Steel Legion Done, Orcs on the Horizon & a Clean Desk!

Well,

That's a deep subject huh??? (Sorry bad pun!) But really, got a little update on a huge project that was completed last night, the Steel Legion project or my buddy Lonnie Jordon who is over in Iraq. I started this project a while ago with all the infantry, but over the summer Lonnie was home & we went shopping for his armour for the army. He bought 6 Chimeras, a Valkyrie, and another Basilisk, this was added to three Leman Russ, one a Vanquisher, three sentinels, another Basilisk as well as. All of this had to be repaired and assembled & painted before he arrived back home on December 9th. So here are a few shots of the completed army.

Up first, two basilisks, the one on the right had to have a new railing added to the back of it since it broke off, so I went to my bitz box and found some stand in parts.

Next up a Forge World Vanquisher that need some TLC.

This Russ also needed some TLC, the side sponson was missing the front plate and I had to dig through the bitz box again. I had an extra and had to glue it back onto the sponson, all ready for battle now.

Lonnie wanted one Russ to have a Special character, Knight Commander Pask added to it. GW does not make a figure of him, so this came from the Baneblade model. I think he works rather well.


Also Lonnie wanted the armour to look like it was out in theater, so I grimed up the Russ' to give them some extra mud effects. Once the model was painted, I added Liqutex Stucco to the tracks and to the side to give the effect of mud. I also added static grass to it while it was still wet. Once it dried I came back with Americana Mississippi Mud and a black wash, viola instance mud!

This Chimera had allot of TLC work done to it. Lonnie was going to use this Chimera for his Lost & the Dammed army, so Chaos symbols were added to make it look more Chaos ie. I had to take these off and make this a proud vehicle for the IG. The turret is completely new since when I was trying to clean up the other one it broke. So another dive into the bitz box.

One thing I had forgot to do on the Valkyrie was the flight stand, so I added a old 4th edition ruin set to the base. This fits in with the rest of the army and does a good job of hiding the clear stand.


Here is a shot with the Valkyrie on it, it looks pretty cool in person.

Also Lonnie wanted Commissar Yarrick painted for the army, so here is the most feared Commissar in the Imperial guard.

I also made a few Command group figures for Lonnie, Here is the Company banner all painted up.

And here is the Medic.

One last figure, Lonnie had a Lord Solar Macharius figure with the group, now the current IG codex does not have stats for him, but Lonnie could use him as his Commander for the army, so here he is in all his Glory.

So there you have it, a huge project done, now I just need to deliver it to Lonnie when he gets home next week.

Also last week I did a crazy trade with my buddy Mike, he had a Orc & goblin army and I had a huge Tomb Kings army. Well I was not really interested in the TK's so I trade him the whole army for this huge lot of Orcs & goblins. So yes this means I will be getting back into WHFB!

Also I mentioned in my last post, I am going to start my own painting service, still working out the details, but the first thing I needed to do was clean up my desk. so here is a few shots of my clean desk which is just waiting for some paint commissions.

So there you have it, been busy looking for work and painting models. Hopefully 2010 will be a better year...

TK

Return of 40K

Well I thought it about time to return to 40K, I am sure some of my followers from FTW will be glad for this update!

Anyhow, this past weekend I decided to finish up a few commission pieces I am doing for my buddy Lonnie. First up the Valkyrie, now I have had shots of this before up, but today it's with the weathering and details picked out. This is an awesome model, I have to get me one of these!

Now since Lonnie is over in Iraq, we do not get to talk much, but when he gave me this kit to build, he wanted me to be able to make a Vendetta out of it. For all you 40k folks out there that play Imperial Guard, you know that the Vendetta carries 3 Lascannons on it. Lonnie also wanted to be able to use this as a Valkyrie as well, so as in my previous post I turned to magnets to mount the added weaponry on the kit. First up the Hellfire Missiles,

Next the Lascannons. You will notice that these are supposed to be Twin Linked Lascannons, but I went with a single Lascannon since this is all I had. If Lonnie wants twin linked in the future, I can easily magnetize a set and add them to the model.

Last up the Missile Pods. Once again I love the options that Rare Earth magnets bring to a kit like this.

Sticking with the Fast Attack theme, I decided to finish up three Sentinels for Lonnie as well. The base paint had been finished for a while, but I needed to do the highlights on the models. I also needed to add the rubble to the bases to finish the models off. Here are three of them, two armed with Lascannons and one with an Autogun. I really like how these have come out.

