Vox Stellarum: The Unification Wars

[Umbral]

So after building Ryltar's first Proto Astartes naturally I had to build my own.



This time I used a Cataphractii head, and mounted the kataphron plates on a Stormcast, 











The sword is a Heavy Chainsword from the Forge world mkiv power weapon kit, that was bent back using the heat from a lighter, then I glued the end of a Nostraman Chainglaive to the end just to get a give it more length, and added a disintegration pistol from the Imperial Space Marine 

[Ryltar Thamior]

Beautiful work Umbral :D I've been waiting for you to post this .. and the Albians .. for awhile so everybody else can marvel at it :D 

[Ryltar Thamior]

Servitor for the Egyptian-inflected Mechanicum ... 

 

 

 

As you can see, the idea here is a heavy-weapons servitor, albeit one with a few 'twists' on the more conventional silhouette. For starters, there's the fact that the formerly living components of the unfortunate who's provided the body are uh ... pretty wasted away and decrepit, rather than being at least moderately fleshy/healthy. Undecided as yet as to whether to go with quasi-mummified skin, or metal for the 'bone' bits - the lattr would haev a bit of a necron feel perhaps, but would definitely insinuate some dark stuff like Men of Iron or whatever. 

 

The Tomb Kings helm and shield really help to add to the Egyptian/Bronze Age feel of the servitor, an the slack-jawed silent scream pose of the skull also gives a personality that is otherwise lacking in many servitor sculpts - maybe there's still a sembalnce of who he was in there somewhere ... 

 

 

The shield's there to deflect shots from the core mechanisms of the servitor and maybe the weapon; wonder if there's an energy projector in there. 

 

 

Back-shot which is slightly blurry but shows the direct intgration of the plasma weapon into th backpack; althogh presumably means that aiming requires a whole body pivot. 

 

 

 

And yeah uh - the weapon's a Primaris helblaster plasma rifle - archaeotech designs rediscovered by Cawl latr, presumably.

 

 

Scale-shot next to an Iron Warriors Auxilia. 

 

 

Show's he's surprisingly 'beefy' for a skeletally thin guy :P 

 

Now, partsmix is TOmb Kings head, torso, left arm + shield; Primaris helblaster plasma-rifle; Skitarii backpack and legs. 

 

I'm looking forward to a few more servitors kinda like this in various different combinations, plus the appropriate 'necromancers' to keep 'em animated and moving th right way :D 

 

Note to GW: Forget Newcrons ... THIS is how you do Tomb Kings In Spaaaaace! 

[as per usual, an Umbral creation]

[Vairocanum]

Fantastic work to the both of you! Those proto astartes look fantastic. Love the differing styles of both of them, but wow that's a really big sword. Looking forward to seeing more!

[Ryltar Thamior]

MORE WEAPONS SERVITORS FOR THE ARMY OF THE PHARAOHS 

 

 

 

 

 

Partsmix is again Tomb Kings skeletons plus AdMech Skitarii legs; weapons are, variously, the volleyguns from a Taurox,  and the hellblaster plasma incineratory things from Dark Imperium. Another lot of Umbrals. 

 

The first one is *mostly* painted , just needs inking and a few details picked out. Really looking forward to running a full Army of the Dead of these and some other types up against Umbral's Albians :D 

[deathspectersgt7]

Those are Crazy COOL !!!

[brother tycho]

Oh I love what your doing with skeleton survitors, you understand the great crusade like you were present, how old are you..

[Legio Draconis]

WOW 

[Bythehololight]

This is sooo good. Do you have a full army of proto marines?

Iron warriors auxilia also look awesome!

[Dragonlover]

Have you guys considered using any third party stuff for this? I feel like some Scibor bits might work well.

 

Dragonlover

[Markus_]

Great conversion work in this thread. :)

[Ryltar Thamior]

Thanks for the positive feedback, everybody - please keep it coming, as it's great incentive to do more stuff :D 
 

This is sooo good. Do you have a full army of proto marines?
Iron warriors auxilia also look awesome!

Lol, we'll definitely have a few more in the not-too-distant future - although for various reasons, an "army" of proto-Astartes might uh ... might only be a few. And you can see more of the Auxilia in our Horus Heresy thread [link in sig]. 

