Cultists and Marauders

Hey, I haven’t had a chance to get back to the Leman Russ/ Destroyer (got a pile of edits that needed my attention) but I wanted to share something else I’ve been working on. Sort of an ongoing background project.

As I’ve mentioned here once or thrice, my biggest 40K army is the Alpha Legion.  I was a fan and follower of the 20th Legion since back when they were just the Napoleons of Chaos, long before THQ and  Dan Abnett made it cool to like them.  And as such, I’ve always had a place for cultists in my army. 

Alas, for years, the only cultist models were half a dozen or so metal ones, half of which were leaders or special weapons.  That’s not a lot of options.  Plus, they were metal, so they could cost three or four dollars apiece!  Can you imagine that?  Paying four dollars for a single GW figure?  What craziness.  Thank goodness for Finecast, am I right...?

Anyway...

Like most folks, I solved the problem by mashing things together. A good mix of Catachan parts and Fantasy Marauders gave me a nice group of post-apocalyptic looking cultists.  Mix in a few Kroot accessories and they looked great.  And these guys worked fine for many years.  Then Dark Vengeanceshowed up and there were real cultist models. Not too posable, but lots of variety. Also space to add on the odd bit of individual detail here and there. Plus, through the miracle of eBay, I was able to get a bunch of them for less than two dollars each...

But this still left me with all my old, homemade cultists in their horned helmets and headbands.  They just don’t mesh well with the new ones.  Sooooo... what to do with about forty figures?  And then it struck me that, in Age of Sigmar, it’s possible to field just one or two units and play like that. So what if I just turned the mostly-Marauder ones back into regular Chaos Marauders?

I went through all of the old cultists and sorted them into mostly Catachan and mostly Marauder.  In a few cases, I found complementary pairs where I could swap legs and they’d make a more-complete figure.  Then, I began to disassemble them.

Helpful Hint—The idea of cutting up figs like this might seem intimidating.  Just make sure you’ve got a really sharp, clean blade, a good cutting surface, and plenty of light (the seams can vanish in shadows, and I want to be cutting between components, not through components).

It took about an hour to separate them all and scrape off any of the white “soft spots” left from the glue.  Then I dug up all the leftover Marauder parts and made a good-sized squad of fifteen armed with axes and shields.

I also discovered I had enough bits sitting around to make one more figure, and after a bit I decided I might make someone I could use as a Darkoath Chieftain, using the Age of Sigmar rules that GW put up to go with some of the Silver Tower figures.  More on that later, depending on how it turns out...

And as for the leftover, mostly-Catachan models...  Well, as it happens a while back I also ended up with a bunch of the hooded Adeptus Mechanicus heads.  A few head swaps, a few details from the Marauders and the Kroot, and now these figs will blend in much better with the newer Alpha Legion cultists.

So don’t be afraid to cut up old figs and repurpose them. It can save you a couple bucks and turn units you don’t use into units you do. Heck, it might even give you something to play a new game with.

And I'm just adding this one last guy with the flagellant body and a flamer because I really liked how he turned out...

Ogres to Ogryns, Pt 2.1

Two quick things...

First, wanted to show the Ogryns with some paint on them.  Not a lot of paint, mind you, but right now they’re in the “broad swaths of color” phase and it’s enough to get a general sense of how the conversion turned out.  As I’ve said many, many times, painting is not my strength.  If we waited for me to finish, the blog would probably go another four or five months without an update...

Assorted Ogryns, ready to pound the jungle flat.

The Bonehead with his pauldron.

Assorted pouches, straps, and "frag grenades."

Not bad, I think.  I’m happy with how the ripper guns turned out.  The putty abs look good, and the gear really helps carry them out of Fantasy and into 40K, even with some of their bags and bear traps. 

The second thing was a big Friday the 13th sale that one of my publishers, Permuted Press, is having.  Almost all of their ebooks are under five dollars, most of them are just 99¢.  That Times of Trouble anthology there on the right is on sale.  So is my mash up novel, The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe, and also my novella The Junkie Quatrain.  Grab them all by Monday morning when the publisher gets back in the office and resets all the prices.

Ogres to Ogryns, Pt 2

Well, this only took a few months.  More like half a year.  Pathetic, isn’t it?  Sad as it is to say, these guys have been sitting half-done on my cutting mat the whole time.

So, the basic bodies are done.  What I need now are weapons.

