Realscale Dreadnought

I'm partially cheating with the title, but we'll get into that soon.

First post of the year, I hope everyone's doing good! I've been recently working on my Realscale Space Sharks force again, on a very particular piece. I guess that the title gave me away, ahem.

I wanted a Dreadnought, and for me there's only one acceptable model, the glorious 2nd Ed style one (I believe it's now called "Castraferrum Pattern"). Whatever.

THIS and only THIS is a proper Dreadnought

 The iconic image of the walking brick summarises WH40K in so many ways. I never liked all the other models, and sorry, I simply cannot stand the tiny head popping up in the front of the Dreadnought. This is the armoured beast I had since the old days and wasn't really giving up about the idea of reproducing it for my Carcharodons army.

I could have looked up for a .stl online and then asked to have it 3Dprinted and upscaled, just the way I got the Rhino, but I really didn't find any suitable options, I feared some level of detail would be lost when upscaling it, and didn't fancy the risk. I think I could do better than that.

So I embarked upon a new insanity. Judging by pics, I believed that a Leviathan Pattern Dreadnought would provide a suitable starting point, as it looked adequate for my purposes in terms of size. There are some obvious differences from the 2nd Ed Castraferrum Pattern, but I thought I could live with them.

A mere starting point

I feared that the legs would look too different, but I admit they are the only option to provide some additional height, and didn't look that bad.

Even considering that they have knees!

The plastic kit is excellent and it allows some flexibility, so you can reposition the legs at will. A little fiddly to assemble, but incredible model. I wanted a slight sense of movement, so I assembled them into a walking position. Slow, heavy walking, but a little dynamic.

Now it's time to have some fun. As I told above, I really (really) dislike those Dreadnoughts with a tiny helmet on the front. It doesn't make much sense to me, I like the concept of the crippled Marine inside the sarcophagus. But the Leviathan Pattern Dreadnought has one of those annoying heads!

Fortunately I had some spare bits, including an old sarcophagus. I had to cut and trim here and there, but I finally got this result:

The walking brick!

It was a little bit tricky, but easier than I expected. At that point I felt confident that the project would be feasible. But that wasn't the only conversion required!

Another thing I've never liked is the way the assault cannon is depicted in Dreadnoughts. Go get a look at the first pic above. It's just a chunky single piece where the six barrels are just a huge bulk. It looked great back then, of course, but I believe GW has evolved since then and can certainly provide a more accurate way to represent a Gatling-style weapon.

Anyway, the Leviathan sprues don't have any assault cannon (and a classic Dreadnought needs one, of course). Let's take a deep breath and see what can be done...

I had to cut the weapon on the arm...

...and make it a little bit wider

But why, oh, why? I hear you ask. What's in your deranged mind this time?

A proper, realistic (1:6?) Gatling mini gun!!

I made a search on the internet looking for a smaller weapon, but I didn't find anything suitable. Judging only by the online pics it was a little risky, but given that it was like a 3 euro purchase, I was keen to take such a risk.

The lenght of the barrels was excessive, even for such a crazy project

But I managed to reduce it a little

Still too much, but manageable. It's ridiculous, humongous and/or many other adjectives... but this is Warhammer 40,000, where the concept of "too much" means nothing!

Too much. It works

Close enough to my idea of a realscale Dreadnought

I didn't look for a power claw, as those drills look dreadful as hell. They suit the Space Sharks brutal background and they looked cool to me.

Well! It's of course not a perfect replica of a classical Dreadnought, but that was never my aim, I was just looking for a proxy, and I believe the general shapes of this monster and the sheer bulk will serve my purpose.

Let's add some paint to the equation!

Yes, I painted grey over the grey sprues

I took some additional risk with this symbol on the kneepad, and I have to admit I had to use glasses. I've been avoiding this moment for years, as long as I could, but I'm afraid the time for painting with glasses has finally arrived.

This a representation of my own face while painting it

The final touch was adding details that would take the viewer's attention. Colour focal points and that kind of stuff.

Again, there's no such thing as "too much" in WH40K

I got some decals from Fallout Hobbies and I have to say they are great. They look fantastic and helped me quite a lot. Have a look at the beast:

Too much? That's like your opinion

Go ahead, make my day

All in all, I think this is the least disturbing perspective of the Dread, where it looks better proportionate

OK, final (really) touch: A banner. I could have made a paper one, sure, but this time I thought this model deserved another thing. I took this banner from the Grey Knights box (yes, I once wanted to do that army, but never did):

But... there are no sharks there!

Will this work...?

Good enough for me!

I wasn't sure if the decal would fit the banner, but luckily it did! I wrote Tui atu i te mate, which is Maori for "Beyond death". Then I fixed it to the Dreadnought with magnets, for storage convenience:

TUI ATU I TE MATE

The shark jaw on the banner comes from the Dead Animal Bits box by Wargames Atlantic. I'm quite happy with the purchase and now I have tons of all kind of scary bits!

Here you have a few more pics of the finished thing:

And a couple of mandatory scale comparison pics with realscale Space Marines:

Now this is the size of a Dreadnought

Pics will get better when I get a background

It's been a risky project, but a rewarding one. I still believe the assault cannon is too big, but until I find a smaller option I much prefer a true Gatling-style gun to any other weapon.

My Space Sharks force keeps on growing. It's dangerously close to a functional 2nd Edition army list, hmmm ;)

Red Coats are for Christmas

 It's that time of the year when you start to see random people on the streets (and everywhere) dressed in vibrant red, usually their beards waving in the cold wind. The vision of those red garments tends to bring joy to everyone, and calls for heartwarming feelings.

