First Mini of the Year!

A freelance biologis researcher equally at home in games of INQ-28 or Shadows of Brimstone, this fellow was a relatively simple conversion involving drilling out the metal elf head of a Reaper elf alchemist and attaching a Lead Adventure kickstarter reward head. I pondered giving him a servo-skull buddy or a handgun of some kind, but it would've limited his playability a bit. 

I really dig the step up in quality we've seen from Reaper lately, including in their Dreadmere line. I just wish they'd drop their Bones plastic. It's awful shit that bends like rubber and can't hold paint worth a damn. Don't be lured in by the low price, folks: avoid avoid AVOID. 

WIP: Something for INQ28.....

After taking a break from 40k stuff and working with lots of mecha, the INQ28 Facebook group has inspired me to once again return to the 41st millennium. Haven't decided on a proper name for it yet, or whether it'll be accompanied by an inquisitor or more crazies, but it feels good to work on something like this. 

The Last of the 2016...

I know, I know, I promised pictures of the Pelta, and there are still more Deathwatch to come, but I thought I'd close things out with the last miniatures to be painted this year, one of them just today, in fact. 

Some of you might recognize this lovely demonhunter from the rapidly expanding Wargames Exclusive range; she came as part of a 3-pack of Heresey Hunter Dominators (her sisters are being pinned even now) which is actually a much MUCH better deal than buying all three separately.A word to the wise, though; while their range is actually quite good (yes, some of their models are cheesecake pin ups) some of them tend to have rather delicate joining points and parts. The two-sword sister broke a hilt, and I had to end up doing some creative repair. All in all, still an excellent buy. Go check them out. 

Judge Duvic here started life as Nicodem the Undertaker from the Wyrd miniatures range. Sharp eyes will note his mechanical left leg, and I've given him a bolt pistol and done some extensive refitting of his vulture. This mini also suffers from some questionable casting decisions, sadly. The vulture head/neck came separately, strangely enough, as did his vulture-mount arm (which had to be pinned). I had extra servo skulls from a Forgworld Castellax, and some Dragon Forge metal pipe and another bit were enough to turn it into a cyber-familiar of sorts. 

Yegor Vladmiroff, the witch hunter is a new mini from the Reaper range, Jakob Knochengard. I removed the zombie head he was toting around and gave him a more useful lantern. I'd originality bought him fro use in Frostgrave, but I think he'll serve well as part of an Inquisitorial war band. 

Happy New Year, everybody. 

=][= MVNDA

Tears of Envy has been showing off some of the brilliant design work that has gone into this project on her excellent blog, which I highly recommend all of you go check out. Apparently there's an affiliated website coming, along with other lovely gothic things.  


While you're at it, follow her, too. She's quite possibly one of the most talented designers I've ever had the privilege to sort of know, and always, always interesting. 


Happy Friday, people. 

The Inquistion, the Last Part (edit): GUNHEDS and Walkers...

Recently it was pointed out to me that I wasn't leading with my strengths, so I went back through and gutted this article for reposting.

The three GUNHED's above were my answer to the appalling vulnerability of the common Penitent Engine. Where the PE is slow, underarmored, and underarmed, (and based on those woussy mecha from The Matrix)  the GUNHED is fast, heavily armed and armored, and has a Sister Repentia in the crew compartment (which is, of course, featured open to show off said pilot). I kept the flamethrower buzzsaw arms and pseudo-sentinel legs (I only used the right one for uniformity) and ditched the rest. That said, it's based on this manly hunk of steel:

That's GUNHED Sergeant MBR-507, from the Japanese movie GUNHED, which came out some time back in 1989. It was pretty standard fare for a Toho movie, in that it was shot in glorious Tohovision and featured giant monstrous things trying to kill each other. The plot was thin, the acting was... adequate, but overall, the star is the Studio Nue-designed monstrosity you see there. GUNHED is an acronym for "Gun Unit/Heavy Elimination Device", and were meant to be entirely unmanned drones deployed in battalions to fight... other unmanned war machines. Interestingly enough, that Kawamori design is also the precursor for the mecha in the underrated Eureka 7.

