Empire of the Dead Kickstarter

I'm kinda taken by the Empire of the Dead kickstarter; I love the whole VSF vibe, and if you're in quick, there is a really good deal going on. I sold on a load of 10mm French WW2 stuff, and I guess I'm recycling some of the cash into new shinys.

Anyway, while I'm waiting for the kickstarter to deliver, I thought I'd go through what I have sitting in the cupboards and play with it. This is an armoured car from Ironclad Miniatures, re-purposed as a police wagon. I'm going to replace the turret with a plain hatch, but I need the figures before I can do that, so it'll have to wait. Oh, and a drop of gloss varnish into the portholes...

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