Death's Head Veteran Squad - First Member

Not feeling like painting the other night, I got to work on the first of member of my second veteran squad. After seeing these great stormtroopers by jdteixeira over at the Work In Progress forums, I've been wanting to use the idea of Necron Warrior heads for a while - a veteran squad felt like the perfect time to break them out!

He's got a shotgun I converted up as described in this guide, and a bit of green stuffing and plasticard work as well. The Necron Warrior heads need a bit of sculpting as they have no neck, and I bulked out the rear of the heads to look like fully-enclosed helmets. Let me know what you think! The bandolier was made in a similar way to the shell holder on the side of the shotgun. I had to repair the forearm as well, because it is the sergeant's arm from the troop box and removing the insignia just left a flat area that didn't look right.

This squad will probably go together quite slowly, as I want to make painting what I've already built my priority for the time being. I'll be adding updates as they get done though!

Yet Another Commissar - WIP

It's probably not a secret any more, but I really love painting Commissar models! They're one of the things that drew me to the Guard in the first place, and I like the unique personality they possess - it really makes them stand out from the ranks of Guardsmen. I've got 2 Commissars already done, but I'd been doing some minor sculpting for my shotgun conversions, and with the left over Green Stuff from these sessions I came up with this:

Now this idea certainly isn't mine - I first saw this beautiful example on Coolminiornot. Having a spare metal commander model (it's from the old Cadian Command Squad box) I decided to have a go at this conversion!

This is one of my few attempts at sculpting something other than a basic shape, so I decided to break it down into several steps and let each bit dry before I moved on to the next. It basically went as a cylinder on top of his head, then the basic peak cap shape. This ended up being too flat on top, so I added some more bulk to give a bit more of a sense of his head being there. I also sculpted the eagle symbol at this stage.

Once that was done, I added the brim, and when that was dry I finished it off with the braid above the brim, and glued on some thin slivers from plasticard rod at each end of the braid.

Let me know what you think! I'll paint him up at some point and show it off here, but I've got a lot more urgent things to do at this stage!

Command Squad Veterans

Last week I showed you Captain Shout, my Company Commander, so here's the rest of his squad. Being veterans, I wanted to make them stand out so I used a variety of bits to differentiate them from the rest of my force, and hopefully make them look battle-hardened!

For those interested, they've got Space Marine Scout heads, Catachan legs (I like these for veterans as they have lots of pouches already on them) and various backpacks and other bits and pieces.

In the interests of making these guys stand out, I decided to soup up the squad's voxcaster as well. I added an extra antenna from some guitar string and made the knob at the end with some plasticard rod. It's very long, but I quite like it - it will help with long-range communications across the battlefield!

Shotguns for the Imperial Guard - 10 Minute Conversion Guide

I've been thinking about another Veteran Squad already (I still need to paint my first one) and have decided I want to equip them with shotguns. They'll operate as an expendable unit, with flamers to cause as many wounds as possible, and since you can't assault after firing lasguns I'll outfit them with shotguns.

Obviously, this means I need some way of representing this on my models. There's a few different options I've looked into:

1. Using Space Marine Scout shotguns, such as Necros did on the Boot Camp forums.
2. Convert some shotguns up, such as these really nice ones over at The Manufactorum.
3. Buy some 3rd party shotguns. Some places like MaxMini do some. (I'm sure there's others, this is just an example I've come across).

In the end, I went with Option 2. The Scout shotguns look great, but I want some weapons unique to my Guard. Third party stuff is fine too, but I enjoy the process of converting things, and so I went with Option 2.

Now, after trawling the 'Net, an article on dysartes.com frequently got mentioned. This site is unfortunately not around any more, but I was familiar with it as it hosted many articles I was interested in before it disappeared. Thanks to the miracle of the Wayback Machine, however, I managed to track the article down! The full thing can be seen here, but what follows is my adaptation of that tutorial.

For what I'm showing here, I used:

 - 1 Imperial Guard Lasgun (either by itself, or attached to an arm - the latter will require a bit more work though).
 - 1 Space Marine Bolter
 - Green Stuff
 - Styrene Rod (1.6mm round and 1mm square)
 - Styrene Sheet (I used both 0.75mm and 0.25mm thick, but use whatever is comfortable).
 - Resin shotgun shells which I bought from Elodiemae.com. These aren't the cheapest way to go, but they do look nice - you could achieve something similar with some thin rod, however.

Let's do it!

