Painting Challenge Entry - Imperial Militia Rhino's and Land Raider

 

 One of my ongoing projects is my Imperial Guard / Traitor Militia for Horus Heresy. It's a simple olive green paint job that goes on quick and looks decent. Late last year I painted up some Alternative Armies Ion Age Retained Knights to represent Rogue Trader humans in power armor to be used for the Age of Darkness H H rule set.  I decided they needed some transports, so dug out some old rhinos and gave them a 30k makeover with bits from Blood & Skulls Industry. The rhinos are about 20 years old and were originally for my Salamanders Army. They were then repainted and then stripped. As such, they were in rough shape. Here are some work in progress pictures.

The resin parts come in several pieces and you have to saw off the Rhino exhaust pipes to fit the new bits on. It was actually pretty easy, so long as you have a small saw. Here are the completed rhinos:

28mm Infantry is for scale only

The Eye of Horus displayed prominently.

I also picked up the new plastic Land Raider Proteus for Horus Heresy and painted it up for the command squad. I went light on the upgrades as this army is lucky Horus gave them a Land Raider at all!

 

Thanks for visiting.

Traitor Militia Malcador Tank

 I picked up a Malcador Tank off ebay last month thinking I got a good deal. It was in rough shape, but I figured I could whip it back into shape. Unfortunately, when the model came it had all the hallmarks of "foreign" resin. If I had wanted a recast, I'd have just bought one. I was going to go back to the seller, but upon a sober second look at the listing, there was no mention anywhere of "Forge," "World" or any combination of the two. I should have known better, but I let my excitement get the better of me. "Well played sir! I'll just go f*** myself over here, while you count my money!" 

I decided to make the best of it and figured a well weathered tank would look suitable in the Horus' traitor militia. It's not like Horus is earmarking the best equipment for these guys.

The model is equipped with a battle cannon and 3 autocannons. The autocannons are from Mortian Tanks.

That's it for the Traitor Militia. I'll try to post a whole army post this week.

Thanks for visiting.

Traitor Militia Grenadiers

 I mentioned last post that I was adding some units to my existing Imperial Guard army to adapt it to a 30K army. The cool thing about 30k is the use of technology long forgotten by the 40k universe. Some technology in use is rare even by 30k standards. I like the idea of the Survivors of the Dark Age provenance as it gives regular infantry a 3+ save to represent power armor. Power Armour is used mainly by Space Marines, but it was probably fairly common prior to the Age of Strife. A few worlds still had access to power armor, but their availability was dwindling. By the time of the Horus Heresy there would be few non-space marines who had access to Power Armour. 

Many Imperial Army regiments followed Horus during the Heresy and I liked the idea of one of them being relatively favored by Horus and thus given access to human power armor for the elite squads of grenadiers. They haven't gone to chaos yet and follow Horus out of blind loyalty and for political reasons. I'm sure it'll work out great!  To represent the grenadiers I drew inspiration from this picture.

The closest models I could find were Alternative Armies Ion Age Retained Knights. The models are cast in metal and I think were sculpts from the 90's. They share many features of space marine power armor, but I'm not sure who inspired who. The AA models are spindly compared to space marines which I think helps to convey that there are just normal dudes inside. I struggled with the lighting today, so the color is a bit more washed out than normal, but it gives you the idea. I just went with the standard olive green like the rest of the army, but added red shoulder pads and some Sons of Horus transfers. You can't see them due to the glare unfortunately. The banner is also a SoH transfer and the banner bearer is standing beside the platoon commander who's decked out in brass power armor. I painted up 35 models in total. That's enough for 2x 12 man grenadier squads and a large command squad.

 

I have one more vehicle on the way for this group and when it's done, I'll post a photo of the entire army.

Thanks for visiting!

Imperial Army Force Commander

 I've been having fun playing around with the Militia & Cults list for 30k and made an entire army in the form of the Inferallti Hussars. To give the Traitor Legions some cannon fodder valued support, I'm adding some units to my existing 40k Imperial Guard army. I don't need to add much as the two armies use much of the same equipment, but they do have to be slightly reorganized.

First up is the all important Force Commander. This model is from Knightmare Miniatures and pays homage to a piece of Rogue Trader art of Rogue Trader Joff ZUCKERMAN "Hero of the Kynblax Genicide." You know it's Grim Dark when genocide can be considered "heroic." 

 

This model won't be representing old Joff, but I'm sure he's a suitably nasty character in his own right. He fits well in the traitor force as he's already displaying a desiccated head! Unfortunately, he's wearing power armor without a helmut, but maybe that head band contains a refractor field or something. He also has a tattered rag wrapped around him which I painted up the same color as the guard army uniform. I figure he wrapped his original uniform around his power armor as a show of solidarity with his men...or maybe he's just nuts.

 Last up is a goofy conversion of an earthshaker cannon. The Militia & Cults list doesn't allow Basilisk tanks (those are for the Legions), but they can have the immobilized gun. I had the gun in my bits box (thanks to another conversion for an ork army that never got off the ground) and mounted it on a small chassis I was able to cobble together. It's a bit rough, but I think it helps represent how poorly equipped the militia were compared to the legions during the Horus Heresy.

The last thing I'm going to add are some Grenadiers to represent the Force Commanders elite guard. Hopefully I should have those done in a few weeks.

Thanks for visiting.