Imperial Guard Ogryn/Bullgryn Bodyguard

This is my first finished infantry model in the new design. This is also my first time using a lightbox to take pictures, but I decided I much rather wanted to do that instead of taking my usual half-bad pictures with a lot of mess in the background. Hopefully I will find a better setup with time. Lord knows I have a lot of models to practice on when I get to work my brushes. It is an study to find the best spots for the lights and the camera.

This model is an Orgyn or Bullgryn (never understood the difference) bodyguard. He is either protecting a high ranking officer in the Walpurgian 3rd or one of the visiting Regimental advisors serving with them.

There is only one bodyguard model made by Games Workshop, and he is one of several versions you can build from a box of three. This bodyguard is the impressive Nork Deddog, but you can only have one of him in your army. So the remaining two gets to serve as something else, and if you do this three times you have three bodyguards and a unit of six Ogryns/Bullgryns with another setup. 
I have done it twice as much, so I have six bodyguards so I needed to personalize them a bit. One of the six is Nork (but with a new name) but the remaining five have gotten some things changed.

The great thing with the Ogryn product line is that they are interchangeable with their counterparts in Age of Sigmar where you have many more choises of heads and weapons. Most of my Ogryns/Bullgryns have heads from the Age of Sigmar Ogors (because abviously they can't have the same name in both systems...), as I think they look much better with lots of hair and wild beards and most of the boxes of that range has extra heads in them anyway.

This bodyguard is based on the model of Nork Deddog, but I had to replace his head, so I gave him one from a Bone 'ead. They are supposed to be  smarter than the regular Ogryn, so I felt that would be fitting. Would not want him to smash the head of the officer he is guarding...

Nork also has a great big knife, but I am not sure if that is something special for Nork or if that is standard equipment for bodyguards, so I replaced it with a big, heavy club. This is also from an Ogor box. 

To make him stand out as a bodyguard I decided to give him the same gun as Nork with the round magazine. I also placed the mechanical Commissar head with the Commissar cap on his shoulder. 

Around his hip I placed a pouch but I am not really sure what he keeps in there. Single bullets maybe. And he also got a couple of hand grenades to really be able to fight off an enemy.

Here he is from the back. From this angle you can see that his armor is quite nicely made, this is so he gets more acceptable by the high ranking officers who often wear very flashy uniforms. They can change for festive arrangements, but the bodyguard need to wear the same equipment all the time so it is important that he looks decent.

I think the Ogryns/Bullgryns might be my favorite unit to build and paint. They are easy to convert and even I with my limited skills can make them look alright. I have built and primed many of these, and some of them are already partially painted so more will follow fairly soon.

Imperial Guard Hellhound

This Hellhound is the first model I painted with the new squad colors, and I am quite happy with how it turned out. The Hellhound is designated a flame-tank and is built on the chimera chassis.

It is armed with an Inferno cannon in the turret and a heavy bolter. The Inferno cannon has a shorter range than the heavy bolter, but it spews flames in to every nook and cranny and makes everything it fires against go up in flames. Hellhound crews are often seen as crazy fools for serving in these kind of vehicles with that much of explosive fluids in the tanks in the back.

This vehicle is from the first squad and is commanded by Lieutenant William Scott Ketchum. 

This is how it looks like from the sides. The left side has a short armor plate and then a relay array, while the right side has the full armor plate with the Imperial eagle symbol. On this model I remembered to paint the rectangle in Dark Angels green before taking the pictures.

Here is a picture taken from above to show the tanks that are in the cargo hold. This model has four tanks. They are painted in red, just like the prometheum tanks that the flame troopers have on their backs. On this model I painted the barrels before I assembled them in the cargo hold, but on some of the other Hellhounds I have built everything before painting so I am a little exited to see how it will be to paint those. I know I will get more of these, so if painting a fully assembled model is harder I will go back to painting the tanks before I assemble them in the back.

The final pick show how the Hellhound look from behind, as one can see the tanks are pretty well protected.

Imperial Guard 2 more Leman Russ tanks

 Here are two more tanks for the 2nd Armored Regiment. This is an Eradicator and an Executioner

The Eradicator is part of the 3rd Squad as one can see from the tan markings on the turret. It belongs to Tank Company Alpha and is commanded by Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Butler.

It is armed with the Nova cannon who easly blows away both barricades and the soldiers hiding behind them (just bout the same cannon as in the Hellhammer just a bit smaller). It also has a lascannon and the side sponsons are armed with heavy bolters. 

It also has a searchlight and smoke chargers. as I like to put that on as many tank as I can. But for this one I opted not to put a dozerblade on it. I do love dozerblades, but they don't come with both Leman Russ tank sets, and it is not usually on all tanks anyway. This is the first Eradicator in my army, but I am sure it will not be the last as I like the look of the Nova cannon.

From the back it looks like any other Leman Russ. I like the look of the Leman Russ tanks from all angles, and that might be the reason why I want to have entire tank companies.