 

 

Have you guys considered using any third party stuff for this? I feel like some Scibor bits might work well.

Dragonlover

Funnily enough, we actually did our first-ever order through Scibor a few weeks ago - sourcing lion-head shoulderpads [and some shields iirc] for my Adamanticores, as well as some other parts for a .. secret project you'll hopefully start seeing in the foreseeable. Are there any particular parts or ranges you'd recommend for Unification?

 

 

Oh I love what your doing with skeleton survitors, you understand the great crusade like you were present, how old are you..

Lol. I can neither confirm nor deny that one or both of us may in fact wind up living tens of millennia on into the future. 

But yeah uh .. part of our success i guess is just being reasonably familiar with a lot of the material that a number of the authors have directly been referencing or drawing upon for inspiration , and then working that in for our own projects, occasionally taken in *sllliiiightly* different directions [most commonly: "up to eleven"]. 

You can see this most prominently with stuff like the fluff work-ups for my [loyalist] Iron Warriors and Night Lords [Heresy thread link in Sig] - wherein the fact they're *also* Terran veterans from the very early Great Crusade or even really late Unification is established, in no small part, via the intentional use of quite a bit of Sanskrit and Hindu myth. Why those elements? Because when you take a look at quite an array of stuff in both the HH Black Books, and some of the Black Library novels which touch on (proto-)Imperial Forces drawn from Terra, there's quite a bit of that around *anyway* [see, for instance, the way Graham McNeill wrote about Thunder Warriors and the region of the Imperial Palace which quite likely forms the 'heartland' of Unification in The Outcast Dead.]. 

Except instead of a few characters here and there and relics of a bygone [even by the HEresy] age in erms of naming conventions ... well ... there's a lot more of them, running a *lot* more deeply, and 'very much alive' so to speak. I also quite like the way in which drawing mythic names helps inform characterization - as well as giving hte sense for those of us 'in on it' of illustrating evocatively a Mythic Age with our work. 



 

[Ryltar Thamior]

 

been a bit quiet ... sat down to do something else with Umbral, and this kinda happened instead. Awhle ago we'd grabbed a few of the Khornate AoS characters for potential use as proto-astartes; and after realizing they'd be a *bit* sketch in some particulars for this role, we hit a bit of an impasse as to how best ot make use of htem. 

 

 

But looking at the half-assembled miniature this evening, and remembering the single-handed Grey Knight spears [or  glaives or wahtevertheyare], things just kinda started coming together! [We've had a few Empire General sprues sitting around with the lion-helmeted head earmarked for Thunder Warrior-ness for quite awhile now]

 

 

Main issues were what to do about the rather large difference between wrist/forearm and the armoured gauntlet [i.e. the construction of a vambrace]; and what to do with the chap's left hand [the one the chain's connected to], as well as a few more touches to ensure that it looks like a part of the Imperium [or, to be more precise, the Imperium's anciently forgotten fore-runner in the forces of Unity]. 

 

 

I think that with the posing, armament, and all the rest of it that it's now one of those miniatures that automatically suggests what its function is - and I'm envisaging, here, some kind of [potentially solitary] Hunter. 

 

 

He's also equipped with a rather ornate [sheathed] dagger I'm thinking of as a proto-Misericordia, and has a book on a chain potentially to record targets, kills, and other such htings [it's also a nice counterpoint to the hulking brutality of the miniature to have such a ... literate touch]. Grenades help drive home that this isn't a fantasy miniature [although these days, of Dwarves with chainswords and power-armoured top-hats .. who'd know, I guess?]; and an omnispex from the Skitarii kit serves as an admiirable pre-Crusade Auspex-style device.

 

 

The vambrace made out of the winged lion from the Scions kit helps to connotate further the swooping down hunter style thing [partiuclarly in light of hte laurel'd lion-helm]; while the winged skulls [which i should probably check potential meanings of] further tie the miniature to the future Imperium. 

