BCK's Thread of Stuff: Super Heavy

[Bryan Blaire]

Sorry that the Cold Ones aren't going to work out, BCK. It is too bad that there isn't more variety in the Cold One poses, the Rough Riders would have looked awesome astride cold, scaly steeds and sculpting new large lizard bodies would have been such a pain. Looking forward to seeing your new idea though, with the cabled plasma rifles, and some foot Vostys with the sallet type helms.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I found my missing 4th cold one body earlier today while looking for more horse parts and to my great surprise it wasn't nearly identical to the other 3.  I did find out there is a slight difference in the arm positions of a few of the bodies, but more importantly was that the left leg and body side was different with the foot barely touching the ground. I had a family event to go to tonight and most of the time I was there I was contemplating if I really wanted to give up on an idea so fast that I've wanted to do for close to a decade (at least). Now that found the missing cold one, I don't need to make anymore castings and the nightmare fit problems that come with it. Well, I'm missing the one rider I used on a failed conversion a while back and will need to do something about that. 

 

Anyway, I decided to see what I could for re-posing the overgrown raptor when I got home to get a little more movement feel out of him. Out came the blades and I targeted the hip and thigh on the right side of the body for removal. It's difficult to see from the angle in the pics but where the red line is there's a ridge of protruding scales that run from the tail up the body and I used that line as a guide for cutting the top of the leg. 

 

 

Then I chopped the leg at the knee, pinned it, and temp glued the leg bag on along with the other body half along with a head and the rider to see how it looks. 

 

 

 

This is definitely closer to what I imagined with the body pitched forward more and the tail higher in the air like we're used to seeing in stuff like the Jurassic films. The rider still seems to sit awkwardly and will need work, but for now the idea of lizard cavalry got a stay of execution. 

 

 

**edit*

 

Forgot to post my conversion challenge pics! I've been working on a Castellax idea I've had for a while that I originally intended to do with my 30k Dusk Raiders as an allied Mechanicum force. I got some of these dirt cheap from a guy some time back that are recasts in not great shape, at all, because he was getting replacements and his modeling skills weren't up to trying to salvage them.

 

So, while I like the overall look of the guys, I didn't care for the weird bolted head-thing on them or the bizarre skull cavity in the middle of the chest. And given that most of the raised armor trim was so thin it broke in shipping, I took the opportunity to remove it all and go for a smoother, cleaner look.

 

 

 

Personally, I think they look heavier and more sinister with the smooth dome and the hole in the chest filled in to a natural point.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Major_Gilbear]

Looks like you had a productive weekend! I'm glad you found the other Cold One too, as I liked your efforts with the riders so far. :)

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Update on the rough rider. 

 

 

Putting the texture back on the leg wasn't as bad as I thought it would once I realized I could chop up the oyumaru mold and use it was a texture stamp.

 

I'm going to have to remake the plasgun mold because they all look like crap but I like the overall look of the mock up here.  

[DaBoiKyknos]

Hmm, those look cool, but they aren´t Vostroyans to me tbh...

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Remember that these are my 8th ed. Vostroyans that got upgraded helmets in the wake of Saint Guilliman bringing new toys to all the good kids. 

 

 

And there will be some sculpting work done to make these rough riders look more like traditional Vostys with the big coats and all that. 

[OakRiver]

Great work. I have never had a lot of success using oyumaru to cast weapons, so if you have any tips I'd be happy to hear

[DaBoiKyknos]

Remember that these are my 8th ed. Vostroyans that got upgraded helmets in the wake of Saint Guilliman bringing new toys to all the good kids. 

 

But there are the fur-hats?!  

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

The fur hats was the one thing I didn't like about the Vostys and now I have the ability to change it. I'll be doing some writing to accompany the figures as I build that has them in an environment where their normal respirator masks are insufficient and that regiment is given some low end skitarii helmets.

[DaBoiKyknos]

Ah ok. That´s were disagree. I always loved the fur hats, but they are your models and all...

Do they still have theoretical mustaches under their breathing masks? :) 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Of course they still have mustaches under the helms!

 

Finally sat down and dug through some of my vehicle sprues for some detailing on the Vostroyan tank destroyer and I think it's looking pretty good. 

 

 

 

Rocking that old school 2nd Edition tank hatch and the others are from the Manticore sprues with a few camera gubbins from some terminators to be the sights for the gunner. Next is finishing up the engine deck and exhaust and then rivets. Lots of rivets. 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Impressive work.

[Lexington]

YAY LIZARD-HORSE. Dig that helm, too.

 

Any plan to do a high-back saddle or anything of the like?

