Deep Strike Land Raider - part 2

Earlier this week I took a tenon saw to an eBay Land Raider... here are the results. I think it's an unusual piece of terrain, and I'll enjoy popping it on the table down at the club...

Deep Strike Land Raider

I managed to pick up a couple of Land Raiders very cheaply on Ebay. One will be finding itself refurbished properly and added into my Imperial Guard army as an allied unit (I have started writing the fluff for that one), the other one is being turned into terrain.

Stage 1 - close assault on a Land Raider with a tenon saw. As you will see, it's basically a hulk; most of the weapons and hatches are missing and I'll replace some from the bits box.

Stage 2 - the bases are cut from 6mm MDF, the Land Raider parts are stuck down with plenty of hot glue. The larger part will be painted as a Blood Angel vehicle, so I'll do the basing in standard grass colours. The smaller part will go into my Mars terrain so I will probably paint it up in Ultramarine colours to clash with the red basing.

Stage 3 - hatches replaced, weaponry replaced, I will add some torn-away wiring to the right sponson where I'm not going to put a new gun in place but basically I can sand the base and start painting once it's all dried.

Thunderfire Cannons

I'm stuck at home for a while. I'm not concentrating well enough to paint, but I can do a bit of cutting and sticking. Anyway, here are a couple of Thunderfire cannon from scratch. The weapons and tracks are from a Robogear walker, everything else comes from the bits box.

What I reckoned I'd use

Starting to come together

Basic construction complete

Still needs detail, but recognisable.

I will still be adding some more details to the outside of the carriages, but basically that'll do me. Total cost - a few pence for the plastic card, £2 for the Robogear kits from a charity shop, details from the bits box of leftovers. A darn sight cheaper than £36 each from GW...

Dark Vengeance bike army

I am hoping to build a 1500 point all-bike army for 40k this year, using the cheap bikes that have flooded out from the new Dark Vengeance starter set.

The list:

• Captain on bike (artificer armour, relic blade, storm shield)
• Librarian on bike
• Bike squad (sergeant with power fist, three bikes with two meltas, assault bike with multimelta)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power sword, three bikes with two plasma, assault bike with heavy bolter)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power sword, three bikes with two meltas, assault bike with multimelta)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power axe, three bikes with two plasma, assault bike with heavy bolter)
• Bike squad (sergeant with power axe, three bikes with two meltas, assault bike with multimelta)
• Assault Bike squadron (three multimeltas)

Attack bikes are going to be built onto DV bikes; I have a couple of spare sidecars, and it doesn't look terribly hard to scratchbuild a half-dozen more from plastic card and the bits box.

And now, a couple of pictures of the construction to date...

Librarian on bike

Sergeant with power fist

Squad with melta and attack bike

Dark Angel Deathwing

I have built up the terminators from the second starter set now; just a few cut-and-shut changes this time. One of the stormbolter/fist guys was given a heavy flamer from the spares box; the other had both arms replaced with lightning claws. One of those stormbolters was transplanted onto the assault cannon body - see the pictures below.

The sergeant and the chainfist figure were left pretty much alone, apart from the wings on the sergeant; easy to remove, and it makes the two figures look slightly different.

Finally, I raided the bits box and put together two more terminators using the left-over arms; one of the bodies is a 'real' terminator, the other one was from Black Reach. I will have to add a bit of iconography with green stuff to blend them in, but the ornate arms help to get it started. I have given the cannon guy a greensuff hood already; more to come.

15mm exchange 2012

There was a figure exchange on TMP recently, and I was lucky enough to receive these from the estimable Eclipsing Binaries...

Very nice, thank you very much!

Dark Angel plasma-nator

I felt that since I bought the set, I probably ought to put the figures together.

The terminators are a nice small squad, so they are first...

Of course, I can't just make them as they are intended; I have replaced the assault cannon with a plasma cannon from the Imperial Guard Sentinel...

Maybe a bit bulky, but it'll look nice enough under a coat of paint.

Valkyries and Vendettas, part 2

I haven't done anything about the cockpit yet, though I have scoured Ebay and the bitz sellers for the parts so I can get started. Here are the in-progress pictures of my colour scheme so far...

The stripes are going to be on the upper surface only; mostly because the weapons were glued in place before I got the model, and it'll be a real pain to paint round them. The next two will be striped upstairs and down.

Of course, once you put flyers up there, you need to be able to bring them down. Hydras aren't wonderful (they can't take on ground targets with any degree of accuracy any longer) but they still look good. Here's the basic colour scheme for the first of my pair. The cannons have been attached with magnets, so they can elevate (or more likely, be removed as I get shot up during the game)

Playing Gruntz... 1947 style.

Alan and I were playing around with Gruntz - here are a few pictures of our Weird World War 2 game, complete with hover-T43s with vibrocannon and Sherman Lasertanks...

Hellboy and Captain America were there on the US side, though I don't seem to have any pictures of them.

Alan has also put some pictures and notes from this game on his blog...

Valkyries and Vendettas, part 1

I have started on the Valkyrie I picked up at a bring and buy for a tenner. It'll do as a test-bed for the paint scheme; I can make my mistakes here, and if it's that bad, I can turn it into scenery. It was completely undercoated in black, across the canopy as well, so I bought a spare from a bits seller online to replace it. Here's the basic model after a coat of silver spray...