 

Sizewise, he's uh ... i'll do some comparison shots at some future time, maybe. But he *towers* over ordinary unaugmented humans [like, nearly but not quite twice as tall]; and even truescale Astartes only come up to about his mid-chest. Obviously he's not in powered [or even semi-powered' armour - presumably so he can move more stealthily and unencombered by worries about running out of opwer. 

 

Man, maybe h e could use some 'associates' [maybe the sabertusks from teh Ogre Kingdoms range]. 

[Cocha]

That... Thing of the Abeyant with legs and fricking Lorgar on top of it... Is simply wonderful!!! You inspired me in building something like it and use it like some kind of Mechanicus knight.

[ElDuderino]

Wow, just wow. So much awesomeness. Subbed obviously

[Terimus]

Holy cow, this is impressive! I really love what you guys have going here! I was planning on building some Thunder Warriors myself using Tartaros as the base, but your guys are HUGE! 

[Ryltar Thamior]

Holy cow, this is impressive! I really love what you guys have going here! I was planning on building some Thunder Warriors myself using Tartaros as the base, but your guys are HUGE! 

Well, if you were comparing them to 'regular' scale Astartes then it'd possibly work sizewise - the only issue is that Tartaroi are far too 'uniform' in their look to be Unification era quasi-powered armour IMO. 

 

But for my money [in a semi-literal sense i suppose],, if you're going to do something like this ... you not only "go big or go home", you attempt to make everything look as individual and distinctive as necessary from its 30k/40k 'descendents'.

 

If you were looking for an 'easier' path to doing Thunder Warriors than spending up on Chaos characters and Primarchs , and didn't mind htem being smaller than possibly needed, you could *probably* grab some of the larger Age of Sigmar khornate mortal units and just start up-armouring from there.

 

I've also seen some rather impressive efforts built around Nurgle Blightkings on this very forum [although the images, sadly, are no longer up :( - a pity, too, as the fluff behind them was excellent and many of hte elementsi n that particular log were spectacularly well done. It's called Horus Heresy kill-teams or something like that] 

[Dragonlover]

So, Rogal Dorn seems tailor made for this project right? Either as a slightly more collected Thunder Warrior (maybe an earlier generation one who acts as a discipline master?) or something Custodes related?

 

Dragonlover

[Ryltar Thamior]

So, Rogal Dorn seems tailor made for this project right? Either as a slightly more collected Thunder Warrior (maybe an earlier generation one who acts as a discipline master?) or something Custodes related?

 

Dragonlover

 

IFKR! Umbral showed me the pix last night, and that was pretty much the first thought! Everything from the stance and pose through to the profusion of Raptor Imperalii is very, VERY period appropriate! 

 

Which remidns me .. we still have a few primarch models floating aound we havent' done much on/with...

[Ryltar Thamior]

 

Right, so originally I wasn't going to share these until they were basically done (by which i mean, all the conversion-work etc. - painting's a glacial thing for me to a standard I'm happy with, as you may have noticed by now :P ) ... however, they've now been sitting there on my desk for *literally months* now , and I kinda feel i've hit a bit of a creative roadblock. 

 

 

These're a few Xeric XIXth legionnaires, as a bit of a counterpoint to Umbral's XIVth Dusk Raiders. The Mk.III [truescale] is hand-constructed - and because I'm some sort of maverick for doing things in difficult ways, rather than the 'usual' approach people seem to use of greenstuffing torsos in whole or in part, I wound up building up the backs of the torsos by hand out of plastic and resin. 

 

 

Anyway, the issue I've run into is ... I feel a strong need to make it clear that these're Xeric Astartes - that is to say, in contrast to the relatively humane and civilized Raven Guard we meet once Corax has taken command, these're barbarians and slavers rendered unto transhuman form. 

