Bonehead's heavily customised Rogue Trader Imperial Guard: the Ebla regiments

[The Pounder]

They look fantastic @Bonehead! Old school and very characterful.

[Bonehead]

Thanks mate! Glad you think so.

And with surprising rapidity, here's three more finished models.

The final two heavy bolter loaders and a second grenadier sergeant. Now I have the right models for two entire platoons (in the 5th ed codex, but whatever). They're not all based, and of course none of the chimeras are done, but the models are actually a physical reality.

More views of the rear showing more of the trademark Ebla regiments' 'no amount of gear is too much gear' attitude. Sorry about the focus but my camera is old and very moody.

Here is a somewhat better shot showing the loaders teamed up with their gunners. The gunners are over a decade old and painted the old-school Bonehead way: blend, blend, blend. The new ones are much quicker zenithal-highlight-wash-final highlight efforts and honestly I think they look nearly as good as my best blended efforts in about a fifth of the time.

Just got to get the bases done and the chimeras ready for paint. Sounds boring. Think I'll build some more troopers and do them instead.

[Gnasher]

On 2/22/2024 at 9:37 PM, Bonehead said:

 

I think he looks more like a Rupert than a Sarge, with his fancy pants chest plate.

 

Make a good force commander IMO.

Edited February 24 by Gnasher

[Bonehead]

On 2/24/2024 at 7:43 PM, Gnasher said:

I think he looks more like a Rupert than a Sarge, with his fancy pants chest plate.

 

Make a good force commander IMO.

Well, he probably would. Fair point. But I already have a commander model. And several lieutenants too- all identically armed, but I know which ones are which. All my grenadiers are in the carapace breastplates, so he fits in with those well enough. I've even got a whole platoon of those now, waiting for better weather so I can varnish them and then do their bases.

 

[wildcardTBC]

Hi Bonehead ,I'm moving back to the UK soon (may ish) and i have a large number of RT Imp army guys in storage that i want to make into an army, i haven't done much conversion work with lead and white metal miniatures , i was wondering if i could ask a few question and pick your brain for the best techniques?

Edited April 4 by wildcardTBC

[Bonehead]

23 hours ago, wildcardTBC said:

Hi Bonehead ,I'm moving back to the UK soon (may ish) and i have a large number of RT Imp army guys in storage that i want to make into an army, i haven't done much conversion work with lead and white metal miniatures , i was wondering if i could ask a few question and pick your brain for the best techniques?

Pick away mate, I've got a ton of oddly specific knowledge on the very subject, earned the hard way through the very activity you're looking to learn. The number one first thing I'll say is: develop patience, lots of it.

A couple of good tips I can offer right off the bat are these: Invest in a quality razor saw and some decent files, a pin vice or two, several pairs of fine pliers and a variety of decent clippers. you want standard wire clippers and flush trim clippers. You'll need to pin most of your conversions so make sure to have plenty of paperclips around the place too.

Tip number two is: if you're doing the metal bodies with the plastic arms, be prepared to be frustrated. The plastic arms are very limited even on the plastic guys; on the metal ones they often just don't fit at all. To get good poses, you'll be chopping and changing a lot. My preference nearly all the time is to just use different arms. Victoria Minis make a lot of sets that work very well on RT guard models.

Edited April 5 by Bonehead

[wildcardTBC]

Thank you for the advice mate,
I did get a few of the Victoria mini, The one part lasgun resin and metal arms back in 2014 just before i moved to the US for work, i dry fitted them at the time but due to the rt Guardsmen having a much wider chests then the contemporary cadians, i wasn't too happy and they were going to need alot of work, the move came up so the project got shelved,  

 

any way i came across your post about the 3d scan stuff and it inspired me , i have a load of the RTB sprues, plastic ones and the white metal once from the 90s and i was wondering if i could 3d scanned the arms and edit them in the software in to alternative positions or gestures ? its just the idea of me badly cutting up and desecrating my irreplaceable childhood minis terrifies me alot

 

 

[wildcardTBC]

here's some of my crappy Darktide mini i throw together

 

Edited April 5 by wildcardTBC

[Bonehead]

To be honest my advice is still to get VM arms- the set you want to buy is the 'unversal victorian' arms; they don't come with the gun attached so they can be fitted to differently sized models. As you can see from quite a lot of the models in this log, the arms fit very well on the RT metal guardsmen with a minimum of trimming.

