++++INLOADING DATAFILE 090++++ Castellax Battle-Automata Maniples WIP 1.0

So a lot of things have been going on over the last few weeks, hence the slow rate of posts.  I've been playing a lot of X-wing, there was the regional championship tournament for New England (I came in 46th) as well as at least 5 other tournaments I've attended in the last month, so that took up most of my hobby time.  I also spent some time painting my Chaos Renegades, batch painting 200+ infantry is a chore but its progressing.

Work has picked up nicely of late as well, which helps relieve financial stresses, and I have my annual training exercise starting tomorrow for the Army National Guard that I've had to prepare for.  On top of all of that yesterday I received my acceptance letter for Grad School, which is extremely exciting.  I actually had a hard time sleeping last night as my mind was alight, so I decided to finish assembling the Castellax Battle-Automata kits I picked up a few months ago.

Here are the 5 normal Castellax I've built.  There are a lot of minor touch ups to fix casting errors and to mark them out as Dark Mechanicum engines, but they are pretty much done otherwise.  This is a very interesting kit to work with, and very challenging as well to pose well.  You can do great dynamic poses, but it takes a lot of work to do.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 086++++ Adeptus Mechanicus Land Raider WIP 1.0

I've been busy of late, and playing too many computer games as well, hence the dearth of posts.  But I have been working on some projects, most notably this.

In the first Horus Heresy book there are not many options available to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but one of them is an Adeptus Mechanicus Land Raider.  A quick glance will show that this is not the heavy assault transport we are all used to, but more a heavily armored exploratory vehicle for traversing hostile environments.  Its stock armament is only a pair of Lascannons and a single Heavy Bolter, and it lacks the Assault Vehicle rule so it does not have the iconic front assault ramp.  To make up for this you are getting it at a great discount at 195 points.

It also has a crazy amount of options, so you can customize it to your heart's content.

I decided to go with a relatively inexpensive but very potent anti personnel build with a Volkite Culverine and a pair of Quad Heavy Bolters.  I also plan to take an Exploratory Augury Web, Flare Shield, and an Auxiliary drive.

As you can see this is a pretty comprehensive rebuild of the basic Land Raider Chassis.  I picked up an old Land Raider a friend and I had tried to convert a while back and removed the front ramp and turret well.  Instead of having the standard offset front sponson I centered it, which means that the vehicle is driven by sensors (no driver's vision port).  I added the sensor pod from the Land Raider Helios to represent the augery web and rebuilt the front using a piece from a Land Raider Achilles.  Then a bunch of plasticard went into creating a new front sponson well, I wanted to use a layered armor plate approach to make it look like the standard Land Raider chassis had been reinforced considerably.

The Volkites and most of the other bits come from a Triaros Armored Conveyor.  I built the front sponson from some defiler and land raider parts, and the 4 gun volkite array just looks cool, its a great feeling when an idea starts to fit together right.  The tracks also were copied from the Triaros, I need to do more work to fix the gaps and casting errors in them but it was worth the effort to visually tie into other Admech vehicles more.

The side hatch was made from the Triaros.  The instant mold material is great for doing quick one off molds for cool parts like this hatch, I cast up at least a dozen for future use as well.  The side sponson is complex; first I started by casting copies of the Hunter turret well (an awesome bit as it can go on top of any vehicle).  Then I sawed off part of the waist to a Khorne Lord of Skulls (Very cool bit, I found a bunch online cheap.) to create a smaller turret well.  Then I took a rhino hatch, shaved the antennae off and inserted it.  After that I used the ball turret part from the volkites I chopped up to make the front sponson and used part of a Forgefiend's plasma cannon to attach it to the sponson.  This all attaches to the Quad Heavy Bolters which were made from recasts of the twin linked Mauler Bolt Cannon from the Triaros.

More work still needs to be done on the sponsons but the basic concept works.

