Warhammer 40k Armoured Train Build

This is a project that I've had at the back of my mind for a long time. Actually, the seeds were sown years ago when my brother attended a gaming event where our local game store Marquee Models in Harlow (UK) had a land train game set up with ork vehicles that were jumping onto the train to attack it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I got the idea of a warhammer train and it stuck - bubbling away back there for decades.

Recently, I've been working on my Steel Legion and the train idea resurfaced. A quick Google search revealed that some people had been able to make one successfully. A while back, I'd looked at actual scale train kits, but they were prohibitively expensive. I was basically looking for something to be used in scenarios - budget was definitely limited for this project!

A bit of Internet searching revealed this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/769594.page?userfilterid=122875 - which featured a great train built from something called a "Caterpillar Construction Set"... I looked it up on eBay and got a used one a few days later for a grand total of £10 plus postage. If you look at the thread on Dakka Dakka, it was a really involved build. I wanted to do something more simple with a focus on look and playable area. The running boards for the train were a brilliant idea  so I took that idea and sort of ran with it to increase the playable area. The train itself is perfectly in scale, but as a dodgy plastic toy, I had a lot to do. The first things to work o  was the windows at the front as the front is always the place people look first!

I also bought a bunch of plasticard bits to make railings and details with. The photo above shows how the basic shape for the running boards was constructed. I decided to make a freight type looking train and not to add guns so that it wouldn't be so much a fighting piece as a transport. I also looted my bits box for parts. I really didn't want to add hundreds of rivets to the thing, but handily, I had a bunch of flat plastic Warlord Games bases that already had a gripping side that looked like rivets, so I used those with some plasticard used to cover where it said Warlord Games in the middle of each one! 

For the 3 carriages, I have one small (in this photo red) tank which was actually an ore cart looking thing I flipped over and built a gantry on. The passenger car is next which has large playing areas added. Of all the carriages, it was the most unstable, so low armour skirting was added which is also some sort of anti roll device to stop it tipping too far on the table. After that in the distance is a mostly flat tank carrying platform which should hold 2 Chimera size tanks, although I haven't tried to size it since adding the hand rail section to the rear. There is a bunch of cheap ass looking plastic track sections too I am going to paint as well. They would actually look really good if based up, but as I don't have room to literally build a permanent train board, the flexibility of being able to lay them as is has to be king. 

All in all, I spent about a week building the Steel Legion train. I guess I need to name it now - and paint the thing. I finished 3 carriages in total plus the train, and there was a one more carriage in the set I can do at a later date along with a bunch of track.

It took quite a lot of spray to get down a decent coat of white to start working over the top of. It was fun to roughly array it once it was looking like more of a united colour. For me, the balance came out just about right- a lot of the otig9nal kit is visible still, but up-detailed and the running boards are a very usable size. 

The photo above shows the passenger carriage from the rear. I added a raised gantry with control panel to the back - the ladder on this one was already part of the kit, so that helped and saved me a bit of time. Work on  the whole train was slow in the beginning, but once I got going and had basic shapes in place it came together pretty quickly.

Pictured above is the big transport carriage which I did test later on after writing some of the text earlier and found that it will still hold 2 chimera hull tanks or similar size. Actually this was one of the more difficult carriages as it had a number of lumpy plastic details that I had to remove which was one of those jobs that could only be done with clippers and a lot of time. I did most of it while watching TV in the end.

Now that it's undercoated, it looks almost ready to cross the Ash wastes! Story wise I envisage it crossing the big stretches of Armageddon between Armageddon Prime and Secondus or the hives themselves. Hopefully, I will have time to update once I have had the chance to pit some paint on it. 

Horus Heresy Blood Angels Legion Outriders

I've always liked space marine bikes - the only problem with heresy bikes is that at the moment the only option is to buy them at the extortionate prices that forgeworld are charging (currently a little over £20 a piece). I was never going to pay that when I had a set of old ravenwing bikes just waiting for a new marine project.

The problem I had was that they weren't really heresy, so I did a bit of conversion work for both the bikes and the riders to rebuild both the front and back of the bikes and then move the bolter to the side like the official outriders. I'm sticking with Mk6 armour for the Marines, so went with with corvus helms again. 

