Warhammer 40,000 | Wargaming
A Leman Russ for the Four-Armed Emperor!
Hobby Blog Number 4: In which I loot my childhood
I’m not usually in favour of haul-related content. People showing off the piles of stuff they have bought doesn’t interest me and it feeds into a fear of missing out mentality within the community. This is an expensive hobby, one that I struggle to afford myself, so seeing people flaunting the big boxes of models they’ve bought with money as some sort of achievement never strikes me as particularly tasteful. When they have been built or converted, painted and transformed into works of art, it’s amazing. Give me more of that. But just unmade boxes and spurs…
But maybe this once…
The Loot
I finally had the chance to return to England last month. I’ve been stuck in Turkey due to some utterly incomprehensible decision-making by the clown shoes currently governing the UK. Whatever, I was able to go back, see the family, engorge myself with pork products and get a bunch of books. More importantly, I was able to have a look in the attic and at the back of cupboards in the family home for my old Warhammer collection.
When I was a teenager, I principally played Warhammer fantasy (RIP). The large piles of Dark, Wood, High Elves and Warriors of Chaos, though cool, didn’t really fit with any of the projects I’m currently working on. I had to be selective when choosing what to bring back. There were some Astra Militarum bits and bobs that will fit into the Genestealer cult nicely and a few other whole models that I’m excited about — more on them later.
The thing I was most interested in finding was my old bits box. Having vast piles of sprues and carefully clipped out parts is incredibly useful and ups my possibility for interesting kitbashes and conversions in a way that wasn’t doable before. In particular, I am excited about the parts from various Empire Militia box sets that I found. Obviously, this set is Mordheim to the core. Just as I have done with my Adepta Sororitas, I plan on using 3D-printed components from third-party miniature designers along with the GW parts to create new, exciting henchmen for the dark streets!
Some parts are not going to be as useful. I have a lot of high elf spear arms, but that is the thing about bits. You never know when a part or component might have a use, so all of them have value.
Genestealers
Twisted Mutants
I wanted some Abominants for my army. I love the lore of the Twisted Helix experimenting with human and Xeno parts in unholy ways and wanted to do the same. My aim is to make some grubby mutants to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies.
I tried to bash together the Iron Golems and the Tyranid Warriors boxes together for this purpose. Honestly, I messed up here. The size difference between the models is much greater than I thought. It is going to be a hard job making models that are not ridiculously disproportioned, but it’s a challenge I’m looking forward to and limitations inspire creativity.
An easy first bash from the two kits was my Abominant. I used the Ogor Breacher as the starting point. He already has a massive hammer arm that would do to represent the Abominant’s power sledgehammer. I cut away or filled in all the chaos symbols with milliput and clipped off some of the Iron Golem’s details. I set two of the warrior’s arms on his left side in a bed of green stuff and cut down the shoulder pad until it sat over them.
I carved out his torso and the chest from a Warrior until the two pieces fit snugly together. They are about the right size and I think it looks a bit bulky, but good enough. I thought about what head to give him but eventually decided on using the Golem head with the faceplate filled in. In my mind, it is like a diving helmet so the Abominant can move around the dank hive sewers behind enemy lines. The neon green doesn’t look fantastic. It needs a couple of more coats to get it to a very solid colour.
Bases
I wanted to try something ambitious (for me) with the bases of my cultists. Going along with the aquatic look, I wanted them to seem like they were moving through sewers ready to appear behind the enemy and eat them.
To do this I used resin. I have never worked with resin before and wasn’t super confident. However, I watched a really good video by Not Just Mecha explaining how to make swamp bases and it seemed achievable. To be honest, I just followed his steps. I did a few things differently, I don’t have access to quite as many texture paints as Marco, but I did get the wet ground and the resin from the same producer as he uses (AK interactive). Both were great, a lot of fun to use and the resin was easy.
I mixed a little green oil paint in some of the resin to give the more toxic look, which appears good but does cover up work that is below the waterline. I deviated from Marco’s build by not using wood bark as rock effect. I wanted a more industrial effect so I used bits of sprue, corrugated cardboard, plastic drinking straws and cork from a pinboard to create metal beams, rusted metal, pipes and concrete.
