Commissar's Personal Challenge/German themed Guard

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Good job on the models.

[commissar_roach]

Well well well,

 

it has been a while since I last updated this thread with any progress on this project/challenge

 

A lot has happened since my last post, not as much in terms of painting and the like, but a lot of work on finding and gathering supplies for the upcoming vehicles I plan to add to this force. Also a few tests on things like weathering and paint chipping, I've done these before with smaller scale models and wanted to see if my normal methods scaled up well (they did not). I also took a bit of time in between work and working on my Holloween costume this year to fix up my hobby desk.

 

The new setup

 

I'm almost done with the first batch of infantry that I built a few months ago, I just have 8 more minis and then it's on to more building. the next batch will be only made up of normal infantry as I already built all the Vox, plasma gunners, and sergeants in the first batch.

 

The last few left to paint, and the ones already done

 

I have also gone ahead and looked through my old model storage and found 3 minis i think will work just fine for my commander and two commissars I plan on having in the force. since I set forth to not use any actual GW minis in this army unless they were either 1.) cheaper then other alternatives or 2.) I already owned them before the start of this project, I'm actually a little limited on choices for officers. the theme I'm going for make the minis choice limited, even with 3-d printing available I was coming up blank of officers that weren't just DOK look a likes, and while I am going for a German theme those were a bit to WW1 to fit.

 

Until I found these in my storage (with an absolutely god awful paint job before I let them soak for a few days)

 

those are (from left to right)

1. the old commander of the 13th penial legion Colonel Schaeffer
2. the current commissar sculpt but from a time long passed, before anyone had even heard of finecast
3. An even older commissar sculpt. this one I got in a trade back during 4th edition, it was out of print even back then

 

I think with the right paint scheme the commissars with fit right in with the rest of the minis in the force. I also think that old Colonel Schaeffer looks just right for an old IG german-ish infantry commander, he even has the right hat!

 

be on the look out for these old boys to get a new lease on life.

[duz_]

Nice set up! Looking forward to seeing those metal minis painted they're some of my favourite

[commissar_roach]

Work continues on the infantry and officers for this force, but while I am working on one thing I always like to prepare for the next thing. So I have been thinking about how I want to make my squad of veterans that I plan on having in the finale list.

 

I've always liked the idea of vets with shotguns, I don't know why but it just feels like that fits. with that in mind I have been looking around for a nice way of proxying shotguns with the standard Raumjager kit I'm using for my infantry.

 

I think I found it in the same place I found the arms for my sergeants, The Makers Cult's Valour Korps line, they just came out with a unit of engineers and I think these will fit really well.

 

render of the arms

 

I have also made a bit of a breakthrough in trying to find files that would make good proxies for IG flyers. I was given a link by a friend to a modeler by the name of Darkjeyzz, and it turns out they make really nice proxy models for the popular FW imperial guard flayers. I went ahead and picked them up and took a look, the files look great, and it shouldn't be much trouble to print these off in a long weekend or two.

 

a few renders of the files

the Thunderbolt stand-in

 

the Lightning stand-in (i kind of wish it looks more like the original lightning as opposed to the Voss pattern)

 

The Avenger Strike Fighter stand-in

 

I have a lot of ideas for these birds, that Avenger would make a really nice looking Stuka if it was painted up right.

 

more to come soon!

[commissar_roach]

I had a bit more free time this last few days so i went ahead and painted up that old Colonel Schaeffer model for use as a company commander proxy.

 

 

 

I really need to get more metallic paint or i need to learn how to non-metallic metals. other then that i liked how this old boy turned out, even if this really reminded me why i didn't like painting up metal minis. 

 

let me know what you all think!

[duz_]

Looks great! I use synthetic brushes for metal minis so they don't destroy my nice ones :lol:

[commissar_roach]

so I went on a bit of a painting spree these last few days. 

 

first off, i couldn't help myself and i ordered some heads from anvil industries to help give my force a bit more variety. while i was on the site i saw a really nice mini and picked it up as well. 

i know i already have a few commissars (and unless they get a buff in the new codex, far more then i will need in game) but as you may have inferred from my name i really like commissar minis. i just need to wait on a small order of paint as i kind of ran a bit low on my forces primary color after the last few days.