The ripper guns weren’t that hard.  I wanted to stick to the combat shotgun idea from the Imperial Guard codex, but I didn’t have a problem with them looking a little simplistic and Ogryn-friendly.  My previous Ogre-Ogryn conversion (for my Penal Legion) had used the autocannon magazine on the side, but I wanted to see if I could make something that looked more like an industrial Thompson sub-machine gun.

The most notable part of a Tommy gun (and a ripper gun) is the ammunition drum.  I played around with a few ideas, including building the drums from scratch.  What I finally decided on was gluing together a pair of old Fantasy shields.  It gave a size and depth to the drum that I liked, plus some tiny details around the edges.

The main body/barrel of the ripper gun is 3/16” tubing.  I cut a 1/4” section and then a 1/2” section.  These would go on either side of my magazine.  On the shorter, back half, I also added a wheel hub to serve as a machined-looking butt to the weapon.  

Then I took some 1/8” wide plastic and cut a 7/8”strip.  This would be the top of my ripper gun and help tie the whole thing together, both  visually (it helps hide the fact that a few of the front and back pieces don’t line up perfectly) and structurally (it was going to serve as a sort of spine for the next bit).  I lined it up to the back so any excess hung out over the end of the barrel.

I made a few 1/4” squares and put them on either side of the rear section, placing them so they “connected” to the top strip.  This gave a bit more bulk to the body of the ripper gun.  I put 1/4” x 1/8” pieces on the front, also lined up with the top strip and butting up against the magazine.  It gave the whole thing a nice, solid look.  I finished it off with a thin strip along each edge and a 1/16” strip along the top.

The last touch was to cut a 3/8” piece of 1/8” tubing and slide it in the front of the ripper gun to give it a muzzle.  I left 1/8” sticking out and filed it a bit to make it perpendicular to the barrel.  I toyed with the idea of putting iron sights on the front of the muzzle, but for the moment I’ve decided against it.  Since ripper guns are made exclusively for Ogryns, I can’t see them being manufactured with any level of accuracy in mind.  I may change my mind at the last minute before priming, though.

Next step was to mount the weapons on the Ogryns.  The Ogres come with a lot of large, square blades that look a lot like machetes, and I like that look for Ogryns who were going to be in the jungle.  Since those blades are all right-handed, I had the choice of making all the ripper guns left-handed, or doing a lot of modeling work to switch everyone’s hands around.  I decided to stick with machetes on the right, rippers on the left—mostly because I like how this works with a lot of the arm poses (which are pretty inflexible on the Ogres)

(keen-eyed readers may note one of those is a right hand.  I did a cool knife bit with the Ogre musician hand, so I had to put that ripper on the opposite side.  The other option would’ve been having it slung over said Ogryn’s shoulder, but that would’ve involved building a sling and a trigger mechanism and, well, I didn’t want to do all that and have it come out half-assed.  Plus it’d leave me with the oddness of what to put in the other hand...)

I cut the weapons away from the hands and filed them flat above and below the fist.  I tried to make sure the flat sections were parallel, so I could add a base to the grip (just a little square of plastic) that would line up.  This is one of those subtle little things that can really gnaw at you if you get it wrong, and it’ll take forever to figure out why.

Helpful Hint – I attached the fists to the bodies before I attached them to the weapons.  Most of the Ogre arms are tight against the torso and I didn’t want to risk attaching the hand to the weapon at a point where it would prevent me from attaching that whole assembly to the body.  So hand to body and then weapon to hand.

Ogryns get frag grenades, but all the standard grenades look ridiculously small on them.   So I tried to think what a group of near-feral abhumans would use.  Oh, sure, they might just use oversized frag grenades, and I even had an Inquisitor-scale grenade, but I thought it’d look a little weird to only have one model in the squad with a visible grenade.  Plus, I wanted something that would sell their borderline bestiality with something a little more fun.

As it turned out, the answer was right there on the Ogre sprues.  Bear traps.  They’re big, primitive, fit into the jungle setting well, and... well, let’s be honest.  They work as frag grenades.  If someone throws half a dozen open bear traps at you, you’re sure as hell going to put your head down.

I also added a bit of random greenery from different Fantasy sets onto the bases.  Especially for a jungle-themed army, I find the big empty swaths of base are kind of distracting.  I find these leaves and weeds all the time in the bitz bins (I think they’re from Wood Elf sets, or maybe Dryads), and this is a great use for them.

I tried to pick some of the less-crazy Ogre heads.  Even so, I filed down a lot of the weird bumps and pins on their heads.  I’m toying with the idea of using a little bit of green stuff and making simple bandanas on them.  It would tie them to the Catachans even more... and also give me some more time to consider those iron sights.

