Tech support

 It's been quite some time since I last made any addition to my Carcharodon army, but there was one thing I’d known for ages I really needed to add: a Techmarine. A Techmarine is essential in an army, because you need one to include any kind of vehicles, support weapons, or a Dreadnought (remember, 2nd edition Codex). So I just had to get one in there somehow!

The new model, the Primaris Techmarine, honestly did appeal to me for this project. But looking at it closely, I came to the conclusion that it’s basically just a standard Primaris armour with a few trimmings. Honestly, for what it costs, I almost preferred to just build one myself.

And so I did!

I started from a Primaris armour:

The torso comes from a regular marine

 I enlarged the torso and added some greenstuff on the feet. I know, I know, you're not impressed. Let me add more weird stuff...

The loincloth took ages!

It looks awful now, but I need just a little faith...

Black priming always helps to hide errors

I used some Terminator and Skitarii bits. At this point I faced a hard choice. There's one thing I really don't like of Techmarines. I don’t like that overloaded look with all the bionic arms —it’s like a cross between Doctor Octopus and an armoured Swiss Army knife. Over the editions they’ve just kept piling on more and more gadgets, and it’s got to the point where it’s simply over the top.

What’s more, the servo-arm on the backpack gives me headaches. I mean, it’s clearly a hydraulic arm capable of, among other things, lifting heavy loads. But sticking that arm on one side of the backpack completely throws the Techmarine off balance. Any big load is just going to topple him over. I can’t picture him using that arm as a jack to lift a Rhino while fixing its track.

So I scrapped that idea completely. Anyway, I realised my memory had been playing tricks on me. Thanks to later editions, I was convinced the servo-arm had its own in-game effects, that it was a piece of gear with its own rules. But it turns out, not in Second Edition. After going through the Codex over and over, I finally saw that nope, it’s just a decorative element. This is my chance! 

 I completely changed the concept and thought that what I could add was a small auxiliary arm for manual work — a third hand to help him handle tools and little bits and pieces.

Tiny retractile arm!

This first attempt was made with little plastic rods —Skitarii backpack antennas. Needless to say, it was a terrible idea. The whole contraption fell apart to bits; the joins with green stuff didn’t hold up. The arm needs to be a single piece.

 

Solution: just a clip bent and cut wit some additional greenstuff

Anyway, since we’re just talking about pure aesthetics here, the idea of having a servo-arm, something to help him repair heavy machinery out on the battlefield, still felt logical and interesting. Freed from the burden of game rules, I could make it however I wanted.

Kinder Surprise eggs to the rescue!

What if what the Techmarine actually uses is a servitor that follows him around and helps with the heavy work? That way, the little arm on the backpack still makes sense, but the ability to handle big jobs is still perfectly doable.

Heavily inspired by Space Hulk's C.A.T.

 Little by little, the Techmarine was taking shape…

What a change since the first pic!

And so was the servitor, even if only in its most basic form.

Again, I need a little patience from you...

 New problem. The Techmarine’s arm didn’t hold up. With a small knock the ‘hand’ (made from leftover Skitarii antennas) fell off, and to this day I still haven’t been able to find it. The whole arm really needs to be a single piece. Just one.
I had to admit defeat and give up on the original idea in favour of something more practical: a laser cutter (or maybe a torch) from the Servitors kit:

A compromise solution

 It’s not the solution I wanted, but it still looks reasonably good and, honestly, I needed to move on. I’ve spent more time just on that tiny arm than on the entire rest of the model.

As for the servitor, that’s where I really did give it a proper servo-arm:

Armoured Swiss Army cockroach

I thought of adding more wires, but I refrained myself

 Well, here it is, the final result:

Tautoko hangarau ("Tech support" in Maori)

All this just to justify the servo-arm

Duel of the servo-arms

Ooops, blurry pic! Dammit! My bad

(You were supposed to see the Carcharodons emblem on its back)

Now I can deploy that Rhino and that Dreadnought I already have!

 

BONUS!

Just a single pic, as it really didn't involve much work (at least compared to the above). Now that I was doing the Techmarine, I only had a kind of character left, the Standard Bearer. I had a Primaris for that, the generic guy from the Dark Imperium core box. With a couple of bits I got this:

That giant maw was quite a challenge to place!

BTW, I have Carcharodon decals, but they don't fit in the central space on the banner! Too little or too big. So I had to freehand the Space Sardine.

I have to admit I don’t like that generic sculpted banner. It doesn’t really feel like fabric; the skull, the laurels… everything’s sculpted in such high relief that you’re not quite sure how to read it. I considered making a plain banner myself to paint on it, but again, it was just too much work, not really worth it.

With this I’ve got all the characters for a Company: Captain, Chaplain, Apothecary, Librarian and Standard Bearer (though I doubt I’ll ever actually use that last one). A squad of Veterans. Two Tactical Squads. A Rhino. A Dreadnought. I’ve already got in mind what I’m going to add next. When I do, I promise a family pic.

But... Hmmm, this is already a full Second Edition army…
 

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 ;)

Large Shark beakies

 It had been quite long since I last visited my realscale Space Sharks project. I think it's time to get back to my grey large marines!

