Armillus Dynat

At the recent Forge World Weekender, the model for Armillus Dynat was revealed. I am actually really pleased about this to say the least as it is always deeply unclear if all the named characters will ever get the breath of fresh air (ahem) resin from Forge World.

But on the other hand, I'm a little bit miffed, as I had a good conversion for Dynat on the go.  Here's my attempt so far! I think the Forge World model is superior (obviously), so this model might just be taken apart for spare parts. For the moment though, I thought I'd show him off to the world and see if you like my take on Dynat.

For the model, I've used Dark Angels terminator legs, shaved down and green stuffed over the Angel's iconography. The torso is from Anvil Industry, as it the head. The weapons are from the Grey Knights, whilst the arms are space marines. The right shoulder pad is a chaos space marine one, shaved down so that the chaos symbol is gone, and the left shoulder pad is from Forge World.

The pose of the model that I was gunning for here was one of near-arrogance. At least in a way to encapsulate the Martial Hubris of the Alpha Legion. The power sword is therefore in almost a casual fencing pose, whilst the hammer is readied to deliver the harrowing blow. He also has some grenade accessories ready to deploy. One thing that I think is perhaps missing is an antenna on the back pack. But in hind sight, I'm not so worried about that as I selected a rather high-tech looking back pack from the space marine range to cover the rules for Dynat.

The bald head from Anvil Industry is excellent for Alpha Legion models. I was intending to paint it with a tattoo (as per Extermination's vision of Dynat).

Overall, I think I'm pleased with the way that my model for Dynat looks. That said, I'm not beyond purchasing the real model from Forge World when it is released for sale, as I think that is a great model as well. Maybe I should keep my conversion -- the Alpha's could do with multiple copies of Dynat I feel?

Heavy Support Marine - with Eldar Missile Launcher

For my Alpha Legion force, I intend to leave no model unconverted. None. Whatsoever. They're all going to have some kind of modification, some kit bash, or some scratch build conversion about them. Indeed, all my infantry are going to be pseudo-true scale for starters. I'm trying not to do too much true scale stuff at the moment as it can be a bit of a killer on the hobby mojo.

I decided that for my heavy support squad (a squad of missile launcher guys), I wanted something that might be very characteristic of the Alpha Legion. Specifically: the use of alien technology that has been retro-engineered and put to full use (field testing or post field testing) in their arsenals. Of all the legions, it is the Alpha legion that has the least problems with this kind of thought. Note explicitly that Alpharius himself carries around a spear of unknown origin (perhaps necron, perhaps something else altogether).

Therefore, instead of normal missile launchers from the 30k range, I've opted to give my legionaries some eldar missile launchers.

In the image, you can see that the missile launcher is from the Eldar Wraithlord range. It has, however, been extensively converted. Firstly, I took some chaos space marine arms - specifically the ones that hold on to a heavy bolter - and modified them to carry the missile launcher. The left arm sits nicely on top of the planed eldar missile launcher. But for the rear, I have chopped off the rear of the missile launcher and inserted the right hand and arm, before re-pinning and connecting it. The look is finished off by adding some purity scrolls on to the missile launcher, as well as a veteran terminator crux accessory to the centre of the launcher. This gives the feel of something that might be Imperial - at least in the eyes of the Alphas.

The toughest part of the conversion by a long way was the pinning of the right hand. I had to drill right through the hand and ensure that it matched up with both the end piece of the launcher and with the main body of the launcher. By contrast, getting the left hand to line up and align with the torso of the (Forge World) body of the marine was relatively easy. That said, I might add a bit of greenstuff under the armpit to help with the angle. This will, of course, be eased in appearance once the left shoulder pad is added to the construction (and, needless to say, the legs as well!).

Necron Command Barge

In a bit of a change from the usual pace, today I wanted to display an image of a necron command barge that I recently completed with my daughter. I've not built this kind of monstrosity before, so I was really looking at the instructions very closely every step of the way for this one.

What I found was:
(1) the shoulders of the pilot and the gunner at the front of the command barge can be a little  bit awkward to place. If you look closely, you can see on my barge that at least 2 of the arms on these guys look a little bit odd -- they're out by several mm compared to where they should be. This has been caused by wanting the fingers of the hands on the correct place of the control panel. But the problem that caused this was that these two figures are the first bits to be constructed according to the instructions. But sadly, these necrons are also placed farther back than they perhaps should be (I think I might have placed the seats too close to their groins for comfort). And as a result of this, the arms are not quite snugly where they should otherwise be.

(2) the necron lord comes with his own base. I constructed him separately (although the orb that he is holding is an odd one to glue together due to the elbow joint) and simply placed him on the command barge. Whilst this has the benefit of being able to remove him, I'm not totally sold on the pose being equally good for a ground commander as he is for commanding from the back of a barge.

(3) the curvature of the back "spine" of the barge was a little awkward to get in place with the horizontal struts that come off it. Although at first it looked like it was going to be an easy part of the construction, actually getting these struts in to place is something that I would recommend some dry fitting of before grabbing for the superglue.

