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 ;)

Something old, something new, something red

Misleading title, I admit it ;)

Long story short, I've used my Secundaris Space Marines Method to build some Blood Angels. Let's get the pic first and the long, boring text later:

Why did I choose to do that, so suddenly? It's quite unexpected, isn't it? OK, a (not so) little digression...

My younger, who quite recently just turned 5, has been fiddling/toying/playing with my miniatures for some quite time now. He gets them from the shelves or drawers and just pew-pews with them or makes his own story, whatever. You know this kind of stuff, we all have done it. Needless to say, quite a significant number of minis end up on the workbench again for... extensive repairs. I don't really care. I believe it's more important that the kids enjoy and get familiar with dad's toys. I only keep the most fragile models away from them.

The thing is that he's been playing with my Carcharodons, making them fight against almost anything else around. All kind of beasts, space lizards or whatever. So it's all I like these knights, pew pew. A few weeks ago he plainly asked me if I could make some knights like those for him, but in red. That's important, as it's his favourite colour. He was tired of using those boring, dark grey space knights.

So I got this unexpected commission, one I could never refuse! These were the essential guidelines:

1. They had to be red. My first idea was not to do a mainstream Chapter (spoiler: I changed my mind later), I thought it would be nice to do a different thing, something more characterful. Well, of course I couldn't do something as vanilla as, let's say Genesis Chapter. What kind of dad does that to their own child. In the future it would be something like "-Hey, how did your old man got you into Warhammer?" "-He painted me some Genesis Chapter Marines" "-Uuuuugg". Ahem. I seriously considered the Exorcists, as I've done other Chapters involved in the Badab War in the past. In fact I even started painting them with this idea in mind, as you'll see later. However, this involved the future problem of explaining to my kid the weird stuff surrounding this Chapter, such as daemonic possessions, the Puritans vs the Radicals within the Inquisition... the Inquisition itself... well, you know. Anyway, while I was on the early stages, he saw a pic on my computer of Blood Angels and he asked "-Are those my red knights?" "-Well, son, not particularly these, but..." "-But I like these. I want these." "-Ooookay". No more questions, your Honor. Blood Angels it is. In fact I honestly think that in the end it was the right choice. If he's ever to play WH40K on his own in the future I guess it's better to start with something better known, such as this Chapter. Blood Angels then!
2. They had to be, I wouldn't dare to say sturdy, but at least a little bit resistant. Their primary use is not precisely going to be on a gaming board by adults, but by a 5 y/o. For that reason I didn't even consider metal miniatures. It needed them to be plastic, and with the least possible number of pieces involved. I had a few spare Primaris Marines on their sprues, so they seemed like the obvious choice.
3. Once I was on this course of action, I wanted visual coherence with my other stuff, i.e., my realscale Carcharodons. Please be aware that all this stupid fanfic from 10th Edition, such as the Primaris Marines, the resurrected Primarchs and other nonsense simply doesn't exist in the Suberverse. Don't even bother to mention it. I have large, towering Space Marines, and that's it. That's why I used regular Space Marines helmets. But, as said above, I wouldn't dare to make just but the minimal, essential conversions. I don't want a hundred pieces all over everyday.
4. I can't believe you just read all that. Let's see the pictures!

Raw Materials

You can see that I originally intended to add a Captain, but in the end I dropped it out of the project. It could make sense as an Exorcist Space Marine Captain, but not that much as a Blood Angels Captain.

I even started to paint it!

I'm not a fan of the new large bolters, but I can live with them. I shortened them for my Carcharodons, but I kept them for these Marines, as I feared little broken bits all over the place. However, I shortened the plasma gun, that was too much for me!

I hadn't painted this amount of red in quite some time!

Both my kids helped in the early stages with the base colour. It was one of their first contacts with the brushes and we worked on some of the basics, it was a pretty cool experience :)

As Old School as I could get them

 I went for a Second Edition aesthetics (well of course!), and I must confess that I thoroughly enjoyed the process. The vibrant red, the breast plate eagles in yellow, that kind of stuff... ohh, I felt like thirty years ago, in the middle of the Red Era. This was the kind of work I would have liked to do then but lacked the skills to achieve, so I can say that these five Space Marines have been a total second chance for me!

Here you have them, one by one.

The mohawk helped with the oldschool vibe

As I see this pic now I notice I haven't finished the checkers on the kneepad! :O

I didn't think of the Croatian Marine until I had it finished

The bolter and pistol pose is quite Second Edition too

It can't be retro if you don't use a beakie head

I'm displeased with the decals. I only used the Blood Angels symbol on the left shoulderpads, but I think it won't be that long until I tear them apart and paint them. For now, here you have the final result:

The best thing of all this is that my kid is happy with his new red warriors, and that's invaluable for me.

Oh, but now the elder brother (8), has just asked if he could also get some minis for him! I've proudly answered that for sure, what would you like, kiddo? And I didn't expect the answer... Marvel Superheroes minis. Wow.

Well, I guess I'm looking for the Crisis Protocol stuff now...