Step 1: Cut the lasgun down to basically the main body: we want to get rid of the stock, the barrel, the clip, the front part of the stuff on top, and the angular bit under the aquila. Shave off most of the details as well. The bits to remove are shown in red below:

Step 2: Cut the section shown in red off the bolter. It's worth leaving the bit behind the bolter grip too long to begin with, so you can get a good fit later:

Step 3: Shave the part behind the bolter grip down to straight sides, by cutting off the red parts in the second picture. I like to shave it even thinner, to look like a rail for the bolter grip to slide along as a pump-action.

Step 4: Glue the bolter grip to the underside of the lasgun, cutting it to the right length so the front of the two pieces are flush (I accidentally cut my grip too short, but we'll fix it up later). Glue a section of 1mm square rod along the top centre of the shotgun. Shave the front at an angle.

Step 5: Drill a hole in the front of the shotgun and glue some 1.6mm rod in there for a barrel:

Step 6: Right now, the pump grip seems to be hanging in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to stop it sliding forward. I cut out some 0.75mm plasticard to fit around the barrel and extend down to cover the front of the pump. I do this by drilling a hole in the 0.75mm sheet (of the same diameter as the barrel, this gives the bit which fits neatly around it) and then cutting out the rest of the rectangle, with one of the short ends being a semicurcular hole. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but check out the picture below! This makes it look like the rail goes all the way to the front of the gun:

Once all this had dried, cut the barrel down to size and drill it out.

Step 7: The bulk of the body has been done.

Now we need to fill in any gaps and finish off a couple more parts. Firstly, green stuff over any gaps between the 'rail' and the main body of the shotgun. Also, fill in the section above the old lasgun clip and extend the bit on top of the gun to the back. (I've drawn red arrows to the parts I've green-stuffed):

Step 8: To add some interest, cut out a plasticard 'plate' to attach to the side of the gun with the skull decoration. I also cut out a cartridge ejection port - having a sharp knife and using 0.25mm plasticard helps with this. Cut the ejection port first as well, to stop the plate from deforming.

Step 9: We'll add some spare cartridges on the other side of the gun, which gives some extra decoration. I'm using the cartridges I bought from elodiamae.com, but, as mentioned earlier, some plasticard rod could also be used here. Firstly I glue a strip of 0.25mm plasticard on this side of the shotgun to raise the cartridges off the body of the gun:

Step 10: Next, I glue some cartridges on to this strip. My cartridges have come with an extra tab on the bottom from the casting process, which I've left on for now to give me more to grip on to. I'll cut them off after everything has dried. Finally, roll a thin sausage of green stuff and lay it across these cartridges. Squash it down flat, and finally use a wet blade to press the green stuff down between each cartridge. That should give you something looking like this:

And that's done! All that's left is to attach it to your veteran and paint them up. All in all, this process took me about 10 minutes - however, that doesn't include time waiting for the green stuff sections to dry. I wasn't quite as careful as I normally would be, but I still came up with a decent example.


I haven't done a full veteran yet (I've got some super-secret plans for them) but I can show you a shotgun all painted up to give you an idea of what they will look like:

I really like the chunky look of this shotgun - after all, I want my vets to look like they'll do some damage! However, I realise it may not appeal to everyone, but hopefully this will solve the issue of a lack of shotguns for a few of you out there. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section, and, as always, thanks for looking.

Grenade Launcher Guardsman

Just a quick update - I've been pretty busy lately and haven't had a lot of time for updating my blog, but rest assured I'm still cruising along with my army!

I have a 1,200 pt tournament coming up, and was 1 Grenade Launcher short of having the infantry component built. (Pictures of the rest will be up in the next few weeks!). There's only so much one can do with the single set of GL arms that come with the Cadian Troops box, and I didn't want all 3 of my GL-wielding troops looking the same. Here's what I came up with:

To make him, I grabbed the Cadian Command Squad box, with a GL from the Catachan Command Squad box (which doesn't have a hand attached to the trigger). I added the handle from a section of plasticard rod which had rings carved out of it, which hopefully looks close enough to the 'real' handles.

Finally, I noticed that the helmet-holding arm was much skinnier than the standard Cadian arms, and it had a cuff on it which the standard troops don't possess. To fix it, I used some Green Stuff to bulk out the inside of the arm, and carved the end of the sleeve down to match the standard arms.

Paint will be applied soon! As always, thanks for looking and feel free to leave comments!

Lt. Lokk's Lads

Well, they may not end up being called that, but a little bit of alliteration never goes astray, and I didn't think Brigadier Bob's Buddies sounded quite right...

Anyway, I've been working away on my first veteran squad. They're led by a Sgt. Bastonne counts-as, with carapace armour and 3 meltaguns. It's a hefty lot of points, but they'll get a Chimera eventually so hopefully I can deliver them to a target, destroy it with meltas, and still survive a round of shooting with their 4+ save. I took Bastonne mainly for his ability to give orders and regroup regardless of restrictions, as this squad might end up moving out of orders range from my command squads in order to engage targets.

