Solar Auxilia Command

In amongst everything else, I've started on a little bit more work for my Solar Auxilia army, using my old Vostroyans.

Above is the old officer that was going to lead my army. Sadly he was never finished. So, here he is, resurrected and still WIP, standing on his new Dragon Forge base. I'll be using him as my Lord Marshal.

Here are the group that will be my new Auxilia Tactical Command Section. The Proclaimator, Vexilarius, and two Veteran Auxilia are complete (have been for a long time) but I recently got the bug to build a Strategos from the the commander in the Tempestus Scions box, with the head of a Vostroyan lascannon crew member and the archaeotech pistol from a FW Legion Praetor model.

As I get certain elements of the army assembled and/or painted, I'll throw them up here.

Cheers
Dave

Thank you, Secret Santa!

A special thank you to the Secret Santa that sent me these three lovely Vorax Class Battle Automata.

I had a lot of fun assembling these guys, I just love the models : )  The ammo feeds for the rotor cannons are a little tough to get to the right shape, particular if you go for dynamic posing like I've done. Sadly one of the feeds broke, so I've had to build a new one from plasticard strips.

The bases are scratch built using other bits of plasticard and the cool Tech Deck conversion parts from Dragon Forge Design. Click on the link above and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Cheers
Dave

Hearthstone Miniatures

Recently my friend, Scott Maurer, launched a new miniatures venture - Hearth Stone Miniatures. He plans to work with a wide variety of sculptors, producing many interesting sculpts of fantasy minis. The first from his new range is the Chuppa (above), sculpted by Yoo Jing Lee. I asked Scott for a bit of a rundown on Hearth Stone, and here's what he had to say:

"Hearth Stone Miniatures is dedicated to bringing new and interesting visions of fantasy miniatures to life. First and foremost, I am beholden to the sculptor and the artist. I want to see new artists flourish because they are the life blood of our industry and hobby. To that end, I have an arrangement with many sculptors to mold and cast their work free of charge and split the profits from sales with them. This is extremely important to me and I think a good way to foster new artists. Secondly, I want to make cool miniatures based on the work of artists I like. To that end I am commissioning concept artists and sculptors to create new and interesting miniatures that will engage your imagination with their bold vision. Finally, I am committed to quality. Everything I make is done in pressure-cast, hand-poured resin by me because I believe that this material offers the best resolution and I can best control the process by doing this myself."

You can see more concepts for future work at his site here, or on his Facebook page here.

Some very cool, and somewhat disturbing, visions of things to come : )

Behind those shields, boys!

You'll notice a bit of a theme over the next few months in my personal hobby posts. I'll be switching gears back and forth between building and painting units for either: a) my Death Guard, b) my Mechanicum, and c) my Solar Auxilia. The theme will, of course, be the Horus Heresy era.

Anyway, here are a the first ten of my Breacher squad that I managed to complete last weekend. I have another nine assembled, I just need to get my hands on one more, possibly the FW Breacher Marine event special (if anyone has a spare).

And I have finally put together a squad of Heavy Support Death Guard rocking the Volkite Culverins. Their Heavy 4 firepower and Deflagrate special rule will make them especially dangerous against lightly armored opponents : )

Cheers
Dave

Digging out a behemoth.

After taking a look through the Horus Heresy Book Four: Conquest from Forgeworld, I've definitely decided to repurpose my Vostroyans as Solar Auxilia. Once the Imperial Army list rolls around, I'm sure I could swing them back to acting as regular grunts too, but for now, they'll be the elite of the standard human troopers.

One thing that's fun in the Solar Auxilia list is that you can take a Solar Auxilia Tank commander and add him to a pretty wide variety of vehicles, including super-heavies. He transfers his Ballistic Skill of 4 to the rest of the crew, which means that when you add him to the Stormlord super-heavy, the Vulcan Mega-blolter (which is a 60" range, S6, AP3, Heavy 15 weapon) will hit, on average, ten times. Or 20 times if you remain stationary in the movement phase, allowing you to shoot twice! With additional weapons onboard, you could comfortably wipe out a 20-man squad of Marines each turn. Fierce!

So, with visions of torrents of fire raining down on the heads of my opponents, I dug out an old conversion of mine. I converted this Baneblade into a Stormlord as soon as the data sheet was released, a couple of years before GW made the actual model now found in their online store. Of course, as soon as I finished it, I moved on to a different project and never painted it.

But now...