Unfortunately, their rules are pretty bad right now- this unit comes out at around 100 points, but in the current edition of heresy bikes have no more protection than ordinary men (no additional wounds or toughness). If you run you get shrouded, but it's not a whole lot of protection. Worse of all, they seem to be unable to take melta bombs now which ends the time honoured tradition of dunking tank rear armour. Talk about tactically limiting!

That said, I do intend to build a few more to see if I can make something of them yet! 

That about rounds out the look at these guys. I think it may be time for some army photos now. I have some individual shots of thee Rhinos, but will probably post them later on. 

 

Emperor's Children Lord Discordant

Well, this is a model that has been sitting around ever since the release. Really happy to have finally finished it.

Due to the conversion work, painting was very difficult. In order to fit the lady on his lap, I had to do a lot of culling and shaping. By the time they were finished, the whole thing had to be glued together and then painted as one huge chunk, which really made it difficult to get to the riders! That and the 6 legs worth of gold filigree really made it feel like a challenge.

Style-wise, I always thought it would be fun to try adding a sort of love-interest semi romantic edge to a Slaanesh model. I think I was also inspired the original art for the cover of the first Vanpire Hunter D novel, which I've always really liked. As far as actual lore is concerned, I imagine perhaps he fell in love with a noble noblewoman he took as a slave - unfortunately she didn't survive the warp energy she was exposed to in the eye of terror, so he clones her again and again, enjoying the sensations of both love and heartbreak as only his gene enhanced physiology and twisted mind can. Something like that anyway.

As far as the actual paint work is concerned, this is my regular Emperor's Children scheme. I've also been working on a Leviathan dreadnought for them, which I should be able to start painting soon.

Dark Eldar Grotesques WIP Conversions

A slightly different project today. As I've been working on my Dark Eldar (which have a Haemonculus Covens theme), I knew I wanted some grotesques. Like many who came before me,it didn't take long for me to realise that the options are limited as GW only makes one model that's both expensive and finecast. 

I had a look through the options for conversions, and Crypt Horrors to me seem to be by far the best kit to use as a base. All the mutant spines and stuff work in your favour, and they're half way there from the beginning. I picked up a set of them on eBay, and then combined them with spares from the Talos kit.

In terms of the conversion, I mostly just had to trim their heads down to fit the masks and replace some of their hands with weapons from the Talos. I added tails too, as they looked good with the poses. Handily, as I'd built legs for my Talos I had a lot of tanks left over, so I had plenty of them to add to the spines I'd cut off to look like it had a lot of chemical feed lines stuck in them. 

The only other part of the conversion was trimming off and shaving down the hairy bits on them, as it just isn't right on grotesques. I still need to finish adding some more bits and then greenstuff the gaps etc, but they're getting there. I'd like to add a bit more armour to them too - just so they'll blend in well with the rest of the army once they're painted, as the gloss red scheme is quite distinctive.

Dreadtober Talos 2nd Week Progress

Painting has commenced on my Talos with legs conversion. There's still a long way to go, but it's starting to actually look like something!

In terms of the work so far, I began by painting the bulk of the gloss red areas, as getting the high shine effect is quite labour and time intensive. It worked well though. After that, I basecoated the flesh areas with Rakarth Flesh, and painted the base too.

Personally, I like the mantra "bases and bases" when it comes to painting. Often getting a basecoat on your mini and painting their base gives an impression of the final model, and also gives a decent tabletop level finish. That's prettyour much where we're at now.

Next steps will be finishing the smaller red gloss details, and then washing and detailing the skin. Somewhere in there I need to start on the metallics too, so there's plenty to be getting on with.

Dreadtober - Dark Eldar Talos with Legs Conversion

I'm quite proud of this conversion. My Talos with legs is complete and ready for paint!

I looked at different options for kitbashing, but in the end I decided to sculpt the legs myself. It was a bold move for me as I'm not that great at sculpting, and normally I'd intentionally avoid a project like this. That said, I really wanted the legs to match the style of the model as well as the rest of the force and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the conversion. With that in mind, I set to sculpting the legs I wanted.

