Nico's Praetorian Guard WIP Thread

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

So here's the WIP thread I promised to do in my brainstorming Praetorian Guard Ideas thread.

I'll admit, I'm pretty depressed about the increase of standard game sizes to 2000 points alongside the assertion that units will cost "about the same" in 8th edition as they do in 7th. That means it will take a long long time to finish this project. But, there's only one thing to do ... do the Guard thing, straighten my tunic, stiffen that upper lip, and get to work slowly but steadily building up that force.

I ordered a bunch of stuff from Victoria Lamb and Mad Robot Miniatures last week. While waiting for pith helmets and other Praetorian bitz to arrive, I decided to start working on the Scions using leftover backpacks and hotshot lasguns I have from the Scion kits I've previously constructed. I am short a few backpacks so I have also tried making replacements ... I think they are passable.

So here's what we have so far.

Hat tip to Stofficus for the suggestion to use Cadian torsos as up-armoured look for Scions!

[WarriorFish]

I wouldn't worry, that was just a snippet to show how much faster the games will be now - nothing stopping you playing at whatever point values you want as before :)

 

Good work so far, the Cadian torso thing works really well - looking forward to seeing more :tu:

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Unfortunately I won't be able to do a lot more until I get my shipments from Victoria Miniatures and Mad Robot ... given international shipping from Australia and USA, respectively, I don't expect to get any of those bitz before the end of the month. I am going to put some of those torsos onto Cadian legs, but others will wait for Victoria legs as I intend to mix Cadian legs throughout my troops to make use of the 20+ Cadians I've had sitting unused since circa 2004, plus also to stretch my VM order as far as I can.

 

I'll build one more hotshot lasgun upper body for 7. I'm not going to build the special weapons and sergeant until 8th hits and we know what we're dealing with and what upgrades are worth taking. Although I suspect melta will be the choice for the Scions who intend to mount in a fast "Taurox Prime" (still trying to figure out how to turn a Gundstock Gunhauler into one) and move ahead aggressively.

 

Speaking of the Taurox Prime I believe I made a critical error ... I cannot for the life of me find the leftover missile launcher and autocannons from the Taurox Prime I built for my inquisiton army and armed with the volley gun and gatling gun. I am worried that I threw those bitz out. Which would be the height of irony since I have two big bitz boxes full of bitz I will probably never used, and yet I threw out the one sprue that I now want! That may prove a rather expensive mistake :(

P.S. -- true, nothing stopping me from playing whatever point level in friendly games. And thank the Emprah, one of my gaming buddies moved back to town so I have someone to play with. It would be sad if I am unable to field a force for Astronomi-con though.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Last night I tried something new on a bit of a whim. While removing mould lines, I accidentally messed up the cargo pocket on this set of Cadian legs so I decided to try my hand at modelling a "green stuff" stripe on the pants so that it would match more with the Victoria Miniatures legs.

It ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be, and also a lot faster. I therefore decided to do an impromptu "tutorial":

1. First I cut off the tab under the top flap of the pocket

Basically then I just roll a strip of green stuff between my finders to made a thin "noodle", and press it onto the model

3. Then use my GS tool (whatever its called -- I have the GW one) to push it flat and smooth the edges so it's straight. Then just push in where there are folds on the existing model/pant leg.

[vampyrerodent]

Love the step by step! You make it look east enough for a self-conscious modeler to try it themselves!

Thanks!

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Cheers, vampyrerodent, glad you found it useful!

 

Got a shipping confirmation today of my Victoria Miniatures order. So it will be a few weeks before I'm able to make any more substantive progress.

 

Unless I buy a Kharadron Overlord frigate ...

[MithrilForge]

Nico, great to see the ball is rolling, love the stripe on the pants leg,looks great   and i love the cadian chests on the scions   is that a straight swap?...

 

look forwards to seeing more here in the near future!!

 

cheers, Mithril

 

and its called a Taurox Prime "Kharadon pattern" 

[NatBrannigan]

*Waves hand Jedi style* "You want to buy a Frigate"

 

I'd love to see how that turns out! Scions looking good although I am partial to the over the top Breastplate myself. They might sutie any cavalry you wanted to make though?