For the most part, the models were made using pieces from the Cadian, Catachan, Space Marine Scouts and Tau Fire Warrior sprues with a few other bits and pieces thrown in. I was aiming for a mix of parts to personalise each trooper, but with enough similarities to tie the squad together.

So here's the main event. What you've all been waiting for... *cue drum roll*...

Pictures!

Firstly, here's the squad as a whole:

The armour was done by taking Tau Fire Warrior legs, cutting of the feet and replacing with Cadian boots, and then filling in the gaps with Green Stuff. Some poses require more work than others, but I think it came out OK. The heads are from Pig Iron Productions.


Now a few pictures of the individual models and some notes on the conversions:

First up we have the Bastonne counts-as. He has a hellpistol, so I cut down a lasgun and tried to copy the hellpistols from the Kasrkin models. I'm actually pretty proud of the job I did (if I may say so myself) and I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference once it's painted. The backpack was a cut down vox-caster, the power sword converted from the Cadian Command Squad and the chainsword arm from the Troops box, and the hoses for the pistol simply electrical wire. The black bands were heat-shrink pipe cut down to size. You can find this stuff at electronics stores, and you put it over what you want, then heat it with a hair dryer (there is a proper tool for it, but anything that blows hot air will work) and it shrinks down.

Now I know you all think I'm amazing and get everything perfect the first time around (or at least, I like to tell myself that you think so) but here's the previous iteration of the sergeant:

You'll see the hoses were originally connected to the side of the backpack which made them look way too long and out of place. I think the new version looks a lot more streamlined.

This was the first veteran I did. He has a Forgeworld Resin Backpack, Space Wolves knife and some Space Marine Scout belt accessories. Some minor green-stuffing and I came up with the above.

This guy is one of my favourites. He has a Space Marine scanner for something different, and the armour plate he is resting on was just some platicard, melted with a lighter to look battle-damaged (kids and accident-prone people, make sure there's an adult around!) and some rivets added from chopped up styrene rod. The meltagun nozzle is some styrene pipe, because when I was drilling out the barrel the bit snapped off and I had to destroy the original gun to get it out. Lesson learned...

This guy was just for a bit of fun. He's the token 'crazy guy in the squad of battle-hardened troops'. You know the one...

Anyway, I hope you like them - I certainly enjoyed converting them up! As always, thanks for looking and watch this space!

Identity Crisis Marbo!

Here's something I've been working on for a little while - my counts-as Marbo. I wanted to get across the idea of a cold-blooded, emotionless killer as described in the background, but a slightly more twisted take on it.

The fully-enclosed face was chosen to remove personality from the model, and his poisoned weapon is a pair of wrist-mounted syringes - his victims suffer a swift, clinical death, in line with the way I imagine the character.

I used green stuff to make his wrist weapon, as well as modifying his backpack and gun. Plasticard was used for various parts.

I'd be interested to hear your opinions, especially about the scope on his gun. I'm not sure if I should add anything more, or leave it as is. Let me know what you think in the comments!

He's made from a lot of different parts, apart from the plasticard and Green Stuff. The bits used are:

  - Cadian heavy weapons helmet with visor.

  - Respirator from Cadian Command Squad sprue, with hose cut off.

  - Cut down lasgun.

  - Catachan Vox-caster backpack (cut down).

  - Catachan legs.

  - Cadian Torso.

  - Cadian arms (I can't remember which ones, in particular).

  - His left fist is a cut-down one from the grenade launcher hand (the one holding the handle).

  - His melta bomb is, as I found out afterwards, represented by a Tau Photon grenade (I've added a few bits to it, so hopefully it won't be so recognizable).

  - The ripper pistol barrel is from a vox-caster's antenna.

  - The round bit on the back of the ripper pistol is cut from a bipod from the heavy weapons sprue.

  - The demolition charge is from Forgeworld.

  - A couple of frag grenades from the Cadian troops.

Let me know what you think! I'll post an update as soon as I've painted him, but it could take a while - he doesn't currently feature in my 1,500 point list, so isn't a high priority!

Guardsmen Conversions

Just a quick update - I'm still working away on various projects, but for now, here's a couple of conversions! I want to avoid having a whole army of troops who look the same, so every now and then I try and pop in a small conversion to add some variety. These are two examples:

Not too much to say about them, except that they were before I got my new tools that I use for Green Stuff work (more to come later!), so I'm not completely happy with it. Unless you look closely, however, they don't look too bad.

As always, thanks for looking!