As for the models I've used og RT guard arms on in this log, the thing you're giong to be unhappy about hearing is that an overwhelming number of them have been cut up and reposed. I've used pliers to squeeze metal arms into new shapes, bent the hands back on the metal arms and very carefully cut with trimmers into the plastic ones in order to change their pose. I also regularly repurpose right arms as left arms and vice versa, with the hands cut off and swapped.

More than that, literally all of the metal bodies are posed in such a way that it's impossible to get them looking in the direction their gun is pointing either when using the RT guard arms or the victoria ones; so more than 90% of the models in this log and in my army as a whole have had their heads cut off and repositioned, not to mention swapped between various models.

I'm not saying it's the only way to do it, but if you want to get models that look anything like mine do, then you'll have to bite the bullet and get cutting sooner or later! Like I said though, the VM arms are brilliant for adding more variety to the poses without cutting up your precious old models. The various 'universal' arms are great and so are the 'heavy weapon crew' arms set- there's dozens of those among my models. With only five arm poses among the RT arms set you run out of new options very fast without a bit of creative cutting and editing here and there- especially because GW in their unfathomable wisdom modelled two of the fists with the thumb along the top, rather than along the side; which is not how anyone makes a fist and also makes it impossible to put a gun in that hand without it looking stupid.

As far as 3d scanning and editing goes, you'd need to appeal to others there; I'm pretty much a total luddite and I haven't done any of the scanning of my models, my part of the deal was converting them the analog way with sawing, pinning, filing and green stuff. I think there are a few members of the forum who are into the 3d scanning and modelling side, and I also know there are some people out there who've already 3d scanned various RT sprues including the IG arms and weapons- but they do ask you to pay for the files. I never did because i'll probably never need any more parts than the ones I already have, besides VM arms.

But on to more positive things: your Darktide models look amazing. I love how mutated and eviI-looking that officer is and the guy holding the chainaxe is a stone-cold winner of a model any day. I think they're absolutely great, and I really hope you get some paint on some of them soon. Even if you don't, you should totally start a log on them over in the 'Realm of Chaos' section of the website. The traitor guard are woefully under-represented on this forum and I'd love to see more pictures of yours.

My log on my own just started traitor guard regiment/cultist horde is here:

Even if you don't start a log of your own, chipping in every now and then with some of your Darktide guys would be really cool. I'm spreading myself a little thin over three armies at the moment, so the more content I can look at to inspire me the better.

Edited April 8 by Bonehead

[wildcardTBC]

Thanks again for the Help mate i'll look into VM stuff abit more and once the move back to the uk is done and just bite the bullet and not feel so bad about chopping and changing the OOP stuff. i'll also post some more pics once i have something better then my potato iPhone cam.

Can we PM on here? i was hoping you would pointing me in the direction of the people that do the 3d scanning and sprues?

here some more pics of me cleaning up some mini in the sonic cleaner.

 

 

 

 

[Bonehead]

Wish I had a sonic cleaner.

If you follow the link to the files, you should be able to contact them through that website. They didn't do it for money or anything like that, just as a favour for a favour. It's not a shop or a service they offer or anything so I'd rather leave it up to them if they want to do anything with you.

[Bonehead]

In a bit of a departure from the usual, I'm doing something a little different today.

I been working on army number 3- the one that doesn't have a log- so I thought, being as they're loyalists they fit in better on this log than the traitors' one. Couldn't face the idea of starting a third log.

Army number three are the Yantar 82nd, a light infantry regiment made of Victoria Lamb guardsmen of a custom type- bits from various of their sets, basically, with old necromunda ak lasguns and the oop Forgeworld Cadian respirator heads. In my opinion those are the best heads GW ever made for the guard. They look like this:

I've got a pretty large collection of them- almost all infantry though. I finished two sentinels, and I've got two squads of the VM rough riders waiting for assembly and paint, but most recently my attention got caught by these new Tauros models:

They're a necromunda model, but the unit was originally a 40k model from Forgeworld and I always liked them. I picked up a couple from Wayland games for a pretty major discount (saved about £16) and I really enjoyed putting them together. Arming them was originally an issue because they came with either twin machineguns or some kind of web gun in the kit; but I wanted the IG version with either a multilaser or lascannon loadout. I've done my sentinels as lascannon armed antitank ambushers. The lightly armed Yantar troops only have heavy bolters, mortars and missile launchers, so the sentinels pretty much had to have lascannons. I never really liked the idea of clanking slow-walking sentinels as scout units. A good scout vehicle is low, quiet and fast; the sentinel is neither.

