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 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 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

Steel Legion Infantry Squad Finished

I just finished this squad for my fledgling Steel Legion force. I've been playing with the camera again too to get some dramatic and dynamic photos. I've also taken some stock shots on a black background so you can get a clearer look at them. The black seems to make the yellow of the jackets look a bit too strong. I did want them to be a bit more vibrant than usual though so they would stand out on the battlefield.

This has been quite a fast scheme to paint, and I estimate that they've taken me about an hour each. I've tried to keep the scheme fast because I'll need to paint a lot of models to get to the end of the army, and it is a force that I'm intending to use for games, so speed was an important consideration.

I remember the Third War for Armageddon Campaign that was fought in White Dwarf and all the battle reports from the time, as well as the global campaign that was fought. It has directly led to this project, as it gave me a real love for Steel Legion and there's just something awesome about how nostalgic it all feels. I've used Death Korps models, as they are a bigger range and nicer than the older (and now a little dated) Steel Legion models, but I still want to keep as much of the original feel as possible. For this reason, I'm planning to use a lot of the older units on the field, and plenty of things that were in Epic, and I have the same nostalgic feeling about. For that reason, I've started working on a Basilisk and a Colossus to back these boys up.

I also painted up a unit from Anvil Industry's Regiments range for them; giving me a total of 20 painted Infantry and the Deathstrike. Not a bad start, but I'll need at least 40 men to really get them going, and I need to finish some other vehicles as the Deathstrike is a bit lacklustre rules-wise at the moment, so it'll need some backup to get the job done!

I actually painted these 10 men in the space of a single weekend, so here's hoping I can keep up this level of enthusiasm.

Imperial Fists - Betrayal at Calth Breacher Sergeant

Work on my Imperial Fists continues at a slow pace. I finished painting this converted Sergeant for my Breacher squad recently. The conversion is a head and weapon swap for one of the Character models from the Betrayal at Calth box set combined with a Phalanx Warder's shield.

I'm quite happy with how he came out - although I might take a second whack at that power sword at some point as I basically just coloured it in blue without really putting in too much effort (I think I was tired!). I'm quite happy with the freehand "VII" details on the shin guard and the cape though.

He can now join the rest of the army in what I hope will one day be a legally field-able force!

Click on the links below for more pictures of my WIP Imperial Fists Force 

Imperial Fists Squad

Imperial Fists Vindicator

Mortarion Primarch of the Death Guard Painted

Well, I finished painting Mortarion. I'm happy with the results, although I have to admit that I found the whole process rather difficult. It was mostly just getting the colours to look good that I struggled with. My own style tends to be quite vivid, I like bright reds, blues and purples, but Mortarion is a sort of creamy off-white. It wasn't difficult as such, but more that I found it difficult to think it looked "good" as it isn't a colour I would personally choose. To compensate for this and to make him look a bit more interesting I used the full range of Death Guard Colours (adding in green and red compared to the Forgeworld one). I'm particularly happy with the freehand numerals on his armour.

On the subject of his armour, it was also difficult to match the colour of his armour with a good colour for the base - too light and he'd just blend straight in. Equally though it had to be muted so that your eye would be drawn to the model and not the rock he was standing on. In the end I went with a stone effect for the top and just tried to keep the rest fairly dark.

For those who missed it, I also painted Roboute Guilliman (Primarch of the Ultramarines). You can read all about it here:

Painting Guilliman 

That article contains a fairly comprehensive painting guide for him too if you're interested in the kind of techniques I use.

Mortarion Commission Part 2

Work is well underway now. I've gone ahead as planned and changed around one or two colours to get more contrast going on. So far things seem to be going well.

I snapped off a few pictures earlier today that I'll add below. The armour was airbrushed in a graduating shade off creamy off-white that I mixed myself and highlighted with pure white. When I'm airbrushing I almost exclusively use Vallejo products as they just flow a lot better in the machine. For brush work I'm using good old citadel paints.

I always begin a new project by running a test for the colour scheme - even when I'm only painting one model. In this picture you can see I've finished his leg (seen bottom right) to completion, while the rest is mostly still just base coated.

You can see in the picture above that I've taken the scheme and run with it following the successful test. I'm using red as a bright contrast to breathe some life into him compared to the nice, but very mono tonal Forgeworld one.

Still a long way to go on this one though...

Mortarion Commission Part 1

Well work is now well underway on my latest commission. This time I'm tasked with building and painting Mortarion, primarch of the Death Guard.

I've completed the build and at the moment the greenstuff is drying. The natural break has given me some time to consider the colour scheme. Obviously there isn't much leeway, as he will have to be presented in full Death Guard finery, but at the same time I would like to make a few adjustments. The Forgeworld version is too mono tonal for my tastes and I know I can make the model look better, so I plan to introduce a bit more contrast into the scheme. An obvious change will be to switch the cloak to black so that it is visually distinguished from the armour. I will also introduce some green details in keeping with the traditional scheme, but that seem to be missing on the Forgeworld model. To finish things up I'll use a red as a contrasting colour for the smaller details.

I'm planning to start with airbrush work to achieve a smooth blend across the armour. At the same time I will use the airbrush to begin a non metallic metal style blend on the scythe blade. We'll see how it goes from there.

As a final step I plan to make a few slight adjustments to the scenic base to ensure that he can be moved in and out of it smoothly.

I'll be posting more as I go, so stay tuned for the next update where we'll be taking a look at how the painting is going (hopefully well!)