[FlamingDeth]

I'm wondering for the rough riders if it would be worth adding bionics to help change up the poses? It would help with the repetition without having to sculpt a bunch of scales. Armoring them up could help hide some joins too. Both seem plausible with fluff, I imagine that trained riding dinosaurs are valuable and I doubt they'd let one go just because it was injured. Edited November 17, 2017 by CardinalVirtue

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I hadn't planned on a high-back saddle but I'll give it some thought, and I dunno about bionics.

 

So, this post will be a good news/bad news thing. 

 

Good news? A little more work on trying to nail down the look for my lizard cavalry and now they have armor to keep them in line with the Vostroyans originally being heavy infantry and all of them being equipped with carapace armor so I felt the rough riders should follow suit. I removed the spikes on the neck and head of the lizard because it occurred to me it could be quite a hazard for the rider. 

 

 

I also made a new mold of the plasgun carbine and got rid of that huge mold slip on the barrel, though it's still not as good as I'd like. 

 

So what's the bad news? I really don't think my brother and friend are really that interested in playing. Even with the suggestion of the slow grow idea and starting really small, anytime I bring up working on some models I get noncommittal grunts and subject changes so I'm not going to bother them about it anymore. What really sucks for me is that I just ordered five more infantry squads and enough replacement heads for them and all the other guys I currently have. If I'm real honest with myself, I was very excited for 8th when it first dropped but it's turning into the multi-book nightmare that the last several editions were and my enthusiasm for playing again is taking a nosedive. Oh yeah, and the super nerfs that GW is doing with the FAQs is getting real annoying too. *sigh*

 

In the realm of other project ideas, I was recently reading about military recovery vehicles after seeing a very nicely done 1/35 scale model of an older M51 HRV (heavy recovery vehicle) built from the chassis of the last real heavy tank the US military had - the M103 - before dropping heavies entirely and going with the main battle tank platform. Here's some pics of the real thing. 

 

 

 

Is it just me or does it kinda feel like a 40k vehicle? So what's the idea? At the time, the M103 was the heaviest tank we had at 58 tons and there wasn't a recovery vehicle that had a chance of moving that much weight by itself so they used the same chassis to make the recovery vehicle. Now, Forge World has made two recovery/support vehicles that are conversions of existing kits with the Trojan made from a Chimera (and is still being sold) and the Atlas made from a Russ which is no longer on the site.

 

But what if you needed to recover a super heavy? Are you going to use five Atlas vehicles to tow it back to base or haul it out of the mud that couldn't support its ridiculous weight? In the real world, probably not because someone would have made a recovery vehicle that could handle a super heavy in tandem with the production of the tank, but in the setting where logic is thrown out the window more often than not I'm sure that would be the answer. But it's an answer I don't like and I'm seriously considering making a super heavy recovery vehicle because of the challenge and also because it scratches an illogical itch about the setting. I tried to convert a Shadosword years ago when it and the Baneblade were still separate kits and made a total mess of things and I'm wanting to use that as the base for this idea.

[Sagentus]

That carapace on the steed looks great, the model as a whole look spot on! 

 

The idea about the super heavy recovery vehicle is awesome and i look forward to seeing it put into action!

[Lexington]

[...] I'm seriously considering making a super heavy recovery vehicle because of the challenge and also because it scratches an illogical itch about the setting. I tried to convert a Shadosword years ago when it and the Baneblade were still separate kits and made a total mess of things and I'm wanting to use that as the base for this idea.

 

Y'know, Dave Taylor did a cool Gorgon conversion on a Baneblade way back in the day. Obviously, a real FW Gorgon also happened (then de-happened, apparently?) at some point, but Taylor's work might be a good base/inspiration for you here. Sounds like a fun project, really want to see where it goes.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Lexington

[Lord_Ikka]

If I remember right, in the Macharius Crusade novels, the Imperial Guard didn't recover super-heavy tanks- they just left them where they went down and later the Mechanicus used their super-heavy transporters to move the damaged vehicles. Of course, the idea of a super-heavy recovery vehicle is really interesting.

[Ferrus Manus]

Don’t give up on your Vostrayans, even a small force of them will look great at the rate you are going.

[Dantay VI]

BCK, I would advise that you stick with your Vostroyans and get them done. Nothing can light a fire under someones enthusiasm as much as seeing a beautifully crafted army.

 

So please keep at it, would be a shame to see the Vostroyans sent back to their box again.

 

Coud you avert the multi-book nightmare, by sticking to the indexes for a while until you get familiar and then go all multi-book. Or do the Indexes really limit your choices?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

 

Y'know, Dave Taylor did a cool Gorgon conversion on a Baneblade way back in the day. Obviously, a real FW Gorgon also happened (then de-happened, apparently?) at some point, but Taylor's work might be a good base/inspiration for you here. Sounds like a fun project, really want to see where it goes.