That left me with no real scout units so that was where the rough riders were going to fit in; and then GW put the tauros out. Had to have some. Once I'd thought things through the obvious solution was to fit them with multilasers as befits a light fast unit. I had a couple left over from the sentinels, so I picked up two more:

As you can see they took a bit of work. The left hand side of the gun is hollow as it just fits on the sentinel with that part hidden. Obviously not ideal for my purposes.

I got some .5mm plasticard and sorted the situation out, shaving the aquilas off the one side and adding them onto the other side as appropriate while I worked. The cabling that hung down fouled the main body as the turret turned so I shaved those off and added them back onto the sides. Finally I shaved off some rivets from the remaining guns on the sentinel sprues and added those in on the new side panels. The result is not perfect, but the scale's so small it's pretty hard to notice.

I fitted the drivers and gunners as I went. The drivers more or less drop in with the original driver hands transplanted over, but the gunners needed a lot more work. The legs had to be shaved right down and the feet taken off. Fortunately you can't see the feet anyway.

I also shaved of the machinegun ammo bins and replaced them with the multilaser batteries so that the whole thing matches neatly.

Finally I accessorised each vehicle with extra stowage- the kit comes with some, but there's four identical fuel cans and four identical backpacks, which is a little too regular for my taste, so I took some backpacks from the Cadian weapons team sprues, and shaved a couple of packs off the rear torsos from the set too, and added them in to break up the regularity.

Finally, time for paint!

I started with the vehicles- my scheme for the infantry is quick and easy and as such I can do the crew more conveniently when I have less time later on. Work is slow right now.

Plus, I still have to put a bit of green stuff on the drivers' hands. Keep forgetting that bit.

Spraying the undercoats was a pain. First I masked up everything but the wheels, engine and undercarriage and sprayed black. I really should have left the wheels off. next time I'll maybe remember. Possibly. Then I did the opposite and masked just the wheels, undercarriage and engine and sprayed Zandri Dust. Finally I cut lots of small triangles in low-tack masking tape and stuck them all over, and sprayed the other GW mid-tone. The green one, whatever it's called.

Right, this is the stage I'm up to now:

The wheel hubs got brush coats of zandri dust and straken green- two light coats of each gives decent coverage. I am an unapologetic dirty straight from the pot painter and refuse to change. Straken green is just a touch lighter than the green spray and zandri dust out of the pots seems a shade lighter than the spray too. Perfect, for my purposes.

The tires were drybrushed first with skavenblight dinge and then with mechanicus standard grey. This was a very heavy drybrush on the first colour and still quite heavy on the second. While the flash makes the remaining dark black undercoated areas look quite stark, they're actually much subtler in natural light:

The intention is to make the tires look grey as opposed to 'black with highlights'. They are going to get a lot of washes and some weathering powder in the next session, and there's also going to be a lot of sponge-chipping on the hubs. Generally they're going to look quite different when finished.

The main bodywork got a severe washing down in athonian camoshade; it works really well on both the green and tan and homogenises the model as well as desaturating the colours quite nicely. Next will be a drybrush highlight on the green and tan: apart from the stowage and consoles that'll really be an end to the traditional painting. I'll do all that lot once I've finished the main areas of the model, apart from weathering powders- those simulate dirt and rust and the stowage will certainly be dirty.

Here's another shot with flash:

You can see the green and tan need re-establishing somewhat, but the wash has given the models coherence.

Once the drybrush is done, then I'll do a bunch of paint-chipping with a sponge; probably with light grey to simulate primer and then a lighter sponging with dull metal. Then stowage and washing the tires, then weathering powders. By the time I'm done they should look thoroughly used and filthy.

I hope you enjoyed the brief change from the usual. Normal service will resume.

Edited April 18 by Bonehead

[Bonehead]

Quick Tauros update.

Got distracted on Wednesday building a Malcador for the baddies, but today I managed to go a few steps further into the painting process.

Namely, i drybrushed the two main camouflage colours to blend in the green wash and give a little natural-looking highlighting, then washed the tyres and lower body with black and then brown.

This shot is without flash ansd shows the colours a little better, although my camera is just being a pain at the moment so they're still somewhat washed out.