But, there they are.  A good-sized squad of Ogryns for about a third the price it would cost to buy as many actual figures.  If I’d been able to work on them straight through, this was maybe three days of non-intensive work.  I might toss up a picture later once they’re primed and have some basic colors on them.

Next time (which will be, I swear to God, in one week) I’ll show you how some friends and I whipped up a bunch of good-looking, dirt cheap scenery in just a few hours.

Plague Zombies

So, I’ve been insanely busy and done very, very little with Paperhammer or even just general Warhammer 40K stuff.  Those Ogryns were supposed to be done months ago, and I’d actually wanted to get back to basics and build a paperhammer tank.  To be honest, I really don’t even have time to post now, but I’m about to do some more shameless pandering and I figured I should at least make it worth your while...

My book, Ex-Patriots, was re-released by Broadway Books this week. Check it out.  Superheroes, zombies, mad scientists, super-soldiers... it’s got pretty much everything.  And a ton of people think it’s actually good.  You can even get it in audiobook form, which means you can listen to it while you’re building little toy soldiers and zombies.

Resident Evil 40,000

Hey, speaking of the shambling undead...

This is an easy little tip for zombies.  I use it for my plague zombies in 40K, but it would work fine for Fantasy zombies, too.  I started my plague zombie collection way back during the Eye of Terror campaign.  Under the current rules (with Typhus) I’ve got about four solid squads of them, plus one little group of zombie specialists who I just set loose as distractions.  To help keep them straight when they’re in big mobs, I have zombified Catachans, zombified Asgardian Rangers, the citizens of Hive Romero led by the Seven Dwarves of Nurgle, and the Tanith Last and Final.

The zombie Tanith are what sparked this post.  I think it’s safe to say one of the defining elements of the Tanith, visually, are their camo-cloaks.  Now, one of the standard zombies has a little bit of a shredded cape on his back, but it’s really short and doesn’t really sell the big, sweeping cloaks the First and Only are described as having.

So, here’s an easy way to expand them a bit.

Get any little bit of thin plastic.  I used some 1/4” strips I already had, but this would work with just about anything.  Cut up some blister packs, plastic signs, soda bottles, plastic jars... whatever.

However you get it, cut some pieces that are about 1/4” by 3/4” long.  The length doesn’t have to be exact, and as you go along you may try some different lengths for variety.  Once you have your pieces, cut them diagonally, corner to corner.

Take these long, thin triangles and cut up the short end.  You’re trying to make them look a bit frayed.  I usually make three or four length-wise swipes with my knife, then maybe hit it from the end to make the gouges stand out.

There are two ways to glue them on.  The simplest way is just glue them to each side.  The thin end goes at the top, and I try to place them so they seem to flow naturally off the shoulders.

Apologies, by the way, for all the glare from the white plastic.  It's rough with my setup to get a good balance between the white and the light gray.

For variety, on some of them I glue one of the triangles in from the edge a bit.  This makes them look like big wrinkles or folds in the material.  When I do this, I sand the thin end down a bit so it flows up into the top of the cloak better.

And that’s it.  Bigger zombie cloaks just like that.  A green base with a few colors on top of it and I’ve got a really distinct group of the undead.

I'm going to be at a couple of horror conventions over the next few weekends, but starting next month, I swear... the Ogryns get some ripper guns, some urban scenery, and a way to make very cheap and distinctive Stormtroopers.

Ogres to Ogryns

There’s some old stories in the Catachan fluff about how the Catachans like Ogryns.  There’s something about the straightforward, no-nonsense approach both groups have to warfare that make them bond.  They’ve even got more specific stories, like how Nork Deddog served with the Catachan II for years.

So when my Catachan army started coming together, Ogryns were kind of a no-brainer.  What army can’t benefit from a pile of brainless muscle that shrugs off damage and hits like... well, like a pile of brainless muscle?

But seriously!  Twenty-two bucks per model?  That’s $66 for a bare-bones squad of three.  And even with the drastic remodelling, the Games Workshop Ogryns still look... well, a bit goofy.

So I started looking at other options.

A box of Fantasy Ogre Bulls is just forty dollars for six models--less than a third the price.  If you’re willing to go with fewer options, you can buy them piecemeal online and save even more.  Ogres are big and beautiful, in a modelling sense.  They’re so big there’s lots of room for modifications and modelling.