Anyhow, my take on it was this (and no, it doesn't transform) :

A lot of bits went into #507. That long-barrelled vulcan in the turret came from an old, large scale Heavy Gear weapons pack. The metal turret and tread assemblies is from a pre-Flames of War tank wargame (three lead tank blisters for a mere $6 apiece!) and the rest are Penitent Engine parts, plastic bits, Inquisitor icons, and other things. The legs I extended by use of plastic i-beams and the tread bits from the tank models.  I tried to keep it gothic, keep it dark, and keep it, as other 40k designs, looking like it should have had more tacked onto it, but after thousands of years had been boiled down to its basic ugly funcitonality. Yes, the penitent inside is a Dark Eldar Wych (pun intended):

In the old days you used to be able to order practically any manner of bits from practically the entire range of GW minis, and life was good. Now you can't, of course, because maintaining a massive bitz inventory is evidently too much of a bother for the powers that be to handle. Now we have to scrape and scrabble on eBay for plastics that aren't even marginally as interesting as all of the things we used to have access to whenever we wanted, as much as we needed. 

Those thrusters, of course, are for turbo-boosting into battle so you can flame/buzzsaw them after to you Punisher cannon them to pieces.  I like the book on the engine section, there. I was really into the WH design motif of covering things with shrines and scrolls. This thing remains one of the jewels of my collection, and I liked it so much, I built another one, #508 (or "Flame-HEDD")  with an emphasis on fire:

That giant flamer in the turret belonged to an action figure a long tim ago; I found it at the bottom of a drawer, I think. Having the accelerant tanks on the outside of the turret seems like an awfully good way to get them blown up, but then again, having an open cockpit on a war machine is a terrible idea, too. Maybe it closes like a clamshell, retracting up into the chest? If that's the case, that Rackham babe needs to tuck in her legs:

Yes, I noticed the glare spot on these. The angle on the bottom of the chest section seemed to catch the light no matter what I did. I suppose I should have sealed these with matte instead of semi-gloss, but every time I use a matte spray-seal it just kills the metallics. 

You'd think the Ecclesiarchy would lock up all of their scrolls and relics in museums, but they seem to delight in carelessly nailing them to tanks and other monsters of the battlefield. You might also notice the engine sections are slightly different; these pre-date my current standardization kick. At the time, I did make sure to use only the right-hand PE legs, certain torso bits, etc. that matched up to connect the models, thematically.  It didn't take me long to discover the (then) newly-released Warmachine range:

The Grey Knight version, the X-252 "Melta-HEDD", uses Khador warjack parts (I forget which one) and Inquisitor Karamazov's tri-barrel multi-melta. In retrospoectAlong with the PE and other parts, this model fit together really, really snugly. The Dark Age Reaver girl even fits nicely in its little command throne. More than that, she actually looks like she wants to be sitting in there, and isn't chained to anything.

Well, she's not enthusastic about it, but she's not writhing in anguish, either. 

Compared to the other two it looks a little under-armed; my intention was for that boxy thing on the turret to read as a psycannon, (even though it reads, visually, as some kind of sensor). Being a Grey Knight construct, it has the obligatory Force Weapon in that bigass gauntlet. You didnt think I'd cut away  a dreadnought-sized axe, did you? Likewise he carries a Liber Demonica just in case he has to call out a demon's true name in the middle of combat to subdue it. There is no plastic on this model at all, so it weighs as much as two old-school metal dreads. I shit you not. This thing is fucking heavy.

Man, I do love that cluster of exhausts in that big, solid torso (if I was in the black again I'd start a Warmachine hobby in a NY minute) Sharp eyes will note the old-school Battletech Marauder torsos as boosters on the engine sections. I am almost (at long last) completely out of bits and bobs from the old B-Tech range, too, so unless you want half of a leg or torso that's been smashed beyond recognition, I wouldn't bother asking. 

Yes, I do also own the Penitent Engines that the GUNHED was supposed to supplant. I even used GUNHEDS as stand-ins for PE's at one point, but was so disappointed by how quickly the PE's got chopped apart that I retired the models from that dubiously helpful duty out of shaming them. Yes, really. I went and got real PE's out of pity for the made-up ones. 

I always thought the Penitent Engine had  a lot of potential, if only it didn't have the major stumbling blocks of being open-topped and badly armored. It's far more interesting to look at than the average Dreadnaught, and is closer to being some kind of Dark Eldar construct  than an Imperial design. I mean, a machine powered by a tortured sinner that carries blades and shoots fire? It may be shit on the battlefield, but it's one hell of a neat idea. Unfortunately, neat fluff rarely translates well into the game. 

