I next decided to start on an Adeptus Mechanicus warband. I wanted these to look very traditional, with the Magos, Croll Steiner, in red robes.
He was joined by a Skitarius, Kurt Gansel, and the re-fitted mining servitor Mikael-374 (actually, now that I think about it, these two were finished some time before their master).
A very recent addition to the warband is the praetorian combat servitor Dieter812.
It's at about this stage in proceedings that things get hazy and I can't remember what order I built these next few models; but in order to take a break from warbands I built a few individual characters instead.
Konrad Winter was a fairly simple conversion of the Scarn model. He's an archivist on the run after discovering the 'Journal of Doctor Outek', a book that belonged to one of the scientists who worked with the Emperor on the Astartes project; a book that people will kill to possess.
After reading an article PO wrote on the Obliterator virus, I fancied building an infected gunfighter. The result was Harry Cronenberg, named after the director and star of
Videodrome, which seemed to me to have the right feel for a man being taken over by a technological-daemonic-virus.
Anton Delis Soylent was my entry to a competition being run by Fanatic, which I won :-). He's a restaurant owener and Haemovore cultist, with an augmented digestive system and an iron jaw.
Another randon character was Jessamyn Rae, a freelance assassin vaguely based on Aeon Flux. She's another model I've never been happy with and I plan to rework her and add to to my Ordo Sicarius warband (see beelow).
These three Eldar models were all built at different times (the ranger was one of my earliest characters), but I've lumped them all together here. They are the ranger, Karhedron; the Exodite knight-errant, Irilliath; and his squire, Fayelle.
This next warband were built for a Conclave event; first up was Inquisitor Benedict Helios Seldon, a puritan member of the Ordo Malleus. (Unfortunately, after building him, I decided to use Kaled at the event instead.)
The first member of his warband was Inquisitorial Stormtrooper Lillith Polanski, who I build for an article in Dark Magenta issue 1. The second, and so far final, member of the team is the Squat Engineer Thorgrimm Hargir.
At the first Conclave event I took part in, Xisor brought along his Demiurg. I rather liked it, so after much discussion during which we fleshed out a whole load of ideas, I built one of my own, plus a couple of automatons to accompany him.
My Adeptus Custodes model was built mainly as a learning experience - something to really challenge my skills. There were quite a few bits of it that I had no idea how to do before I started, but I muddled my way through and the end result, turned out okay.
My next warband was a Blackship team, led by Maximillian Gusteens. He might look strangely familiar to some of you, as his model is based on Spock.
The two other members of the team are the Blackship security trooper, Ferdinand Zelig; and the Witch-seeker Johann Goodwin.
The Tau Silent Hunter was inspired by games like Splinter Cell - he's a operative for a shadowy secret agency who perform various 'black ops' in situations when mobilising the Fire Warriors is inappropriate.
My ogryn, Krugg 'Thunderjug' Graxxlagg, was built as a bodyguard for Inquisitor Kaled, and was a big hit at the first Inquisitor Grand Tournament where he won me first place in the Painting and Modelling round.
Belladonna Crowe was next I think, an ex-Escher ganger turned bounty hunter.
After seeing a couple of stormtroper conversions on the 'Clave (most notably Van Helser's Choi), I decided to have a go at one of my own. At the minute, Karl Hoskanner is not part of any warband, but at some point I ought to find one for him to join.
My next warband was an Ordo Sicarius one. I wanted the team to be centred around a heavily-armed syn-skin clad operative, who ended up being called 'Snake-Eyes' due to his resemblance to the old
Action Force/
GI Joe character, who I decided to sculpt over an armature - despite some of his muscle groups looking a little off, I think he turned out rather well.
Next up was the Inquisitor himself, a shadowy secretive figure code-named 'Red Queen'.
The final member of the team is the auspex and comms operator, code-name: 'Blackjack'.
Somewhere around this time I decided I wasn't happy with Kaled's warband. He was my favourite character, but other than the ogryn I'd always borrowed other models when I used him in games, so I decided it was time to build him a new warband. Previously I had built a second version of Kaled, one of him out of uniform and working undercover. I decided that Kaled's new warband should be less military in style so they wouldn't look out of place next to either version.
First up was Talessa Valdez. Originally she was envisioned as an undercover version of Eliza Torres, but when the model was completed I decided to give her a whole seperate identity. By this time I was a lot more confident in my sculpting ability, and am rather happy with how her coat and hair turned out. She's accompanied by her cyber-mastiff, K-8.