 

as for the other things i was able to get done, i went ahead and painted up my newer GW commissar. i just had an itch to get something done and that was the closet mini on my workbench. here are a few shots of him all painted up.

i modeled the paint scheme somewhat off of WW1 era German offices uniforms. it doesn't come across in these pictures but the red of the coat lining is much darker then the reds of the sword knot and hat braiding. i'm really proud of how the power fist turned out, and while i had to do some last minute model surgery as he somehow over the years had his tab bent and i had to chop it off along with the box he is normally standing on, overall i'm pleased with how he came out. even more so since it only took me one sitting to finish him.

 

after that old boy was done i still wanted to make some more progress. who knows maybe its my new ADD meds finally kicking in. after painting up two officers in a row i wanted to get back to the main force, but i was also a bit board of doing the basic infantry, so i went ahead and printed up those shotgun arms and built up my veteran squad.

 

1. i really like how the shotgun arms work with this basic kit i'm using, they are a bit tight for the sets that have both arms connected, but nothing a little sanding couldn't fix. in the future if i need more i might scale them up by like .5% or something, as they were really just slight too tight.

2. i thought the vets needed a little more to make them look different, so i did some tests and looked up some references to old German splinter camo. i really think it turned out pretty well, even if i had to highlight up the base khaki color a lot to make it work.

[WarriorFish]

Good to see such progress, those Commissars are such great models so it's always nice to see them given the attention they deserve :tu: I think the colours really came together on your troopers too, it's going to look fantastic on an entire army :)

[The Pounder]

Looking good!

 

The Commissar with the book and fist is one of my favourite sculpts! (Too bad he doesn’t have a gas mask!!!)

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Your guardsmen are well-painted. How will you decorate their bases? Maybe put a severed head on the swordsman's base, to demonstrate his skill with the blade?

[commissar_roach]

So, with the end of this year we are currently at 6 months-ish from when I started to work on this army. I haven't gotten as much done as I was hoping but I've still made some good progress on the project.

 

I was able to use the last half of Dec as a bit of a hobby sprint and got my Vets and officers all painted up. with them done I went ahead and finished the basing on them and the last batch of troops I had finished. all of them in total bring the mins finished so far to 40. The current plan is to have 75 infantry minis in this force, with 6 squads of normal guardsmen 1 squad of vets and 5 officer/others. This means that I'm more then 50% finished with the infantry models!

 

now I still plan on having a heavy weapons section with this force, but I'm waiting to work on them in case Wargames Atlantic come out with a heavy weapons box for the mini line my force is built around (the closer we get to my one year goal the more I'm thinking I may need to kit bash my own). Overall though I hope things will move a lot quicker once I get into the tanks, transports, and flyers. who knows, maybe that's a pipe dream.

 

But enough with the words, lets get to the pictures!

 

here is a shot of the currently finished minis in the force in my display cabinet 

as you can see, all of the special troops (Sergeants, Vox, and plasma gunners) have been finished, the only ones left are the basic infantry to fill out the squads

 

here are the finished vets with shotguns, flamers, and plasma guns. i'm kinda proud with how the splinter camo turned out, as I have never really been able to make camo work in 28mm scale and I think I was finally able to here.

 

now I didn't just work on the vets during this time, I also wanted to get most of my forces officer corps finished up. as I showed off a while ago these were mostly made up of old 3rd and 4th edition era minis from GW. in fact if all goes to plan these will be the only official GW minis in this whole 2000+ point list. now I didn't get them all finished, I saved the oldest commissar model for if I need a change of pace in the upcoming wave of rank and file troopers.

 

I showed off my forces leader a while ago but I went back and tried a new idea for the power weapons on this force, I'm not sure if it works or not but i do think it looks better than how it was before. I also applied this new method to the power sword of my vet sergeant, I think that one has a much better blend to it. these both were the first times I've ever worked with glazes and have ever had to make them as well. let me know what you think!

 

 

now with all that said, I have 31 basic infantry figures left to paint. hopefully these should be quick to knockout, as I really want to start working on the vehicles for this force.

 

the last batch of infantry built and ready to be primed and painted.

 

wish me luck as I race to try and actually finish up this army by my one year deadline of July this year.

[duz_]

That's always the case I find!
At least what you had done looks great! And can't wait to see the rest of it hopefully completed! 