The engine parts are again directly copied from the Trairos, I circled the particular parts below.  It was surprisingly easy to make the molds as the tracks come in separate pieces.

  I haven't completely decided yet what to do for the sides of the engines, this is just a test fit so far.  

 

From above you can see how the roof has been redesigned to accomodate the sensor turret, more detail work remains to be done.  The exposed machine parts on the back are something I am debating over.  They look cool, but it would require the rest of the roof to be redesigned further.  I'll let it sit for a bit and see what jumps out to me to help join all the parts together.

For the rear I'm debating on whether or not to try and use the big gears from the Triaros.  Alternatively I'll have a number of large exhausts coming off the sides.  I'm leaning more towards the exhausts, again this is just a test fit at the moment.

So that is where this project stands as of this afternoon.  Its coming out as well as I'd hoped, its actually the first time I've built a Land Raider in at least 8 years and its fun working with the kit again.

Coming up soon I'll take a break from my Admech posts to show off an Ork Dread mob I built to sell.  My goal is to build up some interest so that when I put the stuff up on ebay it actually gets a good price.

As always let me know if you have any recommendations on ways I can make this tank look better.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 085++++ Sicarian Infiltrator/Ruststalker WIP 1.0

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, I've been busy cleaning out my apartment to make room for more stuff and with several new computer games.  I'd recommend Dungeon of the Endless to anyone who has a spare day and enjoys falling into rabbit holes.

That said I have had some recent hobby progress, notably my conversions of Sicarian Infiltrators to make them look more like IG-88 from Star Wars.  My original idea was to use Imperial Guard Mortar Shells for the basis of the head, this was a terrible idea as they are way too small for it.  Sometimes you need to actually have the models in hand to realize that an idea sucks.

But in the process of getting the mortar rounds out of my bitz box an ancient special weapons sprue from Necromunda fell out of the box (literally) before me and I had the perfect bit.  Its the macehead to the power maul from the Redemptionists gang.  After trimming down some spikes to make them into eye lenses and lopping off the handle it was ready to get mounted.

See the resemblance? 

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 084++++ Skitarii Vanguard WIP 1.5

So I finally had the chance to crack open my two boxes of Sicarian Infiltrators and man is there a lot bits wise in this kit! The first thing which I decided to use it for was to upgrade my earlier Skitarii Hypaspists. I didn't wind up quite liking how that first attempt came out, so here is try number two which I mentioned yesterday.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 81++++ Dark Skitarii Rangers WIP 1.0

Sorry for the derth of posts, I've been otherwise engaged of late.  That said I for one am very excited for the new Adeptus Mechanicus codex which should be coming out soon, as well as the Skitarii book coming just before it.  I'm interested to see whether this will be the first book which truly works to unify a GW and Forgeworld range as has been suggested by some to be the new model for the upcoming 30k plastic range.

After I bought my first White Dwarf in a few years (I had a subscription for over 10 years ago.) I was quite impressed by the rules for the Vanguard and Ranger units.  Both are well costed, neither is brokenly good or bad, and they each have workable weapons with different mechanics between the units.  The Vanguard's rad weapons are very neat, while they differ substantially from Rad weapons in 30k I prefer this version.  The 30k rad weapon effect only matters AFTER a multiwound model has failed to save a wound it has been dealt by a rad weapon, which is situational in the extreme.  The new "double wound" effect is cool, and it works well with the weapon's low str of 3 and high rate of fire.

Skitarii Rangers actually strike me as being the more conventional of the two units, as they are essentially just equipped with Kraken Bolters.  A while ago I converted a bunch of Skitarii for my Dark Mechanicum army but at the time there were no rules for them and I used them as Adsecularis Tech Thralls.  Right after reading the new rules I started reconverting them into Skitarii rangers, all it took was swapping the lasgun barrels on their guns for more Sniper esk ones and adding some scopes.

