Cornelivs Maximvs Allied Regiments

[GreenScorpion]

Converting vehicles into something a bit more post-apocalyptic has made me look at my goliath for some time and wonder about whether getting another would be a good choice or not.
With the announcement of the GSC combat patrol box a few weeks ago, I am feeling really tempted to get some discounted goliaths and so more miners for the core force under Cornelivs, as the GSC infantry as lots of potential for conversions and out of the box for militias and other irregular forces (obviously loyal servants of the Emperor regardless of their origins and lack of proper gear).

The box has the same number of models as the Cult Insurrection battleforce with which I started my GW collection and if it is the same price as the other combat patrol boxes (especially if I can get it from a retailer with a discount) than it is an even better deal than the battleforce at the time.

Some of the heavier weapons from the infantry models can easily be used as a HWT equivalent if desired, there are lots of spare parts, including torso fronts/backs to make a few more models out of the sprues and the character in the box can easily be converted into a female psycher (I already have some ideas on what could be done).

The aberrants are likely the only major waste for a proud servant of the Emperor, as they are too alien to be easily converted into something more acceptable by imperial standards, but everyone needs enemies right?

 

On a different note, I have been working on another vehicle conversion, this time a transport truck that will be given some weapons and a cover for the back, to allow troops to be transported safely throughout the battlefield. I hope to have some pictures later this week, once I get some more work into the concept :)

[GreenScorpion]

A small update from the front, I have made some progress on the truck and have something to share although some minor stuff is still missing.

 

 

The cover for the transportation area was only placed as it is for the picture as I will not attach it until the model itself is painted and the way it will be attached is something a bit more realistic than a hair tie :)

I only remembered about the fact that a picture with a scale reference would be useful after I stored the model away, but for reference, the model is roughly the width of a chimera (just slightly narrower), but is a bit longer (pretty much the part where the soldiers would be transported is the length of a chimera, so the front of the truck is the extra length).
I tried placing some soldiers inside the truck a few months ago, so the transportation area fits 2 soldiers side by side (with 25mm bases), with 4 lines of soldiers fitting along the length, allowing a total of 8 soldiers to be comfortably transported inside the truck.

 

I have equipped it with spare weapons from the goliath kit and used some GSC skulls as decoration as can be seen from the pictures. Although this vehicle is longer, gear wise it could fit as a goliath truck or equivalent vehicle.
I have not yet decided whether the back of the truck will be closed or not, but I have the materials around to do some sort of curtain so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

Hopefully more conversions should be available soon :)

[Slave to Darkness]

Just caught up on everything, I think my fave mini is the horse that looks like its falling down, the rider looks like he is coming out with some colourful language. That post apoc style car is looking pretty sweet as well. :tu:

Edited January 28, 2022 by Slave to Darkness

[GreenScorpion]

Just caught up on everything, I think my fave mini is the horse that looks like its falling down, the rider looks like he is coming out with some colourful language. That post apoc style car is looking pretty sweet as well.

Thanks, I like how the horses ended up having lots of randomness added into them, as that made the entire thing way more expressive than I would have expected :)

 

 

Now for another update related with vehicle conversions, this time I focused on the 1:43 scale BMW I bought at the same time as the other car a few posts back.

I wanted to make a car to transport one of the officers through the battlefield and the extra torsos and heads from the french cavalry ended up being used to make the crew.

I added a driver, a soldier with a pistol to serve as a navigator and close support, a soldier carrying a rifle in the back seat and the officer using some sort of tablet device to check the status of the battle.

At least for now, I have decided not to add anything to the car itself, except for the crew.

 

 

I have acquired 3 more scale cars to make some more conversions similar to the post apocalyptic car with the gunner on top, so I will be trying to sculpt another torso, which hopefully will be good enough to be turned into a mould, so that I can make relatively consistent torsos for my next conversions.

If the sculpting goes as desired, tomorrow I will use some blue stuff to try to make a 2 part mould of the torso.

[GreenScorpion]

A very short update, I have been working on some more car conversions this week, but since I was given a relatively round bit of wood, I ended up glueing that "tree" I have shown around here some months ago.

I am thinking I should add some decoration to the "base", but the tree should be far more stable now and likely usable on the battlefield.

Some varnished will need to be applied to the actual base sometime soon, in order to keep things from falling apart :)

 

[GreenScorpion]

Today I bring you a longer update with some progress on both the conversion and the painting side of things :)

 

I have worked on 3 more converted post-apocalyptic cars with gunners, this time 2 lamborghini and 1 alfa romeo (the choice had more to do with the shape of the cars rather than the brand).

