Misc. SciFi Minis for Dark Heresy

Greetings once again! As a small reward to myself and as a break from all things Star Wars I decided to build a few models for use in an upcoming Dark Heresy campaign I will be running. I love finding alternate SciFi miniatures for use in various SciFi Roleplaying games and I was able to track down a couple of new options on EBay.

First up are a couple of Female Officer figures from a gentleman named rattlesnakejake19 on EBay. I found these miniatures to be nice if a little thin. There was some clean up involved but not too much. Here are some views in the various stages:

Here are the ladies after assembly and some liquid greenstuff to blend in any small gaps and resin bubbles. All in all I found the castings to be fairly free of defects but there were some.

I think the grey primer starts to show some of the finer details which were hard to see when the miniature was solid white or tan.

I also found on EBay a gentleman in England named titanslayerminatures that produces Si-fi Crusader knights that I thought would make excellent Elite Guards for a Noble House or for a Guild House in Dark Heresy. They are meant to be used as an Inquisitor's Crusader Henchman but I changed them up a bit (I have the GW Crusaders as well). Here are some views of the new Elite Guards of House Haxter (or some such group):

The shields are very cool and the two that were not used went into the bitz box for a future project!

The swords did not have an overly 'powered' look to them although one of them had a nicely sculpted Inquisition 'I' around the hilt.

Here is the group all converted and greenstuffed to blend away any gaps. The use of Cadian Guard arms seemed to work out well and it makes them look more like a small unit of Elite Guards.

Some close up shots after the primer stage which definitely helps show the detail on these miniatures. I thought they turned out really well considering I paid less than $15.00 US to get these from England.

While I was shopping with rattlesnakejake19 on EBay I noticed that he also sold some replacement heads for use with plastic guardsman. I liked the look and bought a set to see what the quality was like. I have several different squads of 'traitor' guardsman and I thought these would make a fine addition to the forces of Chaos. I have used GW's plastic Cadians in several of the other units of 'traitor' guard so I wanted to try something a little different for these guys. I dug into the Guard Bitz box (nowhere as impressive as Mordian7th's closet of doom) and found some old Rogue Trader-era plastic guardsman. These look nothing like the current plastic guardsman from GW so I thought that was a decent place to start. Here are a few WIP shots of the Rezzo Chem Fiends:

Still quite a bit of work to go on these guys. Need to get some more backpacks (modified guard flamer tanks) for the boys and then fill in the arm gaps with greenstuff (new Cadian arms do not work super well with the old R.T. era plastic guardsman), run some tubing from the backpacks into the back of the helmets. I might add some fiddly little bits around the belts but I want to make sure there are no 'Eagle-Lickers' in this group. On a side note: I think the heads would have worked better on the Cadian plastics but I did not want to go that route and have these look to similar to the rest of my 'traitor' guard.

Thanks for looking and comments are always welcome!

First Sculpting Attempt

Greetings once again Internet!

While at Origins Game Faire this year I took a sculpting class from Sandra Garrity. I have never attempted to sculpt anything before so I went into the class as a complete novice. The class was about sculpting armor, wings, and scales; since I plan on doing some Heresy-era Salamanders the scales portion of the class was perfect.

So here is my attempt at drake scales:

I was going for an aged and rugged look to the scales and I think the small ridges along the scales help convey that. I will have to work on some smaller versions for the Mk IV shoulder pads I plan on using on the Salamanders.

There are a couple of things I learned from the class:

1) I am not the only one that uses an Xacto knife for everything (including sculpting).
2) The 'clay' tools I bought were way to large for what is needed

Now to practice and practice and practice some more. All in all I am quite pleased with how my first sculpting attempt came out. Thanks for looking!

Origins 2012 Gaming Terrain

Greetings once again! Well Origins 2012 has come and gone and I must say that I had a blast! The gaming was awesome and the sculpting classes were enjoyable. I learned how to sculpt some very nice scales for an upcoming Crusade-Era Salamanders Army and after a little more practice I will show you all some of the things I will be working on. To tide you over I present some of the wonderful gaming terrain I saw will out there. It seems Warhammer 40k has a fairly strong presence at Origins every year. Here are the pics:

There was a Doctor Who booth in the dealer's room:

I thought this was an awesome display although I am not sure which game it was for.

Some nice 28mm fantasy terrain.

I thought this was awesome but I could not figure out which game it was for. It was an enormous Egyptian temple complex but there was a 'Stargate' at one!

15mm Napoleonic Game! Viva la France!

This is a big Pearl Harbor game that was done in 1/2800 scale I believe.

Another 15mm Napoleonic game.

Battletech terrain complete with large defense lasers!

US Marines versus Nazi Zombies!

The top comes off showing the inside!

This is just a small portion of an 8' wide 30' long table. I got this little piece because that is where the action was going on.

A rather cool Alien Head I stumbled across in the miniature room.

I thought this was the best 40k terrain I have seen in a long while, the table was beautiful!

Thanks for looking!