The Executioner is a relic armed with a plasma destroyer as its main weapon. It belongs to first squad of Bravo company and is commanded by Lieutenant Oliver Otis Howard. Its side sponsons also have plasma cannons, and the front has a heavy bolter and a dozerblade.

Here we see it from the side, and as we see the side sponson guns are pointing quite far out from the tank. I am not sure how it happened but they sort of stuck that way either during building or during painting. I would have liked them to be a little closer to the tank body, but one has to work with what one is given.

This is what the Executioner looks like from behind. What differentiates it from other models is the extended back part of the tower where it has a plasma coil.

This is the first time I tried to paint plasma weapons this way. I got a guide from Duncan Rhodes who used to be the main painter for the painting tutorials on Warhammer TV but now has his own painting academy. He demonstrated how to paint blue plasma coils in a video, so I kindly asked him how he would do it with green and he told me how he would do it. I think with some time and experience I will manage to make all three colors visible in layers, but I am quite happy with how it turned out for this tank.

Imperial Guard Leman Russ Vanquisher

This is the Leman Russ Vanquisher Hand of Steel, under the command of Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman is the commander of the 2nd Armored Regiment, and is a true tank ace. In games I will run him with the Knight Commander Pask rules, as this gives some special abilities.

This tank has the powerful Vanquisher cannon, and it is a quite rare version of the Leman Russ. This tank also has side sponsons armed with plasma cannons. Colonel Sherman is standing in the turret. 

The tank also has a dozerblade with wide hazard stripes. 

Here we see the tank from the side, and as we can see the side panels indicating squad has a golden bronze color, indicting that this is a command vehicle. Here we can see how long the Vanquisher cannon is, and we also see the lascannon sticking out in the front just above the dozerblade. 

This is what it looks like from behind. As we see the exhaust pipes has the same colors as the pipes on the Super Heavy tanks. We can also see that this tank has a flag, and that is because it is the tank of the tank ace Sherman.

Here we see a little more closeup picture of the flag. It is a sort of a griffin or something in the same golden bronze as the squad markings on the turret. Then it is mountains painted in the same gray as the tank, and a small sun peeking over the mountains near the end of the flag.

I am not sure where the flag is from, I got it from raiding the bitbox at my local Games Workshop store in Oslo when they wanted to clean out their bitz. I didn't know what army it originates from, but my best guess will be one of the Elf armies in Warhammer Fantasy (what is no known as Age of Sigmar).

I've been debating with myself a lot on how I should field my command segment, but right now I am thinking of having three tanks so that they can drive in a wedge formation, and then add a command Chimera with the regimental Commissar and a unit of Stormtroopers.

I already have the Chimera assembled and partially painted, so I hope there is not too long before I can present it here.

Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) Deathstrike and Manticore

I feel I have spoken of these vehicles on the blog for a long time, but they are finally finished and ready to provide firepower to the Walpurgian 3rd artillery.

On the left is a Manticore, and on the right a Deathstrike missile launcher. They are built on the popular Chimera chassis, but instead of getting compartments for transporting personnel, they are given weapon platforms instead. 

They both have a heavy bolter for close protection, and a smoke launcher and searchlight mounted under the driver compartment.

The Deathstrike missile launcher is under the command of Lieutenant Richard Brooke Garnett.

It is not sent in to the heavy fighting, but like other artillery it stays in the back where it is supposed to be relatively safe. Still it is armed with a heavy bolter for close protection if needed.

The commander of a Deathstrike must be a really cool person, for firing a Deathstrike missile without the proper authorization is a capitol offence. The Deathstrike is only fired in the direst of need as the missile has such a damaging effect. It is classified as Ordnance Extremis.

When you see the Deathtrike missile launcher from the side you see how big the missile really is.

I saw when I posted the pictures that I had forgotten to paint the small rectangle with the imperial markings and a place to write a name for the vehicle. This is fixed now, and the plate is painted Dark Angels Green like the main body of the missile and the side sponsons of my tanks. 

Not much to look at from behind, except the huge opening for the flames from the rocket motors to spew out from.

The Manticore missile launcher is also based on the Chimera and armed with a heavy bolter for close proetction. But instead of one huge missile like the Deathstrike it has four smaller missiles.

It can be used both for long-range bombardment and air support so it is quit versatile. The drawback is that it takes a long time to reload once it has fired its four missiles and it is hard to do in the field. But the missiles on the Manticore does not have the same restrictions as the Deathstrike.

Here we see it from the side. Like the Deathstrike I had forgotten to paint the rectangular area just behind the middle. But on this one I had painted the green, but not the silver of the winged scull and the "off-white" of the banner below. This is rectified now.

Here is a picture from behind, showing the rocket engines and also the mechanism to raise the firing platform to the right elevation for the rockets to go to their destination. And unlike many of my builds, the mechanism works like it is supposed to.

I decided to build the Manticore with the top hatch partially open. This shows us a little of the driver, and the driver compartment is fully painted. The driver/commander of the vehicle is Captain Joseph Wheeler who is the commander of the Deathstrike and Manticore elements of the 2nd Armored division. 