The gunners are made with torsos copied from the simple torso I sculpted last weekend with greenstuff and the mould used was created using blue stuff.

The two recommendations I would have for anyone wanting to try using blue stuff is that you really need to have boiling water to get it workable (it doesn't stay to warm to touch, so the only chance of burning yourself is with the actual water) and for smaller stuff it is likely not the best approach (two part silicon putty seems to work better for smaller stuff).

 

 

 

I have also finished a new batch of painted miniatures, this time a chimera and 3 HWT.

 

 

The next batch of miniatures on the paint queue are the characters from the original Blackstone Fortress box, including both the playable ones and the leader of the chaos warband.

 

To put the recent progress in terms of painting into retrospective, here is a group shot of the stuff that I painted since December.

 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Good job so far.

[GreenScorpion]

I have been working on my self imposed zero bits challenge with the current focus being on spending some of the older bits I have around, namely Anvil Industry parts and the last few things remaining on my Escher sprues.

Using copies of the simple torso I sculpted out of greenstuff, portions of sprues to serve as the base of the hidden legs, a varied array of bits and large amounts of greenstuff, I managed to finish the first batch of 5 models, including a medic, a radio operator and some close combat soldiers.

 

 

The current plan is to continue experimenting with similar concepts and make a few more batches, until I build up the competences to make something a bit more advanced, with visible legs and such.

[GreenScorpion]

Not much progress this weekend since I went to take the booster shot for covid (so far moderna seems to have milder side effects than jansen vaccine which is good) and decided to avoid doing any stuff that could affect the arm that took the shot (my left hand is used mostly to hold miniatures while painting them and I was afraid that could cause some avoidable strain on the sore arm).

Regardless, my parents have gathered a pair of small branches from the farm and cut some rustic bases for them, which were glued this week, after the branches were covered in a white varnish we have lying around.

Below is a picture of the current status of the 3 small trees, the previous one is on the left and the new ones are on the middle and right. A converted miniature was placed at the base of the middle tree to show the relative scale.

 

 

I am considering decorating the trees with some gruesome stuff, like bodies hanging from the branches, as if people had been hanged there.

I have some spare torsos, arms and heads from my mantic plague zombies and mutants, so I was thinking about hanging those from the tree.

My mom has some thread lying around that would look realistic as 28mm scale ropes, so that would be used to actually hang the body parts, allowing me to add or remove them as needed.

I am thinking about trying to sculpt some sort of guts coming out of the bottom of the torsos, to add to the gruesomeness and hide the round shape of the torso connection from mantic's zombies.

 

If all goes well, I should finish painting the Blackstone Fortress characters next weekend and potentially prime the next batch of stuff (likely one of the two sprues of Servants of the Abyss from the original BSF box).

Supposing everything goes well and I don't have to return to the north, I should close the 2018 purchases from the painting point of view by the end of March or shortly afterwards.

Edited February 13, 2022 by GreenScorpion

[GreenScorpion]

Yesterday I finished another batch of 5 miniatures built using spare bits (mostly Anvil parts).

 

 

I have finally spent all of my escher heads, which is a shame as I seem to have finally discovered how to properly sculpt curly hair on top of them (for anyone not familiar with the kit, eschers have more "faces" than hair bits necessary to build the full head).

 

The focus will continue to be more conversions to spend bits, so expect more "frankenstein" miniatures :P

[GreenScorpion]

Yesterday I finished painting the characters from the original Blackstone Fortress box, which given I got it as a pre-order at the time means I am only over 3 years delayed :P

The characters from BSF are used to represent some of the characters from my books.
Check the spoiler below for the pictures and the brief description of who is who.

 

From left to right:
- Ergoth, a treporer mercenary working under Inquisitor Belenus (count-as for the moment as Ergoth is actually a humanoid mole, so perhaps some skaven conversions can be done to represent him and the rest of the treporers);

- Inquisitor Belenus, an Inquisitor focused on hunting dangerous aliens who tends to deploy some allied aliens to assist him;

- Bianca, a zealot warrior with a big flamethrower and a mysterious past who supports Cornelivs during his missions throughout the region. She is smarter than most zealots and behind an apparent crazy fanatic as a very capable woman with surprising skills;

- Konrad, the sniper halfling;

- Rainer, the close combat halfling;

(Konrad and Rainer are twins)

 

 

- Rhys, an Imperial Psycher supporting Inquisitor Belenus;

- Lorenzo, a missionary with a powerful faith and a much more powerful power mace who has rescued Bianca from being sacrificed in a bloody ritual while she was still a young child. He trained Bianca after rescuing her, helping her learn the ways of the imperials and protecting her from those who would hurt her, if her true identity was discovered;

- Laelara, an elvish ranger who has allied herself with Belenus and supports him through several kinds of scouting missions;

- Gnaevs, an extremely good guy who is disguised as one of the bad guys during a mission to locate Doctor Tavares and assist Cornelivs with the recovery of the Doctor and his assistants;

- Delta1951, an ancient robot which Belenus uses as a personal bodyguard when Ergoth is not around and provides heavy firepower whenever the Inquisitor gets involved in heavy fighting.

