131 Hardened Vets Progress Update

Evening.

Just some quick pics, so you can see how stuff's progressing with my vets. I've been modelling more than painting - these little buggers seem to take forever!

Firstly, G/Sgt Harker is getting painted up now... I'll get a close-up of his backpack once he's done:

Secondly, a vague look at the progress on my heavy flamer - I don't like the new vertically stacked command squad version of it, so I put mine side-by-side:

Thirdly, my vet lascannon crew. Most of you know by now that I'm not a big fan of either the 60mm base or the plastic lascannon, so I was originally going to have them fully dug-in and covered in a camo-net - almost in protest! Luckily, common sense prevailed, and I went for it with a 'prone' loader/observer and a stripped-down lascannon (in the background). You for those of you (Hal'jin!) who dislike right hands, you may appreciate the las-carbine swap in lieu of the basic laspistol:

Finally a general shot, including the FW Weissmann model (my new Fleet Officer)...and the monstrously overpriced You-Know-Who lurking in the background:

Cheers,

- Drax

"...the world's greatest Imperial Guard Treadhead English Teacher..."

130 Vetting Processes

Evening!

A quick update, for those of you who've enjoyed them in snippets before:

I'm working on my hardened veterans again - including a converted G/Sgt Harker and a converted heavy flamer, which I quite like!

I thought of repainting them all black.

Then decided against it.

So it goes.

- Drax.

129 New Model Army - 1 Platoon

Hey, Crazy Kids.

For those of you who've been kind enough to anticipate these fellows, I've now got the two new, re-worked, re-codexed incarnations of 1 and 2 platoon finished. Hooray! Today I had the chance to take pics of 1 Pl, so here they are. First, the whole platoon, front and rear:

Now B Coy, 2/24th is now a designated 'tactical' company, and 1 and 2 are the 'tactical' platoons, with 3 platoon in more of a support role. The idea is that the company can hold its own - if required to do so - with its own organic fire support; so too can 1 and 2 platoons, although not so much 3 Pl. For a little more discussion and their points cost, please see Post 122. The old version of 1 Pl can be found here.

These, then, are the constituent parts of 1 Pl. NB: Please excuse the more crappy painting - some of these models were painted 6 or 7 years ago, and their flesh tones and eyes are pretty ropey!:

HQ Section:

All of my officers count as being armed with lasppistols and power weapons. Sadly, I've felt the need to replace my old medics with grenade launchers - medics are just too expensive now at platoon level...and I do so love grenade launchers!

1 Section:

The sgt is based on a friend of mine.

2 Section:

3 Section:

'B' Section - missile launchers (click link for more details):

Yes, I know they're not on 60mm bases. I don't plan to put them on any either, but I will get some 50mm or 60mm discs to blu-tac them to if needed.

'C' Section - autocannon (click link for more details):

Ditto with their bases.

'M' section - 2 melta guns and my new demo charge 'wrecker' model:

As usual, each model has an identification 'flash' on the reverse of its base - red for 1 Pl. I find these incredibly useful; here are some details of them for you:

I'll get 2 Pl photographed when I can, though the next post will probably be the pics of my new griffon battery.

Cheers,

- Drax.

128 Demo CHARGE!

Wotcha.

I recently noted that I had only five models left to finish in order to complete my two new re-structured 'tactical' platoons.

Happily, I've been able to get out to The Shed the last couple of nights, so they're now finished but for the basing*:

I quite like the demo charge model, and I've decided to call him a 'wrecker', courtesy of a suggestion from Siph_Horridus. Apologies for the cruddy indoor photo and lack of variety - the camera ran out of juice.

Hopefully I can base them this afternoon/this evening but it's a trifle awkward as we have a house guest. Damnit. Luckily(ish) he has to wait in for someone to come and fix his windscreen, so I've time to kill - hence blogging now, whilst the varnish is going off.

The next pics will hopefully be of the new tactical platoons, with new squad-by-squad profiles too.

HOORAY!

- Drax.

*And yes, I know I should base first, but almost my entire army is already built and undercoated, so that's not really an option.

127 The Dangers of Painting

Crikey, Chief!

Whilst painting in The Shed t'other night my eye was briefly distracted...by the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of a glass tank. Vis:
I encountered one big-ass spider*.

NB: Please note the importance of hyphenation above. Had I written "I encountered one big ass-spider" the meaning would have shifted entirely. I chose to avoid the ambiguity of not hyphenating. Hmm... I might use this example in class tomorrow.

I'm not squeamish about such beasties, and our cottage (naturally enough) does have a propensity to attract them...but still - this guy was big.

I know, likewise, that many of you reading this from almost any other part of the world will have genuinely big and dangerous animals on the loose, but do please appreciate my concern: this fellow must've been fully three inches across and jet black, and that's simply not cricket. Seriously, I was fully expecting him to march off with the barbecue. Or me.

