Rogue Trader era Slaves to Darkness Black Legion/Sons of Horus Officers and conversions.

More Rogue Trader era Slaves to Darkness conversions, this time based on the artwork for the Black Legion army list officers.

One of the many lovely things about the old Slaves to Darkness book is the artwork. Anyone who has looked through the book will have noticed many of the illustrations are similar to many of the miniatures which Citadel produced at the time. In the case of the 40k sections of the book, some of the artwork is linked to Citadel's 40k miniatures range.

One of the armies I am assembling is a Horus Heresy era Sons of Horus army using the Black Legion army list provided in Slaves to Darkness. However, looking at the army list entries I noticed that some of the lower ranking officers artwork was not based on 40k miniatures, but fantasy ones.

So I decided to see if I could match the fantasy miniatures to the 40k illustrations in the list. I did this easily by looking through the late 1980s Chaos Warrior ranges and finding the right miniatures. The main determining factor were the heads, matching the style of the helmets to miniatures with the same helmet in the illustration. After that, I just converted the miniatures, removing fantasy weapons, adding chaos backpacks and bolt guns, and swapping an arm in one instance. I have not gone for 100% conversions, but close. With the same helmets in the artwork and on the miniatures, I think the end result ties the two in nicely.

Enjoy :)

The Black Legion/Sons of Horus army list.

Lieutenant Commander and Captain.
Both of these officers artwork are actually based on two Chaos Renegade miniatures, so these were easy to replicate, with no conversions, just a few bits added to milliput enhanced bases.

Lieutenant.
This officer was a Chaos Warrior originally holding a halberd. I had a spare Chaos renegade arm, and so just swapped the arms over, and removed the shield boss from the left arm. I was originally going to do a head swap with another Chaos Renegade miniature which has a similar bolt gun with chain blade in the illustration. However the angle of the Chaos Warriors head and left arm meant that it might be damaged too much if I tried.

Librarian.
Simple weapon swap and addition of a chaos backpack.

Medic
Again another weapon swap and addition of chaos backpack. I love the squared off looking horns on the helmet.

Chaplain.
Weapon swap and backpack. I might add a blade to the bolt gun from the RTB01 Space Marines box set (which is where the bolt gun came from) at a later date.

Techmarine.
This a Slaaneshi Chaos Warrior miniature. I just added the backpack and removed the shield boss. I was going to remove the sword and add Spawn-goads to each hand, as per the illustration. However, I like the sword too much, and you can equip Techmarine with Chaos Weapons (well, the Chaos ones anyway!). So it stayed.

Next update will be more conversions. I've been converting heavy weapon troopers and Sergeants, amongst other things.

A few Rogue Trader era Slaves to Darkness conversions.

 Continuing with my grand sorting out of my Rogue Trader era Horus Heresy miniatures, I have been converting a few as a I go.

Enjoy :)

Chaos Renegade officer mounted on a Chaos Steed.
Personalities in the Slaves to Darkness Black Legion Army list are allowed to be mounted on Chaos Steeds for 32 points. I had a spare C13 range horse used for the Jaek and Helwud miniatures, and thought it would fit the miniature nicely.

The Emperors Children Lieutenant Commander illustration is similar to a Slaaneshi renegade which was produced at the time. I can never be sure if the miniatures were inspired by the artwork, or visa versa, although I recall reading somewhere (sorry, can't remember where!) that it was often a bit of both.

So, I decided to convert up the Slaaneshi miniature to fit. It only required a hand swap and drilling/pinning, but it's a nice idea. I am planning to use the miniatures which are similar to the illustrations for all of the officers of the three army lists included in Slaves to Darkness. Several of the Black Legion ones are based on Chaos Warrior miniatures which I have and will convert up soon.

Flamers!
Although I have a lot of Chaos Backpacks, I want to make sure that not only I don't run out, but that I can use any spare ones on regular Mark VI Marines in order to 'Chaos' them. In addition, I think it would be nice to break up the look of all of the backpacks with other things. In that vein, I have taken the flamer miniature on the left, and modelled a few fuel tubes on the backs of them. I could have just used modern GW ones, but I wanted to keep with that old school style.

Two more flamer marines.
The fuel tanks are made from bits of old tube and plasti-card. I have green stuffed some tentacles over them to make it look less bare, and to fit in with the tentacled look of the miniature.