I recently bought one of these Horus Heresy Mk.VI Tactical Squad boxes. It was kind of love at first sight, I can't emphasise how much do I love the Mk.VI (I guess that as much as any of you. I hope so). It encompasses everything that has to be said about nostalgia. It brings me back to the RTB01 times, when I got on board of this Warhammer madness. When it was called Rogue Trader. I believe I could write a whole essay on the subject, but don't fear, I won't. If you share the feeling, there's no need of it. If you don't, there are no words that can make you understand how it feels.

No more digression. The Mk.VI Corvus armour. The beakies. The models are a little bit larger than the previous Space Marines, so I thought I could just assemble the models and make them fit in with my previous Carcharodons. However, they are not as large as the Primaris models (if you remember, that's what I used for my latest unit). So I had to re-scale these too! Below you can see a regular marine from this box and a converted one:

Little difference, but enough to be perceived

Funny thing, once you start to enlarge your marines, you cannot just leave it at the legs or waist. The lack of neck seems alarmingly obvious:

He didn't appreciate being called Brother Shorty

So I had to work on knees, hip and neck. There's no need to do anything with arms, shoulderpads or anything else. Well, unless you want some kind of conversion, like the Sarge here:

The gauntlet comes from a metal Chaplain. I prefered the classic sword instead of the new provided with the current kit

As I wanted to keep a relative old school vibe, I used this Missile Launcher from Space Crusade:

Looks like a heavy thing to carry

Once again I took the same path I used with the heavy weapons operator in my previous squad. In case you don't remember (you don't have why), I built a harness to help the marine to handle the weapon while not holding the whole weight solely on his arms, kind of the Aliens thing:

I did this to my previous marine:

Archive pic

And I did it again now:

The guys from Prevention of Occupational Hazards approved it

There's not much else to it. From this point on it's all a matter of smoothening the green stuff work and painting the whole thing in the very same way I've always done.

If I can bring something new is that I changed my mind from my previous works and decided to put a back banner on the Sergeant. Of course, if I was doing it with this Squad, I also had to do with the other one. So I came up with these:

A little bit smaller than I anticipated, but it works

The banner on the other Sarge

The Horus Heresy box comes with a back banner for the Sergeant, but instead I used it on my Captain, as I think it looks best there:

He didn't have any banner until now

Here you have the whole squad, in all their Mk.VI glory:

The only thing I regret is the breathing vents on the helmets preventing me from painting shark mouths. Trust me, I tried. But there's not enough room for that. Sigh.

They are missing the Chapter symbol on the shoulderpads. I have ordered some custom decals, but until they arrive, they look good to me :)

I really do have to work on a backdrop

What can I say. I totally love these models. They finally are what I was waiting for. I think these are the true evolution of the old miniatures. They keep the aesthetics, they are not over the top, haven't fallen on the gruesome baroque nonsense we sometimes see nowadays. It's simply an update of the old models and I love it.

The box brings enough sprues to build two squads, so you can bet I'll do some more stuff in the future (probably not more Carcharodons, but I'll see what to do).

BONUS! As I was painting grey and black, I thought I could work on something else too. I could have made a post of its own, but I think it really belongs here. I had a Rhino re-scaled and 3D printed, so it matches my realscale Space Marines:

OK, right, this is BIG

I'll be honest, I wanted it even larger, the size of a Land Raider. I made some rough numbers and it looked like the size it needed to be to make ten realscale Marines fit into. But I was finally persuaded and now on a retrospective I'm glad. Let me show you how I turned this from this tone of grey to a totally different tone of grey.

Ta-daa. Easy. I collected some useful bits too

Now to the fun parts. I planned to use decals too, but the hatches don't really allow it. So I had to make it the hard way.

If it goes wrong, I'll have to name my Chapter the Space Herrings

Space Eels will work too

A thing I was missing was some lights. I cannibalised an old Rhino and did this:

Fortunately the size difference wasn't an issue

I faced some issues when painting the decorations on the side hatches. The separation between the two doors didn't allow me to paint the Shark, as the awful hollow space in between really ruined it all. At first I toyed with the idea of three stripes with Maori style symbols:

However it looked weird at tabletop distance

Then I moved forward and painted the rest of the empty spaces:

Too much. Looks like the blackboard at my school when I was a kid

It wasn't working. Sometimes less is more. I realised I had to take what I call the Epic approach. When you see a Rhino at a distance (i.e., little Rhinos in Epic), you have to understand what you are seeing. If it's all a blur, you are doing it wrong. And this was exactly what was happening here. Whatever symbol was to be depicted on that door, it had to be readable. I could only breathe and take the wise decision. Paint black again over it and start again.

It was a hard decision, but it brings peace and joy to my hart

As a compensation, I painted some of my Maori mandalas on the upper hatch

The final touch was to add a couple of banners on the back. If there's something more Old School than that, I don't wanna know. It's still missing some symbols here and there, but I plan to use decals for that. When they arrive I'll take more pics, but for now this is it:

Just in case, another size comparison pic, with a regular Rhino (the donor of the lights and some bits):

Daddy?

So a realscale Rhino to meet my realscale Marines:

At this pace I'll soon need a realscale board

I promise an update when I get the decals. Until then, let's keep on moving forward!