Remnants: a Death Guard log

[Charax]

Wow, haven't posted since January? that's kinda bad.

Well, lots of happened, both in my personal life (not so good) and my Gaming life (I have a local club, yay!)

I've been saving these up, so I thought I'd post them all at once. Here's my Old-style Contemptor to New style Contemptor project

Last time I mentioned This Dakka Plog. It's kind of stalled now but the progress was good and inspiring:



I filed down Mr Catface's...Cat Face and fitted the Venerable Dread front. This particular one uses the wide Contemptor torso and the grated Ven Dread piece. Filing was quite easy - I keep a large-grain wood file around for these situations, where I need to take a ton of material off of a model, and it works brilliantly. This is the dry fit (you can see the blu-tak) - you wouldn't think that's a very good fit, but there's more to come:



Front fiew of the dry fit. Again, much blu tak holding it together, but you can see more clearly the files-down head area. I thought I filed it down a lot, but it apparently needs a LOT more before the conversion works properly.

There are a few stages without photos, so I'll describe what I did here as best I can:

• I built up the gap between the Contemptor body and the ven dread piece with milliput. This was actually my first time using it - people aren't kidding when they say it dries like a rock! It wasn't neat by any means, but that doesn't matter
• Selected a suitable head for the Dread. The original plog called for a Venerable dread head, but the nice ones disappeared from bits sites extremely fast and the price was high, so I picked my favourite "normal" power armour head, the chaos plain studded one. I tried to push this down into the Ven Dread body but apparently I needed to file down the metal a lot more, so instead I sliced down the back and bottom of the head and squished it into some putty. Yay improvisation!
• I built up the gaps with green stuff and Procreate. It's a little messy, but that's where my future plan comes into play.

And that left me with:



nothing spectacular, but add the Contemptor's arm and...



Woohoo! vast improvement. Lots of room to improve, but it's taking shape nicely. Kinda looks like a Warmachine Warjack, which is great!

Still to be done:

• Smother it in Liquid green stuff to smooth out the puttywork
• Decide on what the hell to do for legs! Originals and Dread legs are too stumpy, Sentinel legs are too long. will have to think about it
• Pick a second arm!
• Maybe add some steampunky details (chimney stacks?) to go with the Warjack look
• Shave off those Imperial details

And then there's the other one (Thin Contemptor body, other Ven Dread torso):


Peace out, will try to post more now I have more time for gaming.

[Shadow Nugz]

I really like these updated dreadnoughts. The added thickness really makes it look good. However with the first one I would recommend doing something to the shoulder piece of the arm to make it beefier.

[Charax]

It does drop off a bit sharply, doesn't it?

I don't know, adding a shoulderpad would kind of ruin the nice curves it has. I could attach something else to the shoulder part of the arm but then it might look weird next to the rather skinny arm itself.

I do have a couple of old-style missile launchers (the ones with the curved upper mag) that I wanted to use as Havok Launchers, if he comes out looking too skinny I might stick those on the shoulders

[LokkoRex]

for what it's worth, congratulations to being one year closer to a mid-life crisis!

sorry, couldn't help myself, hope you didn't take offence.

cool idea to use old contemptors for something like that.

[Charax]

Heh, no offence taken, it's not so much "Mid-life crisis", more "Mum almost dying, long-term girlfriend dumping me, terrible job prospects & general lapses into depression" :P

Anyway, back to the log:
The Contemptor is looking pretty s*****, I'm very happy with the look (not much has changed since the last pic was taken). The main problem I'm having is with the legs - the original ones look silly, sentinel ones are massive, Dreadnought ones are stubby, I can't win! I've sawn off the terrible hip join on the original legs that made them just out at an odd angle and I'm thinking of filling in the bottom hole in the body with milliput, sanding it flat and using various bits of gubbinz & kibble to build a new hip join to the old legs - which actually look ok, it's just the feet that don't look great.