LE101 Chaos Renegade Marine.
I purchased himfrom e-Bay, with his tentacled arm missing. So I added a RT01 Space Marine Power Fist instead. He needs a backpack glueing on, which I forgot to do. 

Milliput!!!
I am going to require a lot of milliput for bases, and someone was selling a whole case for £28. That's 10 packs! LOL

Next update will be more conversions and basing. I am not getting around to painting at the moment, so contenting myself with organising, basing, and converting. I am also renovating the house, so that (and work) is taking a lot of my time!

A little bit of Rogue Trader Dreadnought basing (with added robots!) .

 I'm still not getting around to any painting, but I am spending some spare time sorting things out. I have so many different things to do, but I keep being drawn back to Rogue Trader era Horus Heresy. I did start on this a few years ago (2015 to 2016!), but a series of painting problems and other distractions moved my attention away.

I now want to make a serious effort to sort out what is an immense project and one which will take time just to sort out the miniatures. The armies involved will be Ultramarines for the loyalists, as they seem the classic Rogue Trader era Horus Heresy Imperial forces from the artwork of the time, and the blue is nice. They will be organised using the standard Spaced Marine list from the time.
For the forces of Horus, I will be fielding an army of each of the three army lists in Slaves to Darkness (with the Black Legion being painted in their Sons of Horus colours), and two armies from the two Renegade lists in The Lost and the Damned. But more on this at a later date.

For now I have been paint stripping and reassembling my Dreadnoughts. The Ultramarines will be able to field eight Dreadnoughts, consisting of three Contemptor (Chuck) Class, three Furibundus (Fury), and two Deredeo (Eddy).
The Traitor Legions have four of the old metal Dreadnoughts, and one large plastic Chaos Dreadnought from Space Crusade. I have rebased all the Dreadnoughts on 60mm round bases as I think it looks better, gives them more room, and actually gives them more of a battlefield presence.

Enjoy. :)

Eight Imperial Dreadnoughts.
I have added some milliput to the bases to make it look more like a battlefield and less like a bowling green.

Three Furibundus (Fury) class.

Two Deredeo (Eddy) class.

Three Contemptor (Chuck) Class.

Four Chaos Dreadnoughts.
One of them I have already painted for my World Eaters some years ago.

I re-positioned this Chaos Dreadnought to give it a look of hunting its prey.

Chaos Dreadnought from Space Crusade.
I wanted one of these for the fun of having one. Its pretty large and armed very differently from the other Dreadnoughts, but I will probably use it as a 'counts as'  a Chaos Furibundus.

I also paint stripped, reassembled and rebased my Cataphract  Robot Maniple. These are on 50mm round bases.

In addition to all that, I have finally got around to framing my old 1987 Rogue Trader poster. I had this on my wall for years after buying it in a now long gone model shop in Worthing named 'The Crazy Dwarf'. The poster has spent the last 25+ years folded up in a box.
I need to tinker a bit with the frame, I need to put some black edging on the sides of the poster.
I discussed this poster, and another 1980s poster, in a blog update a few years ago:
http://goblinlee.blogspot.com/2015/10/1980s-warhammer-posters.html

Another view. It is currently handing in the spare room where my painting table is. I am renovating the house, so the wall is a bit of a mess!

The next update might just be some painted miniatures finally!
...or maybe something I've glued together again (not my fingers though!).

TA1 Golgoth, Lord of Balrogs.

 ..an arcane Daemon from an earlier age... 

I'm still not getting enough time to do some serious painting, but I have been sorting through miniatures, and decided to paint an old Daemon which has been lurking in the shadows of my windowsill: Golgoth, Lord of Balrogs.

Golgoth is a Greater Demon miniature from Citadel, released in 1984 as part of Tony Ackland's Arcane Monstrosities range. The range was released in 1984 (the Orc Catapult released in 1983), and was largely sculpted by Tony Ackland, although Chas Elliot sculpted the Chaos Battering Ram. Golgoth was only released for a few years before being replaced by the TA1 A-Angor Demon King.

