Astra Militarum recovery vehicle

I finally got around to build my recovery vehicle for my Walpurgian 3rd Army. I am not sure if I can use it in a game, but if so it must be with Forgeworld rules for the Trojan that they produce. 

After all I've made my own because I can't afford buying from Forgeworld and because I am not too happy working with resin.

I originally wanted to use the big crane from the Galvanic Servohauler set, but it looked too big no matter how I tried to fit it. I thought of cutting it down, but I would have to cut it so much it wouldn't be functional so I gave it up and decided to use that crane on another build in the future instead. There was an article in last month White Dwarf on how to use it as part of the industrial scenery so I might do that instead.

At the front, the vehicle has a big dozerblade that will help it to get to the stranded vehicles that needs service or recovery. It doesn't have lots of weapons as it needs to be light and carry a lot of equipment. But they do carry a heavy bolter mounted in the front and a heavy stubber by the hatch that can be operated by the driver when the vehicle is standing still.

This is what it looks like from the sides. It is mostly identical on both sides except one side has a pick and a tarpaulin that is folded up, while the other side has a shovel and a missile.
On both sides there are heavy chains so that vehicles can be rescued.

Here is the view from behind. I wish I could have found a better back gate for the vehicle, but I think I found an ok solution to it. Because of the grappling arm you can't see that there also is a towing hitch on the back. 

Here is a view from the top of the vehicle, details are sort of hard to see at the moment, but when it's painted up then hopefully everything will be visible. In the back there is a big toolbox on the floor and on the wall hangs a hook for when they need to tow a vehicle and a lasrifle for personal protection.

On the other side there are an oil barrel and fuel cans for refueling vehicles to get them back to base or just refill missing hydraulic or motor oil after damage. There is also a smaller lasweapon (the one that comes with the Basilisk sets) for personal protection for the other man in the back.

On the back wall I added an industrial sawblade that I believe is part of an ork set originally, and a fire extinguisher that came in the Galvanic Servohauler set. The middle section that the crane is connected to is the middle section for the Manticore missile rack that you don't use if you build the Deathstrike missile.

Here are the two men working in the back of the recovery vehicle. The man on the left is still missing rank and name, but he will get it before everything is painted up. I suspect he is a sergeant.

The fellow on the right is Captain Thomas Egenton Hogg, and he is a Squadron leader in the army all though he doesn't have much of a squadron to lead yet. But I might add some other vehicles at a later time, maybe a tanker of some sort, and he is probably also in charge of the crewmen working on repairs at the base.

New Grot tank

I needed to buy a set of Galvanic Servohaulers as I need a solid crane to put on a recovery vehicle I am working on for my Astra Militarum army Since I just needed the crane itself for this, I had two servohaulers in spare. Last time I was working on Grot tanks one of the employees at Games Workshop Oslo suggested I could use these, and now I had the chance to do so.
A While ago Games Workshop had an event where we could come nd raid their huge bitbox ss they wanted to clear it out and start again with sets that are in the current range so I do not know where everything comes from, as last time the box was emptied was in 2001. 

We could bring things we wanted to work on and use the bits we wanted, so one of the tings I brought was this. 

I know banner on the front was a lance from the Bretonians or Empire knights. The back turret is raided from a chaos vehicle sprue, and I believe the front turret is from something T'au.  The front turret is armed with a heavy bolter taken from a Leman Russ tank. I also found a pair of heavy bolter tips that I glued to the front of the vehicle, and I believe they originally came from an old chimera turret.

I plan to glue some Ork glyphs on the big drivewheel to cover up the mechanicus symbol on there. 

The twin storm bolters in the back are mounted in a turret that can be manned by a Grot gunner when needed. I do not know where the bottom of the turret came from, but I decided it would work well as a place to sit as it adds some height for the gunner.

It looks rather menacing from the front with the three heavy bolters and the two smoke launchers.

On the back there is a weird Ork energy thing that I have seen on some of the vehicles and cannons, but I am not 100% sure what effect it has, but being from the Ork range I felt it fitted nicely. On the other side there is a mine attached, that the grots can place on an enemy vehicle or fortification they meet on their way.

I plan to paint this vehicle yellow and use a sponge to add some dirt and rust to it. To make it go a little faster the Grots might add some red stripes to it if they find a place where it can be done.

