Veteran Sergeant does True Scale + Blackstone Fortress

[deathspectersgt7]

(Waist) Thanks   I will be loading them down with pouches and grenades.

[Sheesh Mode]

So Veteran Sergeant, have you settled for a particular height for your marines? How much plasticard do you use? I see that some of your models only have plasticard along the hips while others have plasticard on their hips and shins, is this due to their stances or is it to increase their height? 

 

I'm working on my own truescale marines right now and am using your models as a guide. 

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

Two entries in less than a week? I need to be careful lest I make progress. Fortunately the ladyfriend's work schedule, illness amongst my gaming buddies, overcast weather, and no football left me with some time to kill today.

I've had a fair number of ideas for Marines carrying supplementary weapons for a while. Some may remember the one with the looted shuriken catapult, lol. I wanted to create a Marine who was carrying a grenade launcher. Ultimately, the pose I wanted didn't work since my Marines carry so much extra gear already. So this was a compromise. The other problem is that 40K weapons are just so gigantic, even scaled to my taller Marines.

He's also armed with the Cerceus pattern bolter. The pose was created with the idea in mind of eventually mounting him on a hollow base and have him stepping down into a puddle of... some kind of to-be-determined liquid. I used a Chaos shoulderpad, filing off the decorative Chaosy bits, and then bending the skull so it appears to be hanging naturally. The grenade launcher is simply the Cadian launcher with two bolter grips glued onto it and its aquila filed off.

Ultimately the grenade launcher, game-wise, is just a decoration.

Awesome work. Is it just me or are these guys getting bigger with each entry? It seems there's quite a leap upward (literally) with this particular battle-brother. The subtly converted grenade launcher is a great idea, shame we can't get rules for rad grenade launchers and the like on regular squads.

[Veteran Sergeant]

They have gotten slightly taller, but a lot of it is because I'm playing around with the posing. So some guys are just standing taller than others. Cutting the feet free opens up a lot of different stances for them, even with the same basic leg sections. I'm also using a Steel Legion figure for the height comparison instead of the old Cadian guy. The Steel Legion figures are slightly shorter, which makes the Marines look even taller.

Here's a lineup up of some of the 4th Generation figures.

So Veteran Sergeant, have you settled for a particular height for your marines? How much plasticard do you use? I see that some of your models only have plasticard along the hips while others have plasticard on their hips and shins, is this due to their stances or is it to increase their height?

I'm working on my own truescale marines right now and am using your models as a guide.

Yeah. All the 4th (and hopefully final) generation figures are 1mm spacers mid-calf, 1mm at the hip joint, and 1.5mm at the waist. The ones without two leg spacers are all 2nd and 3rd generation figures that were assembled in the early days of the project. This thing is over two years old at this point (my original blog was on Dakka, and was added here later). Which makes it rather silly that I'm not finished or close to finished, but hobby fatigue is pretty real for me, lol. Building Space Marines was so much easier when I wasn't insistent on them all being different and having a "character" to them. It's also easier when you just use the parts out of the box. Somebody asked once and I counted up that there are over 30 unique bits to every Marine, and then I'm cutting them apart.

For a Tactical Marine he needs:

Head, Torso (2 pieces with 4-5 1.5mm card sections), Legs (cut into 7 parts, then 4 1mm card sections added), 2 Arms (usually cut into 5-6 pieces), 2 shoulder pads, Backpack, bolter (now being cut into 3 pieces and barrel drilled), 2 large pouch bits (cut into 4 individual parts, shaved and filed), 1 small pouch bit (cut into 2 pieces), holster or bolt pistol (barrel drilled), frag grenade bit (sometimes cut into two individual grenades), knife.

Then you have jerks like the grenade launcher guy or the missile launcher guy in the group shot where the old plastic on his legs snaps while cutting and I have to do some rescue/recovery, lol.

[Forté]

They look sooooooo good.

[Sheesh Mode]

 

For a Tactical Marine he needs:

Head, Torso (2 pieces with 4-5 1.5mm card sections), Legs (cut into 7 parts, then 4 1mm card sections added), 2 Arms (usually cut into 5-6 pieces), 2 shoulder pads, Backpack, bolter (now being cut into 3 pieces and barrel drilled), 2 large pouch bits (cut into 4 individual parts, shaved and filed), 1 small pouch bit (cut into 2 pieces), holster or bolt pistol (barrel drilled), frag grenade bit (sometimes cut into two individual grenades), knife.