I say 'him', but given the three trillion baby spiders currently pootling around in the webs I share The Shed with, 'he' could well be a very proud 'she'.

In the UK our most dangerous animal is commonly considered to be the (fractionally venemous) adder, and our most vicious predator? - The badger. I simply shouldn't have to put up with such monstrosities in my shed!

Right then: back to work avoidance.

- Drax.

* Excuse the US 'ass' in lieu of 'arse'. Some phrases just work better that way!

126 Griffon Back-Conversion Complete!

For once, a speedy project for Drax.

A few weeks ago, I hit upon the idea of taking my HQ salamander Opilio - itself converted from an ebayed (for which read: 'in rag state') griffon - and converting it back into use as a griffon mortar. Here's two pics as she is now, followed by one of her as she was (more pics below):Wow - in that one above you can really see how thick the old ebay paint job was. I repainted Opilio before I discovered stripping paint. This, then, is her as she was:

Now of course, many of my loyal readers rightly bemoaned the loss of a more 'characterful' unit...so I've kept the mortar removable so that the heavy bolter can be replaced:

Naturally, I've had to adjust the vehicle's identification and transfers. I was tempted to make it look like a field conversion, but I don't really have the necessary painting skill, and the crappy old ebay paint job mixed with the my ubiquitous glossy varnish would've looked a little incongruous. More pics:

Luckily, she's still attached to the 1/24th, so keeping the blue-white-blue flash on the starboard side wasn't a problem, though I did paint out the large '24' on each flank.

Click for more pictures of Opilio in her old salamander guise;

Click for more pictures of my other griffons.

Your roots are showing, dear...

If you're wondering why she has so many garish colours, let me explain. If I convert or repaint a vehicle which already has an ID flash, I try to retain some of the colours in the scheme - as something of a tribute, I suppose, to the vehicle's history. Therefore Opilio has her current 144th red-blue-red flash and has retained the blue-white-blue on her mantle and the winged skulls, but also has her original (ebay) flash colours of red-yellow-red on her nameplate scrollwork. These colours are actually still visible if you look at her from beneath.

Details you might like include the legend 'THE CORGI' written by the crew on the port flank (this is why the '144' transfer is shifted rearwards a little - the name's a long story, but obviously relates to our old favourite, After The War) and the fact that - for reasons forgotten now - I gave the port-side winged skull an eyepatch:

Hopefully I'll soon have posts of all three griffons together and then a completed brace of infantry platoons!

Cheers,

- Drax.

125 Mortars - "Rounds Complete!"

Hurrah!

I can't quite claim it as a 'labour of love', but at last I've finished my first mortar squad:

I'm glad I went for the more scenic bases though - they would've felt awfully exposed on those big ol' bases otherwise.

Here are some different angles for you:

Had I more talent, I might've added some graffiti and more detail to the walls. Details I enjoy include the rifle propped up against the wall and the cable sticking out of the masonry upright. I'm not sure I liked how the rusty metal (front team) come out.

Good news: I've only the following to get finished before the first two full tactical platoons of my newly restructured infantry company are complete:

1 flamer

1 demo charge guardsman (any ideas for a better name?!)

2 melta gunners

1 normal trooper.

Watch this space.

Cheers,

- Drax.

124 Converting G/Sgt Harker

Hey, all.

Two things. Firstly, I've finished the mortar squad (hooray!) - though the weather's been drizzly and it's dark now, so photos are right out. I'm fairly pleased with them, but they took too long, damnit.

Secondly, like many of us I'm boracic at the moment, so I'm trying to make my own special characters. Chief among them is G/Sgt Harker, a hardened veterans upgrade and the only real means of enabling my beloved veterans to infiltrate (one of my few gripes with the new codex). The trouble, of course, is getting a guardsman to sling a heavy bolter, when all the guard weapons are huge!

My answer (so far) was to use a chaos space marine sprue (true story: a kid in my last school left a squad's worth of CSM sprues in my cupboard and forgot about them for two years...then left the school! I never got around to chasing him up...) which had a heavy bolter on it. I scraped away the more telling iconography, and after fretting about how to carry it, I eventually settled on cutting out a chunk from the back of it and using a Cadian flamer arm, with the sling. Et voila:

I'll fill that gap in the back, but the ammo feed will hang from those two nodes in front of the pistol grip anyway.

More to follow.

Cheers,

Drax.

PS: if you didn't catch my previous post, please take a look and leave your thoughts if you can. I don't usually like to ask, but without a local gaming community any feedback I get is hugely appreciated. Thanks to those of you who've left your marks already!

123 Captain Stephenson - Unique Character

Hullo!

NB: This is an update - 16/03/2010 - I've tweaked Stephenson's profile after the advice of my dear readers: thanks for the ideas, guys! The data and fluff, below, are the new versions.