Galvanic Rifles group 1

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 080++++ Scyllax Guardian-Automata Conversion

I'm sure that everyone has seen the new Scyllax Battle-Automata from Forgeworld, they are nifty new models and have some neat rules.  I like this unit as there have always been battle constructs in the lore that are mostly made up of lots of Mechadendrites but up till now there has never been a decent representation of such units in game.  So I decided to have a go at converting one for my Dark Mechanicum army.

Forge World's version

 My Version

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 079++++ Myrmidon Secutors WIP 1.0

First off, this week we hit 30,000 pageviews for this site.  Huzzah!  Thank you all for viewing and providing me with the recognition all of us bloggers crave desperately!!!

Onto today's post.  Here are some in progress shots of my Myrmidon Secutors.  As always these guys are a kitbash using components from a very wide array of sources.  The legs I got off of a friend a few years ago, he had planned to use them for a Grey Knights Paladin squad I believe, but that didn't work out.  I never liked them for marines as the poses are so rigid and awkward, but that makes then ideally suited for Admech cyborgs.

Myrmidon #1

Based on his pose I am thinking he is the squad leader.  He's armed with two Phased Plasma Fusils.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 075++++ Vorax Class Battle Automata WIP 2

It's been a while since I have touched this model, but last weekend I finally played a game with my Dark Mechanicum army, using the rules for the Legio Cybernetica from the Horus Heresy series. I only had about 800 points and hilariously my one battle robot gained sentience and turned on me as the first roll of the game.

The previous iteration of this guy was too small compared with the Forgeworld kit, and it really did not stand up to my standards, so I broke it apart and kept only what I liked from the original attempt.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 070++++ Darkmagi WIP

++++RECIEVING DATA INLOAD++++

VERIFYING SOURCE.......

AUTHENTIFICATION KEY OUTDATED........

ISOLATING UNAUTHORIZED DATA........

++++WARNING DETECTING SCRAPCODE CONTAGION++++

AUTO PURIFICATION PROTOCALS FAILING........

OMNISSIAH PRESER10001101101101010100101101011........

++++CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE++++

++++ALL PRAISE THE OCTED++++

Continued from last post here are pictures of some magi from my Dark Mechanicum Army.  It was my intention for their corruption to be less a matter of obvious mutation and more one of corrupted logic and geniune evil.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 069++++ Skitarii Hypaspist Test Models

So I have mentioned in the past that I have an Adeptus Mechanicus army, repeatedly in fact, but I have never really posted pictures of any finished models from it.  That changes now!!!!

The army is of course themed around the Dark Mechanicum, but I wanted to create more of a "We are evil because good is illogical" visual style rather than the "Oh goodie, my input/output dataport just grew another tentacle" visual style I've seen for most dark mechanicum armies.  The goal being that in a pinch I would like to be able to use them as a Loyalist Adeptus Mechanicus army for campaigns locally, as there is talk of a Imperium vs Orks campaign being in the works.

Here is a test model I did to make a Skitarii Hypaspist, which is essentially a lower order Skitarii warrior with excellent equipment but little in the way of cybernetics.  I was directly inspired by Manus over at 

Forge Mechanicus for their design.  Here is my take on these guys.

++++INLOADING DATAFILE 042++++ Vorax Class Battle Automata conversion

This is a test model for my Dark Mechanicum Battle Maniple. I wanted to use Centurions as a base to create variants of Thallax Battle Armor that was both more heavily armed and armored.



I quickly found though that there were a number of problems with this concept. The first of course being that the Centurion kit is substantially larger then a Thallax. Also none of the weapon options that I was able to find for any Thallax variant seemed to suit the design that I was working towards. So after working on it for a week I decided to utilize it as a Vorax class battle automata instead.



Stage 1:



Here you can see the original concept, which is not dissimilar to the base Centurion kit. I used two of the weapons to create the shoulder mounted cannon. The bubble where the head goes was originally planned to be a glass head similar to what a Thallax has but later was turned into the thorax armor for the battle robot.