In other news: Decimator! - it's so very, very tempting to get one (without the arms though - the body comes with the upper arms and paying £18 for two weapons doesn't sit right with me), but doing so would negate the point of the log, which is "No direct purchases from GW, Ever". I could wait for someone to sell one, or try building one from a defiler if I see one up for trade...

I think the next major project for the log will be that horrible blue Land Raider, I think I've figured out what I'm going to do with it:
- Rip off the side doors and replace them with These from Zinge Industries, replace the top hatch with This One. I know, £9 on hatches doesn't really fit with the penny-pinching theme of this log, but given how little I got the land raider for in the first place, it still comes out cheap. The hatches will give it a nice submarine-esque feel to it.

- I don't think I'm going to bother stripping it, it'll take too long and I don't have nearly enough Simple Green to do it in one go. Plus it has enough holes that getting the Green out again will be irritating. If I can pull it apart (not looking promising there) then I'll reconsider, otherwise it'll be given a grey prime all over

- Weapon mounts: I'll probably use Predator mounts in the forward positions again, unless I can find another alternative.

- Other weapons: the Proteus is quite a beast weapons wise, it can carry 2 Twinlinked lascannons, twinlinked heavy bolters, a havoc launcher and a pintle multimelta/Heavy Bolter, which makes it quite eclectic (You say "Versatile", I say "Unfocused"), I'm really not sure what to do about the other weapon mountings. Technically everything except the lascannons is optional though, so I could just leave them off.

- I have a HUGE dozer blade that might look good at the front

- Paint-wise it would be a good chance to use my airbrush. I got that in a trade a while back and haven't put it to use yet

I really should work on some non-Elites choice units at some point...

Oh, and I'LL BE AT SALUTE 2012

So if anyone knows of a nearby bar, or has a hot friend they can introduce me to, PM me

[Charax]

The Contemptor is looking pretty s*****

Oh c'mon, seriously? it's a valid word!

[Charax]

Wow, people really don't give a damn about this log do they? Oh well.

You know what you don't see enough of in 40K? Clockpunk/Steampunk. It creeps in every so often, but outside the odd Iron Warrior army or some Space Skaven, you really don't see a lot..


(Click to enbiggen)

The fist is from the Forgeworld Character Conversion Set, the gears are from a 50g bag I got off ebay for about £9. Constructing that arm was very satisfying - all too often people just slap gears on things, but taking the time to make sure they mesh is very gratifying. Also my knee is at the perfect focal length for my phone.

Feedback/criticism/encouragement/abuse welcome

[DapperAnarchist]

Mmmmmmm, steampunk.... And you didn't just stick some gears on it and call it steampunk! The fist itself could do with some merging, it has a very sudden ending, if you see what I mean, but the arm looks great, and the skull fits in perfectly.

[Charax]

ok, so I drilled into the fist and hollowed it out, filled it with gears and then used some spare ProCreate to make it look vaguely fist-shaped again:


Might add a couple more skulls to make a Nurgle icon (I know icons go on the left, tactical markings on the right - that doesn't apply to Clockwork Cyborg Death Guard)

Also started building the other arm (which will have a Plasma pistol - either in the hand, or wrist mounted, or replacing the hand as part of the bionics, haven't decided)



Legs are going to be quite plain, lest they detract from the rest of the model - don't want it looking too busy. For painting, I'm going for white/bone with bronze trim on the armour, and I'm thinking of leaving the cogs plain, or giving them a heavy black or brown wash to make them look oily.

Haven't yet decided on a basing scheme for the army, any ideas?

Anyone?

...Please?

[mrtn]

Both swamp and desert themed basing could look cool.

[Charax]

Yay! A reply!
Hmm. Never done either before (I tend to prefer urban basing). Swamps provide lots of modelling opportunities but with the downside of being green - my previous Death Guard army was green, and had kroot allies, it would be fair to say I'm a little sick of green!

Desert might be interesting, nice and easy, but I can add some extra details if I want to. Might have to look at some Tomb Kings logs and see if they've got any interesting ideas.

[mrtn]

You could check my Dirty Rotters plog, I've got Mars-like desert bases, and I think that looks very nice. Not that I'm biased or anything.

