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.

Ork Battlewagon

Orktober and the big Waaaaagh! is over, and we have gotten a lot of new vehicles for the Orks. I have one of each of the new ones, and I plan to build them gradually throughout the winter alongside my Astra Militarum forces. But the Orks gives so many options to do modifications, and that is some of the fun with the army.
This weekend my local Games Workshop store had an event they called "The Mad Dok Workshop" where they let us use their bitbox and take any parts we wanted and use them to modify a vehicle, character or unit in our ork army. I had long thought about making a Battlewagon with a Deff Rolla, so when this event came up I went for it.

The picures are not the best, but they do give an idea of how the Battlewagon looks...
In the front I added a skull from some Ork kit (think it was the Stompa) to make this look like it is part of the same Ork clan that operate Da Punisha! (my Stompa).

You can see a lot more of the details on this picture. I made a gun tower with twin heavy bolters that I found in the bitbox. The bottom and back wall are from a Battle Wagon set, the sides are from a Rhinox that is used by the Astra Militarum and the top is made of two track links from the track of a super heavy tank. The second small tower is built from the instructions in the Battlewagon box.
I also added some sort of rocket pod (might also be from the Rhinox, but not sure) to the front of the vehicle. In the back there are two rocket pods mounted one on each side of the lower panels of the cargo hold. Above them are two boarding planks (also one on each side) and these are taken from an Ork trukk set.
I wanted to use the big turret on a tank conversion, so I took the turret from the tank and placed on this vehicle. I felt I needed an ork in the turret to show that he could fit, so I took the scout from the big tower and cut off a bit of his base and glued him on there. To keep the tower on, I glued a terminator base on to the tower base after I had placed it, but before I glued the roof of the cargo compartment on to the walls. I also used a 20mm base as floor in the tower to place the ork upon as the original piece did not fit in the Leman Russ tower.

I have also made the turret with the big claw, so if I like I can replace the Heavy bolter turret with the original turret with claw. Only problem with that turret is that it is so unbalanced because of the the claw that it falls out of its hole and down on the ground if you don't hold on to it. But I plan to add a little lead weight under it, and hopefully that will take care of the problem. Just need to make the turret heavier than the arm with the claw.

I would like to convert one more Battlewagon for my army (maybe even more in the future, who knows) and that should get a big gun mounted on the floor in the cargo area. Forgeworld have done this, and they sell a cannon named Ork Supa Cannon. It's not too expensive, so I might buy that. But there is a lot of fun in making something by kitbashing too, and one possibility I have is to take the gun platform from a Basilisk and use that for my gun. Then I can use the Basilisk chassis to make a transport, towing or rescue vehicle for one of my Imperial armies. 

I'll see what I end up with, but the finished result will be shown here.

A grand Knight (Freeblade)

I think I have mentioned this one before, but  it seems like I haven't shown pictures on the blog.
The knight is painted by a  former staff member at my local Games Workshop store in Oslo, Mats Stangjordet.
Mats is not only a great painter, but he is a great guy too and he has helped me a lot with my painting and unit building over the years. I could always ask him for advice, and he would say what he would have done and if you chose to do it another way he would support you anyway and help you as best he could when you asked for it.
Mats has a big interest in Japan (and actually live there now) and you will see Japanese writing on several places on the Knight, and it also has a Manga inspired female on its left shoulder.

On the pictures the banner that is supposed to be hanging under the torso is laying on the ground. This is just because I want to attach the same piece to some of my own knights before I try to do it on this one as I do not want to damage anything.

Here is a close-up of the shoulder with the anime figure. You can also see a delicate checkerboard pattern on the middle section of the knight, painted in quite neutral colors. This is one of the details that help this Knight stand out, and it is repeated on other armor panels other places on the body.

I keep this Knight on top of my work table as an inspiration for myself to try and always paint each miniature a little bit better than the last, and also it is very pretty to rest my eyes on when I need to look up from the figure I am building or painting. 

I would love to try and make the same kind of bases as Mats did on this for my knight army as such a big figure deserves a base that is more than just some paint slapped on a flat base. I don't think I will get the exact same colors, but I will try to do something similar.

The knight will be brought to games if I can, and I'll be proud to field it among any of my Imperial armies.

More Astra Militarum

I did a little search in my Imperial Guard boxes when I was at my unbuilt model-storage, and brought home most of my unbuilt vehicles.
I have two Basilisk ordnance batteries, one Hydra, one Manticore/Deathstrike, four Chimeras and four Leman Russ tanks. I left two Sentinels, two Tauroxes and two Valkyries in my boxes with the troops to be built at a later time.

I also did a check on my finished models, and I don't have any finished Basilisks from before, but looking at my almost finished Hydra, I think that is the one I remember putting together and painting up. But two Basilisk boxes is a good start, and I look forward to building them. I have two different generations of boxes, but the sprues looks identical. I plan on building these at the same time.
I would love to think up a canon to use to build another type of gun, as the cannon on the basilisk would look great on an ork vehicle, maybe even on a Stompa.

The four Chimeras are also two different generations. Two of the boxes are no longer available, they provide one Chimera and one 10-man squad of Imperial Guard Cadian troopers. This is the exact same Chimera that is in the single model box (still on sale) with identical sprues.
The fourth box is an older box, and this has different sprues. It is a lot more to assemble, and one of the major differences are on the tracks and drive wheels. It also have different communiation gear, but apart from that it seems identical so I don't think it will look much different when built.

