The Grots are comming...

Grots, Gretchin, Gobbos, call them what ever you like.
Forgeworld produces a set called "Grot tanks", so I'm using Grots as a name for them. We are of course talking about the small helpers of the Orks.

It all started with the wish to have Grot tanks, but the Forgeworld set is quite expensive. So I thought, why not make my own?
The first three tanks are in the making now. They have the tracks and base from the Kataphron Breachers from the Adeptus Mechanicus range. On top of that I put the bodies of the Killa Kans and I use spare weapons from the Astra Militarum tanks. All in all this gets more expensive than buying from Forgeworld, but I plan to use the remaining pieces for other builds, and I already had the kits.

On some world there's been a big battle between Orks and the Astra Militarum. Before the repair crews from the Astra Militatrum got to the battlefield to recover their tanks, the Grots had been there and taken what they could use from the abandoned tanks.
The three Grot Tanks I have so far are armed like this:
The lead tank is armed with twin Autocannons looted from a Leman Russ Exterminator. 

The second tank have the outer half of a Battlecannon from a standard Leman Russ.

The third tank have the Lascannon from the front turret of some variant of Leman Russ.

The Grots managed to get away with the main cannon from a Baneblade, but in order to have their own little tank army they traded it to an Ork Bigmek to use as a bellygun on his Stompa. This is the essential difference between my Grots and many others that have tried the same before them.
In the game Gorkamorka the Grots made a revolution to get equal rights for Grot and Ork. In my army they use trade to get certain advantages. They all work for a Big Mek called Gyvva. (Try to say it fast with a little pause between big and mek and it sounds a lot like McGyver. Pun intended!).
Many orks would not like their grots to get good equipment, but as long as he keeps his grots happy, Big Mek Gyvva gets more dakka under his command, and a steady supply of scavenged weaponry. This makes him mightier than oter Big Meks, and gives him more respect with the Warboss he is fighting for.

I would like to take a small group of Night Goblins and modify their arms a bit, so that they carry tools or weapons from the 40K universe. Then I will paint their robes red, just like the robes of my Mechanicus. They will be the masterminds behind the Grot machines, and supervise the builds as well as selecting the pilots for them.
I am sure I will get some spare parts as I build my Mechanicus army, as well as from other Grot sets.

The Grots also plan to make two different walkers, one on two legs and one on four, and the Grot/Ork version of a Hellhound. They might think up other creations in the future as well.

Veterans done

Last night I assembled my ten-man strong veteran squad. This is the second squad of veterans I've ever built, and I know I will need more. But before I make another I will make a regular squad of troopers. 

The first veteran squad was assembled with lots of Forgeworld stuff, as I bought a veteran upgrade kit from them. This second squad was built just with bits from the regular millitarum range. 

The veteran sergeant is armed with a plasma pistol and a chainsword, he got a face with a cigar stump in his mouth from the command squad sprues.

The unit have two snipers with capes, and they are both armed with the long sniper version of the lasgun. Each command squad sprue has one cape and longlas.

The fourth veteran is armed with a big plasma gun, as I love the look of plasma weaponry. This too came from the command sprue, and this was the third veteran in the squad with "special weapons" and that is all I am allowed to take according to the rules.

The rules do state that I can have one veteran with a heavy flamer in addition to the three special weapons, so naturally I grabbed the heavy flamer from the command sprue and made one. I thought the gas tanks were the same on both the command and regular sprue, but either there is a small difference or the heavy flamer has a really bad fit. But I tilted the tanks just a little bit and that seemed to do the trick. 

The rest of the veterans are armed with lasguns with bayonets fixed, and that includes the one carrying the vox caster as I didn't have any more of the arms with the lasgun slung over one shoulder.

But I think it's ok anyway, as I have several vox-men with that same piece.

I had planned to see if I could make females with autoguns or shotguns from the House Escher sprues, but the shoulders looked way too skinny to look good on an Imperial Guard torso. I might try to use the spare Escher heads on some other units, as I know this worked fine on my first female officer in longcoat.

Ran out of glue?

For the first time ever I've managed to run out of glue! I have no idea how I did it, as I had several tubes with some glue left in them,  but I suppose all the scenery building just made me use more than expected.

When I was at Games Workshop last week I planned to pick up my final order of terrain sets for the refinery area, but for some reason it was not delivered. The helpful employees checked it out for me and the package somehow got lost in the warp. But being customer friendly, they made sure that Games Workshop shipped a new package free of charge as they didn't have the sets in store so hopefully I will get it when the mail orders arrive in store tomorrow. It is a Prometheum Forge and a set of Haemotrope Reactors.