[Charax]

ooh, those are quite nice, I hadn't considered red sand. Although now you've done "Plague Marines on sand" I can't bring myself to do it! :P

[DapperAnarchist]

How about a mix of urban and swamp? Sort of flooded city look, with sewage and filth and maggots everywhere?

[Catferret]

Desert with rusted metal thingies sticking out? It's certainly one of my favourite base styles. Bits of scrap and gubbins half buried in the sand is pretty quick and easy to model and paint.

[atraphos]

nice work on the clockwork plague marine, great start to a good theme.

i was looking at doing something similar with a defiler conversion, but couldn't find the right size bits...

[Charax]

Well, in keeping with this log's theme of trades and 3rd party supplies, I just bought my basing supplies from This Thread - 40 25mm bases, 20 40mm bases and a few 60mm bases, should be plenty

...guess I'll be having a volcanic theme then

[Charax]

Update time!

I've actually got lots of little updates, so I've consolidated them:

1) Salute was great! Met a bunch of cool guys, picked up a lot of stuff, including a ton from Zinge and Anvil Industry - nice guys, Kit at Zinge gave me one of his new rivet strips to play with.

2) The Zinge bits were mainly for that big blue monstrosity of a Land Raider up there in the first post. You can't really tell from that pic but the main hull was a mess of thick paint and stuck on randomness, so I decided to replace it with a Rhino hull (which arrived this morning). Along with that, I thought about giving it an old-school submarine feel, as I think I've mentioned before, so I ordered two of these and one of these

The rectangular doors are replacing the side hatches like this:


Told you, mess of thick paint and randomness. The hatches are actually fantastic, because of the softish resin that hinge actually works - same with the circular one!

So, current plan is this:
- attach hinges
- replace the hull with a Rhino hull
- attach the circular hatch to the top of the Rhino using the Predator top plate
- attach weapons
- paint

So I'll have my own Land Raider Spartan! Not nearly as cool as the upcoming Forgeworld one, but also much cheaper

3) I caved from my "no direct purchases" rule and bought the new Forgeworld Apothecaries from Salute. I couldn't resist, they're magnificent

4) This is the big 'un:


You know what that is? Two Hundred and One Death Guard Heads, and the reason I don't update much

You see, I love converting, I can't stand having non-unique models - this is why I don't let people paint my armies and I don't buy complete ones, but at the same time converting every model in a Death Guard army is a PAIN. Looking at some of the Forgeworld torsos, they're basically just a cool head on a minimally-resculpted Space Marine body, and it still looked recognisably Death Guard. the main thing that was missing was a head in that style that had the ball attachment to fit on a normal Marine torso

I know other companies do Death Guard-type heads, but they're not really the same, and kitting out a whole army in them gets expensive, so I had my old pal Robey (You probably know him better as Precinct Omega) sculpt me up a reasonable likeness of one of these pickelhaube helmets with all the trimmings - helmet spike, studs etc - and send it along to a mutual friend for casting, which by some voodoo space magic he managed to complete in about a week.

The idea behind this is that I can now pick up any marine I have, replace the helmet, do some minimal sculpting and have a fairly recognizable Death Guard marine. and because it has all the trimmings I can snip off the helmet spike or file down the studs or add some battle damage to stop things getting boring. Pretty cool, huh?

So yes, I might get round to doing some infantry at some point.

5) I got some miscast Forgeworld Tartaros pattern terminators from BitsAndKits at a hefty discount, they arrived with the rhino hull today. Cant actually see any miscasting right now, although there's a TON of flash...

So anyway, yes I'm alive, yes this log is still going, thanks for all the views and ratings but please, please leave comments! Comments encourage me to update, otherwise I just assume nobody gives a damn and carry on without updating.

[DapperAnarchist]

Ooh, nice heads. And the doors are awesome too It's always nice to see a poorly treated model resurrected with a bit of clever work.

[Mr Feral]

Steampunk Death Guard? I do like the sound of that!

Those nautical hatches will look great on the Land Raider, giving it a different vibe.