Steel Legion Infantry Squad 2

Another infantry squad completed. I actually finished this one a few months ago, but as the blog is behind, and as basic squads aren't that exciting, they've been a bit delayed. In the army, I have 4 fully painted squads of basic infantry, 2 with just lasguns, and another 2 fitted with special and heavy weapons. This one has an Autocannon and Plasma Gun - a pretty time honoured armament. 

But wait, that's not a Krieg weapon team I hear you cry (insert deafening sounds of silence and images of slowly rolling tumbleweed here....). I'm too cheap for that, so this one was built out of an old leftover Cadian heavy weapon team. The sitting legs were spare Anvil parts I had. I think the arms for the guy with the binoculars were part of a tank commander. The other conversion in the squad is their sergeant.

Speaking of tank commanders, he uses bits from a plastic tank commander; either from a Baneblade or Hellhound kit - I'm not sure. Anyway, that's where I got his arms and head from. 

I could probably have taken better pictures of these guys, but it's what I've got, so it'll do. I think there are some better photos of my other squad, so look at those if you want to see them clearer!

And that's pretty much it for Steel Legion for now. I've started work on some other stuff though, so stay tuned for that. Dreadtober is on the horizon too, so I'll be plugging on with that soon enough.

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 Mortar Teams (Anvil Industry Heavy Weapons)

More Steel Legion today - this time is my freshly finished mortar teams. I've had these guys for a while, but they were always lower down on my list of priorities. After adding up a few potential army lists, I realised that they'd be useful to have as an add on unit to fill those gaps where I was left with thirty or so points to spend.

They're pretty much 100% Anvil parts, so nothing to report on that front. Anvil supply heavy weapons teams with smaller bases than the GW ones; which means that you have the second crewmen on individual bases. I think I'd prefer a 60mm round base, but it does make marking wounds easier.

Style-wise, they match the rest of the army. Most of my guys are styled with very busy bases like they're in the thick of combat. I went with calmer more plain bases for the mortars as I envisage them always being out the back of the force providing support.

Steel Legion Command Squads

More Steel Legion again. This time, I'm presenting my two command squads. Together with the sniper squad I showed last week, these guys make up the elite section of the force (well other than the Scions and probably veterans at some point!). The picture above shows the army commander Kastoph Greede (some longer term blog-viewers might remember him from my battle report a year or so ago). At that point, I hadn't finished his squad, but here they are with him:

They're really a classic set up - a banner, vox, medic and one special weapons guy with a grenade launcher. They're pretty stock, but the medic does use a few Anvil Industry bits.

I quite like the red cross on the medic and the little freehand numbers etc.

I did say command squads, and that's because I made a second one for my other commander. This time a full flamer team - sort of as a counter-assault unit, but also just for fun. In time, they'll have their own Centaur to ride around in, but for the moment, they'll have to lump it on foot.

Converted Steel Legion Tech-Priest Enginseer

This Tech-Priest was a bits box built freebie. I wanted him to look a little bit ramshackle and less-preferred by the Mechanicus. The kind of guy who would run some type of tank junkheap and get annexed to an armoured column aas he was the best of what was left!

I've always got plenty of stuff about the place from years of building and collecting. The biggest part of this guy is a Renegade Tank Commander body from Forgeworld. I've had the part for a while, but had never done anything with it. It actually only goes to the knees, and had no arms, so I built on top of it as a base.

I used a plastic pair of legs from a different tank commander to get him on his feet. After that, A pair of Scion arms and a Heresy resin power axe with a brass rod haft brought the look together.

His backpack was cut off of a Kreig vox caster (who I had converted to have a cloak in my sniper unit, so I was cutting it off anyway) - the robot arm is an upside-down Necron arm with a bit of a Dark Eldar Scissorhand attached. Yep, he's made of bits from pretty much everything! Oh, and his crotch-plate is part of an Onager Dunecrawler.

Anyway, he's ready for battle now, and painted up to match the rest of the force. Fixing vehicles is pretty good in this edition of the game and as a cheap choice, I'm sure I'll get plenty of use out of him.

Steel Legion Stormtroopers - Militarum Tempestus Scions

Another Steel Legion post today - just showing my recently completed unit of Stormtroopers. You kind of have to call them Stormtroopers for Steel Legion as they pre-date all of that Militarum Tempestus stuff, and that's how they're referred to in the books too.

I enjoyed painting these guys a lot too as they're a little bit different from my usual infantry models. They really came alive when I did the blue details too - like all the pipes and stuff. I tried to make the screens on their wrists look like some kind of bio-readout monitor thing, so I did a heart-beat shaped thing on each one. Equally though, it could be some kind of vox signal (or maybe Codec like in Metal Gear?)

At some point, I'll have to get another 5 so I can have a full unit. For the moment, there's no rush as they're not in any of my planned lists, and I've got so many other units to finish that I can't justify buying anything new. My Steel Legion have become a bit of a dumping ground for older guard army projects - these guys were originally earmarked for my now defunct Traitor Guard force, so they were basically free as I had them laying about the place anyway. The upside and downside is that I have tons of tanks to paint up too!

More Steel Legion tomorrow....

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

Everchosen - Update - I'm in the Gallery of Glory!

Well, I didn't really expect to make it far in Everchosen - what with all of the great painters out there, it was obvious that I'd never win the global competition. Despite that, I got a nice surprise over the weekend as my entry is up on Warhammer Community!

I may not have made the final 3, but I'm in the gallery below them with the top 100 highest voted entries. Not bad, as I'd entered with the hope that I'd make it into some kind of official gallery.

You can check it out for yourselves here: 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/09/06/the-top-3-miniatures-in-the-world-and-100-other-awesome-ones/

It's a nice achievement anyway, so I'm pretty happy with that. I haven't updated the blog a lot lately, but I've been doing quite a lot of painting; I just need to set up the camera to take some pictures, so more posts should be on the way soon.