Exo-Armour Squats - Counts-as Custodes w/ Guardian Spears

Hello Peeps, Thanks for dropping by. Something quite old today, but re-purposed. I bought these many years ago and didn't really look at them at the time. Years passed and when examining the lot I saw that these were quite a rough re-cast of the Originals, I know as I did once own the originals. The Bolter arm detail lacks a lot of the finer detail on the three nubs and the multiple cast lines give the game away.  I didn't fork out much as I remember, it was in the early days of eBay and Squats were not quite as sought after. Now stuck with them and cannot re-sell them I put them in the drawer of doom but eventually came to realise that I could use them as Terminator or more recently as Custodes!

With this new sense of purpose and my anger at being duped fading, I thought about what scheme I would like - as counts-as Terminators they could be any colour, but as counts-as Custodes they ought to resemble the Emperor's finest golden warriors - would gold suit Exo-Armoured Squats? Hell yeah, and a plan was hatched.

I used these as a practice for my eventual Custodes gold, so armed with our Lord Duncan's advice, I did the golds as described, Retributor Gold, washed Reikland Fleshshade - (okay Ogryn Flesh) - Highlighted Auric Armour Gold and further highlight of Liberator Gold. I cut off the (fake) tabs under the feet and mounted them on slate to give them more height (so I wouldn't claim modelling advantage on the battlefield) and these are the result.

The Squad Leader has a banner made from a SM Bike aerial, and some gubbins from the Ironbreakers kit (a forthcoming squad of counts-as Space Marines), which worked out nicely.

I used the leather colours Our Lord Duncan used in his Custodes video to see if they looked nice, tick, Custodes scheme sorted now. The Power Axes would nicely counts-as Guardian Spears or Terminator Powerfists, painted using Regal Blue (Kantor Blue), washed with Nuln Oil and highlighted Temple Guard Blue and white washed with Asurmen Blue.

I used the Primaris Marine Dark Angel knee decals to make the basis for a winged Hammer, the Squats favoured icon, this can be seen on the (Storm)Bolter arm.

The slate gives some nice variation in look and height and helps fill the 40mm bases quite nicely. I chose to glaze the slate sightly with Calthan Brown and used the highlight colours from the bases to drybrush the rock edges, linking the rock to the base - but kept the nice purple hue.

The rear shot..

There you have it, a nice salvage job, now back ready for the tabletop to fight once again alongside my Marine forces, as Termnators or Custodes... awesome sauce.

Thanks for checking in, cya, Siph.

Relictors Rapier Laser Destroyer Battery Alternatives

Following on from the WIP shots I posted Monday, here are the finished weapon platforms. I have tried to convey the weapon platforms are manned by grizzled veterans, those marines with bionics and maybe not fit for frontline fighting, so put in a support role until they are back to good 'health' or used to their implants/grafts etc.

As Greggles suggested in his comments Monday, he will be pleased, I have dirtied up the dozer blades and worn the paintwork, I was going to do chevron patterns but in the end opted for plain Relictor grey, they already look far too much like Iron Hands/Iron Warriors with all those bionics!

Here is a close up of the grizzled veterans, two bionic leg swaps were from Kromlech Miniatures, the bionic arms from FW and the 'pilot' standing getting used to his new bionic leg also from FW Space Marine Character Converion Set. The seated marines were from a FW Damocles Command Rhino interior with a Rhino door as the platform the seat is attached to.

Here is a different view of the platforms, not as detailed as the FW ones, but they are decent enough for the tabletop.

I've also used the FW Phobos pattern bolters and all the crew have Mechanicus Icon breastplates.

Thanks for stopping by and reading our humble corner of the interwebsphere....

Rapier Laser Alternatives WIP

A quick update, now that I am working on the hobby front again, whilst I was away I see that FW 'nicked' my idea ;)  Here are my Space Marine Rapier Laser Destroyers made from a Kickstarter project 6thDegree and I sponsored. He produced a decent Iron Warriors Laser Rapier in no time at all, I sat on mine...

That was until I bought a Damocles FW Command Rhino and decided to glue the back door shut, giving me two seats and sitting down marines to use... 'ding' great idea, I'll use them as gunners to man the Rapiers, I already have a FW Heavy Bolter one for size comparison, so I'll put these Kickstarter ones to good use.

Nowhere near as detailed as FW, but a decent tabletop equivalent. And then FW did these for the Solar Auxilla... sit on and ride Rapiers, great stuff!

Iron Warrior Cultists (counts as)

So these guys are the Cultists I am using for my Iron Warriors. Evidently they aren't GW's offereing - which I like, but dont fit as well with my IW's aesthetic.

If you read some of the Black Library books that feature Iron Warriors, you'll hear about them picking up a variety of stragglers; from prisoners to militant fanatics - and very often they aren't given very glamorous tasks (like walking into enemy fire to identify where guns are mounted, or clearing a minefield by hand...). I like to think these guys were part of a worlds militia that was brought under heel and they decided to paint some hazard stripes on their armour and try and join the IWs.

The models themselves are from the Brothers of Iron Kickstarter and I got a couple of dozen guys and a tank for about £30. You can now get them directly from Ramshackle Games. Size-wise they are a bit smaller than a normal IG, but lets be honest, those models are out of scale really (if an SM is supposed to be 8 feet tall, that would make IG about 7 feet tall?) - so next to a CSM, they look great.

Quality-wise they are so-so... I quite like the poses, but the sculpts are relatively basic and casts leave a bit to be desired, but they can be cleaned up well and you do have to remember - they are coming from a small independent company and not GW. Still - for throw-away high-volume Cultists, they are fine.

Weemen is getting a 'wee' bit bigger....

Things at the Weemen shed are getting bigger...

Iron Warriors - Rhino Counts-As

Hi again. I picked up this tank as part of Ramshackle Games Brothers of Iron Kickstarter. I pledged around £30 and got the tank and some soldier figures that I will be using for Cultists/Renegade Guard (when I get around to it).

The tank is about the same size as a Rhino - so I will be using it as a counts-as  if I ever need a spare for my Iron Warriors, or for the other projects I've mentioned.

The sculpt is pretty nice - lots of rivets and the tracks are more interesting than GWs offerings, although it is a little light on weapons (you get loads in the kit, but not many hard-points to fix them to). I went with the mini-cannon so it can be a Havoc Missile launcher.

The thing weighs a ton - its mad up of 2 or 3 solid blocks of resin - so don't want to drop that on anything...

It got painted up as normal for my Iron Warriors, with plenty of weathering butI left off any sort of Iron Warrior insignia for now - it looks the part with the rest of my army but I have a theme I am going for in my head with the Renegade Guard, so am sticking to that for now.

Here is a side-by-side pic with a Rhino for some scale - pretty close eh?