First thing is the feet.  The soles of the ogre boots are metal, but they’re also pointed.  It goes with the whole Mongol tribesman look that you can see all through the Ogre Kingdoms line.  I snipped off the pointed tip and used a file to round it down.  The Imperial Guard isn’t going to have anyone prancing around in pointed shoes like Mr. B Natural.

On the torso, I used a knife to carve down the edges of the gut-hole.  They’re just a bit too sharp as is, and reach out a bit too far.  I don’t mind Ogryns looking big, but they shouldn’t look drastically overweight.  Then I filled the hole with little scraps of plastic sprue and put a few drops of plastic glue on it.

Once that dried, I made a little ball of green stuff (about half the size of a pea) and pressed that on top of the scraps.  A little work with the sculpting tool made it match up with the rest of the body.  I was even able to sculpt really simple abdominal muscles.  It’s not that hard, honest.  I did it while splitting my attention between sculpting and watching reruns of Firefly.  Just make a cross in the green stuff and smooth it out in all directions.

That’s a good point, actually.  One nice thing about the ogre bodies is that they’re so big it takes a lot of the pressure off me as a modeler.  Like I mentioned above, I’ve got space to work, and on these guys tiny mistakes are... well, tiny.  It’s not like when you’re trying to put hair on a Space Marine and one wrong pass with the sculpting tool gives your veteran sergeant a reverse-mohawk.  When it comes to green stuff I’m a mediocre sculptor at best, but even I could pull these details off.

Then I took a sliver of green stuff and rolled it into a tiny snake.  This got flattened across those new abs to make a continuation of the belt. Just like above, I used my sculpting tool to smooth and blend it into the belt on the model.  It got topped off with a little 1/4” piece of plastic for a belt buckle.

I also rolled a longer snake and used this to make a strap across the Bone‘ead’s chest and over his shoulder.  It gives me a little something more to make him stand out.  I’m not worried about it being perfect because I’m going to stick gear all over it.

One more detail on the Bone ‘ead.  I used a spare icon/ clasp from the Space Marine Commander set on his belt buckle.  The way I see it, his belt was probably a packing strap on a Baneblade that some Techpriest gave the Bone‘ead as a thank-you present for pushing it out of the mud or something.  It’s a small, simple detail that helps the Bone’ead stand out a bit more.

I wanted to give my Ogryns pouches and bandoliers to help sell their military aspect and also to distinguish them from Fantasy Ogres.  The best thing to use was Space Marine pouches.  If you play any type of Space Marines, you know there’s that one double-pack pouch that’s just a bit too big.  It’s tough to plant it anywhere on a Marine and not have it look like a little bit of overkill.  But on an Ogryn, scale-wise, it’s perfect.  It looks just like an ACU belt pouch would look... if you were making them for nine-foot barabrian giants.

Next time I’ll show you how I built some ripper guns for these guys, and also look at the Penal Legion Ogryns I built a while back that were the unofficial test run for these guys.

The Bitz Bins

I know I mention the bins now and again.  I think most game stores have some version of the bitz bins.  People bring their unwanted bits and models into the store in exchange for credit, and the store re-sells them for a bit of profit.  The downside is it's a bit like a rummage sale and you’re working around poses, paint jobs, and leftovers.  The plus side is you’re usually getting them at a big discount.  Often 60-70% off.  Sometimes even more.

I know some people have this kind of phobia about using pre-owned models, but if you can get past that it’s possible to save a lot of money.  In the past ten years or so, here’s a few of the things I’ve found in the bitz bins of my local stores (first in San Diego, then later up here at my favorite store in Los Angeles)...

* an Eldar Avatar of Khaine—I don’t play Eldar, but I’ve always thought it would be neat to paint an Avatar like molten metal—darker on the outside, hotter closer to the core.  Kind of like the Balrog from Lord of the Rings.  He also had a Thousand Sons head in his hand, so a little glue remover and I had a spare trooper for my Thousand Sons army.  Bonus.

* three Krootoxes—a few editions back (when I had more disposable income) I had a very nice Kroot Mercenary army.  Now I just have a lot of Kroot, and the hopes that the upcoming Tau Codex will address the issue and make it a viable allied force, at least.  Still, three metal Krootoxen (Krootoxi??) were a nice bit of heavy firepower, especially at five bucks each.

* legs and torsos for about twenty-five Ork Boyz for my lovely lady, plus an unassembled Black Reach deffkopta.  If all this cost me ten bucks, I’d be amazed.