 

 

I've managed a few touches here and there that I feel help convey the impression that these are *not* nice people, so to speak; and I'm rather pleased with the torc I've modelled onto the duellist [conceptually at least - it uh .. had a bit of an incident and had to be re-done, with the second iteration not being quite as flush with the neck as the first :/ ] ; but other than the skull-on-a-chain that's fitted to the backpack/comms unit of the Marine I've taken to calling "Yamnaya" [coz he looks sorta like Brad Pitt .. and .. well .. the Yamnaya Pit-Grave Culture [who're preetty close to the "original" Indo-Europeans according to present academic consensus] found in much hte same area as the Scythians who were the inspiration for this project], I've really been struggling with what I can do to portray "Barbarian" and "Slaver" - without 'overegging' it and adding visually dominating chains, skulls etc. from the Flagellant kit that'll sorta "overpower" the much more a) subtle and b) 'realistic' design choices for the rest of the miniatures. Insofar as an eight foot tall steppe tribesman in a walking tank bellowing warcries and firing a rocket-propelled grenade launcher is either "subtle" or "realistic", of course :P 

 

 

In any case, the four marines completed thus far [there's a fifth that's even further off because I'm doing it as a homage to a miniature from my original 3rd edition Space Wolf-ish army, so it's requiring a bit of effort to hunt down the right 'vibe' parts] represent an XIXth Legion kill-team from the mid-late Unification Wars; armed and otherwise equipped to operate for reasonably long periods well in advance of other Army of Unification forces in that strike-and-fade-and-ambush approach so beloved of their later successors.

 

 

Their Mk.III warplate is, obviously, somewaht incongruous with what's on-offer for most other power armour equipped Unification-era formations ; however, I'm imagining they're basically allowed quite some top-of-the-line high-tech hardware in view of their elite spec-ops nature .. while the larger plates of Mk.III [and somewhat jury-rigged Mk.III it is, too...] presumably represent an easier-to-maintain suit of warplate as compared to the much more fiddly ring-based systems of Mk.II; while also enabling extended in-field performance as compared to Mk.1 [there's osmething to be said for having powered leg armour, it appears...]. 

 

 

This operational modus also explains the comms operator; as well as the significant stowage and side-arm-ery each Marine has been equipped with. I personally tend to find many Marines and more than a few truescale efforts to be comparatively 'underdone' on this front - probably because, in-universe, the Marines in question aren't intended to be operating far from resupply or in the field for extended periods of time. Whereas these chaps [and, for that matter, my Loyalist IVth - whom they may wind up crossing paths with in the much younger days of the latter...] are used to slogging around the desert in long-range efforts for days or even weeks at a time. 

 

 

I also went with the Catachan close combat weapons rather htan chainswords for most of them [well, 2/4 - one chainsword, and one pair of rathre more ornate power-swords rounds out the other two in the squad] because a) they make less noise than the rrRRRRR RRRRRRR of a chainblade [so better for sneaky sentry execution etc. wtih]; and b) they presumably again rquire far less maintenance than a chainblade, with far less chance of being rendered inoperable by sustained build-up of grit. The comms operator obviously has some .. different ideas on this front!

 

 

So that's the four of them. And while I can conceivably manage some skull-chain-on-belt elements to both a) tie the unit together visually, and b) stress bot hthe "slavers" [coz chains] and "barbaric skull-takers" angles , based around some mock-ups i just did after taking these pictures ... before I glue those in place, I felt I'd better ask teh denizens of this esteemed forum if they had any thoughts about what I might be able to do instead. 

 

 

(oh and here's a shot of that torc)

 

FOr reference, I'm pushing Scythian/Indo-European steppe barbarian aesthetics and theming with them, in case that's of assistance with ideas. 

 

I also then have to work out a colour-scheme for 'em :P 

[Ryltar Thamior]

 

The fifth XIXth legionnaire. This is the one I did as a 'homage' to a plastic Space Wolf a *much* younger me assembled a few years shy of two decades ago. Took far longer than the rest because I couldn't find a head to appropriately mimic the original Space Wolf upgrade sprue one; and also because I was mulling over what additional detailing to add to him to keep him in line with hte 'Scythian' theme I'm going for.

 

 

Now, handily, a few points of potential 'inspiration' started to express themeslves once i got my hands on the 'new' Primaris not-tactical marines kit - as there are some pretty nifty heads in there imo [even though I remain rather unsold on aspects of Mk.X aesthetics, especially in comparison to previous armours - but I digress]. And even though it's not an 'exact' match for my childhood Wolf miniature ... I really do quite like his facial expression! really goes *very* nice wiht the posing! 