Remember, this was my first 40k army, and so the idea I had was to run some of these up behind Rhinos or Immolators and let them go to town on the opposition. Of course, Rhinos are terrible to hide behind longer than, say, a turn, and the PE's are so lightly armored that a violent sneeze chops off a vital engine part. Despite this, they were such a neat gothic concept that I even took advantage of some bargain-basement priced Sentinel parts, along with some of the nicer metal Specialist range bits:

The Inquisitor range was a treasure trove of cool-ass parts, like cyborg gladiator arms and devotional scripts. Unfortunately, big metal arms plus light plastic parts equal trouble, and this thing was so forward-heavy I had to build up the base on the bottom to it'd stand properly. Nowadays, my models are much better balanced (uncannily so, in the case of the Tervicrons). 

Like my other sentinel-legged constructs, both of these need a rod up the grounded foot to keep them on the base and stable, but the parts allow for such great poses that I don't mind all the extra drilling.

I'd cap off this edited entry with something witty, but there's a hostage crisis right now at Discovery in Silver Spring, where my friend works. I'm praying for the hostages safety, and that a police sniper will fucking blow the gunman's head off.

Wednesday's a bitch, gang.

Forces of the Inquistion, Part IV: This is what 12 years of Catholic School does to you...

That Caestus was so ugly I think the last post threw me down a depression-hole of some kind, so today's entry is a little stroll down memory lane. 

Ah the Sisters, my first 40k army, ever. No, they didn't all fit in the light box. I had to improvise with some hardware, light-bouncing white plasticard, and more lights: 

 

The average Battle Sister model is a perfect example of what happens when GW designs something right; they're so off-the-rails from all of their other releases that, like the Tau, you'd think they were made by another company. I think that's what made them so appealing to me as I looked through the army lists, way back when. They were just so not marines I had give them a shot. I mean, look at 'em:

Oh, but they don't even have the humble missile launcher for anti-tank, do they? That's fail. Multi-meltas are nice, but yeah, no. It took me a few games of valiantly trying to make Retributors and Exorcists work before I figured out you want Inducted Guard for their anti-tank, and from there it's a slippery slope to the Heavy Weapons Nirvana of a full Guard army. Speaking of batshit crazy ideas:

 

Yes, I managed to get them to their target under the previous edition rules (four survived) and yes, they did chainsaw apart the Avatar.  No, they didn't survive, nor have I used them since. 

Overall, the SoB not a good codex by any means (Immolator spam notwithstanding), and certainly not the army I'd recommend to anyone starting the hobby, but hey, what did I know back then? I still trot them out to support my IG army when needed, but until their codex gets a complete rewrite, I think their days of serving as a standalone force are pretty much done. There's a Dominion squad in there too, I think. Everyone's seen SoB before, so I didn't want to dwell on the rank n' file, especially rank n'file  I painted forever ago...

Oooh this was a mistake. Seraphim are okay, but not as great as, say, all of the assault troops in the other books. Sure they have decent mobility and are better than the average Sister in melee, but man, if you don't exterminate whatever it is you're assaulting in that first round, then you're hosed. Faith Powers? Eh, they're really not great when you're rushing an ork horde, to be honest. Making your flamers sort-of AP1 helps, but not often. Making your girls S6 I1? Not helpful at all. Ever. 

I like building armies on the cheap, and these girls, sold as "Shock Sisters" for an obscure game company called Demonblade Games came 4 to a blister for 8$, with the sergeant and heavy weapon girl for 6$. Demonblade has apparently vanished into the recesses of time; I can't find a web page link for them anywhere, otherwise I'd have provided one. Anyhoo, I thought they'd work well for an Inquisitorial Storm Trooper squad, or a squad of SoB in a pinch, so I bought a set and painted them up. Yes, they look like Astartes, but take a closer look at them, and I assure you, there's  a chick in there somewhere.

Speaking of Space Marines, maybe I'll start using the Seraphim as Assault Marines in Blood Angels list. Hmmmm......

Next time, characters or walkers. I can't decide which. Walkers, probably, because I know you people can't resist my crazy-ass mecha.

Speaking of which, this week's poll is for Grievous' companion general. Enjoy. 

Inquisitorial Adversaries...

These poor guys deserve a medal.

I bought them on the cheap and painted them up to serve the "misc villain" purpose. Ex-guard, gangers, you name it. I figured seven were enough. Though I'm anal retentive about things looking uniform, I switched up the basing a bit to keep things fresh (after all, you don't always get in fights in sunny meadows) and kept them looking grungy yet well-armed. 

As you're no doubt aware, there are no shortage of people to burn  suspects in the 40k universe, and when you're starting out an investigation in the mean streets, the first people you usually end up torturing questioning are gangers and assorted toughs. If you need an example of just how powerful the classes are, our Metallican Gunslinger took out fifteen of these poor schmucks without pausing to reload. Many of them right through the head.