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Nico, great to see the ball is rolling, love the stripe on the pants leg,looks great   and i love the cadian chests on the scions   is that a straight swap?...

 

 

Thanks! Yes, it's just a straight swap -- dead simple kit-bash. I didn't have to do anything other than a bit of cutting and green stuff on those two Cadian comms backpacks that I changed into hotshot power packs.

 

*Waves hand Jedi style* "You want to buy a Frigate"

 

I'd love to see how that turns out! Scions looking good although I am partial to the over the top Breastplate myself. They might sutie any cavalry you wanted to make though?

 

I love the whole look of the Scion models, but for this project I like the Cadian chest plates to give this look.  Plus, all of my baroque Scion torsos have been used on inquisitorial storm troopers. For my Praetorian Scions I am just using leftover hotshot lasguns from my Scion boxes.

 

You know, I was on the verge of "wimping out" and just going with regular Russes, Chimerae, et al. but you guys have encouraged me to stick with the plan of converting those sweet Kharadron Overlord boats.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

*Waves hand Jedi style* "You want to buy a Frigate"

http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt254/viewfromthewing/obiwan_zps064ec357.png

"The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded" ...

I'll admit, when I first unboxed everything I said to myself "what am I doing? This is crazy!" and I was sorely tempted, yet again, to "wimp out". But that isn't the Guard way. This will be a VERY expensive mistake if I muck this up though.

So I started by marking out my first cut very scientifically:

Armed with only an X-Acto Knife since I don't own any of those fancy Dremels or whatever serious modellers who are also into airbrushes use, it worked out surprisingly well and I started feeling better:

The hull is now shortened the way I want to make it seem more squat (see what I did there?) like a Russ. I'm going to enclose the deck with plasticard and making use of some parts of the Russ hull I massacred.

I think I'll throw the Russ turret on the front where the Kharadron turret would me. Sponsons will be a must to make it more Russ-like again and my plan for dealing with the big dwarf face on the prow will involve the front hull weapon.

[duz_]

Moar!!!

[MithrilForge]

Coolness Factor and the unbridled hero worship from your peers Due to an awesome Coversion idea Always comes with the inherent Danger of model loss/wallet pain.

it is easy for us to egg you on costs be damned from the comfort of our keyboards...   ...Do it !!!, hahahahaha....

but seriously, I will temper this with the old saying "measure twice cut once" 

i hope it all works out and other people get inspired by your actual doing of what i'm sure others have dreamed of too

If all goes to plan this looks like it's going to be awesome!!...

 

Cheers and good luck!,  mithril  

 

P.S. go buy yourself one of those new GW model saw's ,seriously,if your going to do more than a couple of these it will pay for itself with nice straight cuts and not sore fingers/Grip...

Edited May 18, 2017 by mithrilforge

[NatBrannigan]

Well it's looking a little better than my head swap on a Russ commander so far! Can't wait too see the end result!

 

I browsed bit sites this morning for you by the way. Bitzbox have the Kharadon Skyrigger flying backpacks on sale for £3 each... Not sure where you are based but could be worth having a look yourself? That would make some great looking rough riders!

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Thanks for the support comrades!

 

Well, as I said, so far it has gone well enough. Good tip on that saw, I should look into that. I don't know how many of these I'll do ... it is a ton of work. But on the other hand you can't have just one Russ! The troop transport version will involve a fair bit less conversion; I'll probably just slap IG weaponry on and pretty much call it a day for those. Maybe drill out the viewports at the rear of the frigate and glue lasguns in there for the lasgun arrays on Chimerae.

 

Unfortuantely, my parents are going to be visiting from out of town and the guest room is also my hobby room, so I doubt I'll have much chance for further progress for a couple weeks because after the visit then I'm on a brief trip of my own out of town. I've had trouble finding plasticard locally (Canada really is a wasteland in so many ways) but I do have a number of old gift cards of various sorts kicking around and I've read that those work well so the new WIP may look oddly multicoloured but once primed should look fine.

