INQ28 - Venator

Prior to the release of the Necromunda game, Games Workshop had a set of rules released through White Dwarf that trod some of the same ground, and indeed featured skirmishes between rival gangs set in the Hives of Necromunda.  However, instead of gangs based on nation sized noble houses, Confrontation had gangs based more on profession, or social status.  One of those gangs was the Venators, or professional bounty hunters, as discussed here on the Leadplague blog.

Inspired by some discussion on how to kitbash a Venator, I created the following:

I still need to sand the putty again, and these are but hasty camera phone pictures, but you get the idea.

I used empire militia legs, a Bretonnian archer torso, an old Necromunda Orlock pistol, and a space marine scroll as the "warrant". The head is made from a 6th Edition empire drummer head, and half of a Sanguineous death mask.

For Inquisitor he is equipped pretty lightly with a Stubgun and a club, but most of the time I am sure that it suffices.

Ebay Score

I do not know about you, but there are some items that I "chase" on Ebay, always submitting the same low bids in the hope that someday an item will go unnoticed by others and I will win without having to spend much money. To help me do this, I have my Ebay feed set up to show certain items, like Bretonnians, Rebel Blockade runners, or Revell Gunships etc.

One of those items is the Warhammer Chaos Battalion, which as I have previously mentioned, is a rather good deal at ~$2.34 a figure.  Naturally, I wanted to pay less than full price to make it even more of a deal.

Just before Christmas I noticed a buy-it-now deal for an assembled Chaos battalion "with tons of extras".  I offered less than the asked price on the grounds that "the figures are already assembled, and the shipping is expensive" and they accepted...

I was not entirely sure what I was getting in the mail, but the day after Christmas a large, and extremely well packed box turned up.

Contents:
One Chaos Battalion partly assembled, (12 Warriors, 5 knights, 10 hounds, 20 marauders)
1 painted Nurgle Chaos Lord on a horse
20 6th Edition Empire Handgunners
10 current Empire Handgunners/crossbowmen with all bitz, un-assembled.
10 assorted Horses, primed
1 Empire mortar
2 Battle Master Cannons painted
Beastmen Bitz
Skaven Bitz
Undead Bitz
Bretonnian bitz
40k Chaos Marines Bitz
plus a bunch of truly random things like an Eldar Guardian body, or Gretchen heads.

Assembled Chaos Battalion

Bag of Empire Handgunner/Crossbowman Regiment

Boxes of random bitz

So yeah, I was am a bit excited.

What about you?  Have you ever had an Ebay score like that?

Christmas 2014

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I certainly did, although with two little kids, family events, and some illness, it was busy. 

I did not get much in the way of "hobby" materials this year, although I did get a Tau stealth team from my sister, and a Uniform book for the Napoleonic wars from my parents, which should be interesting reading, and useful for future projects. The final "hobby" item is a MetalEarth Eiffel Tower, which uses laser cut metal rather like photo etch to build up the Eiffel tower.  Looks like a fun challenge. 

The older kid got a ton of Lego, so we have been busy building all of that stuff too. 

And Happy New Year!  2015 should be very interesting.

Pro Gloria

As you might recall, Pro Gloria was running an Indiegogo campaign to get a plastic Landsknecht regiment box produced.  There was some sort of stall in the campaign, and rumors of a big announcement, and now it appears that Pro Gloria has been sold to Warlord Games.   Apparently Stephen Huber (the former owner of Pro Gloria) will remain connected to the project in some lesser way, which is good, since he seems to have a passion for the project.

This seems to guarantee that the figures will be produced, which is good, but probably at best annoying to those funding the Indiegogo.  This also means that Warlord is up to something like 15 different sculpting styles for their various lines, which is a bit odd.(although probably there is not that much interest in kit-bashing landsknecht bodies with roman legionary heads and soviet infantry arms, although now that I say it that way it does sound interesting)  

As another plus, this should make the existing metal figures cheaper for me to get here in the US...

November Army - 11/14 Progress

I managed to paint at lunch today:

Of course, I cheated and brought the more interesting portions of the army to paint, i.e. the command squad and the attached grenadier squad.

I keep saying "army" but really I am painting a rifle platoon, plus three sentinels, and an attached grenadier squad, seconded from the battalion.  The rifle platoon has a command squad, 4 rifle squads, and a heavy machine gun squad for a total of 51 effectives.

I am also in the process of converting a few company level assets, such as a heavy mortar squad and it occurred to me that maybe I could build and paint a full company.  Mostly because I have more conversion ideas... Yes, I am crazy.

November Army - Painting Progress

This might not look like four hours of work, but it is... painted pants, bedrolls, canteens, and a few other things for the 50+ figures.  I also completed a test figure for the Storm Troopers.

Under the Ott Light, you can see the difference between rattle can flat black and airbrushed Reaper Nightmare Black.  One of them is extremely blue.

November Army - Primed

Well, that did not go as planned.  As I mentioned last night (this morning?) I was going to prime all my figures with the airbrush.  Did not work out.  I have not used the thing for 8 years, and only once before that, so I probably should have scheduled in some time for troubleshooting.  And I ran out of black paint.  And the Reaper "Nightmare Black" paint that I got as a Halloween freebie... is actually very dark blue.

So I stopped at Home Depot after my nephew's soccer game this morning, picked up a rattle can of flat black, and had everything primed in 15 minutes.

I still want to use that darn airbrush, but I will have to take some more time to practice first.

November Army -Basing

Just finished the basing of my little army project... now on to airbrush priming.

You can see the majority of the figures to be painted here

 I may have gone a bit overboard with basing, as I built a destroyed sash window, a wooden floor, fence, and a few other crazy things, using time that would have been better spent painting.

Lots of people use sprue for bricks, but how many use a chopper to make them all the same size?

Pre-sanding

Sculpting at work

Similar to my earlier post about painting at work, I have been sculpting at work lately.  mostly this is gap filling and the like for my various Inq28 figures, but I have added straps, fur, pistol holsters and a few more ambitious items.

The box is one of those old Games Workshop bitz boxes that I seem to have a few of, and it suffices for this use.  I carry a file, a needle pointer, a spearhead sculpting tool, and a custom made "lifter" tool I made from some sprue.  I use Apoxie sculpt exclusively these days, partly because it is water soluble (meaning easy cleanup) and partly because it is in the little plastic containers and thus has not dried up.  A bottom of a water bottle holds a bit of water for me to dip my tools in, piece of tape to hold figures and bitz during transit, and we are done.

Today I finished these three Steel Legionaries, two of whom have been converted to carry flamers, and one who has a single shot anti tank missile strapped to his back (for use in SGII battles).

The reason I have been converting these fine fellows?  The family is out of town, and like last year, I plan to get some serious army painting in...

Plastic Landsknechts - IndieGoGo

Pro Gloria's Indiegogo campaign

€24 gets you a box of figures, including 20 regular pikemen on two sprues, and four command figures on two command sprues. Enough arms to equip with halberds, spears, or pikes, and more than two heads per figure so you can have plenty of variety. Shipped worldwide, some time in mid 2015, although it may be longer...

Higher level rewards and add-ons are of course available. As of this writing the campaign is at ~15% of its goal, but I think it will make it, if not here, than later, since the figures are already sculpted.

I do not think I am going to be taking part in this, since I have plenty of pikemen currently, but I hope that this comes to fruition sooner or later... because I will eventually need more, and they look great.