Immortals and Gorgons

It's been a while since my last post, and also a while since I actually finished the rest of my Medusan Immortals - I've been trying to distract myself until I can get my next selection of Iron Hands. But I've not been twiddling my thumbs! As I mentioned, the rest of the Medusan Immortals are complete and I've also built, converted, and painted some Gorgon Terminators. The Gorgon Terminators are absolutely amazing models and really capture the character of the Iron Hands.

I actually painted my Gorgons and tried them out in a few games before deciding to convert them - I wanted them to have a little more hitting power, particularly so that they could deal with vehicles. Although the Hammer Bearer (sergeant) has a Thunder Hammer, that wasn't enough in my eyes to deal with the heavier tanks available in the Age of Darkness armies. Having also bought the Cataphractii special weapon set (so I could give the Gorgons a Reaper Autocannon), I figured I could make use of one of the power fists and a chainfist. A little cutting at the elbow joints and I managed to upgrade their wwapons appropriately.

Anyway, on with some pictures. First off are all ten of my Medusan Immortals:



And here are the Gorgons - you can see the power fist on the Reaper armed Gorgon, and the chainfist on the Gorgon to the right of him.

30k Iron Hands

So in a bit of a departure from my Imperial Guard army, I've recently had some inspiration and impetus to get some work done on my Iron Hands for Horus Heresy era games. I'll admit this was, in no small part, due to those beautiful new Gorgon Terminator models. The slab sided plating that makes up the armour plating is really awe inspiring - so I splashed out and bought a unit. At the same time I also bought the Tartaros pattern special weapons pack, as I wanted to give one model a Reaper Autocannon (and I'm sure I'll find a use for the other weapons).

But before I allow myself to paint the Terminators, I decided I had to paint my Medusan Immortals - I hadn't even built them, despite buying them back in February! An evening of furious assembling and both the ten man unit of Immortals and the five man unit of Gorgons were complete.

I actually ended up undercoating, base coating and washing all 15 models in one go (along with a converted Twin Autocannon armed Dreadnought). From there on though, I'm splitting then down into more manageable chunks - starting with 5 of the Gorgons.

So here they are;

The whole unit awaiting painting:



First five painted:



and just to set the scene:



Just the other 5 to do now...

ICBM...

Really quick update - no conversion work, just good old fashioned hard work combined with a truly awesome model - the Deathstrike Missile Launcher:



The lighting isn't good tonight, so apologies for that, but satisfying results regardless - sometimes simple is better.

Anti-Air Support

With the lovely new Hydra/Wyvern kit being released for the latest Guard update, I couldn't resist adding one to my mechanised Guard army... particularly being as I'd had an amusing idea to personalise the model...

Initially, I was a little unhappy with the idea of having man the Hydra with crewmen that didn't look very Valhallan, but I figured I could probably come to terms with this minor gripe. But then inspiration struck - I could use the tank commander bodies from the Baneblade kit. As these had longcoats on, they'd fit quite well as Valhallan crew, and I could even paint them in the same style as the infantry - problem solved!

The main colour scheme for the tank was already determined, using the same colour as I used for the Chimeras, with the Autocannons and other metal work picked out in the same style as the heavy bolters and lasguns. Then the fun part- a little free hand work on the 'screen'... close up pictures of that below!

So here's the finished tank... I informally named it 'Taito' (hopefully the reason will be clear...):



and a close up of the 'screen':



"Space Invaders" - by the Taito Corporation!





Now to salve my need for destruction on a massive scale...

A little brute strength

With the human sized infantry, and their accompanying transports complete, I returned to my work in progress on the Ogryn squad. These are the four models left over from my Praetorian servitors from a few posts back - although that os a little misleading. It's not a case of these are 'left overs', that I've been forced to do something with, I actually wanted an Ogryn squad, and the fact that two boxes gave me the models to make the Praetorians and models to make a slightly larger than minimum size, squad was a happy coincidence. Coincidently, a squad of four Ogryns will fit inside a Chimera should I decide they need to fit in more with the rest of the Mechanised force.

Not wanting to use the 'standard' Ogryn Bone 'ead 'head', I decided to use the head of Nork Deddog. After assembling the rest of the squad, I realised one of the heads I'd used had a mohican... I'd inadvertently made an Ogryn version of the A-Team! There was one last thing need to really tie in this unexpected 'theme' - Murdoc needed a baseball cap. I'm pretty sure there aren't any models in the Games Workshop range, and certainly none that would fit on an Ogryn sized head... time to get the greenstuff out.

I'm definitely not a sculpter, but after a little help to get the basic shape, I think I did reasonably well - and after the paint job was finished, it was a real success!

Here they are (and yes, I'm now humming the theme tune...):

Armoured Fist

With the infantry finished (at least for the 1500pt list), I've now turned my attention to their transports - the Chimeras.

Sticking with the World War theme, I've opted for a traditional Olive green colour scheme, using Castellan Green as the basecoat followed by an all over drybrush using Death World Forest. Both of these colours are from the 'Base' section of the Citadel Paint range, which means they have a high pigment count and can cover a black undercoat nice and smoothly. The Deathworld Forest 'Base' paint meant I could employ a very rough and ready drybrushing to achieve a subtle yet solid highlight.

I wanted to stay quite simple regarding markings on the tanks as, following a very brief bit of research, it seemed tanks of the era were quite plain. One thing I definitely did want to include were the 'tank stripes' used on many Imperial Guard armies to identify platoons. The Company Command tank wouldn't have these bars as it doesn't belong to a platoon, so I used a Skull icon in its place.

So far I've completed three of the five Chimeras - partly because batch painting tanks seemed like a good idea (???) and partly because that would allow me to cover the three different troop elements from the army; HQ, platoon/squad, and veteran (the veterans will fluff-wise be part of the infantry platoon).

Company Command tank with 'Skull' command icon on the side of the turret and opposite hull side:





Platoon Command tank with red and white platoon markings on turret, and '0' on hull and back of turret:





Veteran's tank with red and white platoon markings on turret, and 'Armoured Fist' icon on hull and back of turret:





A couple more of these and I can move on to the Leman Russ' and Hellhounds...

Enemy at the Gates

Still riding high on my "Enemy at the Gates" theme, I couldn't resist turning a few of my spare Valhallans into snipers. Not having quite enough to make the full 6 man team required for a Special Weapons Squad, these guys were originally destined to be (rather cool and characterful) lasgun "counts as" models. I wasn't overly happy with that, but I couldn't quite bring myself to pay the 5 points each to upgrade them, and the grenade launchers were far too useful to leave out.

Then I realised sniper rifles cost only 2 points! My interest was grabbed... I then realised I could upgrade the sergeant/lieutenants to have the bolt pistols the models actually carry, and combined with the 3 sniper rifles, this would add up to a very conveniently round number. But there was still the - rather devastating - issue of insufficient models.

Disregarding the unacceptable (and wysiwyg innacuracy) of using a couple of spare sergeant models, I relented and resolved to purchase another Valhallan squad. Cue an awesome friend offering up some of his old spare Valhallans. It felt like this was meant to be!

As for the models themselves, I wanted the weapons to be very obviously sniper rifles, but I also wanted them to look very individual - as if they're personalised weapons, had been issued at different times or to different regiments etc, or simply to have been scavenged in a "make do" philosophy. Hopefully I've managed to create three interesting looking rifles that mesh well together.



Now on with the tanks... honestly...