Happy Halloween! ...and some Ogre heads

Happy Halloween to all those who celebrate it!

Here are a few Ogre heads that I converted up for my buddy Teras Cassidy, Head Geek at Geek Nation Tours. They'll be making an appearance in his Warhammer army he'll be taking to AdeptiCon 2015. Not long now until the webcart opens up and tickets go on sale : )

Have fun!

Cheers
Dave

A quick tease, and Kickstarters arrive!

I have a few other things on deck at the moment, but I thought I'd show you two WIPs for my Death Guard. The one on the right is my second Contemptor (who will be wielding a multi-melta and a power fist), and the guy on the left needs a couple of plasma pistols ; )

Anyway, on to the next thing. Three Kickstarters that I've backed over the last 18 months all delivered this month. Mars Attacks from Mantic and Games & Gears' brush sets were the first two to arrive (more on these later). Today, it was these two snazzy boxes from the Secret Weapon Tablescapes Kickstarter. Of course I haven't had the chance to get any paint on them yet, but my daughter was able to help me out by designing the layout you see below. The compression clips were easy to snap into the tiles, and held them together really well.

It's always a great feeling when you know you've been able to help a great company afford to create such a cool product : )

Cheers
Dave

Mechanicum - More Thallax roll off the production line.

A little while back (here) I had assembled a bunch of Thallax so that I could really expand the beefy (yet fleshless) core of my Mechanicum force - after playing a few games, Toughness 5 and 3 Wounds is certainly nothing to sneeze at!

Well, over the last week I've finished off the last eight : )

After applying the weathering powders to their bases, I plonked them in the pile with my other Thallax so I could apply a cog decal to all of their left shoulders. Once I'd done that I couldn't pick out which models I'd just finished, so I figured I'd show you the whole lot, all 21 of them (see above).

The shoulder icon is from the FW Iron Hands decal sheet. I chose this particular one as it has three nuts arranged in a pattern like the three skulls of the post-Heresy Death Guard. A nice little connection if I run them with my pre-Heresy Death Guard ; )

And finally, as with all of my Mechanicum army, they are standing on Tech Deck bases from Dragon Forge Design. Jeff is currently running a Kickstarter to expand the size of one of his most popular lines. Click HERE, or on the image on the top right of this page, to check it out!

Cheers
Dave

Death Guard - Some old school reinforcements and some new models.

While searching around for some Ogre bits a few weeks ago, I stumbled on a handful of old school Rhino-based vehicles. Some were missing parts after years of neglect, others had never seen paint (beyond their black primer coat), so I decided to resurrect them as reinforcements for my Heresy-era Death Guard. I little scraping here and flipping there and I'd managed to salvage the four you see above. The two blue vehicles were originally part of the Crimson Fist Space Marine army that I built in 1997, that graced the back cover of White Dwarf sometime in 1998 (I think). I had a few hatches handy, but hot enough exhausts to replace the damaged ones. I decided to replace all of the exhaust tops with plastic tubing to tie them in with the current Forgeworld homage to this old transport.

Since this photo, they've all been primed and are awaiting a session with the airbrush (which is in turn waiting for me to complete the assembly on my Spartan).

But enough of the old school stuff, here are a few photos of some shiny new models I've assembled using some of the great new parts from Victoria Miniatures!

First up is a trooper using a head, arms, and legs from the Arcadian kit, and the all new Cloaked torso from the Borderworld Rangers kit. Despite being planned for a different set of legs, this particular cloak falls wonderfully over this set of advancing legs. This guy would make a great stand-in for a Vervunhive recruit to Gaunt's Ghosts!

I love breaching shields like this (I currently have 20 for my Death Guard!). Although there aren't any immediately obvious analogs for the shields in my Imperial Guard collection, I thought it would look cool on the arm of of this Scion. For close-quarters action I switched out his laspistol for the great compact stub-pistol. I love it!

And finally, I have decided to use my already-painted Vostroyans to represent a Solar Auxilia force. I have pulled out the models armed with lasguns to form three different 20-man lasrifle sections. This has left a few heavy weapons teams awaiting an indication from Forgeworld on how they'll fit into the new list. A search for spare Vostroyan models, coupled with the arrival of the package from Victoria Miniatures, lead to this lascannon team. I'm excited to get my hands on some more : )

Cheers
Dave

WW2 - A US Armored recon force.

Here are the models from a recent commission, painted up for a client in Viginia. He sent me the models, a mix of Battlefront and Plastic Soldier Company models. It was the first time I'd used the PSC kits, and they are certainly crisp, with a versatile range of parts.