I plan to convert the other Servohauler too, but I am not sure how I will do it yet. But here at home I have lots of parts from Leman Russ tanks, so I might add a cannon from one if I find a way to make a turret. Or maybe I could use some spare side turrets from my Super heavy tanks. That is some of the fun with converting, seeing what part you have available and how you can use it.

The Genestealer cult is comming

A few weeks ago Games Workshop released the 8th edition codex for the Genesteler Cults. I have always liked this army, so I have started building and painting up my army. I have not done much yet, but it's a start. I have assembled several of the new units but I'm waiting for the best conditions to prime my built minis. In the meantime I am painting some older units that I have primed earlier.

I have gone for a colorscheme that will fit both miners and soldiers from the Planetary Defence Force on a mining world. I am using mainly basepaints with some washes and layer paints where needed.

The jackets, coats and cloaks will be painted Jokaero Orange, the pants will be Mechanicus Standard Gray and boots and the main weapon color will be Abaddon Black.
The gray pants and the black boots and weapons are identical to my Astra Militarum army, and this helps bind the forces together.
The padding and mining backpacks are painted Zandri Dust, and the parts that look like metal are painted Leadbelcher.

For the skin I plan to paint it Bugmans glow, wash with Druchii Violet and then layer it with Cadian Fleshtone so that most of the face is light skin but with the violet shining through in some places. The idea is that the less human they look, the more purple their skin will be.

At the moment, I'm also thinking about painting their vehicles in Jokaero Orange and Zandri Dust with some details in other colors.

The Genestealer Cult release also gave me a unit for my Astra Militarum army. I don't know how I will use them yet, but I got some bikers that I plan to field as scouts. These scouts will serve with the Special Forces unit of the Walpurgian 3rd as the heads that fit best were from the Militarum Tempestus boxes. There are four bikes in a box (along with a four wheeler that I can't use) and there is also a box with a sniper on bike, so I plan to have a few units of five, and say that two units is one squad.
I will also use the bikers in my Genestealer Cult army, but there I will use them with all that is in the boxes, and they will also use the spare four wheelers.

Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) Heavy Weapons team WIP

I thought I would do something a little different for once and show you the way from an idea to a finished model. I'm not that good at updating the blog, so 'I have created a new tag called WIP, and from time to time I will show you what I am working on. I probably won't be doing it for all the rank and file models but I will do it if it is something big, different or something I feel I would like to share for other reasons.

I feel that it can be a bit boring to have every model on a flat "black" base with nothing going on (the base will not stay black as it will be painted up some way, but you know what I mean), so I thought I would go for a little mini dioarama when building this Cadian heavy weapon team.
I wanted to add some extra side sponsons and turrets to one of my super heavy tanks, so I bough the Baneblade Sponsons and Accessories sprues from Games Workshop. On these sprues there were two extra sets of the barrels that goes on the back of the tanks. I want to use two barrels for my Stompa flamer conversion that I will make in the future, but the other two I had no plans for so I glued them on to a base from the Sector Mechanicus Industrial bases set as I wanted to use this heavy weapon team along with my city fighters. I can also field them and have them blend in seamlessly on the gangways of my big refinery that I am working on, but most of the time they will be fighting in rulal areas.

They are armed with a missile launcher that they steady on the barrels to aim it straight. I have also given them an extra missile as that was all I had spare, but I might add a crate to another base and that could potentially be full og spare missiles. The soldier sitting on his knee holds a laspistol for close combat and binoculars to get range and target information. The soldier with the missile launcher have a laspistol holstered on his hip, and they also have a spare lasgun for keeping the enemy away when they are out of missiles. I can also add a container og some sorts to another base in the future and place that close by and say it is an ammo dump, so they don't need to run out of missiles in a while.

Here they are primed and ready for paint. The guardsmen are not glued to the base yet, but everything else is glued together. I will glue the guardsmen to the base with superglue when the painting is mostly done to avoid remnants of glue being visible on the finished work.

I've had one paint session with them so far, and this is where I am now. The barrels are painted Zandri Dust, and will have one more coat with that before they are washed with Agrax Eathshade. Then I will go over them with a sponge to weather them up. First with a brown color to create patches of rust, and then with a metal color (also with the sponge) to make them look worn.
There is a lot of metal here, so I haven't decided exactly how to paint the missile launcher, but I'm thinking either black or dark green. Dark green could be my best option as the armor and helmet that is right beside it are black. 
The uniform pants are Mechanicus Standard Grey and the jackets are Administratum Grey. This is the standard paint scheme for all my Cadians.

