Sentinel is done! (almost)

I finished building the Scout Sentinel today, all that is missing now is some paint on the engine and the drivers cage, and the usual round of washes. Plan to do this tomorrow, or perhaps later tonight.

This was the old sentinel model, and that is partly why I chose to make it a scout sentinel. The model is a combination of plastic and metal, and I am not too fond of that.

As i understand the new sentinels are all plastic, and also seem to have more equipment to add and choose from. I plan to add some to the army at a later point, but for now my main goal is to build and paint what is in the shelves and there is a lot to choose from.

The veteran squad lead by Sergeant Bastion is comming along nicely. I had a little challenge painting the resin black, as the paint wouldn't stick right, but I got there eventually.

I find this a little strange, as the grey went on without any problems at all yesterday.

What is missing on the elites now is to do the leather, the skin, and the metal parts of weapons and insignia. The sniper's cape needs to be painted on the outside, and some of the models needs to have head or arms attached to their bodies.

Catachan command squad

The eastern part of the continent is not as industrialized as the western part. The eastern part is mostly farmland, forrests and some swamps.

The troopers based in this part of the continent need to rely on airsupport to move fas tfrom place to place. They are mostly different kinds of infantry, supported by sentinels and Valkyries or Vendettas. The big unit in the east is the 82nd Airborne Division (Nicknamed the Fighting Falcons).

Their first platoon is lead by this command squad:

Lieutenant Hill, with boltgun

Medic with lasgun with foldable stock

Standard bearer with lasgun

Vox operator with lasgun

Specialist with sniper rifle

Several troopers have grenades.

The Catachan troops have flak vests, and they sre painted catachan green

Their headgear are painted Necron Abyss (same blue as the legs of my Space Marines)

Here are some pics:

Cadian Command squad

The Cadians represent as said earlier the troops from the western industrialized zone of the continent. They will be joined by Ogryns and ratlings.

The troops will have access to Chimeras, and will be backed by Leman Russ tanks, Ordnance batteries, hellhound variants, sentinels and hopefully som big and heavy tanks.

The units are gathered under the 101st Infantry Division (nicknamed The Roaring Thunder). Their tactics is based on attacking in force and hitting their enemies hard and brutal.

Here are some pics of the command squad for the 1st Platoon. It consists of the following troops:

Commander: Lieutenant Katz (might be renamed at a later time), with Plasmapistol

Standard bearer with lasgun

Trooper with heavy flamer

Medic with laspistol

Vox operator with lasgun

Here are some pics:

Imperial Guard Cadian troopers

At the moment my Imperial Guard army hails from the planet Xerxes IV (might change this name later) a small planet located in the Mordant Zone between the more known planets Pavonis and San Leor.

In my army the Cadians reperesent troopers from the industrialaized western part of the continent, and this is how the standard troopers will look like...

The helmet, boots, armour and synthetic material on the weapon are Chaos Black

The pants are Adeptus battlegrey

The coats are Fortress grey

all metal is Chainmail

The waterbottles and grenades are Dark Angels Green

all leather is Beastial brown

First Easter update, mostly IG

Just before the Easter holliday set in, I got a package from Forgeworld with the replacement for my dreadnought assault drill (that I managed to break while cutting it clean) and my Imperial Guard veterans upgrade kit.

Naturally I wanted to make my Cadian veteran squad at once, and this meant I had to clear some room on the table. I had two plastic command squads almost finished, so I finished and washed them, and I also washed the five troopers that I made earlier.

I originally wanted my troopers to have a clear contrast between the torsos and legs, but since I suck at thinning and mixing paint and washes I decided to use a thin layer of Badab black on all grey and metal areas. The result came out much better than expected and they look like a gritty band of troopers that has seen some time in the field.

The brown parts were washed with Devlan mud and the green, gold and blue got their respective washes as well.

The pictures will be in my next post, I just took them and need to pick the best pics and crop them a little to get the right sizes.

I also started on a scout sentinel (the old type that is part plastic and part metal), and wanted to make something out of the base, so I hightened the base and made a hole in the middle to create a river using my MIG watereffect set. But since it is a battlefiled I wanted the river to be red with blood, however the result looks a lot more like a river of tomato soup... Still I think it will be ok when I have finsihed the base later on, and I have thought up a new way to make rivers bloody in the future...