And since I had the camera out I decided to take a few pictures of his HQ squad I finished up. Commissar Yarrick just got finished last night. You will also notice that the figures are very glossy right now. This is because of the Minwax Stain I used. Once I get the base's done I will shoot all of this with Testors Dullcoate to knock the shine off of them.

Here is a close up of Yarrick, I will also be adding more highlights after I dull coate him, but you get the idea of what he looks like.

Now most folks know that the Steel Legion line is not a complete line, it is missing a few HQ options for models. So per Lonnie's request I converted a few Steel Legion troops for him. First up a trooper with a Standard. I will admit, this is an easy conversion, it is a Standard from an WFB Imperial Knight cut off at the had and stuck on a Steel Legion Sergeant model. I also used decals for the flag since my skill is not that great on Free Hand painting. All in all the model looks good IMO.

Next up is a sniper, once again this was an easy conversion, all I did was cut down the stock Lasgun barrel, added a Kroot barrel and a Space Marine Scope. That's it, pretty easy but makes a great model.

The next two are stock troopers, one has had a Vox Caster added to him, which meant removing some of his Kit of his back, The other is a regular Plasma Gunner, nothing special about these.

Next up is a Heavy flamer, now all Guard players know that the Heavy Flamer is your friend for mass troops, but the Steel Legion line dose not have any flamers. So this conversion was a bit more complex to pull off. I first had to find the right model pose, then had to remove all of his kit and clean that up. Then took off the models right arm to add the stock Flamer arm from the Cadian line, which meant I had to file off the shoulder pad. I then took the left arm from a Sergeant model and bent it to be able to look like he was holding the flamer. then green stuff the heck out of the gaps. I am not 100% happy with it, but it will do. Lonnie got to see this before paint got on it and he loved it and that's all I cared about.

Last model is of a medic. This was rather hard to figure out, but once again went with a Steel Legion Sergeant but took off his left arm and added a Sentinal Drivers arm with part of the control stick still attached. It reminded me of some sort of medical scanner. His right arm was taken from a plastic Cadian which had the shoulder pad removed and had the glove cuff extended. I wanted him to look like he was carrying a medical bag which came from a Catachan backpack. I also added a small blob of green stuff to his left shoulder for the medical cross. I really like how this guy turned out as well.

Last up are the finished Storm Troopers. Reader of my blog may remember that these guys were done to this point and were waiting for a shot of Dull Coate, but I grabbed Testors Sac Brown/green instead of the dull coate. Well here is what they look like again! I had to strip them down & repaint them. Needless to say I am a bit uneasy with dull coating them again. But this time I will spray the can on a piece of board before shooting the models!

So there you have it, another 40K post in the bag, next up will be more 40K units to finish for Lonnie. I have 7 Chimeras, 2 Basilisks and 3 Leman Russ Tanks to finish by December 9th. Good news is that all the models are assembled and have base colors on them, so it will go real quick!

TK

FoW Italians

So, a few months ago I took delivery of my last trade for paint commissions from my buddy Mike. He had a 1500 point North Afrika German FoW army that he was looking at getting rid of. Well being the sucker I am I asked him what he wanted for it, he said if I painted his North Afrika Italians for him we could call it even. I needed a break from 40K, so I decided to bust out the Italians this weekend and get started painting on them.

So below are the test paints for the army, all the models were primed flat black, then on the vehicles I sponged on Green Orche 70914 from Vallejo Model Color line. I then followed up with a Drybrush of Americana Desert Sand. Once that was done I then dipped the models in Antique Walnut Satin from Minwax Polyshades line. Below are the first few pieces that I did, now I just need to know if Mike likes these.

These are the trucks for the 88cm Flack guns.

Here is a shot of an Italian tank (Sorry forgot the designation) without the dip, notice how much lighter the model is.

And here is another light tank that has been dipped and dull coated in Testors Dullcoate. This model was missing the barrel so I used a piece of brass wire as a stand in.

So there you go Mike, what do you think? (As well as the rest of the community) Also the vehicles look very gritty up close no thanks to my Macro setting on my camera.

TK

Steel Legion Done...well almost!