If it makes you feel any better? I have 30 Mordians from several years ago that are still WIP :ermm: 

[Slave to Darkness]

Looking good!! :tu: I have not heard anything regarding new heavy weapons for any of the Death Fields stuff, so you may have to convert some if you want them fast. If you get any of the Grognard heavy weapons to convert and you dont want the actual Grognards lemme know and Ill take them off your hands if you wanna make some coin, may be cheaper if I hit ebay but Id rather help out a member of the B&C before some randomer,  spreading those good hobby vibes and all that. :) 

 

As for the German aesthetic, have you thought of using any of the Bolt Action stuff? Im having tons of fun mixing Bolt Action, Wargames Atlantic and a few GW bits together, be careful though, I only started using Wargames Atlantic for the German gasmask heads, and now my not Krieg army is bigger than the army I actually started. :lol:

[WarriorFish]

Great stuff, you've made excellent progress and we can see there's more to come - be sure to keep us updated and good luck on your deadline :tu:

 

Remember the commissariat takes a dim view of failure... ;)

[commissar_roach]

So I've been working on the next batch of guardsmen the last few days, nothing much to report with that as all of them are basic troopers with the same color scheme. one thing I have been working on though has been to start looking into how I'm going to go about making the mortar section for the force. I've had a lot of ideas over the last few months, such as just 3d printing the mortars and arms and using the normal bodies I've been using. the other idea was to make a somewhat close copy of my force with the anvil industries site and make some HW teams out of them.

 

Since I want to save money with the force over just buying from GW I'm going to try the 3d printing idea first. In spirt of this, while I've been painting I've been printing off arms and such.

 

last night I actually got the mortars themselves out of the printer and thought I'd share how they turned out when i dry fit them last night.

 

I've also done some dry fittings of the arms with the bodies I've been using for this force and I think I can make this work. Now I just have to wait for another box from wargames Atlantic to show up for me to start.

 

I might even go ahead and join into that hobby challenge that's currently going on to get these mortars finished up.

[commissar_roach]

so I did go ahead and enter into the hobby challenge with the mortar section. I've been working my way through it for a bit and have finished up all the models, now I'm working on the bases for the section. I had an idea that it would look pretty cool if they looked like they were set up in a mortar pit or trench line, so I've gone ahead and started to build up the bases with that plan in mind.

 

I don't normally do complex basing but I'm liking how they are coming along

[The Pounder]

Good start!

 

What are you going to use to fill in the space at the front with?

[Slave to Darkness]

Good start!

 

What are you going to use to fill in the space at the front with?

 

 

The bodies of Heretics and Traitors? 

[WAR]

 

 

Good start!

 

What are you going to use to fill in the space at the front with?

 

The bodies of Heretics and Traitors?

And razor wire

[commissar_roach]

hmm, I guess I forgot to update this thread with the finished versions of those mortars.

close ups of some of the bases

 

and the finished mortars

 

so with these finished I have just 23 more troops to paint and then we will finally be on to the vehicles of this force

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Excellent work.

[Slave to Darkness]

What vehicles have you got planned? 

[The Pounder]

I’m loving the little maps and other details really brings them to life!

 

Looking forward to the vehicles.

[commissar_roach]

What vehicles have you got planned?

 

Well just like the rest of the force, they will all be proxy of GW kits. It'll be 3 halftracks, 4 tiger russ's, and an avenger strike bomber stuka.

 

I'm going to be printing them all and already have the transports mostly ready, they just need to be cleaned up for painting.

[commissar_roach]

And I finally have an update. It's taken 8 months, but I finally have all the infantry (barring 3 character figs) finished for this army. 

 

 

That's six 10-man squads of basic infantry with sergeants, Vox, and plasma guns. A 10 strong unit of Vets with shotguns, 2 flamers, and a plasma gun. A full mortar Section and 3 officers.

honestly knowing my normal pace of painting, this was a lot for 8 months of really only painting on the weekends and some weeknights here and there. I also think that, while they may not be prize winning, they do look good as a group.

So, this whole project was for me to build a full 2000 point list with no GW plastic in it. So far I have been able to do that well enough, even if the company that makes the infantry kit I'm using for my force hasn't actually updated or added to this line since I started the project. Now the next major step is for me to start working on the actual vehicles of the force. I mean, it's a IG army, it's got to have a few tanks right?

As I said in the above post, there are going to be 8 in this force by the end. 4 tanks, 3 APC's, and a flyer that will all be 3d printed from files I have found over the last few months. I have already started to work on getting the transports printed, and once they are they will be cleaned up and made ready for some painting.

here is a preview.

Edited February 28, 2022 by commissar_roach