Mutants!

These two crew members are both converted from Warhammer Gnoblars. I've seen the chainsword conversion before, though I don't remember who had done it.

The big shield on the right mutant is supposed to be some kind of portable shield generator to protect him from shooting while he shambles over to slay with his long-handled chainsword.

The guy on the left is supposed to be some kind of cybernetically-enhanced tracker with a cybernetic third-eye. He has an appropriately dainty laspistol and a pretty sketchy-looking cybernetic claw hand.

Pirate crewman (hairy mutant!)

This pirate crewman is a work in progress, but I don't plan to add many more parts, if any. He's built from a Flagellant head, Beastman Ungor upper torso and arms, and an Imperial Guard bolt pistol. The Beastman arms and torso are really muscular, so  I thought this guy would make a good 'brute' character.

I picked the smallest bolt pistol I could find to try to make the figure look as big as possible. Not too many left-hand bolt pistol bits in my collection!

He is a hairy beast. I'm torn between smoothing it all down or adding more hair to his chest and belly to even it out. It works on a beastman, but with so much hair on this guys head and face, the pattern doesn't quite work. I like the idea that he's super-hairy though. Maybe he's a mutant?

The mace in his right hand actually extends down below the level of his foot, so I'll have to make a little ledge for him to stand on. That'll look cool anyway :)

Old Spacer and Servitors

All three of these figures are pretty old, as far as projects go. I started them a few years ago and am just now getting around to finishing them. They don't even necessarily go together, but I had originally envisioned this guy as some kind of Inquisitor who was really in to Xeno tech

This guy is an old spacefarer. He was originally going to be some kind of Inquisitor, but I liked the stripped-down look of his armor so much that I couldn't bear to bling it up. His head came from the Mordheim sprue...but had a huge hat on, which I removed. To cover up the crude surgery I gave him a kind of soft cap (I imagined it sort of like what an astronaut might wear inside his helmet). 

His armor is just Space Marine power armor, but with all the repaired areas and vents covered up, and all the bling removed. I rounded out the legs a bit as well, to give him a more sleek look. The power fist is from an old close-combat sprue, modified somewhat.

The backpack is a cut-down and kitbashed Space Marine backpack and some parts from a few tank kits and an helicopter control panel. It needs a little finishing work on top, but I'm mostly satisfied with it. His plasma pistol is huge, and has a pretty obvious cable connection underneath (it's the same one I used on the pirate Captain). I'll have to work out some way to connect that to his pack.

I think I had originally planned to try to make this sword look like it was some kind of Chaos relic, which was why he needed a Power Fist to hold it, but I like the idea that he's just wielding a ginormous two-handed weapon in one giant mitt.

These are some kind of servitors. They're built from Skaven/Empire parts from the Mordheim boxed set, some old Space Marine arms (and backpack bits), and an Ork plasma gun. The heads are distributor caps from car models. I think these need about 300x as many cables and rivets and ports on them to really look like servitors though.

Space Pirates!

I have been putting together a bunch of miniatures intended for some kind of space pirate crew. These would probably work as a Rogue Trader and his crew as well, but I like to think of them as straight-up pirates.

The one on the left is holding a Space Marine Auspex. I figure he's the one with the 'treasure map' and knows where to go. The head is from a Warhammer Flagellant, the torso is from the Mordheim boxed set. Cape from a Skaven from the Mordheim set as well. Arms and legs come from Imperial Guard bits. Pouches and holsters are a mix of Mordheim, Imperial Guard, and 1:35 scale pouches.

The middle figure is the captain. The body comes from a Reaper Bones figure. I replaced his bendy and kind of crappy sword with one from some Undead skeleton kit (Mantic maybe?) and some plastic bits. The hilt probably needs a bit more work, and maybe some more detail on the "powered sword" wire that runs down the blade. The servo-skull is basically unmodified, it's just glued on to his shoulder. I added an extra cable made from guitar string for a little more strength in the connection with his shoulder. I think I may have to paint the skull bright colors, like it's a parrot on his shoulder. :)

The captain's hand has been replaced with one that I had left over from a 2nd Edition / Space Crusade Space Marine Scout. The I added a guitar-string cable from the pistol to a canister on his back. No idea where the canister is from. I had removed a poorly detail pistol from his waist, and replaced it with...whatever that thing is from the original beaky Space Marine kits. It looks like some kind of tricorder or something, so I added a seal to it to appease its machine spirit. The dagger is from one of the greatcoat troops from Wargames factory. More 1:35 scale pouches on the back (one anyway).