Above: A mix of PSC early- and mid-production Stuarts.

Above: Five PSC late-production Stuarts (with nifty hedge-cutter attachments).

Above: A unit of Battlefront Priests, with their command staff and observers. The Sherman OP is from PSC.

Above: Four M36 Tank Destroyers from Battlefront.

Above: Battlefront Jeeps - four with .50cal AA, and three with 60mm mortars.

Above: Battlefront M8 Greyhound armored cars and M28 Utility vehicles.

It was quite interesting to put the PSC kits together. While things like the Stuarts turrets had nine individual parts (the bodies were at least another nine), and that meant a LOT of mold line trimming, they were a great fit and looked great once assembled.

I hope you like them.

Back to the 40K/30K soon ; )

Cheers
Dave

Mechanicum - Knights so close you can taste them!

Not long now and my first two Knights will be complete. Just some chipping and then weathering powders to go on my Knights of House Taranis, sporting the 30K version of their iconography/heraldry. The Cerastus Knight-Lancer is above, while the Knight-Paladin is below.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Cheers

Dave

Oldhammer Weekend approaches!

Very soon (Oct 25-26), Dropzone Games will travel back in time to the late 1980s.

Oldhammer was founded by a handful of old grognards, bitten by the nostalgia bug (and possibly not too happy about the direction GW's flagship games were heading), and has become an international "wargaming movement", with hundreds, if not thousands, of hobbyists collecting old school Citadel and Marauder miniatures and playing games of 3rd Edition Warhammer and 1st Edition 40K (Rogue Trader). After a successful Oldhammer day held in the gaming space of The Foundry in Nottingham (owned by Bryan Ansell, former owner of Citadel Miniatures), the Oldhammer enthusiasts in the New World decided to put on a weekend of their own. Blake Shrode and Andrew Dyer are the guys behind this event (and the painting competition, which they have invited me to judge).

You can check out all the details about the event at Blake's blog HERE.

You can read about my involvement for the weekend HERE.

UPDATED: The basic rules for the painting comp can be found HERE (scroll down about halfway through the page).

If you live in the Mid-Atlantic area and have a passion for all things Oldhammer, I hope you can make it along. Please bring along some models for the painting competition too!

Cheers
Dave

WW2 - I mentioned working on a few 15mm jobs.

I mentioned last post that I've been working on a few FOW projects recently. One of them is for a long-time follower of the blog, Jake. Back in April I asked Jake to help me out by 3-D sculpting a few parts for a Knight for me (hopefully I'll have parts in hand from by the end of the month). Payment for the sculpting work/time is going to be this squadron of USMC Shermans from the Pacific Theater. Jake sent me a bunch of reference photos that showed the additional wooden armor that crews would build for the sides of their tanks, and most of the photos show an amazing abundance of extra track sections, also used as improvised armor, draped over the tanks.

Anyway, here are some closer shots of the lead tank, with sheet metal skirting added to the lumber armor. This is based on the photo (apparently taken in Okinawa, 1945) at the bottom of this post.

Here's the color scheme that Jake would like to see on the tanks. 

Now it's on to the painting : )

Cheers
Dave

Mechanicum - Acting as a Mechanicum Forge World

Sorry for the radio silence, I've been too busy to snap any photos of all the hobby work going on at the moment. In addition to my own Knights, I'm working on a big Napoleonic commission, a FOW US tank army commission, a handful of US tanks in payment for some 3D modeling I had done for my Knights, and this beauty - The Etruscan. My friend Dave Pauwels has a great many wonderful ideas, but often nowhere near the time to achieve most of them. To this end he commissioned me to clean and assemble his Cerastus Knight-Lancer. Last Fall I did the same thing for his Warhound - Venatrix Nocturna.

I wanted the Knight-Lancer to be in a wary, combat-ready pose, crouched behind the shield, feet moving (rather than a locked/power stance) to give the impression of circling, as this Knight will be doing at AdeptiCon 2015 in one of the new Knight Gladiator events (more details on those as soon as I have them).

And my custom decals have arrived. Although House Taranis have decals on the sheet that comes with the box, they are designed for the 40K-era House Taranis. Based on the eveloution of the heraldry shown in the lush sourcebook The Imperial Knight Companion, I decided to scale the heraldry back a bit, and make the icon a little more complex.

Now I just have to start getting these elements onto the Knights : )

Cheers
Dave