 

Ah, that really helps thanks. I have already seen Gullimans 'Classic true-scale' and have found it is too intensive for the models I am doing now, would you post your own guide to making true-scale marines? It's really difficult to determine where your making the cut at the waste of the marines and how it looks without the bits covering it. 

[Veteran Sergeant]

There's no cut at the waist. The torso section is glued together as normal. I didn't see a need to thicken the torso like some do because Marines are already fairly barrel chested as it is. Because of the amount of gear I chose not to relocate the "belt buckle". Instead, the torso has narrow strips of plastic card glued to the rim where it fits against the legs. Those strips are then filed smooth around the outside. I typically use a small rounded hobby blade to scrape the insides to a rounder shape so it fits more flush with the legs, though this may not be as big of a deal depending on how thin you cut the strips.

 

I've suggested you could also cut a single blog and glue it to the bottom of the torso piece. You could cut out the middle ahead of time. This might be easier since the lips of the torso is fairly thin making the strips sometimes break off while filing smooth.

 

A single piece also needs less cleanup on the outside. On my figures that isn't an issue since the nearly all imperfections are covered by pouches.

[Sheesh Mode]

I think I understand what you mean, I cut the legs at the hips and shins, then glue small squares of 1.5mm plasticard to them; then trim them till they are roughly of the same curvature as the legs, and glue them back on. 

 

The sense of presence granted by the models greater size is nothing less than awesome. I am looking forward to crushing xenos with my super-soldiers soon. 

[AtlasDM]

I love this project!

Please forgive me though as I'm going to steal your conversion ideas for my Kill Team models I want to do. I can't imagine I would ever retro fit my current models to this size but this is motivation for me to make a Death Watch themed Kill Team list and have some fun.

Great work, thanks for the ideas, and I hope to see more from you in the future.

[nightwing1511]

I love this blog. Your marines look amazing. I'd love to have he patience to do the same with my Crusaders, but I've just started getting paint on models, so starting again would be terrible :p

[Veteran Sergeant]

I love this blog. Your marines look amazing. I'd love to have he patience to do the same with my Crusaders, but I've just started getting paint on models, so starting again would be terrible

Well a lot of the posing can be done without having to make them taller. It's sort of a two-part project. Making them bigger, and then making them look awesome. If you combine the two, they become awesomer, but it's a huge undertaking, so I totally get not wanting to start from scratch, lol.

I love this project!

 

Please forgive me though as I'm going to steal your conversion ideas for my Kill Team models I want to do. I can't imagine I would ever retro fit my current models to this size but this is motivation for me to make a Death Watch themed Kill Team list and have some fun.

Glad you like it. If you do a Kill Team, you could include a Marine with my chapter's icon.

[nightwing1511]

Well a lot of the posing can be done without having to make them taller. It's sort of a two-part project. Making them bigger, and then making them look awesome. If you combine the two, they become awesomer, but it's a huge undertaking, so I totally get not wanting to start from scratch, lol

I've tried to make as many of my templars as well posed as I could, but nowhere near the scope of yours. Also, I can make two initiates look very different with different chains on the bolter, additions of tabard, etc. So I'm kinda cheating :p

[AtlasDM]

 

I love this project!

 

Please forgive me though as I'm going to steal your conversion ideas for my Kill Team models I want to do. I can't imagine I would ever retro fit my current models to this size but this is motivation for me to make a Death Watch themed Kill Team list and have some fun.

Glad you like it. If you do a Kill Team, you could include a Marine with my chapter's icon.

 

Done. It will of course be on the Sternguard "Veteran Sergeant" as well.

[deathspectersgt7]

Before I begin doing this could you post a pic or 2 on doing the waist? I can visualize everything else but that part.

Edited February 14, 2014 by deathspectersgt7

[Veteran Sergeant]

Sorry for the delay getting back to you deathspectre. The current ladyfriend had been over a lot the past few weeks, and while Space Marines know no fear, the kind of women I date might not immediately understand my closet-dork fascination with tiny plastic spacemen. Thus the project had been packed away in the mean time.

I've owed you guys one of these for a while. I'd just never remember when I had them sitting around in pieces. You can see here how the strips are glued to the rim of the torso, and then rounded off a bit so that they properly sit on the legs. This isn't one of the better examples, he's actually one of the earliest models I haven't gone back to fix up, but I wasn't going to just start breaking more of them apart, lol. This guy suffered for your tutorial.