While at the store I got more glue so I've been able to sit down and do some more building these last few days.
I finished the Void Shield Generator that I had started before I ran out of glue, and next scenery to be built is a Galvanic Magnavent to go around it. I need to find out where I should place the tank that is in the set as that usually go where I plan to put the generator. If I leave the tank off entirely, I might be able to place two tanks on the Prometheum Forge. I'll see what I do when the Forge arrives.

I had planned to have a few generators, but it was not a fun build so I don't think I'll buy more. It looks great and the plan behind the design is quite brilliant, but putting it together was a pain. It was really hard to figure out how the designers had planned for the pillars to be mounted to the base (what parts to glue and to what), and they did not fit as the instructions said they should. I got it all together, but lost some of the "playability" in the set. It still looks nice, but I will not go another round with it. Instead I will build the rest of the Sector Mechanicus scenery. I also have tons of ruined buildings for Warhammer 40.000 to assemble and even more to paint up. And I have some scenery for Age of Sigmar that I should build and paint.

To celebrate that I got glue again, I bought a box of Space Marine scouts with sniper rifles. I seem to have a thing for them, so I can never get enough. On the GW web page it looked like they were going out of production a while ago, so I had to have one more box. While writing this I checked the web again, and now they are back in stock and looks like they will stay (thank you GW). Four are outfitted with sniper rifles and the fifth is armed with a rocketlauncher as a support weapon.

I have also built an Imperial Guard command squad, and I'm using some of the spare weapons from that kit and the last command squad I assembled to outfit my second unit of veterans that I am putting together at the moment. I had a hard time finding what "special weapons" was, as there is no Special weapons list (at least not that I could find) in the codex, official rule-book or the Index-books for the Astra Militarum. All I find is ranged and melee weapons. But the Command squad instruction book (who I chose not to follow) had the rules for the command squad and a list of ranged, melee and special weapons.

My command squad is equipped with a veteran armed with a Space Marine sniper rifle that was a spare from the scout set, and I have it attached to his back. He is bent down on one knee checking a map and pointing with the other hand. He also got the spare sniper head. The officer is holding a bolt pistol and the other hand is lost in combat earlier and replaced with a bare metal arm holding a powersword. I have not yet decided who of my commanders this figure will be. The Standard bearer is holding the standard in one hand and a laspistol in the other.
I did not want the medic to hold bandages as they seem to always do that, so I put a medi-pac on his back and put a laspistol and a chainsword in his hands. I also gave him a head with a cigar stump in his mouth. The fifth guy is the vox operator, and he's got a lasgun slung over the left shoulder and ready to be fired with one hand.

The veteran squad will have a sergeant armed with a plasma pistol and chainsword, and his unit will have a vox operator probably with the same lasgun as the one in the command squad if I have any left. If not he will have a regular lasgun in both hands.
There will be two snipers with longlas rifles, a heavy weapon operator with a plasma gun and one with a heavy flamer. I would like to outfit a few troopers with autoguns or shotguns, but I don't have any at the moment. I do have some in the Necromunda House Escher sets, and I will try and see how that looks, and if it looks good I'll add some heads from the same sets to the figures that get these weapons to represent female veterans.

I also love to try and build a unit or two of Fyreslayers as I see so many cool pictures of them in White Dwarf magazine and other places. I might try to do that in the near future as well.

Happy new year!

Happy new year!
2017 is now history. The last things I did in 2017 was building a Command Chimera for my Imperial Guard army. The Chimera will transport my Artillery commander and her command squad, and it is equipped with an extra antenna on the back.
I also bought and started painting the new Sly Marbo figure that came out in stores just after Christmas. I participated in the Games Workshop Oslo Secret Santa event, and I got a box of Genestealer Brood. I have started to paint this unit of eight, and I am going for a purple look on them. I will use two or three purple colors with Naggaroth Night as the base and the darkest color. I will see if I need a contrasting color for some details, but I will look in to that when the skin is about done. So far all eight are painted Naggaroth Night, but only two of them have gotten the next layer on.