 

 

Now in terms of his equpiment ... the bolter and powerfist combo is part of the 'homage' angle. But I hit upon a few 'evolutions' when kitting out the rest of him. One of which was provided by the belt-knife [i don't particularly allow my Marines to go into the field sans a) a sidearm [bolt-pistol, left hip, to be drawn and used by the right hand - even though he's already got a bolter], and b) a close-combat weapon [yes, in addition to the power-fist - c.f my Black Dragon over in the Thorians log having the arm-blades *and* a knife ... for Starship Troopers reference points, partially :P ]], which i wound up having to link to his belt via the addition of a length of chain [wouldn't really fit otherwise at a 'natural' angle]. 

 

This naturally opened the question as to what to put oon the *end* of the chain. And on a sudden impulse, I put an arrow there. Why? Well, as it turns out, ancient Greek writers recorded a custom of Scythian [possibly not *literally* Scythian - it's a long story] messengers and heralds carrying a golden arrow. 

 

Which, of course, meant that i could possibly fill in the *other* gaping space on his belt/left lower  torso ... with a scroll, that may very well be the "message". Or an oath, or some battle-plans, or something else entirely. Possibly even a decoy! 

 

And, alongside that, the skull that's attached to said scroll [from the Flagellants kit - which is really excellent, as i may have mentioned severaldozen times before]. 

 

 

Anyway, I know i'm a bit biased, but I'm quite a fan of how he's come together! It's recognizeably similar enough for my tastes to the original miniature I built all those years ago .. while also really 'working' on his own in terms of both DYNAMIC posing and that whole 'comic-book' look [you cna just picture the onomatopoeic bolt-gun firing noises in big colourful text behind him, Warhammer Monthly style .. "KROOM!!! KROOM!!! KROOOM!!! KROOOM!!!", indeed] that a truescale miniature should often  [again, imo] seek to encompass. I mean, what's the point of all this additional effort we put in if it *isn't* making some walking art, and is just hum-drum , right? :P 

 

The gritted teeth [gnashing, even?] of the face really makes it as well. 

 

And I'm quite pleased I actutally managed to get him looking pretty much right down the barrel. 

 

 

The other four are presently Painting In Progress ... at least partially because i'm attempting  to work out how to do the blimmin' shoulder-rims of the prdominantly grey scheme i've gone for based off teh pre-Corax XIXth legion plate from the relevant FW Black Book and the Mk.IV Recon Legionnaire art from the same/a similar source. ATM, it's looking like metallics followed by several ink washes of various persuasions. 

 

"Paint yourself some XIXth Legion," I said.

"It'll be SIMPLE", I said. 

"How hard can it possibly be to do black and/or grey Marines", I said. 

 

yeeeeeeeeeeeeee. 

 

Oh well, they look legit anyway, and fluff-'s coming along for 'em as well. 

[Ryltar Thamior]

 

Allllrighty. 1x Techno-Barbarian, ready for undercoating. 

 

Now, this chap's been sitting in various states of non-completion on my desk for some months now. The initial idea was fine, but there was always some detail which I couldn't quite figure out. Starting, of course, with the head - which would really be the focal point of hte miniature in terms of turning it into something other than an Age of Sigmar not-marauder with some 40k-era trimmings. 

 

It wasn't until I saw the vaguely skull-like gas-mask on the Necromunda Goliaths sprue that I felt I might have found something worthwhile ... which hten screamed at me to add a Greco-Roman style plume/crest. 

 

Which then made me realize that in my err, bid to do something different, i'd arguably made a Goliath - head-wise, anyway :P . But the rest of the miniature, in particular the raw power [rather than 'roid power] and furs and such handily distinguish it from that end of things, I feel. Not that i've yet decided whether or how i might make broader use of the Goliath bodies etc. in Unification era anyway, but I digress. Finding a way to fill in the gap between the plume and the mask where the Goliath hair usually goes, as wellas the *other* gap in the neck between collarbone and back/bottom of jaw were .. vexing. I *nearly* added some gas-tanks or whatever  to his back or belt, and ran a hose up over the shoulder from the thing projecting out of the latter [which is made from part of a free company crossbow, of all things] - but decided to just go for simplicity and leave it as is. Might keep that idea for a future project, thogh!