It's okay. He'll walk it off. When I glue his legs back on.

Anywho, for anyone newly joining, I cleaned up the initial post a bit. Eliminated a lot of the rambling, and just made it a more concise summary of the project, the rules I set for it, and why. Eventually I'll write up some dramatic intro fluff for it, since that seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days.

[Hyaenidae]

I'm hearing a lot of excuses about dating women who would run screaming from your Sheldon-ness, and not seeing a whole lot of paint.

 

Get your BCG's back on, slip into a comfortable pocket protector, and get to work.

 

 

:P

 

Seriously, though, these guys get better and better. Thanks to you, I can't look at a bolter the same anymore; the suspension of belief just isn't there. Keep on truckin', man.

[KBA]

Only one thing scares us more than a judgmental 10/10: Paint :P

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Only one thing scares us more than a judgmental 10/10: Paint

 

As a "builder", this. So very much, this.

[deathspectersgt7]

Thanks that does help.The current lady friend uses the word Quaint.

[Veteran Sergeant]

I'm hearing a lot of excuses about dating women who would run screaming from your Sheldon-ness, and not seeing a whole lot of paint.

 

Seriously, though, these guys get better and better. Thanks to you, I can't look at a bolter the same anymore; the suspension of belief just isn't there. Keep on truckin', man.

See, now you know why I can't ever seem to get to the painting stage. I'm a big picture guy. A strategy planner, lol. So I'm always thinking "What happens when I decide to change them up again? If I paint them, they will be 'done'".

 

It's pretty bad. I have about 50 models that will need leg extensions, with a fair number of them needing an extra .5mm added to the waist in the process. Which of course will mean I might as well cut their legs apart at the waist and cut free their feet so they can be reposed and...

 

 

 

Yeah, maybe I can start painting some of my old metal models that won't ever get used so I can test the scheme. I've been trying to decide how dark I want the blue to be. I can't bring myself to butcher my old 2nd Edition/RT era metals, and they just look silly next to the big guys. I need to learn how to cast.

 

Anywho. Hopefully I'll have some new models soon. I've been working on my "Master of Signal" (Command Squad generic Marine stand-in) for a while now. Seriously, that model has been a concept for so long Forgeworld beat me to it. But he has a backpack now, and I finally figured out how I want to pose him. Now I just have to actually put the model together.

[Brother Lionheart]

Really impressive Astartes, brother.  Makes my own look positively stunted in comparison, never mind ill-equipped!  As many others, I'm looking forward to seeing some of these models painted.  All the advice I can give, is to take the plunge, maybe as you say with an older model to test the scheme.  Painting a model doesn't have to be the end, either; you can always go back and touch up later.

 

Until next time, the Emperor protects

[Luca Pacioli]

Hi Veteran Sergeant,

Just a quick post for saying thanks for inspiring me to get back into the hobby, after a very long time. I've always been a fan of blood angels and thought I'd just post up a pick of my progress and say keep up the awesome work!

[Veteran Sergeant]

That's a slick looking model. Glad I could inspire you. 

Eventually I will have some more models. I've just not been able to find the time/motivation recently.

[Luca Pacioli]

Have you tried converting any of the metal models yet? I've got a few old ones lying around that I need to attempt to convert. I'm also not sure if they made them much smaller back in the day.

[Veteran Sergeant]

There's too much sentimental value to my old metals. Either that or I remember trying to convert metal models in the old days and how hard it was.

But there's just so much to be done in this process, so no, while I have a ton of metal Space Marines, they won't get chopped up any time soon. Especially not with all the unassembled plastics I have sitting still on sprues or in little bags.

This guy still needs some work. He was assembled using an old set of legs that were repurposed when I pulled apart a dude who needed a waist extension. The legs took a bit of damage in the process that will need to be corrected, and I think I think I may cut the feet free.

Added this after I took those pics. Pic didn't turn out great, but it's a talon from a Carnifex.

This guy obviously another veteran of the Tyranic Wars (in the fluff sense more than the rules-sense). Took a bit of fiddling to get him into the more aggressive pose with the heavy bolter (and amusingly exposes the lack of detail on the inside of the weapon), but it gives him a much more open stance with a "hose 'em down" look.