There are some things that I still need to learn about resin and creating bases in general, but I am so happy with how they have ended up looking. One thing I will need to be careful with going forward is cardboard which I used as corrugated metal and to fill up the bases for the cork. It seems like it absorbed some of the resin, causing the water line on the cardboard-heavy bases to be much lower or not visible at all. Not quite sure how to fix this, except to add a second round of resin. Will experiment.
Tanks
In my looting of my family home, I found a couple of Leman Russ tanks. Yessss. Now they serve the four-armed emperor! They were pretty busted up, but I repaired where I could and covered what I couldn’t. I painted them up in much the same way as I did my Ridgerunner, using layers of stippling and dry brushing with a makeup brush to build up a little bit of colour gradient and edge highlights.
Necromunda
One of the diamonds I found was a big pile of Necromunda stuff. Mostly old metal models, only one of them had enough to make a full gang and that was the Escher. They are great models and I’m going to have a lot of fun painting them.
I am not an artist. I know how to hold a paintbrush and some of the principles that are common knowledge to hobbyists, but I know nothing about colour theory or any of the concepts mastered by those who have learned to paint properly. It is something I’m trying to fix. Fortunately, there is a massive ecosystem of YouTube tutorials to help there. I would particularly recommend Tabletop Minions as a starting point. For more advanced material, Not Just Mecha and Dana Howl go into more detail and both encourage you to approach miniatures like an artist. As with any skill, as you get better, you start to realise how little you know and how much more progress you have to make and that’s only ever a good thing.
With some of the concepts in mind, I had a go at these models. I figure Escher is a good faction to experiment with. As one of the most colourful and over-the-top factions in the whole 40K universe, I feel a certain licence to experiment, spin the colour wheel and see what happens. Moreover, I don’t have to commit to any one colour scheme for the whole band. I can use the black leather boots and straps as the unifying theme while the rest of their costumes is a riot of colours.
Mordheim
I just painted up this metal guy that I found in a draw with my old Warhammer collection. The paint job was mostly finished by teenage me. I just did a bit of tidying up, washing and highlighting then sculpted him a new base. Ready to act as a mercenary duelist or one of the Heroes in my bandits set.
Terrain
Mordheim: Points of interest
I have quite a few Mordheim buildings now. Probably enough to cover a table. I’m planning to make little points of interest to further decorate the board. I started with these: A statue made from a bust I bought at the art shop and a pair of stocks I made out of balsa wood. I particularly drew inspiration from the Chimera Wargaming channel who have some nifty small builds for Mordheim that I’m going to have a go at. I especially liked the way that they use ink to get good effects on wood. I’ve had trouble with that in the past and using inks I bought from the art store has helped. I plan on building more in their style going forward.
40K Trash Builds
Like any good capitalist grinder, I generate trash. Lots of it. Far more than I am comfortable with. Fortunately, as a hobbyist, I have uses for it: Making weird mechanical terrain for 40K/ Necromunda/ Gaslands.
I was particularly inspired by the Scratch Bashing channel. I learned to look for texture, and that so much of the plastic crap that passes through our hands has detail that lends itself to industrial builds. I also learned to think about layers. If you just stick a bottle cap to a box then it looks like a bottle cap stuck to a box. However if you layer it with other material, cut into it, have things snaking in and out of it, multiple textures to catch washes and highlights, then you create something different.
The thing I haven’t got good at yet is building with purpose. In this build, I was just sticking stuff on in layers. I wasn’t asking myself, “Is this a machine? A vent? What might it be for?” I’m going to try and be more imaginative in future builds.
That being said, this is a fun way of constructing. I was using trash so it didn’t matter if I ended up breaking it apart or ripping it down if it looked bad. It was easy to paint as well: spray metal, sepia ink, orange dry brush and some of that wet ground paint for the bottom. It looks strange, dirty and messy. Not out of place in the Forty-First Millennium.
