Name Change

I've implemented a quick name change to my blog, it's now "The Impossible Fortress". Still Tzeentchian in nature, but better reflects the concept I had of a 'place' (the fortress) rather than a 'thing' (the servant) to store my accumulated knowledge and musings, so that others may find them.

I hope the name and domain name change has updated on whoever follows or visits here! Otherwise I'll have to start finding followers all over again!

Coming soon; more Rhino updates!
Plus; Necromunda terrain!

Slaves to Darkness Beastman units

With all the OldHammer and Realms of Chaos stuff going on at the moment, I've been flicking through my copy of Slaves to Darkness, when I spotted this:

There's something about those units of nearly identical beastmen that I really love. Somehow they've made a unit of uniform models look ace. They're all painted slightly differently, and if you look closely, there's a few head swaps. Plus the banner bearers are simply conversions of the basic model.

I've decided I want a unit like that!
(Ultimately I want an ARMY like in that picture!)
But with the price of original metal beastmen, forget it. Plus there's no way I could source enough of the same model even if I had infinite ebay money....

The solution is obvious, make plastic copies of the one original model I do have! Purists will probably be recoiling in horror at the suggestion, but there's really no other way. And as with all the things I duplicate, they never go beyond my possession. That's a line I don't cross.

Anywho, having silicone moulded the original beastmen, the results were surprisingly good.

The flash doesn't help, but the detail is pretty good. There's the occasional airbubble, but they came out a lot better than I was expecting (especially the weapons). Now it's just a case of duping up about ten of each to start with, and painting them in a similar fashion to the ones in the book!

Rhino #2

I've been working on many different projects recently, most notably terrain and miniatures for our current Necromunda campaign (more on that later). But I've made significant progress on my second Rhino transport (the one I picked up at Hammerhead in february).

After soaking in Dettol for a few weeks (the paint was VERY thick) and having a thorough scrubbing, it looked a bit like this:

Not pretty.

Anyway, I'd decided it was going to be an Imperial Army vehicle. I figured that army transports wouldn't be nearly so well maintained as space marine ones, and since this was so battered and beat up anyway, it fitted that description.

The first thing I had to do was replace the exhaust nozzles, which had all broken off long ago:

So I made four new nozzles from plastruct 2mm round rod:

Then drilled and pinned them to the exhausts:

Then I looked at the back, and remembered that the previous owner had put the rear hatch on upside down (sigh...):

So I filed the vision slit off and replaced it with some vent type thing I had lying around:

Finally, being an army vehicle, I added loads of these stowage thingies to it:

So now it looks like this:

Notice it also has an aerial (that curved bit of wire).

Now all I have to do is decide on a camoflage scheme for it!...

Space Orks!

Well, not quite. But close.

I've wanted some Space Orks for my Rogue Trader missions, but buying the original RT metal models is prohibitively expensive. I thus decided to search for an alternative, the answer was found with a sale at Wayland games. They were shifting a load of old stock, which including a selection of Mantic boxes. Now Mantic stuff is cheap anyway (20 models for £20, not bad!), but when I saw a Marauder Grunts Platoon box for just over a tenner, I thought I'd give it a punt. If it didn't work out, I wouldn't have lost much.

While the models are quite limited in the sculpts and their poses, but they're just multipart enough to be convertable. However, they are much smaller than the current GW Orks (which have become parodies of themselves really), and their proportions (and teeth) are much more plausible.

 

The box contains 20 models, but I've only managed to complete four so far. Mostly as an experiment, so see if converting them would actually work at all. Eventually I want to have ten with bolt pistols and hand weapons, and ten with bolters/special weapons.

There's a lot more detail on the models than I expected, which is why it took me so long to get around to painting them!

With space marine boltgun and orky plasma gun.

With bolt pistols and hand weapons.

Those pistols are the ones the Marauders come with, but since the Rogue Trader definition (and appearance) of weapons is very loose, I figured there's no reason why they can't just use them as is. Lemme know what you think, do these work as RT Space Orks?