Oh, if only I could pay tribute to that feeling with my minis.

Oops, but I don't currently have anything even remotely similar to that. Or do I?

Oh, some time ago I got these gorgeous not-Praetorians from wonderful Victoria Miniatures (they are called "Victorian Guard" on their web). They certainly have the red coat and many of them have proud beards. Their vision brings joy to all faithful servants of the Emperor and calls for the annihilation of His enemies. Hmm. Close enough. They'll have to do.

I'm not sure about them bringing gifts though.

Anyway, let me show what I got. First of all, a 10 men regular squad.

Joy to the world and all that

Ho ho ho, have you been nice this year?

I didn't add any heavy weapon, just a melta gun. I'm not starting a full army, simply wanted to have a fistful of minis. I thought they'd make a nice escort force for my Governor mini (which is already dressed in red!), so I wanted to keep them light in equipment, if ready to face any potential threat to the boss. So I'm building a couple of infantry Squads: this one and a Command Squad.

Fortunately they are not Star Trek redshirts. In WH40K their life expectancy is bett... Oh, wait

I gave them my usual treatment about Squad identification, with the parted circle, the left half signalling the Platoon and the right half the Squad.

I should have started with 1-1. It occurred to me later

Here you have the other Squad, the Command one. There were some nice bits I wanted to use (mainly the bugle), but I added some other minis and conversions.

The special character, called "Cpt. Caine", should remind you of somebody

I got a few characters that gave some personality to this force. Apart from the Captain, which you have just seen, I got two other minis that don't belong specifically to this Victorian Guard. One was the drummer, a not-Mordian mini which only needed a replacement on the hat, and the bagpiper. I've always loved bagpipes (please check my first post on Imperial Guard, 12 years ago). They were easily integrated into this squad, and I like how they look. The banner pole was a conversion and the banner itself is just painted on a piece of paper, as usual.

But in the end they all work

The whole Command Squad

But I not only got these. In fact, the infantry squads were but a side purchase. It all started with the Kickstarter for Rough Riders, which got my eye since the very beginning. I got this squad:

I have to say that they are impressive in every detail. The design is flawless, every piece fits in smoothly and the casting is simply perfect. The horses look marvellous and imposing, and the whole squad looks great.

Codex cover

So once I got the Rough Riders I couldn't let them be alone and got the infantry fellas. They all form the Governor's Retinue, a flexible and agile ceremonial detachement ready to defend him from any unexpected issues that may appear (Oh, how handy would these had been that time when the Governor had to escape!).

Here you have the whole Retinue with the Governor:

Now I have to create an scenario for them!

Well, maybe they are not the bearded blokes with red coats you were expecting, and they may have horses instead of reindeers, but I hope you'll indulge me given these days.

Anyway, speaking of the date, just let me wish you all merry Christmas and happy new year!! Here's to 2025, I hope to read you all pretty soon. Enjoy these days!!

Some ugly beasts

 While committing to other stuff, I've decided to take on a small side project, one of those palette cleansers that help you to feel closure and that you get your damn stuff done. It consists of Frostgrave and Stargrave minis, all of them creepy monsters for scary encounters. Nothing special on mind, but just some eerie creatures that you can use in a number of different games.

Eeeek

In the pic above you have an example of each mini, but I painted two of each. Trying to decide how to approach this project, it looked clear to me that they needed to look ugly, dark, ominous. Nothing about bright colours or any kind of flamboyant patterns. So totally opposite to my work on the World of Twilight stuff. Then I thought of a fun experiment. What if I gave them all the same base coat and then tried different approaches? They should look sufficiently tied in, yet distinctive.

It looked great in my mind, seriously.

I primed them black and then I used a mix of dark brown, black and grey for the prime layer. Then I abundantly agrax-ed them:

They look all the same. Ugly and dirty. I'm pretending to say it as a good thing

From this point on, however, I walked different paths with each kind of creature. Let me start with the Leechwolves. I guess the name is quite descriptive on its own.

Uuuugghh

I wanted these to look pale and sick. Leeches are in fact quite opposite, in the black scale of things, but I really thought they should have this kind of look, and Itried to define the muscles and so, just using the three base colours I used on the original mix, but adding more and more grey to each layer.

Cute puppies

Next, the Grothek. Again the palette was kind of the very same, but this time the mix had quite more black and grey. The creature is a strange hybrid of bat and boar or something in that line, so I thought that dark greys should look fine.

I really thought that "animal crossing" was a totally different concept

I only added a different tone of brown on the back when painting the final layers, to provide some additional hues to the result:

A nice family!

The Chronohounds were a different challenge. I decided to go with the dark brown palette, always starting from the same point as the other monsters. I used little grey for the highlights, and then the result fell on the brown side. But they looked too dull and the texture of the minis was calling for something else. Then I came up with a weird idea. As these beasts move in time, coming in and out the continuum, I considered they should have their skin burnt, if not full of nasty tumours. So while staying with the same colours, I tried this:

They are also blind, just because they look scarier

So let's have a look at the final results. The good thing of having two minis of each model is that I can show both sides at the same time:

I'm still struggling to decide how does the Batpig sound

Oink, oink, screech

I prefer not to think of their sound

I really think some vet should take a look at those skins

Imagine a forest in the dark and then you find these. Nice, huh?

It's been a nice challenge, trying to get different results (as different as I could) with just the same three colours. They look like predators, but each one in their own way, and I believe they'll make some interesting encounters in any game they take part of.

I'm currently working on more stuff, and it will be quite different from this; coming (hopefully) soon!