Return of 40K

Well I thought it about time to return to 40K, I am sure some of my followers from FTW will be glad for this update!

Anyhow, this past weekend I decided to finish up a few commission pieces I am doing for my buddy Lonnie. First up the Valkyrie, now I have had shots of this before up, but today it's with the weathering and details picked out. This is an awesome model, I have to get me one of these!

Now since Lonnie is over in Iraq, we do not get to talk much, but when he gave me this kit to build, he wanted me to be able to make a Vendetta out of it. For all you 40k folks out there that play Imperial Guard, you know that the Vendetta carries 3 Lascannons on it. Lonnie also wanted to be able to use this as a Valkyrie as well, so as in my previous post I turned to magnets to mount the added weaponry on the kit. First up the Hellfire Missiles,

Next the Lascannons. You will notice that these are supposed to be Twin Linked Lascannons, but I went with a single Lascannon since this is all I had. If Lonnie wants twin linked in the future, I can easily magnetize a set and add them to the model.

Last up the Missile Pods. Once again I love the options that Rare Earth magnets bring to a kit like this.

Sticking with the Fast Attack theme, I decided to finish up three Sentinels for Lonnie as well. The base paint had been finished for a while, but I needed to do the highlights on the models. I also needed to add the rubble to the bases to finish the models off. Here are three of them, two armed with Lascannons and one with an Autogun. I really like how these have come out.

And since I had the camera out I decided to take a few pictures of his HQ squad I finished up. Commissar Yarrick just got finished last night. You will also notice that the figures are very glossy right now. This is because of the Minwax Stain I used. Once I get the base's done I will shoot all of this with Testors Dullcoate to knock the shine off of them.

Here is a close up of Yarrick, I will also be adding more highlights after I dull coate him, but you get the idea of what he looks like.

Now most folks know that the Steel Legion line is not a complete line, it is missing a few HQ options for models. So per Lonnie's request I converted a few Steel Legion troops for him. First up a trooper with a Standard. I will admit, this is an easy conversion, it is a Standard from an WFB Imperial Knight cut off at the had and stuck on a Steel Legion Sergeant model. I also used decals for the flag since my skill is not that great on Free Hand painting. All in all the model looks good IMO.

Next up is a sniper, once again this was an easy conversion, all I did was cut down the stock Lasgun barrel, added a Kroot barrel and a Space Marine Scope. That's it, pretty easy but makes a great model.

The next two are stock troopers, one has had a Vox Caster added to him, which meant removing some of his Kit of his back, The other is a regular Plasma Gunner, nothing special about these.

Next up is a Heavy flamer, now all Guard players know that the Heavy Flamer is your friend for mass troops, but the Steel Legion line dose not have any flamers. So this conversion was a bit more complex to pull off. I first had to find the right model pose, then had to remove all of his kit and clean that up. Then took off the models right arm to add the stock Flamer arm from the Cadian line, which meant I had to file off the shoulder pad. I then took the left arm from a Sergeant model and bent it to be able to look like he was holding the flamer. then green stuff the heck out of the gaps. I am not 100% happy with it, but it will do. Lonnie got to see this before paint got on it and he loved it and that's all I cared about.

Last model is of a medic. This was rather hard to figure out, but once again went with a Steel Legion Sergeant but took off his left arm and added a Sentinal Drivers arm with part of the control stick still attached. It reminded me of some sort of medical scanner. His right arm was taken from a plastic Cadian which had the shoulder pad removed and had the glove cuff extended. I wanted him to look like he was carrying a medical bag which came from a Catachan backpack. I also added a small blob of green stuff to his left shoulder for the medical cross. I really like how this guy turned out as well.

Last up are the finished Storm Troopers. Reader of my blog may remember that these guys were done to this point and were waiting for a shot of Dull Coate, but I grabbed Testors Sac Brown/green instead of the dull coate. Well here is what they look like again! I had to strip them down & repaint them. Needless to say I am a bit uneasy with dull coating them again. But this time I will spray the can on a piece of board before shooting the models!

So there you have it, another 40K post in the bag, next up will be more 40K units to finish for Lonnie. I have 7 Chimeras, 2 Basilisks and 3 Leman Russ Tanks to finish by December 9th. Good news is that all the models are assembled and have base colors on them, so it will go real quick!

TK