 

 

Other htan the head, the main alterations were to swap the axe or whatever it was in his right hand [it's been so long ago now that i removed it at the start of this process, that i forget! what he was carrying initially], for a bolt-pistol. I'd ummed and uhheed about whehter such a relativey advanced weaopn would be viable for such a figure - but the decision effectively got made for me due to the relative paucity of pistol-bearing hands that were of sufficient size to *not* look out of place on the end of his seriously sizeable forearm. Maybe it's a relic, maybe it's a trophy, maybe his clan's got a surprisingly adroit command of some technology [in a manner similar to how Khyber Pass Specials are made today, perahps - might even be a vaguely similar region, now that i come to thinnk about it...], or maybe he's been issued with this weapon by his liege - particularly if in Imperial/Unification service. 

 

I also found myself pondering what to do about hte area where the uh .. chest-belts? meet in the middle - the chaos icon's gone, leaving a gap where something suitably impressive can and should go in its place. I tried out a few potential ideas, but eventually it was one of the shields [i momentarily forget the name] from the cataphractii sprue. Perhaps he'll get some personal or clan heraldry to go there. Maybe i t's a portable shield-generator of some archaeotech design [hence its size]. 

 

 

And, along with a reasonable number of grenades [sourced from the Orlocks and iirc Cadian Command], a pouch [which came off the legs of a neophyte hybrid who'll be making an appearance shortly as Army of Unification/Imperial Army]  ... he also got, of all things. a book [from the Primaris kit]. I'm still not entirely sure why - I guess part of me wanted to hint at some 'hidden depths' to him. Perhaps it's beceause he's a surprisingly literate [as in, able to read *at all*] or cultured or intellectually capable man just *pretending* to be a brutish stereotype. Maybe he's actually a reasonably respected figure within some organization, and therefore has been given/issued a tome containing instruction or information of importance for his role. Perhaps it's sentimental value? [a hard-bound, locked .. children's picture book, maybe :P ] Or a trophy or relic. Or he might just like the pictures. In any case, it's a bit of character-ization potential and will help break up the grenades-and-pouch-and-skull thing he's otherwise got going on with his belt to the exclusion of anything else. 

 

 

In any case, I definitely think he looks the part. An interesting blend of far-future and could-have-walked-out-of-a-Conan-novel, with a few touches that'll allow for 'points of difference' when it comes to narrative and rules wiith him. 

 

Paint-wise, i have a scheme in mind, so we'll see if i stick  to it. 

 

There's another two of similar-ish design in partial stages of completion on my desk [where they've been for .. quite some time, also], so we'll see if this provides the added impetus to get his fellows finished. 

 

In terms of his formidable size next to 'regular' humans - well, it might be barbarian warrior genes adapted for his environs and lifestyle, or it might be genehancement or something else entirely. He's actually about hte same size as one of my truescale Astartes! [which is why i wasa pondering either this o similar conversions for un/less-armoured proto astartes or Adamanticore scouts or something ; i'm still torn about whether he winds up in Adamantia instead in a similar role] 

 

. 

[Ryltar Thamior]

Yyou may recall I said I was working on some concepts for Army of Unification troops:

 

 

The idea with these [and yes, there are a few more in various stages of completion] was to attempt to build soldiers that were recognizeably .. well .. soldiers - in the sense of mostly-mortal troops equipped with weaponry that'd be both period-accurate and reasonably within the purview of a comparable Guard or even modern-day military equivalent [replete with my customary attempts to add stowage, grenades, combat-blades, sidearms, etc. etc. etc. for some veneer of "realism"] ... but which would *also* : 

 

a) manage to not simply look like one had recycled existing 40k [or even 30k] troop-types with some serial numbers and/or Aquilae filed off ... despite being largely built from *exactly* these sources ...