If you only ever pay attention to the codexes, you figure there are enough armies already. Not so, says the fluff. Behind the lines everybody manages to hire a private army of some sort. Those guys accompanying the IG tank commander are from some obscure range that dared make close facsimiles of old GW models, which got them sued and shut down. They came with a field gun, too, which made them a steal for $12. If you look closely, you can see Sgt. Castro there on the left flipping you the bird. Class. Sgt Tonto on the right was supposed to be drybrushed up to reasonable skin tones, but I left him the way he was, post-wash. 

I have twenty-five of these guys as a block of Grave Guard in my Vampire Skaven army, but since these days my games of WHF are few and far between, they end up as generic monsters in DH (and AdMech servitors in 40k). Not that we've ever run into steam-zombies, but I like these better than generic undead or demons; they just fit the "dark future" feel of the game better. 

Got these guys as part of a bits lot that happened to include nearly all of a metal  Devastator squad. Yes, we did run into some Dark Eldar, and yes, you can scythe them down like wheat, just like in 40k. The only problem is, they're really, really nasty, especially when backed up by warp beasts. Also, there was this traitor dick in the space hulk that sort of turned on us. Turned out he was working for/with the DE, and stabbed my Arbitrator in the back (literally)as we were getting mobbed by weedy space elves.

Because I don't use chaos oriented armies generally, I don't have a lot of what could be construed as truly evil characters. This one is a start, a Dark age mini painted up as a heretical Magos. I brought her cloak up to a nice scarlet before washing it back to near black. If you quint, you can still see the remnants of the cog motif at the hem. Her flesh doesn't look as pale and necrotic as I would've liked, but I didn't want it getting all white and chalky, either. For other enemies, I suppose it's time to repurpose some fantasy models...

Forces of the Holy Inquisition Part III: Inquisitors and Stranger Things....

Where GW really dropped the ball was not announcing a companion miniatures line to go with Dark Heresy. Fortunately, there are a bazillion other companies, like Rackham. I only wish they hadn't gone the badly-prepainted-plastic route, but what can you do? They're French. 


Above is a set of minis I don't get to use often enough, (which is good, because they stay intact that way); Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Thetis and her advisors, Doctor Phobic and High Canoness Vespera. All three are lovely (overpriced) minis from Rackham, minimally converted. I weaponized the staffs on Phobic and Thetis, turning one into a chain-glaive and the other into a force weapon with integrate plasma pistol.The High Canoness I left stock, because I love the freaking miniature the way she is; she has a nice high-holy look without being a frothing-at-the-mouth zealot. 

Yes, I know, square bases on models meant for 40k, it's a crime. I need to get some more Warmachine bases to transplant them to. 


In the grand tradition of high Imperial muckety-mucks, they carry their scriptures around with them, and miraculously manage not to maul themselves with their enormous weapons. I didn't add any purity seals because, quite frankly, they have enough detail, and additional bits would have obscured that too much.  If you look closely at that second photo, I did attempt to do a "vitruvian man" type sketch on Phobic's back banner, but... well, don't look too close. I also dirtied up his storm coat a little too much, I think; I wanted to show he'd been mucking about in battlefield trenches, not Imperial streets. The Rackham range has (or had) a lot of nice models that fit directly into the whole Inquisitorial aesthetic, including quite a few gun-toting weirdos. 

Speaking of weirdos, this bunch was positioned together for the sake of the pictures, but I think they make a pretty neat team. The Inquistor in the center is a Dark Age Bane model, with the rocket-thing flattened into a staff and various bits added.  He happens to own a powerfist-wielding servitor (a Cryx thrall; I love these models) to take down those pesky doors. Plus, there's the ever-present servo skulls, a fearsome looking mercenary (courtesy of the Iron Kingdoms range), the hot bald chick (a psyker; aren't all bald babes psykers in the 40k universe?) and that assassin-looking lady on the end with veil and wicked-looking rifle. (a Shirow Masamune ripoff design from the Corvus Belli "Infinity" range, also woefully overpriced; I got this one on sale from the Warstore, I think) . A lot of these are intentionally painted dark; with a few exceptions I generally start from black and work up. Some of these people shouldn't be walking around in bright, day-glo colors anyway, particularly if they're supposed to be assassinating someone. Speaking of assassins:

Yes, I know, I'm behind on my basing. Get off my back already. 