My Astra Militatum/Imperial Guard army is made up of several different units, but I try to have some things painted the same for all of them to add unity to the army.

I have Cadians, Catachans and Tempestus Scions as troops. Cadians and Catachans are both regular Infantry Regiments, while the Scions form up an elite Stormtrooper Regiment. 

They get different colored jackets dependning on what they are wearing. The Catchans often have combat vests or t-shirts, the Cadians have uniform jackets and the Scions have another kind of armor. But all pants are Mechanicus Standars Grey, and all boots are Black. This is also true for my abhumans (both Orgyns/Bulgryns and Ratlings).

"People" for the Guard

I've taken a small break from building vehicles for my Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) army to build some foot sloggers.
I have made one 10-man squad with regular Guard troopers, and also a 10 man squad and 5-man command squad for my Scions. I plan to use the Tempestus scions as my elite sodiers  in my Walpurgian Army, and I have made a new Regiment for them. The 101st Airborne Regiment, nicknamed the Screaming Eagles (as there is an exiting Scions army called the Kappic Eagles in the game (not sure if I spelled that right). The overall plan is to field the Scions in Taurox or Taurox Prime vehicles as well as Valkyries aircrafts. Then the regular Guard units will use Chimeras.
I will build some Scions with helmets and some with berets, and I have one command squad with each. They are elites, so I don't think I will have as many of them as I have of the regular troopers.

I love the big brutes that the Ogryns and Bullgryns represent, and they have their own regiment in the army (the 1st Abhuman Regiment) where they serve together with the smallest race in the army, the Ratlings (I have not primed or painted these yet but I have a bunch of them assembled and glued to their bases).

I have several kinds of Ogryns in my army:
Bullgryns with Grenade gauntlets - These are strait out of the box, armed with big shields and grenade gauntlets, ready to march against the enemy raining grenades down on them and smashing what is left when they get to them with the grenadelaunchers and shields when they get there.

Bullgryns with clubs and riot gear - These are close combat specialists, armed with modern clubs and small shields. They also wear gasmasks (except their Bone 'eads leaders). They will either be driven in to the heat of battle in Chimeras or march in behind the ogryns/bullgryns that have ranged weapons.

Ogryns with ripperguns - this is the classic Ogryns in Warhammer 40.000. I have some of the old metal minis (even one from back when they were quite small) but also the new plastic ones. I have decided that the plastic figures will have armor on both shoulders and not just one as they do in the assembly instructions. I will see if I can field the old metal figures side by side with the plastic ones but if it looks too weird then they will just fight side by side.

Ogryns with clubs and riot gear - I don't like the slick Orgyn faces that comes in the boxes. I don't mind some of the Ogryns being bold, but they look like they have been too close to radioactive waste for a long time... Instead I have bought some boxes of Ogors from Age of Sigmar, and those boxes have lots of spare heads. So I use the heads for all Ogryns that is not wearing gas masks, and then I decided I could use the bodies a well. They look rather different with their belly shields and more baggy pants, so I plan to field them together as one unit. I plan to have two squads of nine of these Ogryns, and that should leave me planty of nice heads to use for the rest of the Ogryns.

Ogryn bodyguards - some of the most prominent officers and advisers have Ogryn bodyguards to protect them when they are outside of the command bunkers that they usually serve in. One of my bodyguards is Nork Deddog but there can only be one of him in the army so I use some clubs from the Ogor box and different heads to show the difference between Nork and the others. Nork has a big serrated knife and I would love to use swords for some of my bodyguard, but they all are right hands and I need them in their left. so then it will be clubs instead until I can find out a smart solution.

More reinforcements for the Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum)

I have built some vehicles for my Imperial Guard army, The Walpurgian 3rd Brigade

Major Belle Boyd have gotten two Basilisk mobile artillery units to her artillery company. I spent some time trying to make some crew members. Unlike the Wyvern/Hydra set, the Basilisk set only comes with one full crew member. You can make one more that is based in the turret up front if you like, but that is no place to be when the guns are in position.
I recently bought a Start Collecting box for the Astra militarum, and in that box you get a tank, a Commisar, a 10-man squad of Cadians and a heavy weapon team. I decided to give the 10-man squad a heavy weapon option and take two people from the squad to serve as crew for the Basilisks.
I wanted some variation to the crew,  To do this I took one kneeling pair of legs from the heavy weapon team and  pair of standing legs from the 10-man squad. I then gave the legless man from the heavy team standing up legs.
To get everything to look nice, I decided to make a little diorama for my heavy weapon team. I found a bit with two barrels from one of my super heavy tanks, and decided I could use that as a stand for the heavy weapon. I chose a missile launcher as this is a weapon that the gunner has on his shoulder. Then he can rest the front of the weapon on the barrels to steady it. His second is kneeling behind the barrels but is looking around the side with a rangefinder to call out the range.