2018 has started with building of scenery for Warhammer 40K. I have several of the Mechanicum scenery sets, and I am planning to make a big refinery area. So far I have made four structures. The biggest one is the Promethium Refinery where I have used all the pieces to make one tall massive tank with gangways and smokestacks. The second largest building is a Ferratonic Incinerator with Alcomite stack pipes on top. Then I have the biggest pipe from the Alcomite stack set as a separate build, and this will connect with the tank in the Ferratonic Incinerator set through pipes on the ground. The pipes are also built, but I have not glued them to stack or incinerator as this makes it a lot more easy to paint and store it. I might glue it to the stack in the future.
From the gangways on the Incinerator there is a short ladder that can connect to the final build so far, the Thermic Plasma Regulators. They have been built with a plasma conduit between them and are glued together as one unit. In the future there will be another plasma conduit going from the second plasma regulator to two Haemotrope Reactors.

I have five more sets to assemble before I start to prime and paint this scenery (well, six counting the reactors), and that is a Galvanic Magnavent (this will be assembled with a Void Shield Generator in the middle if that is possible), a Promethium Forge, another Ferratonic Incinerator and a Ferratonic Furnace. The Ferratonic sets will have some smokestacks on them from another set of Alcomite stacks that I have. All buildings will be connected somehow, either with pipes, conduits or gangways (or a combination) and I will have ladders going to the ground from all structures.
I will try and post some pictures when all the terrain is assembled, and then everything will be presented in painted glory when that is done sometime in the future (do I dare say later in 2018?).

Keep painting and building, and enjoy your hobby in the new year!

progress on my armies

I have been building a little bit of varied stuff lately. After building the Stompa and the two Super Heavy tanks I thought I should do some small stuff for a little while before I got back to the last Super Heavy tank (a Baneblade) and the other Stompa (with several modifications).
I also have a lot of Leman Russ tanks and some Hellhounds to assemble, and I will get around to those soon.

Right now, I have assembled some Ork units. I had two boxes of Lootas/Burnas laying around, so I decided to make one box of each.
I started with the Burnas, and they were a lot of hazzle to assemble, but they are nice looking minis so I would like one more box in the future.
The torsos were easy, just like regular Orks, but the problem came when adding the harnesses and the bulky weapons. I found the trick was to attach the weapon to the harness before gluing it on to the torso, but still you had to work while everything was wobbly to make sure you got the second arm right. When that was done the miniature could be allowed to dry for awhile before adding the head. It was limited space so it took some fiddling to get everything right.

The Lootas was a little bit easier to assemble, but getting the heads on were even tighter.
For the Burnas you got the choice to build a Mek with his own special burna to fight with the unit. There were no special weapon to use with the Lootas. I tried with a big shoota, but then I could not fit the Mek head, so in the end I ended up gluing the Mek pole on to the back of a Loota rig on one of the other torsos.
One problem with this set if you don't want to bring a Mek is that there are only four sets of weapons for each unit, so you need more than one box if you like all to wear the same equipment. For my next boxes of these that should be no problem, as I have extras of both options now. I am thinking of taking a regular Boyz box and make a Loota out of one of the Orks there to replace the one with the big shoota in this unit, as Boyz can field big guns too. I'll see what I end up doing as I eventually get more boxes sometime in the future.

The final addition to my Orks for now, are one box with three Killa Kans. I like these brute monsters, but they do take up a lot of physical space with their wide arms. I have one more box at home, but I'm thinking of trying to use these as the turrets for Grot tanks, with the chassis from the Kataphron Breachers/Destroyers as belts. I am not sure if this will work, but I would like to try and see. If not, I will build both units according to the instructions as I can always take more of them in both armies.
If the idea works, then I will take spare gun-barrels from the Leman Russ tanks to use as guns. It might not look very pretty, but it will certainly be "orky"... Eventually I'm sure I am going to convert one Leman Russ in to a Grot tank as well (I still have several Leman Russ tanks in storage), but that will be the Grot answer to a super heavy...

The Astra Militarum/Imperial Guard have gotten a command squad for the Artillery commmander - Major Belle Boyd.
Here I met sort of a snag as the rules in the Astra Militartum codex see the commander as a single figure, and specifies that a command squad is only four figures. This would not be a problem usually, as the commander will be the commander from the box. But in this case I want to use my existing figure as the Major who has a command squad atached to her, but the officer from the box will be her Lieutenant and I can't see how I can attach him to her and the unit if he's not a part of the command squad. I don't think I can use him as a single model, and anyway that would not be correct.
But I'm sure I'll find a way to solve this before it is time to use the unit in a game. For all I know, there could be a 9th edition before I get there...
The next thing to build here is a Chimera for my command squad to travel in, and I plan to add some extra bits like an antenna from the Super Heavy upgrade kit on this to show it off as a command vehicle. This is something I plan to do for all my command vehicles, but I might not use Baneblade antennas for all, as it will be a little expensive to buy the upgrade sprue just for the antennas.