Well this weekend I finished up half the the Steel Legion commission that I am working on for a friend. I delivered these to Lonnie on Saturday night and he was very happy with the troops. In my rush to finish these, I did two stupid things, first one was that I forgot to take photos of the figures once completed! That isn't as bad at what I did on Friday night for stupid mistake number two. Let me explain,

So Friday night all I had left to do was Dull Coate 20 Stormtroopers that had been dipped on Thursday. I got a call from my buddy Rob and he was headed over to Lonnie's place for a game, so I told him I would swing by as soon as I was done shopping with the wife. So I went over to Lonnie's around 8:00pm and hung out & watched Lonnie & Rob throw down on some 40k (Tau vs marines). So I left Lonnie's place around 11:30pm and headed home. As I got into the garage I thought "Hey Dullcoate the Stormtroopers before going to bed and they will be ready for basing in the morning." So I grabbed the can of Dullcoate, shook it up and then arranged the models on my spray board. I thin grabbed the can of Dullcoate, popped the top and sprayed away.

But as I sprayed the models I noticed that the Dullcoate was coming out a greenish brown color and as I looked again at the models, I noticed that the models were changing colors from there Blue/Black color scheme to a greenish brown color! I then realized that I had not grabbed the Dullcoate, but instead grabbed the can of Testors SAC Brown!!!!

Now living in Phoenix in the summer it was still about 90 degrees at 11:45pm and was a tad hotter in the garage, so that means that things sprayed out of a can dry almost instantly, see where this is going??

So there was nothing I could do to save the models since the paint had dried pretty quickly to the 99% done models. So after a lot of swearing and throwing the SAC can across the garage, I realized that the only way to save the paint was to strip them down & start from the beginning again. So at 11:48pm, the 20 almost 99% done stormtroopers went into a bucket of Simple Green to be stripped to start over. So an hour later I was re-priming the said models black (after checking that I had grabbed the Flat Black spray!) and by 1:00am I headed to bed!

So the moral of the story is to always, always always test fire a can on a piece of wood or something before you shoot your models! The funny thing is that I have read about people doing this on other blogs & forums but always laughed at these people for doing this, thinking how stupid are you for not knowing what color you have. Well I now can not laugh, because I have egg on my face (which is strangely SAC Brown)!

Now I can move onto the second part of the commission which is to assemble all those Chimeras and paint up all the tanks. Lonnie should be back either in December or January of 2010, so I can take some time building & painting these. Also been working on converting a Steel Legion Command squad. My buddy Rob pointed me to a nice thread on the DakkaDakka forum http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/236631.page This guy is amazing and after reading some of his threads, I got inspired to do the Steel Legion command squad. Will post up a few pictures of these in a few days.

Also got in some Combat Patrol games of 40K this Sunday with Rob & Jerry, took a bunch of pictures and will post them tonight, so stay tuned...

TK

Steel Legion Update

Well,

It has been a while since the last post and this is the first post for July. So here is some of Lonnie's Steel Legion that I am working on, below is a shot of the basic troops with each unit having a vox caster, Grenade launcher, and plasma gunner along with regular troops. There is enough for two companies of 35 men each. You will notice that the figures still have a gloss shine to them. This is because I still have not Dullcoated them yet. Also I need to add the basing as well.

Besides the troops, I also have a few other items that Lonnie picked up last week, here is a Basilisk and Valkyrie along with Commissar Yarrick awaiting assembly and paint.

Lonnie also wanted to have a few transports for this army, so he bought 6 more Chimeras for the army, so besides the other two kits I also have these to assemble and paint.

So whats left, well here it is, 20 stormtroopers, 3 Missile Launcher teams, 3 Heavy bolter teams and 5 Commissars. These I plan to have done in the next few days.

Also to go along with the added transports, there are two Leman Russ tanks, 1 Vanquisher, 1 Chimera & 3 Sentinels.These will be done in a German grey color.

The Chimera started out as a Chaos vehicle, I had to take the chaos symbols off of it and add a few more Imperial items. You can see the additions in light grey plastic.

Also the Sentinel with the Autocannon needed some work, it was in pretty bad shape. I took the top off and re-mounted it so it was more flush, added a few grabs to try to hid the gaps and added an antenna aerial to the back. I guess this will be a command Sentinel now.

Also I dipped a few more sergeants as well as the Lascannon team, here they are sitting in the garage waiting to dry. Good thing about Phoenix in the summer is that in 45 minutes these will all be dry to the touch!

Also had to run to Micheal's to pick up two cans of Testors Dullcoate, I thought I had a full can out in the garage, but no dice.

Will post a few more photos in a few days....

TK