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

[Tallarn Commander]

I have some of those Zinge transparent headlights too. I'll try 'em out when I assemble my Chaos Land Raider over the summer. I have been using and liking Zinge's bendy ammo belts for awhile now. I need to try out their shell casings.

[Bonehead]

Yeah, those ammo belts are brilliant. I don't know how I managed without them before.

[Bonehead]

Well, the whole 'sort out the vehicles' thing didn't really happen, did it? Things got in the way. Never mind, there's plenty more to do.

Lucked into getting some cool models pretty cheaply.

The original plan was to make them into chaos cultists, but I decided I liked them too much to do that. They had a quality that I liked; the somewhat matching flak vests.

These are they:

 

 

The somewhat less-known models that GW produced for Confrontation, the predecessor for Necromunda that was published in a series of articles in White Dwarf, but never officially released or really even finished. It's thoroughly worth your time to search out the series of articles, especially for the first couple which are pretty long, and full of great worldbuilding.

These models are specifically the 'maniac gang' and the 'elite gang' sets. They have a very similar look- all feature the same doublet-style vest, but with different detailing. Only one of the elites and two of the maniacs have the diamond-pattern padded flak vests, but i like the look a ton and crucially it ought to be posisble to replicate accross all the other models really easily.

Here are the three 'maniac' body sculpts:

 

 

The lad in the middle has his jacket somewhat closed, but it's still reasonably clear that there's no flak vest under it. That ought to be pretty easy to sculpt back in. More annoying are the odd tassels all over the same jacket. Those will need to be removed. I also like the cartoonishly large breather masks. The one model not wearing his has it hooked onto his bandolier on the back of the model.

Basically, I have enough of these to make a small platoon, so that's what I'm going to do. The Rogue Trader guard army that was the main content of this log (and will remain so) are generally lore-ified as being involved in the 'Augustine Crusade' shared setting https://apologentsia.blogspot.com/p/augustine-crusade.html which my yantar 8th log and my traitor guard forces over in the Lost and Damned side of this site are also part of. It being a crusade, there are more than one regiment per side, and these will be another. Alongside the Ebla mechanised and the Yantar light infantry, we will also have the Hoptor regular infantry. That's a nice little reference from the distant past, that I defy any reader to correctly identify.

These are the 'elite' models:

 

 

As you can see the vests have different detailing on them, but they're the same shape. it wont be hard to sculpt a diamond pattern on there. The bald head and shades are more what I would call optional.

I did say I had more than just the seven in these photos though, and that is ..technically true.

 

Some kind of glitch seems to be preventing me from uploading any more photos though, so we'll leave it here for the present. Time to consider the fun side of things such as what style of lasgun, what style of helmet and what arms to give the models. No modern GW arms will do, they'll all be too big. So either old GW or third party. Yes indeed, time for a nice think...

 

 

[kabaakaba]

Really nice sculpts! 

[Bonehead]

Aren't they? I felt they deserved better than being just more nurgle cultists.

[Inso]

Looking good :) .

 

You may want to look at Anvil Industry for arms/weapons. They have a massive selection in their Regiments range :) .

[Bonehead]

Good shout. I was originaly thinking Victoria Minis- they tend to work well with old GW- but I think I'm kind of screwed on that with the tarriff situation. Anvil do have lots of stuff. 

I could just do the obvious thing and go with rt guard arms, but honestly they're incredibly limiting, pose-wise. Anvil are definitely going to have more pose options- heavy weapons, even. 

Lasguns, that's a tricky one. I do have a few Kreig ones which would be pretty cool, but they're a massive pain to work with. Not sure if Anvil's stuff is going to have the right options. i've screwed myself a bit giving their best lasgun model to my baddie scion equivalent; now I don't want to make it be an ordinary lasgun for someone else. I might see if I can just grab a ton of the new cadian ones from a bits site. They're smaller, which does suit the old GW scale.

Helmets though, that the really important choice. That really determines the look of the model. I'm going to look at every range I can find, I think. Anvil will probably be the one, but no sense not looking everywhere first. I'm not in a rush

[Bonehead]

The prints break down into two categories: the maniacs and everyone else.

Of the four maniac body styles, including the leader model that is, I was very lucky and got sent a bunch of test prints along with the good ones- and since I plan to remodel these extensively, that suits me just fine. They even worked out nicely by the numbers of each individual body:

 

 

The one body that I have three metal originals, I only got three more prints, but the two ordinary lads I only have one of, I got four and five of. Perfect. Meanwhile I don't have the leader in metal and got just four prints, but his pose is pretty unusual, so I don't mind.

Of the Elites, I guess everything printed great first time because I just got the six lads I asked for:

 

 

It should be reasonably clear why I reckon I can style up an imperial guard regiment from this lot. The detailing is very similar in a lot of ways; the high boots and standard-looking trousers are there on everyone, and nearly all of them have the same cut of vest. There's really only one body that has detail that's problematic, and that is the maniac I have the least of. One of those lads is covered in what look a bit like purity seals, but have a more fur-looking than parchment-looking tail. You can see them on the metal body below:

 

 

You can also see that with a few minutes' careful clipper and file work, they can be removed from the printed bodies. Thus, we basically have a bunch of bodies with matching legs and flak vests, but a few of them have a jacket on over the vest.

Similarly to how the one maniac body can be edited into more of a blank slate, the leader model can be too:

 

 

Bit of GS here and there, new arms and heads; job done, really. Lots of dynamic poses, too which I do like a lot; the RT guard models are very much more restricted in that regard and need some really heavy converting to move them away from a relatively modest set of quite static poses. not that I let that stop me, as previously shown, but still this raw material ought to be easier to work with.

Cheers

 

Edited February 9 by Bonehead