 

 

b) fit into the "feel" of Unification , as I perceive it [and based in no small part on a particular incident from Prospero Burns now that I think upon it] , and try and propel that feeling of hard-bitten , ill-equipped, somewhat rough/improvised, and slightly anarcho-tech plus crudality ; 

 

 

c) manage to convey that these're relatively elite troops - veterans, possibly genehanced, who've seen and done a *lot* of things in the course of their service [and possibly even more before they wound up on the side of Unity...], and who're correspondingly equipped in professional, competent, and above all - deadly and now that i think of it .. teamwork-facilitating ways. [again, just as conventional soldiery - and a bit of a change of pace from the barbarian "take all comers, even if alone" vibe of some of the other Unification stuff I've got going]. 

 

 

Now whether i've succeeded in the above, i'll leave as a matter for you to decide. But I gotta say - I'm pretty pleased overall with how he's come together! [and seriously - while a number of the modern Space Wolves plastic heads are ... cartoonish, to put it bluntly [i'm not kidding - there's even a He-Man in there!], the *Wolf Scout* heads by contrast are *excellent!* Very cool for this vibe as well. Now I just needa find the catachan command heads i had set aside for something like this... have also test-fitted some Orlock and even one Van Saar head for similar purposes and given some thought to a Goliath one - but I digress, rather wildly. I've been up some 24 hours. It happens. ]

 

The only *serious* annoyance for me at this stage is the stock I put on the autogun. I mean, the arm-posing of those particular neophyte hybrid limbs is just not conducive to putting a full-scale stock snipped from a lasgun [a la what I did with one of my Adamantia Auxilia, who in many ways prototyped this pattern of weapon - including the scope etc.]; and probably owulnd't easily 'look right' even with some trimming etc. Which meant building one by hand. 

 

Now, while I managed to get the two projecting bars working fine enough, the severe difficulty finding and/or making a piece to go on the end of these as the actual brace was ... frustrating. No matter what I found, it either didn't look right, didn't *fit* right [or, as is ever the case, fit *fine* in tests up until glue was applied at which point, no longer...], or fitted right-ish while looking *relatively* OK, only to near-immediatley detach itself with springish vigour to be lost forever more in the carpet and replaced with something cruder. 

 

The end result of which being the two indpeendnet bars wound up with a fair amount of superglue in between htem, distorting this considerably - especially when i attempted to carve it back out again. 

 

But hey ... a paintjob hides a multiple of sins, as I have been knowon to say. 

 

 

I considered adding a few other elements here and there, touches of personalization or whathaveyou - perhaps some of the hand-held devices from the Van Saars sprue to represent auspexes, geiger counters, whatever. But in the end ... just didn't get around to it prior to undercoating. [besides, perhaps some of hat functionality's inbuilt into his eyepiece]

 

I've got another three with rather different weapons loadouts pretty much at the 'detailing' stage atm; although I've run into a *bit* of a problem insofar as I'm i) running low on Catachan Command backpacks, while ii) given there's only really two designs of those that aren't medipack or vox, i was always goign ot have to find some other design anyway at some point.

 

So if anybody's got viable suggestions for what to put in their place so i can make a few more beyond this number .. that'd be swell.

 

I considered neophyte hybrid heavy weapons packs, although they're a bit 'techy' rather htan professional soldier in some respects, and in any case, in combination with the legs and arms from the same kit might make them resemble the neophyte hybrids a bit much for my tastes. I also considered the Scion packs, although unless I hav a sudden flash of inspiration for an appropriately Unification-looking hellgun/hotshot lasgun/volleygun  or something *else* that requires a large powerpack on the back ... that's also probably a negatory. 

 

Similar deal with Skitarii packs - too techy. While I suspect the Cadian hardened vet or whatever they are packs I usd on my Caroleans might if anything be a  bit *low* tech rather than modern-ish. 

 

Hm. Maybe i'll end up sculpting some attempts and see if anything 'fits'. 

 

In aany case, will attempt to paint up to match my Proto-Astartes a few pages back. 

 

FOR UNITYYYYYYY!!!

[Umbral]

Sup guys, been a while since I posted anything, but don't think I haven't been busy. Among other things I've been working on heres an Imperial Discipline Master I recently finished.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Good job on the Discipline Master. Does the bird-of-prey carry cameras and other surveillance devices to let the Discipline Master monitor his charges? Edited June 14, 2018 by Bjorn Firewalker