 

 

Next on the painting queue are two sprues of what was later sold as the Servants of the Abyss (the BSF minions essentially).

 

On a non-miniature related note, I have finished the second and final content review for my third book and everything is on schedule for the release next month :)

Starting sometime on the end of March I will start working on another book, this time a medieval fantasy one, which I started over a decade ago.
I don't expect the miniature work to be heavily affected by the fantasy versus sci-fi writing, at least for the moment, so the armies supporting Cornelivs will continue to develop.

[GreenScorpion]

Another short update from the front, I have finished another batch of conversions using anvil parts and other spare bits.

Nothing fancy, just 2 artillery crew members and 3 close combat soldiers. The shield on the 4th one from the left ended up extremely thick, but with the beastmen skull it is actually quite nice :)

 

 

One thing I forgot to say on my previous post was that I have been experimenting with Green Stuff World paints and the BSF characters were painted mostly with those paints.
The paints are not as thick as GW base paints, but work really well even without shading as the paint flows slightly away from the outermost details, working really well with detailed miniatures.

I have ordered some of their shades as well to try in one of my next batches of miniatures. Let's hope they are as good as the regular paints, as that would mean an easy way of getting good paints in 1 or 2 working days whenever I need to resupply :)

[GreenScorpion]

Another week, another update with additional conversions.

 

First, another batch of 5 soldiers using mostly Anvil parts:

 

Second, a couple of gunners on top of small bunkers, firing from an open hatch on the top of the building.

I bought some brown stuff putty to try it out and decided that the sandbags would be a good way to experiment with it and avoid major issues if it wasn't particularly easy to use or had different properties than expected. Brown stuff sticks to stuff a bit more than I expected, but it is softer than greenstuff during its working period, which might make it easier to sculpt deeper details. Will have to experiment a bit more in the coming weeks to see what would be its best use.

 

 

The sandbags on the second went a bit to the side before they were fully dried out, so they look like they are constantly about to fall to the side.
I have put a bit more glue to ensure they stay where they should although they seem to be so well glued to the surface that they are not going anywhere.

I might use the sandbags moving outwards as the base for either some combat damage or place the bodies of anyone who attempted to attack the machine gun nest (or perhaps the remains of the previous gunner).

[duz_]

Doing great work with the gs! Can't wait to see them all painted up :tu:

[GreenScorpion]

Doing great work with the gs! Can't wait to see them all painted up

Thanks duz_

I also can't wait to see them painted up when I eventually reach that part of the queue.

 

One thing I want to do is make a group shot of what is already painted, as I think I don't even fully realize what the full progress I have made looks like on a table.

I have decided to move out of my rented house up north, so I am thinking about bringing the painted and assembled miniatures I have there, so I can have everything in one place.

If that is the case I will take some photos during my vacation of what the current painted force looks like

The current painted force is over 500 infantry, plus a few heavy weapons, vehicles and some terrain, so it should occupy a reasonable amount of space.

Edited March 4, 2022 by GreenScorpion

[GreenScorpion]

Now that I have my first challenge badge on my signature, one would think that the next update would be one related with painting, but the current batch is not finished yet, so today the update is related with another batch of 5 conversions based on Anvil parts (they have already lasted more than I thought they would and I suspect I should be able to convert at least 20 or 25 more with the spare parts).
The focus has been mostly in creating a group of irregular troops and that is why actual gear and weapons vary between batches and within each batch of conversions.

They should be closer to the acolytes or mercenaries employed by the Inquisition than a standard Imperial Guard force.

When I finish the Anvil parts (the 2 bags I had filled with the spare bits are starting to look like that tent from Harry Potter) and start with spare cadian bits, the conversions should demonstrate a slightly more standardized force, likely with some actual legs modelled :D

 

 

On another note, there are some good news and bad news on my end:

- The good news is that all of my miniatures are finally under the same roof and I should be able to take a picture of the full painted force sometime in the coming weeks. Additionally, starting mid April I should have more time to spend on the hobby, painting, converting and eventually building those last 4 large vehicles I have been saving for later.

- The bad news is that the hobby budget will be close to 0 in the coming months, so any resupplies will have to wait for some time, since the reason I will have more availability is related with the fact that I had to resign from my current job. Hopefully the situation will change in the near future, but unemployment is certainly not going to be a major problem even if it last a few months.