I'd like to think assassins come in other forms than just chicks with swords wrapped in lycra.  When I saw that Privateer Press mini on the left I had to have him, just by virtue of the hat and gas mask, never mind that his primary weapon is the grenade, of all things. Likewise, the Rackham sniper on the far left with the enormous rifle and puritan hat. I resisted the urge to put his =I= icon up there and mounted it on his belt instead. The other two are orc-suited Corvus Belli troopers with nasty rifles, painted to tie in with my chosen SoB order. The real jewel of my assassin corps is this lady:

Sometimes I have terribly poor impulse control when it comes to really beautiful models. She's so delicate and thin I can't even bring myself to put her in a case for use in an army. All that armor is positioned so that as you turn the model it becomes almost an entirely different miniature. It's just lovely. The rest of the faction she comes from is equally exquisite, but I'd bankrupt myself collecting them all, so I had to stop at this one. I still keep the catalogs, though, which are chock full of fantastic photos. You gotta dream.

I chose this Reaper model to serve as my Living Saint, although honestly I can't picture an army featuring one that would work effectively, badass as she supposedly is in combat. You get the feeling they wrote the WH codex right after reading a bunch of Dan Abnett novels, and tried to cram in as much as they could including the Inquisition co-opting IG forces. Well anyway, in contrast to other companies, Reaper's models are both cheap AND good, and I thought this haunted-masthead construct was perfect for a dark future supernatural dynamo. Luckily, the SoB Canoness model comes with a bunch of spare bits, including a wealth of gauntleted hands holding things (like that book). The flamberge-style sword is from a Reaper weapons option set that is also, helpfully, extremely cheap and well-sculpted (see a trend here?)

Forces of the Holy Inquisition Part II: Character Matters...

So 40k aside, I've been playing a lot of Dark Heresy. Our Inquistorial Acolyte team's 5 strong and consists of my Arbitrator, a Techpriest, a Guardsman, an Imperial Priest, and a Metallican Gunslinger. Aside from being an excellent (and nicely art directed) game, acting as miniatures wrangler for DH lets me field many models that would otherwise never see the light of day on the 40k battlefield, so I thought I'd share. 

(I'm experimenting with the light box, so bear with me)

Adeptus Arbites officers, converted from Dark Age Coil miniatures. I found a cheap "St. Mark Warband" on eBay a while ago, and have been painting converting as needed. I like them a lot better than the overpriced (and half-assed, design-wise) GW Arbitrator minis.  Since they're based on Brom illustrations, those chicks are monstrously fit and muscular, so people either love or hate them. (personally, I like strong women a lot, but man...)  In case you were wondering, I used the chap with the big revolver as my character mini when I was lower-level, but modified and painted up the chainsword version when I finally got my chainsword and bolt pistol, several levels later. The reds on their tunics don't match because I wanted to convey used, secondhand digs with the lower-level model and more of a polished, Judge Dredd feel with the higher-level one. Strangely, it's the non-combat investigative skills where this character really seems to shine; I just rolled better on some stats than on others, and if you don't have high WS/BS/Agility, then... well, you're better off acting as an investigator/ human sensor array/smooth talker.

Our GM pointed out, and rightly so, that the Chaliced Commissariat isn't actually a bunch of Imperial-Sanctioned Commissars, to the chap that's 3 from the left is pretty much just for looks. He usually stands in for Creed when I field a Mechanicus army. (strangely, though I'm curious about Warmachine, I just keep tossing the cards for the minis) The Priest is a Reaper mini that was originally a just some friar holding a cross. Since our priest uses a flame pistol full of holy promethium, I stripped and upgraded him a bit (with the book, Emperor icon, and flamer, natch), and his new home is in the DH box. That guardsman is a polyglot conversion job using Tau legs, Scout Marine boots, and IG bits and bobs from the odd vehicle sprue (all of my tanks are buttoned up anyway).

Though we've been using an Engineseer mini, that 3rd chap with torch has been a fine stand-in every so often, the others (well, except for Flamer Arms, there on the end) have been seeing pretty good use as adepts, servitors, and other academic types. I wish someone would put out some kind of old lady cyborg, since we seem to be running into the odd eccentric old biddy once a module. 

I converted these guys up as a couple of hunter/trapper types, and intentionally kept their colors drab, so they'd look like they just fell of the (interstellar) turnip truck. That flintlock and pistol came from a Mordheim dwarf sprue, and the enormous pick hammer belonged to... well, another Warmachine mini that's since gone on to other pastimes. 

Yes, you'll see her in the future. 

Yes, she works for the Inquisition, too. 

Yes, she's hot ;)