I've also started to built a unit of Mark IV (Mk IV) Space Marines. So far I have glued the torsos together, and the Sergeant has also gotten his arms attached. I plan to work more on that unit tonight.
The fluff says that my chapter (The Gateekeepers) are from the second founding and they have been in the outer reaches of the galaxy ever since they were founded, so they have had to take extra care of their armour and service it. That explains why they still have units wearing the Mk IV suits.
Another reason for buying these sets is that I can use them if I ever want to play games of Warhammer 30K/Horus Heresy).
I also try to give as many individual marines as possible the Mk VI helmets (the beaky ones) as I think they are the coolest looking helmets ever. They might have Mk VII armour, but they have kept their helmets. The Mk VI and Mk VII are very interchangeable, so when a part in the Mk VI suits are damaged beyond repair, a Mk VII replacemet is issued.

A bit about names

After writing a little about the names of my Imperial Guard officers in my last blogpost, I thought I would take s little time to write about how I name my characters, why I do it and who gets named.

I generally give names to the leaders and characters in my armies. I also name miniatures that stand out in certain ways and sort of demands to be known.
In addition to naming, I like to make a little background on the miniatures to say just the basic things abut them.
A good example of what kind of background I make is the background for Sergeant Bastion. I read a background in one of the old editions (4th or 5th ed I think) of Warhammer 40.000 about Sergeant Luc Bastonne, a Cadian of Noble heritage that takes every loss of his men personal. Inspired by him I made Gunnery Sergeant "Luck" Bastion, a veteran sergeant leading a squad called Bastions Bastards. Sergeant Bastion have been promoted to higher ranks several times, but have refused to accept the promotions as he likes to be on the ground in the field with his men. Once a colonel took it so personal he reported Bastion for insubordination, but the Senior Commisar in the Regiment felt it was for the right reasons and let it pass. Bastion and his Bastards are made from a Cadian squad set, modified with bits from the Forgeworld Cadian Veteran set.

For my Sergeants I just like to use names that sounds good. One will be called Remagen, but I am not sure who he is yet.
For the commissioned officers I use names from the American Civil War. A lot of them were generals in real life, but I have to demote them in my army. I do not care if they fought for the North or South, but I will not use persons I find inappropriate like Quantrill, who was a guerrilla leader fighting for the southern cause. I don't use Lee or Grant either as they are too well known for that special period (they are probably the only two names Norwegians can name along with Abraham Lincoln when asked about the American Civil War). The General in charge of the Walpurgian 3rd Brigade is Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

For my other armies I have chosen other areas to get names from. My Space Marines chapter, The Gatekeepers, have Roman names for the Chapter Master and Captains. Now that Lieutenants have been introduced, I will use Roman names for them as well. The Apothecaries  and probably the Librarians will be named after Greek philosophers. My chapter Master is called Otho Vitellius.


My Mechanicus army, the Cohort 9-1 Alpha from the Mechanicus fleet ship Gloria Inveneris is Magos Explorator de Orellana. His commander is the commander of the entire Mechanicus fleet, and his name is Arch Magos de Sousa (I will use the Belisarius Cawl figure for this one).
They are named for famous explorers, at least explorers that come up on Wikipedia when I search for Famous ones.

I also give names to my badguys, and my Chaos Space Marine army is called The Knights of Oblivion, and their commander is Arch-Commodore Falstaff. All the named characters in this army will be Shakespeare characters of some sort.

My Orks gets their names from famous people, and they get "orkyfided"   The warboss in charge if the army is Hazza Hoff (as in David Hasselhoff) and he has his pet squig Hoobie. The figure is Grukk Facerippa, a huge Ork.

My Inquisitor army is led by Lord Inquisitor Van Dorn, a name that just came to me and for this army I will just use names I like.

I have not found any names for my Genestealer army yet, but I need to try an find out how a Genestealer would be named. Also my Chaos Daemons are without names, as daemon names should not be spoken.

For Age of Sigmar, I have no names for my Chaos Warrior armies yet, but that will come.
Like in 40K the Daemons will get no names.