*a little over two dozen Catachans—their heads were crooked, and two or three needed their arms redone, but other than that they just needed paint.  They were put together with superglue, so on the really bad ones it just meant popping off a head or an arm, scraping it down, and then putting it back on with proper plastic glue.  I think that find cost me twenty dollars.

* a plastic Eldar Wraithlord—Again, I don’t play Eldar, but my friend Gillian does.  It was missing its weapons and posed a bit awkwardly, but other than that it was fine.  Well, it had a really awful paintjob.  She’s already salvaged it and sent it back out on the battlefield.

* parts for a solid Lizardman army – I don’t play Warhammer Fantasy, either.  I have no interest in it.  But, as I’ve mentioned before, I love the models and I have a long-time love of Lizardmen (reaching back to the Sleestak on Land of the Lost).  I found the parts to make a dozen Saurus warriors, a dozen skinks, a skink hero, an Oldblood on a cold one, a salamander, and even five of the Temple Warriors.  I just liked building and painting them.  I might do a whole post on these guys. 

* at least twenty assorted Dark Angels detail pieces for Marcus.

* a box’s worth of Bloodletters--  Alas, one had a twisted leg and two of them had one foot snapped off, so I only took home eight of them (and who wants a unit of eight Khorne demons...?).    They’ll make a great allied force for my World Eaters.  I used one of the old skeleton helmet horns and a skull to replace the missing foot on one of them.  They’re about half-painted and already itching to fight.

* probably a dozen Dark Eldar heads, arms, and detail pieces, not to mention a double-handful of the older bodies.

* a handful of Blood Angels pieces for Matt.

* parts for at least twenty zombies – These mixed with leftover Catachan parts to become a full squad of Catachan plague zombies.  Poor bastards...

* two Black Reach Space Marine captains.  One was really just the larger back half with legs and cape, but I've got a use for it.

* about fifty of the old Bretonnian bowmen, plus about two dozen detail elements from the new ones to make them pop—Even without playing it, I know enough about Fantasy to know the bowmen get mocked a lot.  I also know enough about math to know that anything is dangerous in large numbers.  Goblins, grots, Kroot, scouts, bowmen... anything.  More to the point, I just love the look of dozens and dozens of archers standing ready with their bows.

* just shy of a dozen Daemonettes.  These showed up a few at a time, usually in pieces, but I kept picking and saving them.  First it was just a few to add to my existing units.  Then it was a nice, Slaneeshi six of them.  Then nine (one with a standard).  Then eleven.  One more and I’ve got a nice group of allies for my Emperor’s Children.

* and tons and tons of bitz.  Almost anything you can imagine.  Shoulder pads, ammo pouches, canteens, purity seals, knives, daggers, bolters, holsters, sheaths, targeters, backpacks, banners, spare arms, spare heads, spare skulls, chains, spikes, tentacles, tails, wings, bases, and much, much more.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying your local bitz bins are going to be some kind of gold mine (again, this is ten years worth of finds), and they’re not really a place you can plan on finding something.  But for the hobbyist on a budget, it’s always worth taking some time and sifting through.  Sometimes you can find some fantastic, useful detail pieces.  Or models.  Or whole units.

And if your friendly local gaming store doesn’t have bins... why not?  It’s a win-win for everyone.

Cheap Jungle Plants

We were told by our landlord that we had to clean the garage out this weekend, so a lot of work did not get done on the Thunderbolts.  However, we swung by our local 99 Cent Store for drinks and I saw this little piece of cheap scenery goodness which I thought should be shared.

One of my many armies is a Catachan force, so I have a love of jungle scenery and some of the great gaming tables Games Workshop has made along those lines.  Even though I don’t play fantasy, I also love the Lizardmen in their steamy Lustrian home.

When GW released their Jungle Plants a few years ago, though, I couldn’t help but feel a bit cheated.  Over twenty bucks for what were essentialy aquarium plants?  I decided to stick with my old plastic palm trees.  I was pretty sure another option would present itself.

Sure enough, my local discount store ended up with a whole shelf of “fake grass” in their gardening section.  It’s a good sized square with about sixty-four tufts on each one.  There are two different textures, with thinner blades on some and wider ones on thers that would be broad leaves in 40K scale.

Each tuft pops off so you can mix and match textures.  Or you can attach them to bases or other scenery pieces.  You could even pull off all the tufts in every third row and suddenly this square’s become a farm with crops growing in rows.  Set up four of them like that with a river and you’ve got a verdant agri-world just waiting to be defended, devoured, or pounded into the ground.

All for less than five bucks.