Warhammer 40K - Coming Back to 8th Edition

Those of you who have been followers of this blog for quite some time may recall that in the dim and distant past my primary game system was Warhammer 40K and remained so right up till the terrible imbalance that was 6th Edition and I also managed to remain indifferent during the massively bloated 7th. I am however giving 8th a go with a small group of friends who nicely hover in the 'competitive enough but not so much that you want to stab them' category.

I have started this by purchasing the Dark Imperium Warhammer 40K starter set and then swapping out the Death Guard half with another local player. This left me with a considerable quantity of Primaris Marines and a shiny new rulebook...a few other purchases were also made...

I'm of the opinion that currently Primaris Marines work best as a mixed force with the original style of Marines for a number of reasons but in the main they (imo at least) lack long range firepower and are a tad tactically inflexible. The issue is of course that my own custom 'Night Reaper' Chapter had a quite distinctive style caused by my use of normal marine configurations with Chaos parts liberally added to give them a renegade look.

Night Reapers - Tactical Squads

Night Reapers - Veteran Scouts

Night Reapers - Assault Squads

Fortunately it seems that Games Workshop have either thought ahead or somewhat by accident they've made the heads, many shoulder pads and quite a few of the weapons close enough in scale to swap between the Primaris and standard Marines. This means that I've been able to match my new Primaris recruits to my original concept with a few head-swaps and some basic reposing. The reposing was necessary as due to having two of the same Dark Imperium halves I obviously have some identical models as the starter box models are of the simple assembly variety.

These are the Primaris Librarian with a Chaos Space Marine Sorcerer head on instead and the Primaris Captain with a Dark Angels Veteran head instead of the provided Primaris one. I haven't decided whether to use their correct shoulder pads or Chaos ones so their right shoulders are currently bare.

Here's some comparison pictures between my converted versions of the starter set Lieutenants and the originals with head swaps. Two of the Primaris Marines had their helms attached to their belts so I swapped those instead of the actual heads. The sword armed version had a simple arm re-position while one of the Bolt Rifle armed versions had a slightly more complicated swap of weapons which required some green-stuff work to get the arm at the required angle.

Once I was fairly certain I could match the older marines from my chapter in appearance I moved onto attempting to match the colour scheme. Unfortunately the two paints I used to mix are no longer produced by Games Workshop and the alternatives aren't quite the same. I therefore went with a metallic blue that despite not being exactly the same as my original scheme is still similar enough in style so they're obviously the same chapter. I did a test model just to be sure...

With that worked out I started some minor conversion work on the Inceptors involving the addition of some trophy racks. The heads are unfortunately too enclosed for me to replace with horned versions...

...and then of course there's Daemon Prince Guilliman Shibboleth....

I've had a few messages from people concerned that I the haven't been posting much lately and this is due to my abandoning all other games in place of Warhammer 40K 8th edition...the truth is that I have been working seventy hour, seven day weeks and simply haven't had the time to do any detailed unboxing and review features. Whereas the above conversions and projects are things I can get done in the couple of hours a day I've actually had to myself. Hopefully things will get back to normal within a week or so...

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Deathwatch - RPG Character Project

I'm currently involved in an RPG campaign using Fantasy Flight Games Deathwatch system set in the grimdark of Games Workshops Warhammer 40K and as with all such campaigns I tend to make a model to represent my character. My first attempt didn't quite turn out how I wanted so I decided to go with something much different.

I started off using a model from Puppet Wars as a base as it seemed like a perfect building block to which to add the other bits and pieces I had in mind.

Of course it was lacking several features that are ubiquitous across the Techmarines of Warhammer 40K such as the various cables usually hanging from the waist or sides, servo arms and the head was very much not in the correct style. Fortunately these were relatively easy to do something about.

I had a set of the aforementioned cables in my bits box and ordered a slightly different set from a bits supplier on ebay. This is the second time I've ordered parts from that store and the service was excellent...anyway...

