Monster Tauros done

A new year has begun and I really would have liket to finish this model before Christmas, as it was almost done. However, a lot of other things came in-between, and the hobby time I did manage to spend really did not lead up to anything worth postning so far (mostly Opus stuff and the Christmas project from my wife, more on that in a later post).

However, the last couple of days I have manged to get some time in on this build and now I am feeling like it is finished. Over all I love how this turned out. The use of the cargo-8 undercarriage really helps sell the conversion as it is highly visible and it would have looked really strange to do some home brew stuff here. I am also fairly happy with the internals. I could probably have spent some more time adding details to the extension but since it will not be generally visible I do not think it is a big deal. I am also happily surprised that the flaring over the wheels turned out to give the Tauros the same width as the doser blade.

The paint jobb was fairly simple as per the Desert rats recipe. It is basically a monochrome beige with some sponge chipping and details. It would probably have been possible to do some nice camo version or so but I like the unitary colour. One new thing I "discovered" was that if I do patterning in the base colour before dry brushing they stay and fade into to over all colour (doser blade and rear mudflaps). This is something I will need to remember.

I still have a ridge runner and a venator to paint for this army but that will have to wait a bit. I am also tempted to get the tempestus-aquilons to go with this mobile force. A Rogal Dorn would also be an interesting addition. But this is what I have so far.

But all that will be for later, now I need to finish the Christmas project from the wifey.

Taurox 02

This week has been a mix of building on Opus and getting some base layers done on the Taurox. So far it has mainly been drybrushing and washing. Not to much to say really. I am happy with how it is turning out. Once I am done with theses layers I will go in with some sponge weathering and add rust and grime. I think it will look great with the other Desert rats. 

Wheeled Taurox for the rats

Hi there. So I have built something completely different again. This time in the form of a Taurox for my desert rats. I have been super keen on building one of these since the Taurox was released and people around the net started converting them, getting rid of the track units and adding proper wheels. I know there are some conversion kits out there and I have thought about buying some for some time. But I never got around to it. But I really wanted to do this at some point so when I decided to do the Deseret rats I bought the start collecting box as it both contained the Scion models but also a Taurox for a decent price. I painted infantry some time ago and added a squad of bikers based on the Necromunda models. But the Taurox just sat there and as I could not commit to ordering a conversion kit and the wheels I bought needed some serious work to get on. 

Then the Cargo-8 came around, and the trailer kits. They had some really nicely sculpted undercarriages and had eight nice big wheels (enough to make a six wheeler), and I thought that it would be nice to use this to convert a wheeled Taurox using only GW parts and some plasticard. On paper this looked like a good idea, so I bought a fule/chemical trailer (with the intention of suing the upper parts of the trailer for the Opus build). The scale of the wheels were nice, but the undercarriage that I fell for was way wider than the Taurox and would need some serious cutting to fit to the original body size. Instead of doing this I narrowed them down as much as I could without destroying the linkarms etc. Instead I added some wheel arc extensions to cover the wheels. In the end I think I prefer this look to just adding the wheels to the original body. I also ended upp adding some custom chocks to fill out the void between the body and linkarms. Make it look a bit like a monstertruck.

I also needed to extend the body to fit six wheels, one could have cone for two but I like the truck look, and I have a ridge runner to act as a four wheel transport. Vell, that meant adding some new panelling, shifting the roof backwards and making a new filler piece. I also added some interior detail.

On the outside I added some boxes, tow cables and tools just to make it look a little bit more cluttered. I also gave it two areals for long-range communication and a banner. On the back I mounted the missile rack but turned it upside down to show the structuring on the missile tubes. The front got a dozer blade, which strangely fit perfectly with my trimmed width of the Cargo-8 undercarriage.

All in all I am very happy with this version and I am looking forward to painting it. Just need to finish some ultra smurf outriders that are nearly done.

Desert Rats command squad

This week we finally got some rain, which incidentally meant that I got some time to finish of some off the models hanging around my to do shelf. In this case it was the Scion command squad. The squad has the same basic modifications as the other squad with cargo pants and chest pockets but apart form that are pretty standard builds. I opted to give some of the models a las rifle in addition to their other equipment's so that they can take part in the action when not talking on the radio, waving with the flag or patching people up. The paint scheme is the same and are done as a all in one paint job where I first colour in all the different colour areas and then drybrush everything in one go...  it is a quite nice way of batch painting as I do not need to be to tidy at the different stages. Next up for this army will be the two vehicles but that will have to wait a bit as the to do shelf is not completely cleared of already assembled models.

1st Lieutenant Ernst Roml

Corporal Stefan Murdoc

Corporal Arthur Breit

Corporal Timothy Huur

Corporal Gorge Tart

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. 

Astra Militaum Tempestus Scions, callsign Desert Rat

Well, that went quick. This morning I got an urge to try out the desert paint scheme for my Scions that I started building some weeks ago. So I set about to do five in parallel (which is something I never do) and a few hours later they were done. I tried out a new way of painting which turned out to work very well with this almost monochrome scheme. Instead of doing all the colour fields sequentially I decided to try to do them in parallel. 

I started out with a very rough base paint were I filled out all the major colours and added some details. Then I washed the whole model and started dry-brushing up form the darkest to the lightest colour, moving between areas all over the entire model. This way I did not really have to care to much about "overspray". After two rounds of this I added some details and added in some greens on grenades etc.  I am quite pleased with how they turned out. Apart form sculpting on legs pockets and some chest pouches I smacked on all the small bits and accessories I could find on the frames to make these look more like some spearhead special forces rather than armoured chock troops. I opted for the beret heads instead of the helmeted ones to reinforce the special forces vibe. I will use the helmets for the bikes and top gunners on the vehicles.

Staff Sergeant James Bradley

Corporal Corben Tell

Corporal Jim Meelon

Corporal Angus McMan

Lance Corporal Aaron Tromley

Back side

I really am looking forward to see how this mini force turns out.