I have started to assemble the Manticore/Deathstrike model, and decided I will build it as a Manticore. I also know that the Deathstrike missile looks way to good not to use with my Orks. To buld the Deathstike I need to take two of the rockets from the Manticore, so somewhere along the line I will build a manticore that has fired off two rockets. But that will not be this first one. There will also be a Deathstrike somewhere down the line.

The Leman Russ tanks are two different boxes. I have one that build the Battle tank version and three that builds the Demolisher. I have too few regular Battle tank versions, so I plan to build one now.
I would also like to take the Exterminator cannon from this box and put it on one of the Demolishers to make one of those. It is quite a common version, so I would like to have some of that in my ranks.
I do have several Demolishers, but I think it is ok to have at least a squad of those, so I might add one more from the four. Then the last one will be built as a Punisher. With these I have enough tanks for my first company and a squad for the second company. I do not know what tanks I will pair together in squads yet, but I will start to work on that as I paint them up as I need to paint squad markings as described in my last post.
What I do know is that my colonel and one major rides to battle in Vanquishers, but I do not think my seond major will do that, instead he will ride in an Eradicator or an Executioner.

Mechanised units for the Astra Militarum

This winter I will work on my Astra Militarum army among other things. One of the things I will do is paint up my armor. I hope to paint up quite a lot of infantry units too, as I have at least one box full of troops and heavy weapon teams.
I've done a count of my assembled units, and I have 9 Leman Russ tanks of different variants that is either patially painted or primed (10 if I count the tank that is supposed to be done, if it isn't too thick with paint I will re-do it yet again, if not it will be as is).
I would like to make unit markings on my tanks as I want to give them a place in the larger army and field them as companies if I ever get to take place in really big battles. So I have thought out a way of marking the tanks with both squad and company markings, and I believe I have found a way to do it.
The plate that the turret is connected to is sort of a raised ring on the hull, and I like to paint this in another color than my tank. Both to get more color on the model and to build up some contrast. I will also see if it looks ok if I paint the side armor on the turret in the same color.
I will use Averland Sunset (sort of matte yellow) on command vehicles, Khorne red on one squad, Caliban green on number two and Administratum grey on the third squad. This will then serve as my squad markings. Then I will paint three vertical stripes (one of each color) on the side of the tanks near the front, and use that as company or regiment markings. I might make it regimental markings as I don't think I will manage to make up too many different combinations that will loook good on the tanks.

One of the Leman Russ tanks is a Vanquisher with Knight Commander Pask in the turret. In my army he will be Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman, the commander in charge of the entire 2nd Armored Regiment. His turret will have a yellow ring indicating command, and then I will add some sort of units to follow him as escort. I will have to figure out what kind of vehicles it should be, but at the moment I'm thinking at least one tank and one or two Chimeras with troops and command.
I plan on  modifying two figures to serve as my majors as I would like to have them to have the same uniforms but different heads. I'm not sure if they will ride in tanks or a command Chimera, but I will figure that out eventually, so that wen I am done both Majors Jobal Early and James Ewell Brown Stuart (in dayly life called Jeb Stuart) are represented on the battlefield.

Before my army is done I plan to have 9 more Leman Russ tanks and a command Chimera to make up my second tank company, and then I need the vehicles that will ride along with my Colonel in his command squad. But this is a long time goal, not something I plan to do this winter. I think I have a few more taks unbuilt in storage.

But the army is not just built up of Leman Russ tanks. They have a company of Super Heavy tanks, and this is just called  the 1st Super Heavy Tank Company and they are under the command of Major Winfield Scott Hancock.
At the moment he has three super heay tanks at his disposal, a Baneblade, a Shadowsword and a Hellhammer. The Hellhammer is equipped for urban fighting, and has four side sponsons instead of the regular two.
Major Hancock has ordered another Baneblade, and is told it is on a transport, and hopefully it will reach him before the Walpurgian 3rd Brigade reaches their next conflict area.

I have built one command Chimera to go along with my Leman Russ tank company, and I will build one more almost identical for the second company. I will also need some command vehiles for Colonel Sherman, but they might have a different configuration.

The 56th Artillery Company under the command of Major Belle Boyd haven't got too may vehicles done yet, but I am quite sure I have a finished Basilisk in storage or in the display case. If so I will bring it back to the desk and make sure it is painted up eactly like the other armored vehicles.
I do have both Basilisks and Wyverns in storage to be built, and Deathstrike/Manticore launch platforms too...

The support company under the command of Major Joseph Eggleston Johnston have some of their vehicles ready too. I have one Hydra Flaktank that only needs some wethering and unit and company colors before it is ready for action.

This company also have all the Hellhound variants in the Regiment, and as of now they have 4 of these to use. One of them just need a touch-up on the paint to get the right colrorscheme like painting the turret black instead of Mechanicus Standard Grey (if I find that looks good), company markings and so on. The other three are all sprayed Mechanicus Standard Grey.

With time this company will administer the Chimeras that are used by the two Infantry regiments (the Walpurgian 25th and 27th) and the Abhuman regiment (they get the vehicles the other regiments no longer want to drive in, so when I paint them up they will get more rust and grime on them).