Aliens!

I've finally completed the alien force for my upcoming Rogue Trader scenario! There's 12 aliens and one alien leader. I've deliberately not named their species because I don't want them to be any kind of identifiable race (like orks or eldar). The reason for this is to emphasise the way you can use Rogue Trader as a 'generic sci-fi' game; humans vs aliens! Although obviously the human side comprises space marines and imperial army.

This generic sci-fi feel is something I'd hoping to incorporate into other future scenarios. I can't really explain why I'd rather do things this way, but it's something to do with creative freedom I suppose. I like the idea of events being set within the Warhammer 40,000 Imperium that everyone is familiar with, but I want to move away from the 'GrimDarkness' and the 'Endless War'.

Anyway, the aliens!!
The models are actually 'Palansi' from the Cobalt-1 diceless miniatures game. I never played Cobalt-1, but it is by all accounts, rubbish. However, the models are actually quite good, especially these Palansi aliens. I had three blisters of them from some ten years ago, but they're still available from Black Hat Miniatures for a very reasonable £7 for a blister of three.

Aliens!

Closeup

The alien leader

I've created a custom stat profile and weapon profile for them, so they're completely different to anything in the rulebook. They're quite difficult to damage with shooting (the reason will remain a mystery for now!) but up close, they're almost useless!. The aliens are armed with Bio-plasma casters and the leader has a Power Scythe! Ooooh!

Rhino and Imperial Army updates

I've done some more to my Rhino, mainly highlights and some detailing. I'm hoping to add transfers and start the weathering process soon. I want to add lots of paint 'scratches' and other scuff details. I'm also thinking about bullet dents and other battle damage, but I don't want to mess up my nice paint job too much! It's been a long while since I've painted a tank and I've enjoyed painting the smooth finish it has now.

The camera flash shows it as being a lot lighter than it actually is. In reality, the blue basecoat is quite dark.

Also, I've finally completed my ten man Imperial Army tactical unit! Here they are in all their retro glory:

We have a Sergeant in the centre and a plasma gunner to the right. If you look closely, the trooper on the left has a camo pattern on his uniform. I wanted all of them to have this (rather than plain grey), but it took so long to do it on one model, I decided to get them finished first and think about adding camo patterns later!

Finally, there's the beginnings of a force of 'other' troopers. These are painted distinctly different than the army troops, and they are intended to be used as 'opposing' forces'. By that I mean any other enemies that the Imperials might face. Examples could include; Cult Guards, renegade or rebel troops, a planetary governor's private troops, a noble's household guard, etc. So hopefully they might turn up in many scenarios. They are also armed differently than the army troops, having autoguns rather than lasguns.

Again, the camera flash might make their uniforms look a bit pinkish, in reality it's quite a dark purple.

That's all for now, more to come.

Necromunda Orlock Gang

We've recently started a Necromunda campaign at Dreamdealers gaming club in Coventry, and this is my Orlock gang, Tannen's 'Mad Dogs'! Points if you can get all the pop culture references!

My leader; 'Mad Dog' Tannen (he hates that name), and the gang's heavy; 'Bear Strangler' McGee.

 My 'shooters', from left to right; 'Dangerous' Dan McGrew, 'The Riviera Kid', 'Doc' Brown and Lola.

 The shotgun duo; 'Bloodbath' McGrath and 'Lawless' Lucy.

 The juves; Clint, Wayne and Marty, all armed with knives and autopistols.

They're all armed pretty much as you see them (other than a few pistols and knives). The fully painted ones are models I painted probably over ten years ago now, while Riviera, Lola and Lucy are all in the process of being painted.
You may be wondering what two Eschers are doing in an Orlock gang... Well I needed the extra models with those weapons and since time was short I didn't want to be messing about converting other Orlocks I had. Thus, the first equal opportunities Orlock gang was founded!