40K: Valhallan Governor/VIP

I had a request from my buddy Joe over at my gaming club PAGE, asking to borrow a model to represent a VIP objective like a Political Officer, Planetary Governor or some such, for the upcoming Sword Sworn 40K narrative event on May 13th. This is from the same guy who runs 40K narrative events at NOVA, so, plan on a good time if you are in the Philly area:

Sword Sworn: Long is the patience of the Emperor's enemies, waiting in the dark to strike at his most glorious heroes when the time is ripe. Now that moment has come for the vaunted Swords of Dorn, as one of their recruitment worlds is besieged and all their allies are called to its aid!

I have a few models that would work for a VIP already, sitting around moldering in my Valhallan collection, but I thought a dive into the bitz box would be fun and a fast aside from Bushido.

Original GW model. The cape made it onto my Valhallan Col.

Parts: The parts for this were a Solar Macharius body, slightly trimmed and cleaned, a right arm from the IG tank sprue (do they even make that anymore?) and a standard Astra Militarum left arm with a totally vintage 1980's Imperial Guard hand; almost all of these bitz are OLDER THAN MY 12 YEAR OLD SON. Weird.

After my club runs the Sword Sworn event and I get this guy back I will add a holstered bolt pistol to his right side, maybe counting him as a Senior Officer or even an Inquisitor.

The Build: I painted him up in matching colors for my Valhallans with base colors, what I call underpainting and then finished with my custom water-based stain for finishing. Check out the Valhallan tab to the left for more examples of painting with stain if that interest you, I have posts on that going back years.

Total time for this VIP was 2 hours from assembly to priming to paint and basing. Pretty dang fun. WIP pics:

Base colors down, ready for underpainting

Shading and highlights are really geared towards augmenting the toning and colors the stain produces

Just-stained

Dried stain, DulCote and basing

40K: 50K Point Apocalypse (Coverage from my game group PAGE and the Winter Apoc Game)

This is a video review of my game group PAGE and the annual Winter Apocalypse game for 40K. The polar spaceport is my work... just realized I never posted any of that up so I will get on that soon. Also within is all of the crazy amounts of work in terms of figures painted, club terrain and awesome stuff guests brought. If you are in the PA area and want to join us for almost any game, something specific or something different, just reach out. We are active at most area stores including Redcap's and we will also be running some events at NOVA again this year, stay tuned!

Warhammer 40K: Converted Enginseer and Servitors

Here are my "up armed" Servitors to go with my Enginseer, which is a Forge World Myrmidion. The changes are pretty obvious on the servitors. I added some more fairing/power plants and servo arms from the old Fabius Bile kit. Those additional bits hide the magnets to swap out the servo arms for Heavy Bolters or Plasma Cannon. These were actually done some time ago, to be deployed in my club's Burning Stars campaign and Apocalypse game. I'm lazy with updates sometimes.

The Enginseer has re positioned power axe arms that have a magnet mount and pin to make storage way easier and the pose more dramatic and crowd friendly.

Hardened Valhallan Vets: Kitbash (and Forge World scanner and GW Objectives)

Here are some Hardened Vets I recently made for an event I couldn't attend. Awesome.

These guys are a kitbash of GW Cadian arms, lasguns and metal SM meltas plus some Maxmini torsos that I built backwards so they became what looks like chest rigs facing forward. I had to trim the collars off to make room for the Pig Iron Colony Militia heads and greenstuff neck/cloth.

All models needed neck sculpting to give the new head purchase and blend cosmetically

Of the chest pouches and weapons there was much trimming and filing where weapons met the chest as well filling voids with sculpted greentstuff. Torsos were positioned first and either pinned or just gap filled with greenstuff.  The legs are Maxmini Greatcoat legs as well.

The heavy flamer is part AM unit from sprue married to SM flamer with brass rods and a tank/rebreather on the side as a pump/primer. Most of the packs are Pig Iron, as are some pouches.

The Sgt. is an older GW tank commander with the head removed and replaced with a Pig Iron head. His left hand was removed and replaced with a gripped fist from the side of a flamer on the AM Cadian sprue. I fit a las pistol on there from the older IG tank sprue, I think.

Overall, I really like how they came out though the casts on the legs were probably the worst I've seen on models, maybe ever. Had I noticed that  I may have even chucked them but as it was I put in time and made them passable thanks to a round rasp and Led Zepp on Spotify. These vets scale well with my Valhallans though they trend the slightest bit smaller (hence the extra kit to bulk them up).

The auspex/master VOX or whatever is Forge World, thrown together at the last minute on a whim, thinking it's be an asset in the game, objective or just nice scenery.

Finally, I mounted the GW objective markers that hold dice onto bases and painted them up.  I boiled the programming outta these servo skulls to soften the plastic and re-bend them to actually grip dice.

That's all the 40k I got for now. Up next some Star Wars X Wing miniatures repaints and some Bushido Ito clan!

Legio Apex

Since my ancient enemy the Kingbreakers recently called me out for felling their Then-Sargent-Now-Captain, it is time to revisit my fetid, foul Nurgle Marines from the shadowlands of time and space.

Some more Legio pics here and Legio Apex BFG here.