In the end, it wasn't that difficult. I built an armature out of some large paperclips. I bent them to the correct shape for the legs, and then set them into a spare block of wood to work on. After that, I built the basic structure of the legs with some white milliput. I actually just shaped it with my fingers and then smoothed it out to get a basic design. It didn't take that long to get a decent look (maybe half an hour?).

I let the basic leg shape dry and then I used an engraving tool to smooth out and reshape what I had. After that, I etched in the lines for the muscle fibres (designed to sort of match the look of the Wracks). Once that was done, I stuck it all together and then it was just a case of adding spare armour from the Talos kit and using greenstuff to make the straps and add details to the feet etc.

That pretty much sums up the work. I'm quite happy with how it looks, but I think it'll be a challenge to paint! So far I've added an undercoat and a little extra white to the mask and skin areas, but there's still a long way to go.

Steel Legion Valkyrie Conversion (Revell 1:48 Hind Helicopter Kit)

Something a bit different today. A few weeks ago, I was watching the A-Team (which is full of Helicopters), and I got to thinking how cool it would be to have one for my Steel Legion. Then around the same time, I played a bit of Red Alert on the old PS1 multi-tap. Needless to say, I played as Soviets (because that is probably the last balanced game ever), and I started building Hind Helicopters. It got me thinking how cool they are, and throw in a little Metal Gear nostalgia and this was pretty much the end result.

I should probably explain that there's a reason I took photos outside. One was for the cool "sky" shots, but the other was that this thing is just too big to fit in my regular set-up.

Build wise, I used a Revell 1:48 scale Hind kit. The 1:48 scale is quite close to 28mm. In face, I was able to use the pilots bodies as they were close enough in scale. It was an odd kit to build though, and my first foray into anything "historical" or real. Basically, the build involved getting half the fuselage and adding all the interior detail to it (including internal chambers and cockpit etc and then sandwiching it with thee other half. It sounds fine till you actually try to get that to fit. I'd read a bit online about people shaving various bits down to get it to fit, but it's actually completely unnecessary. About half a dozen elastic bands stretched round the fuselage as it dried ensured a good fit, and in the end no filling or anything was needed.

As far as conversion goes, I replaced the guns with some tank and Sentinel bits. I also added a crewman made from a few spare Anvil parts, and did a similar conversion (head swap and shoulder armour) for the two pilots. The flight base is from TT combat. I used an engraving tool to cut an "X" shape into the helicopter so it sits inside and is nice and snug. Painting was fine - a bit long winded because of how big it is, but nothing to report on really. I followed my usual tank scheme (there a tutorial for it here)

That's about it then. I think I still have another Steel Legion post to go... but I'm starting to lose track.

I also edited this picture to make it look like a battle scene - consider it a bonus!

Steel Legion Sniper Squad

I've been hard at work again on a plethora of new units for my Steel Legion army - in fact, it got to the point where I had units just lining up to be photographed for the blog, so I though I'd better get started.

This sniper team is a command squad consisting of 4 guys with sniper rifles, although with a slight adjustment, they could be a special weapons squad. They were quite a simple conversion too - just Kreig bodies with Anvil Industry arms, cloaks and guns added. The guy laying down firing his rifle was a lot more complicated though, as I had to convert a standing body, and reposition his arms around a plastic scout sniper rifle. Unlike the others, his cloak is entirely greenstuff as his pose was too far from what the resin ones were designed for. In fact, his pose was so wild that I replaced most of his right arm with a piece of wire and re-sculped over it to make things fit. It worked in the end though - and I love it when a plan comes together! (I might have been watching the A-Team lately too...)

Painting-wise, this is just my standard Steel Legion scheme. I batched these guys with 13 other models, so it was a bit of a busy one, but I made it to the end. The only thing that was a bit out of the ordinary for me was the camo cloaks. I sort of based the design on some of the recent marines from Shadowspear, and I'm quite happy with how the patterning came out. Camo is always one of those things that I'm a bit hesitant to do as it can look terrible if painted sloppily (which is generally my preferred style!). Getting these right did take a bit of time, but it was worth it as it's quite key to making them stand out.

With any luck, there'll be plenty more Steel Legion posts on the way, as I have a lot of units. It might even be tomorrow if I can get things written up!

A view of the cloaks