ADEPTICON - The Loot Part 2

Of course I had to pick up some Dark Age minis at AdeptiCon this year. I bought my own copy of the two-player starter set - Path to Glory - and a few models to wrap up my collection of Bounty Hunters - John Carter, Dedlock, and some Junkers for a conversion or three : )

This is John "Clank" Carter, one of the range of Bounty Hunters, and this one is based on one of the Immortals winners, John Carter (surprisingly enough).

And here I've converted one of the Junkers into one of the Bounty Hunters that has a bit of history with my current warband leader St Mark - X'cess.

I also picked up some scatter terrain from Death Ray Designs, which will be great for my Dark Age terrain collection.

I also had the good fortune to catch up with my friend Victoria Lamb, and she was kind enough to give me the gift of the awesome Sledgehammer BFG (sculpted by another friend Jake Schneider) that she created as part of the latest Reaper Bones Kickstarter. The crew for the gun are in the soft PVC of the standard Bones lines, but the BFG itself is in a hard styrene, with the pieces already clipped from the sprues, and very few mold lines!

UPDATE: A special note for Reaper Bones III backers - The Sledgehammer BFG was NOT for sale at AdeptiCon. Reaper and Victoria Miniatures would not sell the model until after backers get their products. They took pre-orders, but did not sell any models. They'll send out those pre-orders once backer rewards have shipped.

The kit itself doesn't come with instructions, but I expect they'll be available on the Victoria Minis website soon. I was, however, able to build it pretty quickly just by looking at the photos on the packaging.

Within the basic set there are a number of options, like the long wooden planks-style decking above the wheels.

Or you can go with a smaller metal deck plate.

There are going to be accessory packs in resin too, including two track units (one on each side) that replace the wheels.

There is also a resin kit that will allow you to switch the long gun for a much shorter, larger bore howitzer.

That kit comes with some very cool shells too. The one on the left puts me in mind of a phosphex shell from 30K.

I'm a big fan of the wheels, so I'll be gluing them on. I'm now debating whether or not I'll magnetize the howitzer and the long gun so I have the opportunity to switch back and forth.

One more AdeptiCon loot post to go : )

A surprise from Blight Wheel!

Last week I received a surprise package from Blight Wheel Miniatures (a cool European outfit that I've mentioned a few times before). Laurent had sent me a copy of his brand new (currently-titled) Military Truck - a six-wheeled flatbed transporter that is based very much on the conversion I did many years ago. It was also sculpted by another friend of mine, which is very cool. I haven't had a chance to put it together (the painted version above is from the Blight Wheel blog post, here).

Laurent also sent me a couple of surprise pieces (seen below). Two sprues with torsos - all ten torsos in rough and ready armor plates with various icons of allegiance attached.

And a sprue of five heads on various helmets and mempo masks, with optional horns.

I couldn't resit putting at least one guy together, combining a head and torso from the batch with a set of arms and legs from Victoria Miniatures. Without the arms (above) to see the breastplate.

And with the arms to see it all ready to go.

He's finished off with a backpack and rebreather hose from Dragon Forge Design - I sculpted those backpacks!

I hope you like the potential of these kits - get out there and support your favorite manufacturers of cool stuff : )

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

Medic!

I have a few adjustments to make to a couple of the models in my latest Tanith commission, so it'll be next week before you guys get a chance to see them all.

In the meantime I thought you might like to see my verso of Surgeon Ana Curth. Formerly an up-hive surgeon on Verghast, she shipped out with the Tanith following the destruction of Vervunhive in the novel Necropolis. She became an invaluable member of the Tanith medical team.

This model is actually the first of the Victoria Miniatures Arcadian female troopers I've had the pleasure to assemble and paint up. Once again, Vic has knocked them out of the park : )

Here's a look at her before paint.

More from this platoon over the coming week.

Cheers
Dave

Mechanicum Bondsmen

Just a quick post today to show off a unit I put together and painted last week. After reading Lords of Mars (by Graham McNeill) I decided to turn a unit of Victoria Miniatures' Penal Legion models (that I've had sitting on my desk since Adepticon) into a unit of "below the waterline" bondsmen, the lowest of the low who are press-ganged into servitude in the mighty machine of the Imperium.

This unit is the first of Victoria's models that has been cast in resin, and she is currently going through the process of switching her entire range into resin. The quality of her sculpts is wonderful with lots of crispness and characterful pieces. The quality of the casts was equally great, with only a few areas of flash to be trimmed up during assembly.

As well as the parts to make the squad you see above, there are quite a few other options in the set, including two different torsos for the squad overseer, as well as three different head options. Very cool.

I'm looking forward to the rest of Victoria's range making it into resin. It might be time again to paint a new Gaunt's Ghosts army ; )

Cheers
Dave

Wait a minute Mr Postman!

The last couple of weeks have been fun on the "What's the postman going to deliver today?" front, with a few orders turning up, along with my copies of WI281 : )

First off I'll show you some stuff from Secret Weapon Miniatures. Earlier in the month I ordered some Raphael 8404 from misterjustin, along with some of is backpacks. You can see the three different types of packs below going onto the next batch of Tanith I'm working on.

From left to right you can see the small backpack, the large backpack, and the comms backpack.

They're all very nice, and will mix in well amongst the various GW packs I'll also be using.

Nice guy that he is, misterjustin also threw in a few of his very cool Oni Mask heads. Perhaps I'll have to use them for some Blood Pact models later this year? Now if someone just made backpacks like the ones I modeled for my Pact it would be much easier.

Last week I also received my order from Victoria Lamb Miniatures, in Australia. I first met Victoria many, many years ago when I lived in Adelaide, opening up the first GW store in South Australia. She's a lovely lady and one hell of a creative person. If you've got a bit of time, make sure you trawl through her website. Lots of great stuff there.

Along with the conversion parts for 45 Highlander Guardsmen, I also ordered her fantastic Imperial Noble and Billy Bagshot (Halfling Gunslinger) models. You can see the first model assembled below. I think these models will be modeled and used as an assault platoon of veterans for my Genswick army.

The final package to arrive this week was from a fledgling mini company in France. I've been emailing back and forth of the last six months or so with a former colleague who has been doing some wonderful scratchbuilding work. This work is about to see the light of day as Blight Wheel Miniatures edge ever closer to getting their webstore up and running (around late March I believe, I'll let you know once I know). Laurent is slowing building an interesting inventory for a post-apocalyptic universe. I'm looking forward to seeing more from them.

Thanks to my friendship with Stephane, Laurent was able to sell me a few early casts of the Staghound Mk4. The models are very cool, a little smaller than I was expecting, so I think I'll use them as Centaur stand-ins for my Blood Pact and fill them with nasty vets! The casts are incredibly crisp, and look like they'll be a real treat to work with.

Lots of fun on the horizon with all these great kits : )

Cheers

Dave