My Duardin (or Dwarf) army are led by Thorir Thorgrimsson. The characters in this army will all be Icelandic or old Norwegian sounding names. The choice of Thorir for the King is a tribute to the coach of the Norwegian female handballteam Thorir Hergeirsson who is a great leader and sort of short (not saying he is a dwarf though).

The Fyreslayers are sort of cousins of the Duardin, and I figure they should have old nordic sounding names too. Maybe Icelandig sounding for them too, but at least sort of viking names.

The Kharadron Overloards are also related somehow, but maybe a little more distant. I will see how many Icelandic sounding names I can think up, if I get enough they will get those kind of names too, if not I will see if I can find some other sort of cool idea to use on them.

My Sylvaneth army are named after Latin names for all kinds of trees. So far I have named the ancient Treelord who leads the army, and its name is Quercus and this is Latin for Oak.

My greenskins army in Age of Sigmar will all get sort of querky funny sounding names, and for my leader I use the Skarsnik figure with his big squig. In my army the Leader is called Turnip, and his squig is called Blabla.

I have yet to pick a way to name my Ogres, but hopefully I can find something fitting for this nice army of big miniatures.

Progress with several armies

I have done some more work on my Imperial Guard army. The Walpurgian 3rd Brigade have gotten their third Super heavy tank, and this time it is a Shadowsword. It is assembled, and along with the Hellhammer it is also primed and given the factory color of Mechanicus Standard Grey. The Walpurgian forces like the grey, but they will send it to their shops to add Abaddon Black and a detail color to be added to small areas. At the moment the idea is to use Caliban Green, but I will have to give it a try and see how it looks before a final decition is made.
I will also bring home my already assembled and painted Baneblade from storage, to give it the same color scheme, as it is mostly Mechanicus Standard Grey today.

I was quite active with the black spray on Sunday, and the Stompa and several Orks are also primed, alongside the female Commisar (not a GW model), my first Grundstok Gunhauler (smallest ship of the Kharadon Overlords) and a Techpriest Engineseer. They will all be painted up in the comming weeks, some sooner than others. I will add some spikes to the Stompa, and prime them with Imperial Primer along with the Grots that service it. I have an idea to make several Grot wehicles, so I might save some Grots to use on these.

I look forward to assembling more Kharadon ships in the future, as it was a fun build so far. All I need to decide now is the color scheme I want to use. I would like to have colors that are quite easy to get a good paint result with, but also that look good together. I have already decided that my Kharadons will have some blue in their colors, but I'm not sure yet if it will be a dominant color or just a supplement- or contrasting one. While painting I will also prime and paint the pilot and gunner and add them to the ship when the model is ready for that.

The Walpurgian 3rd Brigade have more reinforcements comming. I have finished a command Leman Russ Vanquisher tank, and have also assembled and kitbashed a female officer. She has the torso of the officer that comes extra in the Baneblade boxes, and I have swapped the male head-options for a female head from the Necromunda House Escher pack.
Major Belle Boyd of the Walpurgian 3rd Brigade, 2nd Armoured Regiment have been selected to be in charge of all artillery units in the Brigade. She answers to Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman, who is the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Armored Regiment.
Some might recognise the name of the CO, and yes that is right the name is taken from the American Civil War (1861-1865). Sherman was a Major General for the North, and went on after the war to become the Commanding General of the US Army when General Grant was elected president.
Belle Boyd was a spy for the South during the war, and was granted an honorary title as captian by General "Stonewall" Jackson (Who also is represented in my army as a Colonel and commander of the 1st Abhuman Regiment).
I plan to make up a short info file on each leader in my army (including sergeants), characters and regular troopers that is special for some reason or other.

I have bought the Necromunda boardgame and the rules for using them with 40K scenery. The game itself will be a gift for myself for Christmas, but I have bought and assembled one extra box of House Escher gangers, as I plan to make that my Necromunda gang (unless some really cool gang is released in the near future).
Some of the gangers were a little hard to get to stand on their bases, so I had to cram them up betweeen two bottles of paint until the glue dried. To the left of the paint bottle is Major Belle Boyd.

The Goliath gang that is included in the Necromunda boardgame will also be assembled and painted, but I don't think I will use them in games with other people or have too many of them.
I do love the scenery released for Necromunda and Mechanicus, and I have many plans for building up a big factory area with those scenery packs. Probably a prometheum refinery or something like that, so I can use a lot of pipes and gangways. But more on that in a future post.