The cadian veterans are in different states of ready. I had a little problem glueing resin to resin, but hopefully that is solved now.

4 veterans are armed with shotguns, two with lasrifles (one of these is the vox operator), two veterans have grenade launchers, and the last veteran is a sniper. They are lead by my version of Sergeant Bastonne, armed with a powerfist and a boltgun. I have tried really, really hard to find a "regular" hand with a powersword, but I have not been able to find this. So I had to use a powerfist instead, the most important thing is that it is a powerweapon after all. Also I could not find a left hand with a gun, no matter how hard I looked. So I ended up taking a spacemarine arm and cutting off the hand and attaching it to an Imperial Guard arm. It ended up a boltpistol instead of a laspistol, but I figure that will work fine as that also is the preferred weapon for commisars.

Space Marines update

As several people on the Warhammer 40K forums didn't find my fluff believable, I had to go a few rounds with myself. And... *drumroll*
I've decided to totaly rethink my Space Marine fluff. As a result of this I will also need to change the apperance of my Marines.
The main design will be as is, but some changes will appear.
The main color will be Ultramarine Blue (as before)
Legs will have a darker color below the knee, Midninght Blue for the minis already finished, Necron Abyss for new minis.
One shouldergard will be Scull White with the chapter symbol painted on in black. For the first company there will be a thin black line between the shoulderguard and the white rim. The other Shoulderguard will be Ultramarine Blue with the company color on the rim.

I really liked the name The 2nd Ultras, and the name might stick as a nickname for the chapter, but there has to be a new official name. I have gone several rounds with myself to figure out if I should use an existing name from the Lexicanum as there are several non described chapters there, but if I choose this I make it possible for someone to write about my chapter and hence change my chapter history without my knowledge. So I have landed on finding my own name and chapter symbol. I have several symbols I would like to use, but my problem is applying it to the small shoulderguards and making it look similar from marine to marine. This means I will have to simplify quite a lot. Also, since my hands are not noted for being 100% steady on a normal day it will have to be simplified further.
I am currently testing out patterns on paper, and will try the best of these drawings on some spare shoulderguards from my bitzbox tonight.
After I have landed on a shoulder guard pattern, I will try to find a name that sounds good and matches the symbol.
I will try and post a picture of a Marine with the new symbol as soon as I have decided what it will be.

Finally, some progress...

The Imperial Guard soldiers are finally starting to leave the table and move over to the box where the miniatures awaiting basework stand. Half of the two plastic command squads were transferred over yesterday. The rest are missing one or two minor details or needs minor mistakes corrected before they join the box. Hopefully they all will join this afternoon. They will need washing along with the basework, but I have to do some tests to find the correct washes before I start. No ned to ruin miniatures with wrong washes...

Some Spacemarines are standing battle ready, just waiting to join the base-box. All that is missing is the final wash. I know what washes to use here, so it shouldn't take too long before they get off the table.
They have several units of battle brothers still to be finished, but hopefully most of them will be off the table during the spring. My assault squad will probably be on the table a little longer, as I am missing most of their arms. I hope I will get to arm them by using spare weapons from the boxed sets I have on my shelf, but time will show.

While assembling my Chaplain venerable dreadnought I managed to break a piece of the assault drill arm, so I ordered a spare now. Also added the upgradepack for the cadian veterans, so I can build sergeant Bastonne and his elite warriors. Will need another upgrade pack to make all 10 soldiers in the unit, but I will see how the upgrade pack is to work with before I buy more.

The base design for the Imperial Guard army is now decided. It will be nature bases. This means some will be grass, some rocks, some gravel. Some of the larger bases will get rivers or other larger details. Several of the bases will also get some sort of bushes or growth.
Since battles often rage for as long time, some bases will also have razor wire and other signs of a warzone on them.

I have also decided to make some of the heavy weapons teams hide behind trenches or earth walls, perhaps with added sandbags. This will depend how much of the base is left after the assembled models are placed.