The miniature itself, well, isn't miniatures really! Just like the rest of the range, he is quite large (the clue to this is in the ranges title really) being 13cm long, 8cm tall, and 10cm wide. Being made of the old lead mix he is quite heavy. The advert (see below) had the old 'For advanced modellers only' symbol on it, and whilst it's is not complicated to assemble in itself, drilling and pinning of the wings is advisable. The sculpting is very much what you would expect of the time, being good and full of character, but not as crisp as perhaps the contemporary GW miniatures. This is something I don't have a problem with.

When it came to painting I wanted Golgoth to have a dark aspect of the shadows. It would have been easy to just paint him black, but that would have been too flat. After a black undercoat, I lightly dry brushed more prominent areas in a mid red, and then less so with orange. I didn't want Golgoth to look too red, is was just to stop him from looking too flat by bringing out some of the detail. It was a very basic paint job, but something which I wanted to do. I didn't want an overcomplicated look to keep in with the idea of him from shadows. In the same vein, I kept his eyes, mouth, and claws black, to suggest a creature of the abyss rather than burning infernal flames of Hell. 

Enjoy :)

The original advert.

Golgoth advancing.
I have kept the base basic and plain for the time being, only painting on the Citadel Agrellan Earth. This is because Golgoth will end up as part of one of the Slaves to Darkness Daemon Legions, and I haven't quite decided on how to decorate the bases yet.

Left hand side.

Front view.

Rear view.
Look at the size of the solid lead wings!

Head details.
I think he has a slightly cat look to him.

Tail detail.
It looks a little like a scorpion tail.

Scale photograph, with a Citadel Bloodletter on a 25mm square base for comparison.

Next update might be some Chaos Renegades, as I have been sorting through those, as well as my Daemon Legions.

The Bears of Kislev and the Tigers of Ind, and other stuff besides.

Now I know that I should be painting Goblins, however I have also been sorting through a lot of my other 3rd Edition Warhammer armies. Two of the armies are my Kislev army, and the army of Ind.

Neither of these armies were official armies at the time, nor did they have a 3rd Edition army list. The Kislev did appear as a Mercenary Contingent in the 2nd Edition Ravening Hordes book, and is mentioned in entries in both the Old World Ally, and Old World Mercenary contingent lists. Both were however mentioned in the background, and a few miniatures which could be used for either were produced more in the earlier C01 Fighter range than anywhere else.

For those of you unaware, Kislev was the Warhammer version of (Western) Russia, which was later expanded a lot more in later editions of Warhammer. Ind was the their version of India, which at the time, and since, has received little or no official attention, and very little from fans (there is an unofficial Army Book somewhere online).  

So anyway, as part of my grand sorting though of my collection I am building a Kislev army, and an Ind army, amongst many others in my as 'it would have been' in 3rd Edition. This means only using Citadel and the associated miniatures from the 1979-92 'Oldhammer period'.  I will explain more of the details of each army once I come to spend time competing them, but for now here is a taster of some of the background work and collecting which I have been doing.

Enjoy :)

Bear riding Boyars.
I wanted to have bears in my Kislev army somehow as it seemed fitting. I owned two of the old 1987 Wood Elf Beast Masters bears, and I was going to just have one as a mount for the general (Tsar), with another as a summoned bear for a host. Then I luckily won an e-Bay auction for another two, so buying a fifth bear for a small mounted elite cavalry unit to accompany the general seemed a good idea.
All of the riders were originally dismounted miniatures, which I have converted to be mounted.
As I am using the Empire army list for the Kislev, and will count these as 'Temple Ritterbruden'.

Tsar on a bear.
I have used the F2 Lord of Battle miniature 'Otto Wolvesbane' as he is heavily armoured and has fur trim around his helm. The sword blade was quite delicate and broke whilst I was converting him, so I replaced is with a plastic one from the Fantasy Regiments box set. It will be used as a 'Frostblade'.

Standard Bearer.

This is a converted F7 Feudal Cavalry miniature, with a head swap from an F8 Viking/Norse miniature to make him look less Western and more 'Russian'. I have gone for a huge banner in the old 1980's style for the fun of it.

Boyars.
In the centre is a C01 Fighter 'Brigand' from 1985, and either side of him are two F8 Vikings/Norse.

The Tiger Lords of Ind.
The Tigers are the EC04 Pan Tang ones from Citadel's Eternal Champion range.
I have sculpted saddles onto the tigers, but they are still a little WIP as I want to improve them.
With all of the Ind troops I have tried to select miniatures close to 14th to 19th century India as possible, but given the 1979-92 time frame, some of them might lean more to the Araby style, although some Indian warriors look did.