There was a slight gap which I filled with a tiny amount of green stuff. As I was going to be adding a lot of gubbins to the model I attached the arms and added a Terminator head looking in the correct direction. That way I could orientate all the other stuff in a fairly logical manner and not find that the arms got in the way. The head is somewhat appropriately from an Iron Hands 'Gorgon' Terminator but I actually selected it because of the cluster of eye lenses rather than it's originating chapter.

I then started on the mechadendrites. The 'Ripper' I was using as a basis came with the piece that fits on the top and four tentacle like arms. When ordering the parts I got a second of these so I had some extra just in case. With this in mind I added a third of these tentacles on each side on a flat section of the model to make a cluster of three on each side.

As the top of the model was a little crowded I decided to attach the servo-arms in a somewhat unorthodox location. I quite liked the idea that they reached around under the Techmarines own arms so I attached them to a likely point on the rear and posed one pointing in the same direction as the head and gun arm with the other reaching around under his left one. One of these servo-arms was from my bits box, the other was from the same eBay seller I mentioned earlier.

I then added the shoulder pads...which I probably should have done earlier in the process as there was now a lot of bits in the way. So other than some tidy-up on the green stuff I used to fill a few gaps the model is effectively done from an assembly point of view, I did have a few more 'tentacles' to add reaching from around the models back section but I'm beginning to think that might be overkill...I'll sleep on the idea and have a look with fresh eyes in the morning...

For reference here's my first attempt which used a lot more Games Workshop parts but for some reason I just didn't take to.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Iron Kingdoms RPG - 'Bosh' Skullsplitter Character Model

Peoples levels of immersion differ with RPG's but what's quite common across all of them is having a model that represents your character or in some cases a piece of artwork that does the same. For those of you with an interest in RPG's the background for our characters, mercenary company and write-ups of our missions can be found here.

When starting the Privateer Press RPG 'Iron Kingdoms' I somewhat arbitrarily selected an Ogrun and 'Man at Arms' seemed like an appropriate career...though his second career of 'Bounty Hunter' was in retrospect less than optimal...this is a role-playing game rather than a competitive war game so I went with it.

I purchased from a hobbyist friend a model that he had no intention of using to represent my character in game (Many people play out the in session combats with actual models and that's kinda how the system is designed but we don't...or haven't felt the need to yet at least). My own character was equipped differently from the model I acquired so I started a conversion project.

However his equipment quickly changed so I decided to wait till his weapon preferences stabilised a bit before finishing the model off. 'Bosh' carries a Nyss Claymore 'borrowed' from a dead Nyss who didn't need theirs any more by virtue of..well...being dead. However with the Nyss models that carry such weapons being fairly small an actual one of those weapons looked like a toothpick in his hand so I instead went with 'looks cool' rather than particularly accurate and just made him a sword scaled to the model to represent it. I also still wanted him to carry his other favoured weapon the Ogrun Warcleaver so with a bit of converting I took the pieces of the weapon that had been in his hand, reattached both ends and strapped it across his back together with another he'd 'acquired'.

His sword got fancier...looting is apparently just fine if your an RPG character...

I also decided to paint the skin sections as leather rather than flesh because he wears extremely heavy plate armour and that isn't well known for having gaps where weapons can stick in you through. I also added a lot of little pouches for his gear to go in rather than stick a load of extra items to him and clutter him up. The 'mask' is from a Games Workshop Chaos Defiler but I'm sure similar things are available if you look around a bit...

I'm not a brilliant painter so I won't bore you with an elaborate stage by stage painting guide as you can probably guess just by looking at the model but basically it was an army painter plate mail base colour, with the straps and 'skin' painted a light brown. The whole thing was then washed with Army Painter 'Dark Tone' and once dry everything was then highlighted in an appropriate colour. Some blood was added at the end as well. The result actually looks better in the real world as for some reason my camera has lost the ability to capture depth...

Of course he's recently acquired a different shield...so I may have to convert the conversion of the conversion now...

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.