A long time ago, I pictured this sentinel and noted that there was a story behind the model and the colour scheme. Well, here it is - with some tweaks and in a new-Codex stylee [rationale follows beneath].

Ladies and Gents - Capt. Wm. Stephenson; data, back story and pictures:

Yes, I did it on Excel. I'm not very technically minded, I'm afraid.

Here are three pics of him with his new 'clearance blade':

And here he is - for fun - hiding in my wife's herbacious border:

I should point out that this is an old paintjob - especially on his face. I'd never leave it so blank and pallid now, I hope!

BRIEF RATIONALE AND EXPLANATIONS:

Model: bought from ebay in a slightly ragged state and basic Catachan colours. I converted stuff and made the weapon, just for fun, from an old Epic warlord titan weapon. This was mostly done almost six years ago. He was always going to be Stephenson, so I popped an officer's head on him and spruced up the paintwork and base about a year ago. Added the chainsaw blade today after lots of deliberation - it just adds a bit of depth and a 'Catachan' edge. Looks ugly, but it works.

Points cost: alternative HQ for my mechanised inf (1/24), so had to be at least 70pts. The special rules aren't game-winning, and he's extremely vulnerable to shooting, being a one-man HQ unit and an open-topped, AV10 vehicle. Hence the conversion field, to give him a fighting chance. The vox rule was because I'd modelled it on there and it makes sense, and the bolt pistol's just for fun. The chainsaw blade acts as a power weapon (as a dreadnought ccw) but does not double his strength - that would've been too much.

Concept: from the original 'Zulu' organisational concept for my army - hence, of course, them being the 24th. Stuff's changed a lot since then - that was 3rd edition codex!

The statline is a mix of both statlines (Coy Cmdr and Sentinel), but don't forget how vulnerable he is...

I'd love your thoughts on this one, if you'd be so kind...

- Drax.

122 New Infantry Company Structure

Well,

I've been fiddling about with this, and a number of you have already put up with my occasional groans, but I've decided (yeah, right!) to focus less on my light infantry - keeping them as an option for fun or for Apocalypse (when chance arises). This will be sponsored in part by financial constraints.*

Here they are as they were. Two companies - one infantry coy (three platoons of 35 pax each) and one fire support coy (three platoons of heavy weapons, including one mortar platoon):
Now, after a bit of playtesting and the decision to 'let go' of my babies, I'll be fielding the following; the idea being that the 24th Cadian is now more tactically flexible at company-, rather than battalion level:

HQ:
Company Commander w. p/wpn; medic; standard; vox; plasma gun = 125pts

TP:
1Pl = 495pts:
Platoon Commander w. p/wpn; vox; 3 x grenade launchers = 60pts
1 (inf) Sect w. vox; plasma gun = 70pts
2 (inf) Sect w. vox; melta gun = 65pts
3 (inf) Sect w. vox; grenade launcher = 60pts
4 (HW) Sect w. 3 x missile launchers = 90pts
5 (HW) Sect w. 3 x autocannon = 75pts
6 (spec) Sect w. 2 x melta guns; 1 x demo charge = 75pts

2Pl = 485pts:
Platoon Commander w. p/wpn; vox; 3 x grenade launchers = 60pts
1 (inf) Sect w. vox; plasma gun = 70pts
2 (inf) Sect w. vox; melta gun = 65pts
3 (inf) Sect w. vox; grenade launcher = 60pts
4 (HW) Sect w. 3 x lascannon = 105pts
5 (HW) Sect w. 3 x heavy bolters = 75pts
6 (spec) Sect w. 3 x flamers = 50pts

3Pl = 425pts
Platoon Commander w. p/wpn; vox; 3 x grenade launchers = 60pts
1 (inf) Sect w. vox; plasma gun = 70pts
2 (inf) Sect w. vox; melta gun = 65pts
3 (inf) Sect w. vox; grenade launcher = 60pts
3 (HW) Sect w. 3 x mortars = 60pts
4 (HW) Sect w. 3 x mortars = 60pts
5 (spec) Sect w. 3 x flamers = 50pts

= 1530pts.

The rearranging/repainting/reassignment of the first two platoons is almost finished, and 3 platoon will follow in slow-time afterwards (I've other priorities).

Yes, I know it's not everyone's dream list, and of course it's not the most competitive, but it can pretty much hold its own, and please don't assume I go for a static gunline - everything except the heavy weapons squads is designed for advance where necessary. Mind you, none of it is cut out for assault!

So, I'm interested in your thoughts, and I'll pose them for a pic as soon as they're done.

Cheers,

- Drax.

*The coffers are empty and I've a sprog on the way, so I'll be selling stuff soon, including some vintage models and decent conversions. Look out for old-style 'assault cannon' sentinels; praetorians; ogryns; converted Cadian roughriders; converted Arbites bikers; a selection of Arbites; assorted WFB orky stuff and other 40k metals.