For the leader is chose another Pan Tang range miniature, Jagreen Lern.

Standard Bearer.
He is a converted ME71 Corsair of Umbar. I have fixed the larger standard to the back of the saddle to rather than have the miniature holding it. I did this to keep the dynamic pose of the rider waving his sword over his head. 

Tiger Lords.

From left to right, C13 Heroic Adventurer Luyt'Ama Rah'slyn; another ME71 Corsair, with an old Citadel metal shield; and a C01 pre-slotta Fighter.

C32 Slann Slave.
This on had to top of his spear snapped off so I replaced it a spare Drastik Plastic scimitar blade to create a Eunuch Guard for my 3rd Edition Araby army.

The above Eunuch will take the place of the rare Eunuch Champion in my RR6 Mad Mullah Aklan'ds Death Commandos Regiment of Renown.

I actually have two Regiments of these. I don't have enough room in my Araby Army for them, so tone will go to the Ind army, the other to my Southlands army.

Baboons.
I have been collecting these on and off for a while. They are the Runequest and C22 Creatures range Baboons.

Elephants!
These are for use with my Ind army. I spent a little time to collecting the old style Brittains elephant which would have been the ones used in the 1980s. These, and the much larger African elephants (of which I also have a  a couple) were used in conversions at the time (usually with Orcs crewing). There is even a mention of them in the 1st Edition Forces of Fantasy book suggesting purchasing Brittains Elephants for 'Men of the east' armies.

I have a big bag of model making matches and so I set about making a howdah. 

I added some plasti-card for added strength.

'Finished'.
Well, sort of finished as I intend to added more milliput to the elephant to create the cloth covering, and to the howdah to decorate it.

Next blog update should be the goblins, but I am getting distracted by other things a lot!

Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition Goblins - 'The Stuntie Spikers': part one.

After painting Agrat the Goblin Fanatic last month as test model I thought it would be good to start painting a Goblin regiment.

Over the last few months, years really, I have been sorting out my miniature collection into 3,000 point armies based on the lists in Warhammer Armies. Some of these armies are based on armies used in scenarios and sample army lists. One of these is the Orc and Goblin army used in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition scenario 'The Valley of Death', found in White Dwarf #97, January 1988. 

Without going in deep details (which I will do at a later date) the scenario consists of four armies, two Dwarf, one Orc, and one Goblin, all meeting up for a jolly good time (well, bloodbath really!) in a valley. Like all the Warhammer scenarios of the time the forces involved have a colourful back story and details.These armies were not designed to do anything other than be the forces involved in the scenario.

Now I have had the idea of converting many of these armies, some from 1st and 2nd Edition, into usable 3,000 point 3rd Edition armies. For many this isn't difficult, and only really requires the addition of a few extra troops or magical items. By combining the Orc and Goblin armies in this scenario straight from the pages, you end up with a 2,565 point army. I have been doing this for several armies, not just Orc and Goblin ones. So I am making a start with the Stuntie Spikers. If one is to start anywhere, I feel Goblins are the best place to start. :) 

Enjoy :)

White Dwarf #97.

The Valley of Death.

The Stuntie Spikers army list entry.

The 40 little Goblins themselves.
They are 40 Goblins with spears, but on armour. In order to keep the spikey/hedgehog look of the unit I have moved the Standard Bearer and Musician back into the middle/rear of the unit. In theory this negates their usefulness in the rules, but hopefully I would play someone who appreciates aesthetics over rules pedantry!

Spikey!

Converted standard bearer.
I have converted the standard bearer from an old broken Goblin Fanatic.

Spears!

A very rude Goblin. :)
One of the Character in the scenario is a Goblin Hero named 'Zitpicker'. He has no specific miniature to represent him, but as he has light armour and spear, and he's a character model, I thought this Goblin would fit perfectly.

Another Goblin hero is 'Blackhead'.
Both he an 'Zitpicker' are known as the spot brothers, due to their awful complexions. Blackhead is mounted on a wolf, and so I thought I would make him look more characterful by mounting a normal wolf rider Goblin on a spare 1980s Lord of the Rings range Warg. He is a WIP, but I thought it would be nice to see him so far.

Next update will be Goblins!