 

I hadn't seen that and he did a damn good job on his Gorgon. It might very well provide some inspiration. :)

 

If I remember right, in the Macharius Crusade novels, the Imperial Guard didn't recover super-heavy tanks- they just left them where they went down and later the Mechanicus used their super-heavy transporters to move the damaged vehicles. Of course, the idea of a super-heavy recovery vehicle is really interesting.

 

I was thinking about something along these lines while I was work; would it be a Guard vehicle or an AdMech vehicle? The two FW support/recovery vehicles always had Guard figures with them, often DKoK since the vehicles were introduced in their sourcebooks, but I wondered if a super heavy recovery vehicle might be different. Perhaps in the somewhat unusual situation Vostroya finds itself in with the AdMech - being pledged to them first before the Imperium but not technically a forge world - they may have such a vehicle instead of relying on AdMech specific forces to recover downed super heavies. 

 

Don’t give up on your Vostrayans, even a small force of them will look great at the rate you are going.

 

BCK, I would advise that you stick with your Vostroyans and get them done. Nothing can light a fire under someones enthusiasm as much as seeing a beautifully crafted army.

 

So please keep at it, would be a shame to see the Vostroyans sent back to their box again.

 

Coud you avert the multi-book nightmare, by sticking to the indexes for a while until you get familiar and then go all multi-book. Or do the Indexes really limit your choices?

 

I'm not giving up on them and maybe my brother and friend would get a fire lit under them if I started finishing a good number of figures. 

 

Regarding the multi-book stuff, right now with the Vostroyans it doesn't really affect me that much since I'm only using the rough riders and the tank destroyer from the index, but it doesn't bode well how quickly it's becoming Index, Codex, and very soon Chapter Approved being required to run your army. 

 

And on the recovery vehicle, I'm currently trying to decide if I want a crane arm like the M51 pics I posted above or a boom more like the M88 series (this one being the A2 variant). 

 

[Dantay VI]

 

http://tank-photographs.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/kingtiger-recovery-1956.jpg

 

 

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h160/trx850_2006/persuit-ship.jpg

 

[Marshal Rohr]

Dantay beat me to it. Heavy tank battalions had 3-4 heavy recovery vehicles built off damaged tigers. I think the full TOE called for more, but I’m not sure. The Nafziger Collection from CGSC has a detailed outline.

[The Traitor]

Long time since I last checked in, so I have to say I'm really loving your Cold One cavalry, and am very glad that you didn't give up on it (family events are the best to think about what to do for your model army :P), though the head armour looks a bit weird right now to me.

 

As for the Castellax, your "edition" of the armour looks good, but what you though that was actually the head is just the back, the skull you removed from the chest is supposed to be the actual head, this is an Imperium robot after all, they don't use artificial intelligence so they need a human brain to be inside, it isn't that different from a servitor. Conversion looks quite nice though, would love to see more progress on him.

 

The Tank Destroyer looks gorgeous, and your initial concern of it being useless in-game will hopefully get fixed with Chapter Approved. Also I didn't ever like the FW recovery tanks, but if anyone can make that concept work in 40k, it is you, so can't wait on updates on that!

 

I also noticed you used a FW skitarii helm for your Rough Rider, and I have to say it fits the Vostroyan aesthetic A LOT better, though I might be influenced by me loving that kit... Still I would try to make as much of the army with those as possible.

 

At last, I think you shouldn't give up on 8th edition so soon, as a Guard player you just need the basic rulebook and your codex, I usually don't bring any faqs to my games, I simply know about any major changes, though I have them downloaded in my phone in case something pops up. What I do understand however is being let down by your friends not being as excited as you, something similar is happening with my Warhammer friends group right now, and before that I had my father and my brother leave the hobby some years ago, and it sucks. I've been having more games with people from my local store which I don't know that well though, and it has been great for adding more variety to my games, even if it not the same as playing with close friends.

 

Will be looking out for more updates, your Vostroyans are a very promising army!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

When the castellax were released I liked everything about them except for the skulls everywhere and the one the chest seems like a very poor place to build in a weak point of a combat machine. Properly filled in it resembles the pike nose of the heavy Russian tanks I like so much. 

 

Glad you like the TD and I've read a few accounts of people getting good results out of them, though like any other tanks in the Guard they die quick if any attention is turned their way. 

 

While I would love to give all of the Vostys the FW skitarii helms it would be prohibitively expensive for me right now.