Imperial Guard Hellhammer and Stormlord

Here are the two latest finished Super Heavy tanks of the Walpurgian 3rd. This is a Hellhammer and a Stormlord. They both have red turret markings and this means that hey are the second squad of the 1st Super Heavy Tank Company. 

Fist out is the Hellhammer named The Tormentor, and it is commanded by Captain John McAllister Schofield. He is standing in the turret along with the main gunner. The Hellhammer is built on the Baneblade chassis, but the turret is slightly different and it has another cannon. The cannon is a Hellhammer cannon (genius choice of a name there), and with its explosive shells it can clear away enemies hiding behind cover very effectively. This tank is often used as the spearhead of an urban assault, and in the Walpurgian 3rd that means that the troops of the 27th Infantry Regiment can advance behind it when advancing on hostile cities. 

As with the Baneblade the Hellhammer has been given two side sponsons (one on each side) and they are located at the back of the tank. Each sponson has twin heavy flamers. I chose this because I wanted to make it as fearsome as possible for enemy infantry hiding in ruined cities, the fear of being burned alive is greater than being cut to shreds with heavy bolter rounds that will end your life instantly. 

Here is a shot from the back as well, just to prove I have painted all sides of the tank. For a long time I had not painted the back, as I didn't know how I should paint the shrine to the right. But I found a setup I liked and went with it. The exhaust pipes are painted the same way for all my tanks, both super heavies and Leman Russes (as later blog posts will show). You might think I have forgotten to paint the sculls on the barrels at the back, but that is a decision made by the crews that they will not give their enemies a point to aim at.

The next tank is the Stormlord. It is armed with a Vulcan mega-bolter and this basically spits out a hail of bolter fire to mow down entire platoons of infantry, and shred lightly armed vehicles to pieces. 

This tank is named The Iron Saint, and is commanded by Captain Isaac Ridgeway Trimble. 

The Stormlord also have twin heavy flamers in its side sponsons, but unlike the Baneblades and the Hellhammer, the side sponsons are located at the front. One of the reasons for this is that the Stormlord can carry 40 troopers in to battle and they pile out from the back so you don't want the troopers to get in the way.  

This Stormlord carries troopers from the 27th Infantry Regiment. It carries 15 heavy weapon teams and 1 regular Veteran squad. The idea is that the tank can get the troops safely to high value targets, then the heavy weapon teams and the Veterans can pour out of the tank as close to the target as possible, take out the target and get back in the tank and move to the next. This will make the advance of the rest of the army a little faster (though it is never easy in the 41st millennium) as they should only need to handle "light" resistance while advancing.

The Stormlord carries 3 heavy weapon teams with lascannons, 12 heavy weapon teams with missile launchers and 1 squad of 10 veterans.

Imperial Guard Baneblade and Shadowsword

Finally I have finished painting some units again. Here are the pics of the first two super heavy tanks for the Walpurgian 3rd.

The first tank out is the Baneblade Indomitable under the command of Captain Quincy Adams Gillmore. The side sponsons have heavy bolters unlike a lot of the other tanks that have heavy flamers instead.

The squads are marked by colors on the armored plates on the turret, and this tank has green markings. Other tanks may have dark red or tan markings. The Baneblade has the Captain and the Main Gunner up in the turret. 

This is what the tank looks like from the front. As we can see it is a mighty opponent with two big guns, two lascannons, three double heavy bolters, an autocannon and a heavy stubber.

This is how all the tanks look from the back. At the right there is a small shrine to the Machine God. 

In the middle there is an angel, and she is painted red in honor of the Batle Sisters from The Order of Our Holy Saint who watches over the remains of St. Walpurgia also known as Celestian Superior Valpurgis in High-Gothic.

The other tank in this post is the Shadowsword The Pride of Walpurgia, under the command of Major Winfield Scott Hancock who is the commander of the 1st Super Heavy Tank Company.

The Shadowsword drives in to battle supported by the two Baneblades of the company. The first Baneblade  is presented above, and the other one needs to be repainted to this new colorscheme so it will be presented at a later time. The Shadowsword has been given four side sponsons instead of the usual two for better close protection. All four side sponsons have double heavy flamers in them.

Here we have the tank seen from the front, and as we can see it does not have a turret. This makes it lower than the Baneblade, but there is a good reason for this. The main cannon is a Volcano cannon and it is one of the most powerful weapons ever added to an Imperial tank (maybe any tank) so it would probably blow the turret off the tank chassis when fired. Also it needs a lot of coils and things to fire, so it probably would not fit inside a turret anyway. The Volcano cannon takes a long time to recharge between shots, but when it fires it can destroy a Titan with one shot.

And then we have the back that is quite similar to the Baneblade.

These are the first tanks of the 2nd Armored Regiment, but more tanks are to follow shortly.

At the moment the 1st Super Heavy Tank Company consist of five tanks and four of them are painted and ready for battle. I am pretty sure that the company will gain another super heavy tank in the future, to make a full company, but I am not sure what kind of tank that will be. I have several variants that I would love to field, and I also need to consider what will look good and what will provide the most needed armament to the company.