Rat Raider ATV

It took longer than expected to finish the ATV for my Rat Raider bike squadron. Over all I think it is a fantastic model with at lot of realistic details. It is easy to paint in sub assemblies and with minor conversions it can be re-converted to an Imperial vehicle. Talking about that... it is sad that it is the Genstealer cults that have the best looking vehicles (because they are such a small army and hence will have a limited number of units). No silly track units or archaic 1915 tech. Just straight modern military stuff... (but with a mining vibe that luckily is easy to get rid of. I whish the Imperial army would get an overhaul and make them more 21st century rather than 20th century...

But that being what it is I think the mix of the GC and Scion stuff mix ok. Now I am curios how the dune raider will look and if I can get the taurus to fit in.

Rat Raiders

This week I finished my Rat Raiders, i.e. the motorcycle squad of my Desert Rats. They are based on the genstealer cult Atalan Jackals. The conversions are pretty straight forward as the original models could as well have been imperial guard. I removed all the iconography of the cult, swapped out the heads and weapon arm. I went with ranged weapons from the tempestus scion frame to distance them from the original models and keep with the ascetics of the scions. First I though about swapping both arms to the scion arms, cutting the one holding the handlebar of at the wrist. But I realized the it would be to hard to make any of the arms from the scion kit to match up properly and meet the body in the right way. So I left the original arm in place, but added a shoulder from the scion frame to make it more inline with the rest of the scions. I also added a lasgun to the back of the raiders to further tie them in with the rest of the models. Colour wise I went with the same scheme as with the rest. Slightly tan trousers and a beige armour. I like how they came out.

Sergeant Dane Tiller

Corporal Ernst Helveg

Corporal James Tubon

Corporal Tim Johnsson

Now I need to finish the 4 wheeler and the squad is complete.

Fenrir WIP, shoulders

The Easter Week was spend as a mix of eating nice food, working in the garden and some hobbying. I continued the work on the desert rats but did not manage to finish anything, just got the bikes base painted and got started on the riders but there is where I got stuck.

Instead I got inspired to work on Fenrir, mostly green stuff and some plasticard work. Basically I am now finished with the modifications to the torso, just need to dial in the hoses that are now running from the reactor housings to the shoulders (instead of to the weapons). There are some minor details left to do on the rear parts to tie in the tail to the rest of the protruding bones.

I also fixed the attachment points for the shoulder plates and stared to construct some plasticard extra armour and heraldic shields. Basically I wanted to add some armor to the front of the shoulder to protect the shoulders and arms from frontal fire (and make it more in line with current titan designs). I went with some overlapping plates mounted below the main shoulder plate. I also made two shields that will be attached to the bottom armour plate. To hold everything in place I made to curved beams attached to the underside of the shoulder plate that the rest of the armour will be attached to. Once I have detailed it a bit I will go over it with green stuff to blend it into the existing resin parts.

Then I got the idea of sculpting a 3D demon face breaking through the knee armour. For Varangina I made something similar to what is originally on the Chaos Reaver kit but since I have made a lot of bone protruding through the armour of Fenrir I wanted the face to be more 3D. The skull is sculped in 6 stages so that the bottom structures are cured before adding on them and building up the structure. All in all I am very pleased with how it turned out and I am really excited about getting it painted.

Well, not the much that got done this week/weeks but I am getting close to get Fenrir's body done.