Other than that, the build went reasonably well and I think I'm pleased overall. When I get chance, I'll apply some black undercoat and start to think about the colour schemes to paint it in. I want it in Verdus Prime colours (white and leaking brown effluent / oil) to match my previous small squads of necrons. The only question is how to paint the barge itself -- perhaps it should be in a contrasting black and metallic colour and going sparingly on the white?  Choices!

Tartaros Plasma Blaster Terminator

The plasma blaster is one of the nicer options for Tartaros terminators to take. But, not being made of cash and wanting to do some real conversion work, I decided that I didn't want to go for the comparatively small plasma blaster weapon sold by Forge World. Nope. Instead, I wanted a full-scale plasma-cannon! 

The logic behind this choice is not too hard to see. Not only do I think that that Alpha Legion would have access to some of the biggest, most advanced, baddest weapons possible, but they're certainly not shy of deploying novel creations of their own through reverse engineering whatever they please (cf. Corvus Alpha armour). That, and I'm also quietly hoping that the Dark Angels might have their own terminators capable of deploying plasma cannons themselves, which makes stealing them by the Alpha Legion much more credulous. 

The terminator here is a remarkably straight forward conversion. Having learnt my lesson well about haunched shoulders and the curvy bodies that these guys have on my sergeant, I opted for a variant pose for this guy. Rather than having the plasma cannon levelled, he has it up high as if running, or perhaps attacking with his power sword instead of using the plasma weapon. This made the pinning of the plasma cannon from the Dark Angels terminator range much more easy to do.

The power sword arm comes from the grey knights range -- it is one of the long power swords that the knights in normal power armour wield in two hands usually, but this one is wielded one-handedly (because he's a terminator!). The pinning to the Tartaros arm was not too painful either, but I might add just a dab of greenstuff prior to painting to bring it together better.

As can also be seen, I avoided using more of the puppetswar shoulder pads, instead just going for the Tartaros pattern shoulder pads. Clearly this works well for the power sword arm, but it actually works just fine for the plasma cannon arm as well for that matter. 

Finally, some of you may be wondering why I've opted for a power sword here (rather than a power axe). Let me be honest. This guy will always be the first to die (if I get to select) in any melee. That's because he's served his purpose by firing his plasma blaster once or twice on the way into melee. After that, I'm not firing the plasma and his value is diminished. But more than that, I don't want to be taking on enemy terminators with my terminators regularly. I want to crush weaker specimens if at all possible. That means I don't actually need AP2 that power axes will provide, and can use AP3. It might mean that I can whittle down an otherwise terrifying squad (even for terminators) before the rest of my AP2 weapons start hacking back. Without storm shields, this is not a bad sacrifice in my opinion and shakes up the ordinary paradigm (which is what the Alpha Legion would just love to do in my opinion). 

Tartaros Terminator Sergeant with Added Shoulders

When I last spoke about my Tartaros Pattern Terminator Sergeant, I was really rather worried by his shoulders. The main problem is that although they kind of look just fine at first sight, if you stare at the model too long, it becomes apparent that the shoulders MUST have to be hunched to achieve the pose depicted. Are all terminators similarly afflicted? Probably not. But for conversions such as this where a little bit of hunching is necessary in order to execute the build, there is a need to some how mask what has gone before.

And that is exactly what I set about doing.

Using "Termos" pattern shoulder pads from Puppetswar, this problem becomes a bit less apparent. Certainly for the thunder hammer hand, the entire arm now looks entirely plausible - this is particularly helped by the arm being a bit more lowly hung than the other. The combi-bolter arm still looks slightly off, but it has certainly been helped by these unique shoulder pads. The main issue here remains that in order to incorporate this arm from the Dark Angels range, it necessitated a slightly higher pinning position than I would have ordinarily went for. I think its worked out well in the end, but these kinds of issues can bug me as an avid converter!

Putting some destroyer arms to good use

A while ago, I mentioned that I bought some Destroyer Arms from Puppetswar. Today, here's what I've done with just one of them.

The first thing to note is that these arms are absolutely perfect for terminators. But as can be see here, I'm using them on space marine scale miniatures.

In order to execute this conversion, it was necessary to trim off the shoulder joint. Without this, the shoulder pad simply cannot be attached by any means and we'd be left with a shoulder that did not gel with the overall vibe of the miniature.

The rest of the miniature features a combination of parts from chaos space marines (the back pack, bolt pistol arm and shoulder pad), forge world space marine parts (torso and the other shoulder pad), space marines (head).

Overall, the miniature is one of a brutal design to be honest! And that is exactly what I wanted. This will be part of a squad that are all equipped with the destroyer arms from puppetswar. I'm not going to treat them as counts-as power fists or anything like that -- they're just going to be close combat weapon alternative for the main part. Hence this guy is just a regular marine. Of course, he just looks rather threateningly armed -- more so than the regular space marine. An entire squad of these guys is going to look a whole lot more intimidating than chain sword equipped space marines I think. And that's the point. Moreover, it makes them look very very different to other marines in the technology stakes. And that is one of the key ideas behind my growing Unbroken Chain army.