Colm Devlin known as 'The Chief' was next. He's an ex-Navy Warrant Officer who now works as Kaled's Chief-of-Staff.
Next was Heinrich Ottokar, an Administratum Adept and Kaled's chief savant. Ottokar was closely based on sketches by Jes Goodwin in The Gothic and the Eldritch. Ottokar is another model sculpted mainly from scratch.
The Naval Stormtrooper, Terence Caine, was next and like Ottokar, he too was mainly sculpted.
Some time before I had built a model of a Navy Admiral, who was said to have worked with Kaled in the past, and who was in fact the estranged father of Kaled's acolyte. Now, having just built a couple of Navy and ex-Navy characters for Kaled's warband, I decided to build some more to further explore various navy archetypes. These included Fleet Commissar Valmont; Harlon Devane, a navy officer; and Coen Müller, an armsman.
The final Navy character is not a member of the navy as such, but is a member of a shipboard Death Cult. The cult is made up of void-born children snatched from their families and raised by the cult to protect the ship. Kaltus Zek is known as the Emissary, the cults representative with the ship's officers.
Next are young Herbert with his teddy bear, and his great-grandfather.
By this time the
Inquisitor Grand Tournament 2008 was fast approaching and I decided I needed a whole new warband. I'd had the bounty hunter miniature laying around for a while, so decided to turn him into an Ordo Sepulturum Inquisitor - Viktor Cushing.
The first member of his warband was the Inquisitorial Stormtrooper Marcus Yeovil, who somewhat foolishly took part in a chainsword duel in a vault fitted with sound-activated sentry guns - seemed rather appropriate given his rather maniacal expression.
Next was Sister Eleanor of the Order of the Eternal Candle. She's based on a Lost Worlds of Atlantis miniature, but the only bits still visible from the original are her face and left hand - the rest is ProCreate and tomato puree tube. She won first place in the Painting & Modelling round at the tournament that year.
The final member of the warband is the bounty hunter, Randal Neild.
For the tournament I decided to run a game based on an Enslaver incursion. For that I modelled these three enslavers and their fleshy warp portal.
The Vindicare assassin was another model I'd had laying around for ages - much as I like it, I can appreciate why it was withdrawn as it was badly cast and required a fair amount of work to get it ready for painting.
When I first saw Andrea's Technocop miniature I was struck by how it's torso and legs closely resembled some of the artwork of Necron Pariahs, and resolved to use it as the basis of a conversion for an
Inquisitor scale one. The main difficulty was the head, the version you see is my second (or is it third attempt), and is still somewhat smiley.
Around this time I ran a repeat of the Hobby Competition that I'd won with my first
Inquisitor model. One of the prizes up for grabs was a Kuvar Reaper model by Pegaso - a model I loved so much I rushed out and bought one for myself.
Next up is my second AdMech warband. The first couple of miniatures were completed some time ago but I've put them all here as they're the warband I've been working on recently. First up is Explorator-Magos Vaal Kryzak, who is based on a model of Kane from
Alien. It has since been pointed out that he bears more than a passing resemblence to some of the pictures of Explorators in the Necron codex.
The second character to be built was Saphentis, a high-ranking Skitarius based on the same model as the Pariah seen above (this time with a lot of ProCreate added to give him robes). The character is inspired by a John Blanche sketch of a Skitarius in the 4th ed. 40k rulebook.
The next character to be built was Johann-4251, a very heavily-armed praetorian servitor, whose only remaining biological component is his head in a jar. These three characters comprised my warband at the recent
New Secrets, Old Lies event in York, where despite my worries about him being too powerful, he seemed to be very well received.
The fourth member of the warband is 'The Pariah'. No one knows where Kryzak 'rescued' him from a Necron tomb as he was in the process of being converted, or whether Kryzak has found a way of preventing Necron technology from phasing-out and has implanted it in a servitor.
The most recent member of the warband to be completed is Orla Riall - who you can read more about
here or
here.
When I said at the start that I'd never gone back to 28mm models, that's not quite true - I did build an Inq28 version of Inquisitor Kaled, plus a warband for him made up of old
Rogue Trader era miniatures. You can see a comparison of the three versions of Kaled
here.
You can see more pictures of these models, including shots from other angles
here, and work-in-progress pics of many of them can be seen
here.
Well, I think that's everything up to this point...
- Dave
P.S. Well, the main thing I notice is that I really need to take some new photos of some of those miniatures.