I had a spare arm pointing, so one my my vehicle commanders got that and the other got the arm raised in the air that comes with the set. They both got the other arm from the sets and I gave them both a pair of binoculars to hold. To make it look different the dude with the pointing arm got an officer head with a re-breather.
The crew members were built to mirror their officers. The loader on the one with the re-breather got his own re-breaher unit. I am not sure what set that came from, but I think it was a command set as it was just five on the sprue. He got kneeling legs and is kneeling by the radio set I placed on the back platform. I also added a crate in front of the radio to hide the fact that is don't have an operational panel (this is usually against the back of the trooper carrying the radio). On top of the crate i put a weapon for the crewman to use if their position should be overrun by enemies. On the other side of the platform I placed four rounds of ammunition for the Earthshaker cannon on the Basilisk. It is really ammunition from the Super Heavy tank sets, but I will never make any of my super heavies in such a position as I will need the ammo with them. There are two different kinds of ammo, so I am claiming one to be an incendiary round while the other are regular exploding ammo.
On the second Basilisk the crewman is standing up. I plan to have him doing something by the barrel of the gun with one hand, maybe closing the hatch after he has loaded in a round to fire off. The other hand is holding his helmet. I found a nice bare head with a scar and nice hair.
This Basilisk also have a box with a weapon on top of it, and ammunition on different sides of the platform.

I also assembled a Chimera. The new sprues obviously have several options for the turrets, and I ended up putting a heavy bolter on this one. I also gave it a dozer-blade and a heavy flamer in front and put a Catachan driver in the turret. This means it will serve with the 27th Infantry Regiment under Colonel George Gordon Meade. The next Chimera I build will have a heavy flamer in the turret, and will serve the 25th and Colonel James Longstreet. All the Chimeras are part of the support company of the 2nd Armored Regiment, but serving with the infantry regiments.

I have also decided that I will need to make one more Infantry Regiment, as I need somewhere to place my Tempestus Scions. I have not decided what I will call them yet, but I will come back to that when I present them here on the blog. They will not use Chimeras as personal transports but Tauroxes instead. They will also be part of the 2nd Armored.

Ork Loota (Leman Russ Conversion)

I saw a short glimpse of this kind of tank in a video from Games Workshop and decided I had to try to make one. This is the chassis from a Leman Russ with the big tower from an Ork Battlewagon.
I have later found out that this will be one of three types of looted vehicles to use for the Orks, and a guide on how to build exactly this conversion will be part of the Chapter Approved book that comes out in about a month or so.
The base of the tower is a lot bigger than the little hole on the Leman Russ chassis, so I started by measuring how big the hole needed to be and then set to work with my clippers and knife to give the hole the right size and make it smooth around the edges.
I then took a spare armor plate from a Chimera box (the one part that is never used on the sprues), cut it in to the right size and glued it on under the turret base after I had assembled the turret and put it through my new hole. This makes it possible to rotate the tower 360 degrees, and it will not fall off. I read that the conversion model in the book have done something where they glued the bottom peg of the Leman Russ tower on to the Ork tower so they did not have to cut in the Leman Russ chassis.
The main gun is a big cannon that came with the Deff -Rolla upgrade sprue, but it looks a lot like a Battle cannon on a regular Leman Russ in size.

When you see it from the front it sort of look a lot like a Leman Russ Battletank still, and I am sure this will fool many Imperial soldiers and officers to belive that it is their tank that is comming and hold fire just a little too long to stop it.

Seeing it from the back, I think it sort of has a little World War II feel to it. I like how the turret has that round tower in the back.

The pictures are a little dark, but the orks have added their glyphs to the tank, one on each side, so that other orks shall see that it is on their side. Also this makes the tank better and stronger according to the orks.

This was a fun little conversion to do, and I might make another one at a later time, as I plan to convert one more Battlewagon so I will get another spare tower. It won't be in the near future though, so maybe I will see how Games Workshop have done theirs and copy that solution when the time comes.