The beastman crewman is made from some Ungor legs (same source as the IG beastmen from my last post), combined with a torso and arms from the Mordheim sprue. Sword and hand is from a Space Marine scout kit, and the bolter is a super-chunky one from years past. I wanted him to look like he was holding the biggest, loudest gun he could find. I added a big pouch on to his back from the beaky Space Marine kit to cover up his bare cheeks and fill the gap where the coat is open. I think he needs some more stuff and details, but I'm not sure what yet. Maybe some details on his coat to dress it up a little. He does have a grenade attached to his belt/loincloth though.

The bases are kind of an experiment. I made a rubber mold of some old OOP bases and a few from Secret Weapon (I think) months ago, and had done some questionable resin casts with them. The resin was old and maybe not mixed correctly, so they came out kind of gummy. These are not those bases. These are made with the same molds but cast using Durhams Rock Hard Water Putty. They're a little bubbly, and will require some cleanup, but they'll do just fine for a bunch of dirty space pirates. 

Beastmen Imperial Guard

Time flies when you're not updating your hobby blog :)

I have a bunch of stuff I want to document, so I'll start with one of my latest projects. I've seen some great Beastman troopers for the Imperial Guard in 40k, and wanted some of my own. It's not an original idea, but I really like the look...and I'm happy with how mine turned out.

I made a squad of 5 guardsmen using arms and torsos from Imperial Guard kits, with legs cut from the bodies of Warhammer Fantasy Ungors. I cut the Ungors right across the tops of their belts, level with the ground. I ended up trimming a fair amount of the detail off the beastman belts, and covered up the somewhat rough beltline (and doubling up on actual belts).

Here's how the Sergeant turned out:

And a pair of troopers armed with lasguns:

And finally there are two heavy support weapons to round out the squad:

These should be fun to paint :)

Space Crusade Scouts

In an effort to get back on the hobby-blog wagon, here's some new stuff.

These are some old Space Crusade -era Space Marine scouts. Got these on eBay and stripped 'em down to bare metal. The detail is nice...they look 10x better with no paint on them than they did with the crappy paintjob they started with!

I think these guys will be part of my Relictors chapter of Space Marines.

6mm skirmish on hex grid

To keep from having to do a lot measuring and precise placement of miniatures, I decided to try out a hex-grid. I think it's going to work quite well. This works out to 0.5" from center to center of each hex.

I think it's a good idea. I can measure distances by counting hexes (and not be too far off), and I like the slight 'uncertainty' about a figures actual position that it adds. Line of sight should be pretty easy to figure out as well.

It looks like about 3 figures can fit in any given hex, which sounds about right. I guess you'd have to let figures in neighboring hexes fight in close combat as well as figures in the same hex. Perhaps only allow friendly figures to share hexes?

Magnetized Epic-scale building ruins (and Squats!)

I magnetized a bunch of ruins for the 6mm skirmish set. This is really starting to come together. A little one-sided in that it's all ruined walls, but I think a few more solid pieces will round out the set nicely.

I'm also happy to have scored some Squats on eBay, so I have another (of my favorites!) retinue for ItEN.

I had an idea about doing some Genestealer Hybrids using parts from some of the cheap Genestealers I got on eBay and some parts from my bits-box.

These are a few rough mockups for how that might work. This will be some serious conversion work.

 

Yay! I got some new miniatures in the mail (eBay is awesome).

This should give me enough variety to do an interesting Space Marine retinue for ItEN, and perhaps Orks. I'm not as familar with Orks, so I don't know exactly what I have here, but it looks like an Ork in some power armor, some with rifles and bayonets and some little guys with long rifles. They'll need some backup to fill out their retinue, but I have a few Ork sprues coming in the mail from the UK.

I'm not sure how useful they'll be for small-scale skirmishes, but I'm excited that there will be three big Ork Stompers in the package too!

6mm scale skirmish game

I started a project to take 6mm-scale figures (Epic 40k at this point) and individually base them so I could use them in a skirmish-style game. My goal was to make something like Warhammer 40k, but scaled down to take up less room. And I like really tiny things.

Inspired by a number of  projects on the web, I decided to base them on magnets and play on a metal surface  to minimize the amount of moving around the pieces would do. I tried a number of different options to see what would work best. Here's a first pass on magnetic bases. 

Some of these are based on cut-outs from sheet magnets (like you can get a craft stores...refrigerator magnets). Some are based on rare earth magnets, and those work well. I had originally ordered 6mm magnets (about 1/4", the size of an Epic mini base), but found that you can't bring the bases to close together (the poles will repel each other). I order some 4mm and 2mm magnets to try out different combinations.

What I ended up doing was drilling 2mm holes in the bases and gluing 2mm magnets flush with the bottom. This gave me the look I wanted (a scaled-down 28mm miniature) and enough magnetic pull to adhere well. Here are the beginnings of some groups I've put together.

These should work will with square-gridded maps too. Here's some miniatures layed out a 1/4" grid map (originally intended for the Star Wars miniatures game, 25% scale). The map is sitting on a small magnetic whiteboard.