Send in the Guard!

Now that you have seen the scratch built Chimeras, it's time for the Stormtroopers that used to ride around in them!

I had two 'Plasma' squads, and two 'Melta' squads, like this one.

They were minimal sized units, perfect for taking objectives.  Plus, they could pop their little heads out of the back of the Chimeras and blast somebody along the way!

Each squad was a mix of new and old metal figures, and plastic as well.

I used all the same colors on these guys as I did the Chimeras and my Grey Knights

I made all of the bases as well, using my Sci-fi basing methods that are in the basing section of the blog.  In fact, this is where I developed those techniques!

Here's the whole gang!

Another squad tomorrow!!

Making your own rides

Recent conversations got me thinking about a set of scratch built Chimeras that I made for my beloved Demonhunter army back in the wonderful days of 4th editon. :-)

I made 4 of them in all, each one toting a small squad of Stormtroopers.  This is when troop choices really meant a lot, since it affected deployment in a huge way.

I have images from three of them in this post.

They were made from Sculpey, plasticard, matboard, foam, and even plastic tubes (brush protectors).

Keep in mind that I never had an actual Chimera to work with when I made these.  I was working from a few line drawings that I found in a 3rd edition I.G. codex!

I looked at the drawings over and over, which also had a line drawing of a Guardsman standing next to it.  So, using one of my I.G. minis, I tried to scale everything appropriately!

The turrets could be removed very easily.  Each one had a heavy flamer option.

This vehicle was the only one that had GW parts on it.  Everything else was made from scratch.

I forgot how much I liked these guys!  When I look at these pictures, I see that there was more detail than I remember.

Nobody could tell that these were scratch built , including GW employees!

These images show you a little better what I have been talking about.  Heck, even the Sculpey was mostly left over from other projects... hence the crazy quilt of colors!

The white materials are the matboard.  You can see the clear plastic brush protector that became a Multi-laser.

The total cost of making these things was just a few dollars, which was very sweet!  Obviously, there was a fair amount of time in building and painting them, but I will always like them the best!

The New Gate

Here are some new images of the warpgates that I made for the videos.

Since there were all kinds of GW parts on the old gate, I had to reconstruct it completely.

I also had to make 2 of them at once, since I needed a sample construction for filming and painting.

This made the process a lot longer, to say the least.  However, I have 2 of the gates now!!

There is still a lot of work that I want to do on these guys.  Lots of lighter colors, and maybe some glowing diodes and other freehand.

I snapped some images of the Dark Eldar on this gate, so I will be posting those over the next few days...

Hanging out in the woods...

I could not resist the temptation to break out the Lord of the Rings elves once I had all the terrain pieces set up for the box art shoot.

This is just a tiny portion of the entire army, in fact.  There is much more.  I will be shooting some more images of them as I start to add more units to the army.

If you look back on some of the previous LOTR posts, it will explain much of the back story behind these elves, and why they have remained in Middle Earth.

It has been a very long time since these guys have been out of the box.  At least 10 months or so.  I miss playing the game a lot.

These guys fought over this particular hill many times :-)

I guess I will have to do some more battle reports once that gets going again!

Here's some of the cavalry, who usually did a lot of damage.  They got even nastier when Gwahir joined them!!

One of the archers did manage to make a Mumakil run away with a very strategic shot.  I think his name was Mortimer or something like that...

If you check out the terrain building post for the display board that I created for this army, you will see some serious hill construction!  That was a giant board that I called Fortress Falls.

Anyway, more going forward!

Held Hostage

Time for the final batch of minis that I thought could be fun for Zombicide.  These are hostages from Armorcast.  Perfect for Malls or workplace hostage situations.  Rescue the hostages before the Zombies munch on 'em!

These were also part of the set of officers, SWAT teams and criminals that I painted back in 2007 and 2008.

As with the other sets, these would be just the right scale to go with those zombies!

It's dangerous at those malls!

And now for the whole set...

Rolling rocks downhill

I was doing some cover art photography, so I decided to set up a few arrangements for blog posts.  Let's start with the basic terrain.

Some of you have seen the way I produce these hills in previous posts.  These things have proven to be very playable and very durable.

Of course, I always love my big rocks made out of 'useless' scraps!

I still fondly remember the day I discovered this idea, completely by accident.  From what I can recall, I had a few pieces left over from cutting the main hills, and pondered what could be done with them.  One piece happened to be sitting upright in the scrap box, which must have given me the idea.

Tack on some tree branches, flock and a few Woodland Scenics trees, and you have yourself some very fun terrain.  

I shot some images of the Lord of the Rings Elves on this setup, which was very fun!  Those are for tomorrow night I think...