 

 

I should need 2 more days to finish painting the current batch of miniatures, so the next weekend should be enough to get everything ready, which would mean pictures either Sunday or Monday. After the current batch the only thing missing to paint from my 2018 purchases are some Anvil based squads, a leman russ and a taurox, which I might be able to paint this month since I have a week of vacation coming soon :)

[GreenScorpion]

Today I have a 3 for 1 update :)

 

First, another group of 5 converted soldiers.
The guy on the right side of the picture has a "prosthetic" arm, which is essentially a broken arm that came inside the GSC battleforce but didn't belong to any of the kits.
The arm is similar to those of the familiars, but the pose doesn't match any of those and I had no missing/broken pieces on the sprue (I did check at the time).

 

 

 

Second, 2 sets of Servants of the Abyss from the original Blackstone Fortress box were painted this weekend.

A note on the colours, I had not tried the yellow and blue from Greenstuff World before, so the similarity to the Ukrainian flag is merely a coincidence, as I know painting stuff in the colours of a banner does very little to support those suffering and I am not one to follow trends.

 

 

 

Last but not the least, another book has been published this weekend, bringing closure to the story of Cornelivs with the end of the trilogy :)

 

[GreenScorpion]

A few more conversions finished today, including some close combat troops with shields made from resin "sprue" bits.

 

 

Currently I have a batch of 25 anvil based troops primed so I should have a few more painted miniatures in the coming days :)

[duz_]

Great progress!

 

How are you storing all these models?

[GreenScorpion]

Great progress!

 

How are you storing all these models?

Thanks duz_!

 

Storing the models has been a major issue, due to how many they are, so they are mostly inside cabinets/closed shelves or inside those small boxes with drawers (like those boxes  for tools and small parts but with bigger drawers).

To address the storage issue, my family has decided to offer me a tall closet/cabinet with shelves which I will likely use to place the painted miniatures.

The plan is to assemble it in the coming days and check whether I will add additional shelves to store the infantry and other small items, as the larger distances between shelves are wasted for the smaller models.

My family actually wanted something with glass/acrylic doors, but unfortunately they couldn't find something like that in the nearby stores, so the thing has those partially transparent doors which don't really allow you to see what is inside.

 

Once the additional storage is in place, I will focus on moving the painted miniatures to that space (and hopefully take a group shot before putting them on the shelves).

 

An example of the 2 types of storage:

Shelves - https://i.imgur.com/cqeNsET.jpg

Boxes - https://i.imgur.com/t7L9XLT.jpg

[GreenScorpion]

I managed to get all of my currently painted miniatures on the table and took some photos of the full army, including allies and enemies in a single shot :)
It is roughly the amount I was expecting, although the area occupied by the miniatures is still somewhat larger than I had imagined it would be.

 

[WarriorFish]

Just a few then :P

[GreenScorpion]

Although I have been a bit quiet lately due to some real life stuff, there has been some progress over the past weeks to share

 

I have done some more conversions based on anvil parts and I think I am getting close to spending all of the parts (a few more batches of 5 soldiers should do the trick, they are already 50 for reference).

 

 

 

I have also finished painting a batch of 25 miniatures last week and I should finish a batch of 22 this weekend.

 

As a side note, I managed to get a few more shelves for the cabinet which might allow me to store the full amount of infantry once painted (depends heavily on how many conversions I do in the meantime), but I left two larger spaces for larger/taller models, which should be mostly used for vehicles and terrain.
I doubt the cabinet will be able to hold everything once it gets all painted, but it should be enough for the moment (3 of the 8 shelves have already been filled/partially filled with models).

Edited April 6, 2022 by GreenScorpion

[GreenScorpion]

Another batch of miniatures was finished today (22 infantry soldiers with shotguns). This batch brought the painted infantry to 614 (about 28% of the total infantry at the moment).

 

 

I have already primed a batch of 24 to start with this week.

[GreenScorpion]

Work on the miniatures has been progressing nicely, so I have a few more pictures to share :)

Another set of 5 soldiers has been created using Anvil parts (I am almost at end of the parts, I swear :D )

 

 

I have also finished painting a batch of 24 soldiers, including 10 snipers, 10 soldiers with mg-42's (essentially heavy stubbers) and 4 irregulars with robes that I had done in 2020 (according to photographic evidence as my memory is not that good)

 

I already started with the next batch, which corresponds to 1 taurox (one and only, first model with actually decorated interior I work on) and 2 leman russ tanks.

In parallel I have been working on a mini diorama, expect some WIP pics once the base structure is completed :)