 I thought that I would pop the cockpit off now. Okay, I see why he painted across the canopy - none of the cockpit pieces were fitted! Never mind, I can scratchbuild something into there and make the replacement canopy tinted to hide the difference!

Next thing is to get some base colours on, just to block out where I want things. Red tail, red intakes, drab anti-glare round the cockpit. I am still debating invasion stripes on the wings...

It does look a little 'Grey Knight', but I think that the nose art will break that a bit...

Hydra substitute

Okay, this is the Ramshackle Games Quad Gun perched on top of a modified 1/48 scale KV chassis. It's a bit out of line because it's just stuck together with blu-tac, but the question is - do I need to lengthen the barrels, or is it obvious what this is?

Tank hunting

I've been quiet on the blogging front over the last week or two - family holiday in the Wye Valley, so I was a bit busy in the canoe and on the bike - but I have managed to get some colour onto this Forgeworld tank hunter I picked up on Ebay a while back.

A very simple colour scheme; heavy green drybrush, tracks in drab drybrushed gunmetal, pick out the details. I will be using it in the Imperial Guard army I'm finally getting on with as either an enclosed Basilisk or (since the long barrel is magnetised) as an enclosed Colossus. There are 'proper' rules for it in the Imperial Armour books, but it's good to have a codex alternative...

Rough riders - part 1

Just a quick update of what's on the board at the moment; legs for a squad of rough riders. Made from the hip and boot bits of a pair of Cadian legs, with a bit of copper wire to get the leg length. Once they are completed, I will make myself a mould and cast enough for a squad.

They fit neatly onto a lizardman cold one, but I think they will fit horses as well if I want a second squad. They are a bit rough, but they'll do the job.

The other thing that's floating about at the moment is an idea of using WW2 figures to play Gruntz - some sort of alternative/weird world war stuff... twin lascannon Sherman, anyone :)

They know what you're thinking

The next unit on the modelling table is a psyker battle squad. I have decided they need to stand out from the rank and file of the army, so they are going to have a colour scheme all their own. As a unit that's perceived as dangerous to the troops souls, they are required by regimental edict to wear black and yellow; unit and transport will certainly stand out that way!

I'm building them from Brettonian bodies; what I am finding is that I have a lack of laspistols. I'm looking around for a manufacturer who does replacement arms, but so far I only have four built; more to follow.

The left hand pair have arms from the Cadian infantry, the third has a Space Wolf chainsword and a scroll from the Flagellent set, the last figure has a flagellent's mace and a holstered pistol. The heads are from the flagellents as well, to give a more unkempt appearance.

Painting update - IG heavies

A heavy painting session last night (thanks to my wife for putting up with it!) has given me a new turret for the Ragnarok and four autocannon teams for Echo company, yellow platoon.

One Blight Wheel war-bot in each squad as the heavy weapon team - mounted on 60mm bases, though they only really need 40mm bases for the size of the robot.

Another turret - KV2, styrene barrel made from three diameters of tube.

Two Ragnaroks and the robots...

Heavy weapon madness

I have another game of 40k on Monday, and I am hoping to try out the allies rules - an Imperial Guard list with chaos marine allies. What I have discovered is that I don't have enough heavy weapon stands. A search through the boxes in the loft has unearthed a stash of Blight Wheel robots that I am going to use as autocannon teams - two with their conversion kit, two with plastic autocannon mounted on their shoulders.

I've also made another couple of mortar teams from the Wargames Factory set, and another KV2 turret to give me a second Leman Russ Battle Tank proxy. Hopefully I can get paint onto these for Monday.

More Dr Who converting

Work on the Dr Who's enemies army (counts as Necrons) is going on - this is the first in a unit of Cyberman assassins...

A small hole drilled either side of the head with a carefully bent wire threaded round, a tiny blob of greenstuff, a teardrop on each cheek. Simple stuff. The first head took about 45 minutes to get the wire bent to the right lengths; after that, about 10 minutes a piece.

Playing Gruntz

Last night we played Gruntz in 28mm, with a mix of toys; I was using Wargames Factory and Games Workshop troops, 1/48 scale KV2 tanks and an Iron Man toy as a mecha; Alan used GW troops, Old Crow vehicles and GZG skimmers and wheeled guns.

Playing the Assault and Battery scenario with three objectives; as defender, I get half my units on the board. 

Gruntz squad, commander, heavy tank and a lascannon specialist defending the right hand objective. 

Skimmer specialists with rockets coming round the woods. 

Alan's troops prepare for an assault on the left hand objective. 

Gruntz squad and the tank have been shredded, but Iron Man is there to save the day.

A sighting from his shoulder.

We played much better in this, our second game. Less confusion over the shooting, and I had found two sets of eight pairs of different coloured dice so we could shoot a whole squad in one action. We still have some trouble with the weapons (there's no multi-shot 'heavy bolter/assault cannon' equivalent), but the area effect weapons make a decent proxy.

At the end of the day, we have arranged to play again in a couple of weeks, so that must show that the rules are good.