[MithrilForge]

 

I browsed bit sites this morning for you by the way. Bitzbox have the Kharadon Skyrigger flying backpacks on sale for £3 each... Not sure where you are based but could be worth having a look yourself? That would make some great looking rough riders!

 

or you could use them as Elysian grav chutes... although if you didn't go horses/lizards or motorbikes... steampunk jump packs would be awesome... i wonder how the sizing would go?... Zepplin squad?, Squad Dirigible?... Tally-Ho lads!

 

Mithril     

[walter h]

You know that now you have to get the ironclad. Valk, or Vendetta, counts as .

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

The Ironclad is pretty massive. I was thinking Baneblade

[MithrilForge]

The Ironclad is pretty massive. I was thinking Baneblade

 

Agreed.... the nameplate would have to say "Ironclad" though,you know right?...

 

Mithril

 

++EDIT++ check this link for idea's Nico - 

 

http://commissar.proboards.com/thread/19042/teaching-guard-tricks-update-imperial

Edited May 22, 2017 by mithrilforge

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Well, the guests have vacated my hobby room so I got back to work last night with a bit of "plasticard" (old used-up gift cards):

Slowly coming together. I'm going to put sponsons on that plasticard once I've assembled the rest. It is starting to look a bit Russ-like already and I am gaining confidence that this will turn out well. I am not sure about the hull-mounted gun. As you can see somewhat I chopped a hole in the front of the prow -- basically removing the dwarf face there. It still doesn't fit though. It will need more plasti card.

Having seen in another thread Scions with the shoulder pads trimmed down for a smoother look (cf. http://www.excommunicatetraitoris.com/2014/05/astra-militarum-kasrkin-conversion-from.html), I'm debating whether to do that for my Praetorian Scions. Yet the praetorian Scions with "stock" Scion shoulder pads look good too in the link mithrilforge put up. What do you guys think?

[duz_]

I think the standard more elaborate should pads would suit the Praetorians better than the plain ones

[MithrilForge]

I think the standard more elaborate should pads would suit the Praetorians better than the plain ones

I agree, the standard pad (although not to my liking) will really suit your Victorian/Steampunk-Praetorian theme well.

i do hope you've already cashed in the voucher cards , it's looking promising even from this small snippet of work shown.

 

good luck and keep at it!!

 

cheers, Mithril 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

 

Armed with only an X-Acto Knife since I don't own any of those fancy Dremels or whatever serious modellers who are also into airbrushes use

 

I have both an airbrush (3, actually) and a Dremel (also 3... strangely) and I would use an $8 razor saw to do the cutting. I have tried using the cutting wheel that came with my Dremel and it just seems like a quick way to get some stitches.

 

You can probably pick up something like this at a local hobby store for under $10:

 

[walter h]

  The Ironclad is not as large as a Baneblade, I just bought one and it is more in line with a valk in size.

Edited May 25, 2017 by walter h

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Slowly the Kharadron-pattern flying (hovering) Russ is coming together. It looks kind of goofy with my poor man's plasticard (used up gift cards) but I'm pretty confident that once it gets some primer on it, it will look a lot better. I'm going to add some stowage and use green stuff to cover up or fill some of the small gaps that are observable. The sponson weapons are not glued-in, and I plan to do my first ever magnetization on the turret gun.

A Leman Russ turret will not fit on the front. So my plan is to use a Chimera turret for the boxy Imperial look. I have an ancient Chimera with the really skinny/low profile turret that I can use on the Frigate that will serve as a chimera. This tank will have the ability to switch between Eradicator, Punisher, and Executioner based on the spare bitz I have lying around. I'll have to buy another Russ kit to convert the next one and I plan to make that able to be standard Russ or Vanquisher.

I'm a bit perplexed on what to do with the rudder that was chopped off along with the rear section.

[duz_]

Coming along nicely!

I think it will look great with a coat of paint on it, even if thats just primer!