Next, with flash:

You can see that the black wash (love that new nuln oil formula) ended up drying shiny. Not a problem because they'll eventually get a matt varnish. Seriously irritating nevertheless. You can also see that the brown wash has pooled on the models in exactly the way that the green wash did -athonian camoshade, not the coelia one- and which I subsequently drybrushed the model to get rid of.

The difference is the green wash is really just to shade and enrich the main colours, whereas the brown wash is here to literally look like old dried muddy water and so on. It will get blended more into the model later on when weathering pigments go on. A combination of dark mud and red rust will combine nicely over the top so that really the brown wash is sort of a pre-tone that'll only be visible on its own in a few areas.

Before the weathering powders go on though, I'll paint the stowage and extra details and do some sponge chipping with a light grey and then a little metallic. The metallic will guide where to put the rust powder most heavily- mostly around the front, on spots where the crew will climb over the vehicle, and on the lowest parts. And also streaking downward from a few water trap areas. Meanwhile the mud pigment goes on the tires and around the mudguards, and on the wheels. Probably a little on the front too.

I'm not exactly the best but I hope they'll look pretty good.

Bonus picture with the tank!

Edited April 18 by Bonehead

[Bonehead]

Nearly done with my little palette-cleansing exercise. Self-satisfied chuckle.

I took a little time to paint in the stowage details and a few other things. Obviously, I've since noticed a bunch of things I missed, so they'll get done in due course.

I decided I wanted a lot of mud on the tires and lower bodywork: they are supposed to be off-road vehicles after all. So I caked on a bunch of mud weathering powders with the thought that a quick matt varnish might hold it nicely: instead it more or less dissolved the pwders, creating a very thick wash. Ok, that experiment's a failure, but it was a shot to nothing because I can just cake on more powders.

Flash again, so the colour is washed out, but you get the idea. I did put some rust colours on too, but it's mostly gone. I'll fix that next, along with more mud powder.

Some detail of the stowage:

I did the bags in either dull military green like the troops' armour or the same camouflage they wear. Straps are in the same brown leather as the ones holding on the troops' flak.

You can also see on the left hand vehicle some of the classic scale modelling moves I've borrowed. Troops often enter their vehicles by climbing over them; these routes will suffer paint chipping, mud marks, and then rust. Being as the turret is mostly clear of any contact with anything, the only wear it sees is on the treadplates that the gunner hops in and out on. By contrast, the wheel hubs and running boards are chipped, dirtied and scratched so much there's barely any paint visible. Same on the front skid plate.

Forgot to drill the barrels, or paint the guns' power cables. Easy fixes. In this and the next shot you can see the exhausts have been given a dusting of soot, along with the immediate area. A large diesel like the V6 modelled in the back of these will stain its exhaust and surroundings quickly if unwashed.

Broken aerials, as is traditional. Pin vice, paperclip. Sorted.

Nearly there now.

 

 

Edited April 23 by Bonehead

[Bonehead]

And.......we're done with all the green stuff.

Painted up the crew (very easy, I don't try as hard on these as with the Rogue Trader guard), filled in all the detail I missed, gave the whole thing another thorough rust and mud treatment, glued them together, drilled the gun barrels and aerial bases.

These are all the same methods I used on the Centaurs earlier in the blog, just more hurriedly applied. Still not bad results though. Right, time for some pictures, then back to normal service. Bam:

[Bonehead]

Had a strange thing happen today.

In my working life I repair guitars. I did a fret dress and set up for a nice bloke on his really very nice Freshman acoustic, and he came and collected it today. He'd come straight from work and was wearing his staff lanyard: it turned out that he works at Warhammer World.

Anyway, he was very happy with how the guitar came out, which is exactly the way I like my customers, and mentioned a thing: apparently he works for Warhammer Plus and presents videos about painting. Shame none of my better paintjobs were on display in my workshop really, not that they'd last ten minutes in there with all the power tools and whatnot. He mentioned that he'd passed my details to a colleague who also has some guitars that need work, which I always welcome, but the way he said the name made me think I was supposed to know who it was. A quick appeal to online friends let me know that Nick Bayton is apparently a big deal in the Warhammer video scene. I feel kind of simultaneously proud of being too aloof and cool to know who he is and also just a complete nerd failure at the same time.

There you go, anyway; if you live in nottingham sooner or later you'll run into everyone who works for GW.