Rogue Trader: Adeptus Mechanicus; 3rd Company, 9th Nepenthe Imperial Guard Regiment

Adeptus Mechanicus Section, 3rd Company, 9th Nepenthe Imperial Guard Regiment prepares to move out in support of their unit during the fighting against Gnummschkull Terdlipp's Orks on Far-go, around The Year of Our Emperor 39470.

A strong Adeptus Mechanicus contingent is key to the success of any Imperial Guard formation, for without the skills of the Adepts and their servitors, most of the unit's heavy weapons would soon become unserviceable.

The original 40k Imperial Guard army list permits up to d6 Adepts.  Very useful for fixing broken stuff and necessary for controlling penal troops.  They can also act as spotters for off-table artillery support.  I've included three in my army.  I suppose that's more I'll ever need, but the figures are so interesting, like Mr. deeply disturbing vagina face here...

...who closely resembles the figure in John Blanche's painting from the Rogue Trader rule book.  I always love it when a mini matches up with something in the rule books.

Really fun figures to paint.

The army list also allows up to 3 servitors per Adept.  Again, the minis are so fun that I ended up buying more than I'll probably ever need, 6 in fact.  But I suppose they could also be useful as 'civilian' models in story-driven games.  The mini above reminded me of the 'test bed slave' character from the rule book, so I painted her in similar fashion.

Wrench guy here came out pretty nice.  Bob Olley sculpted all the figures in this post except the two in the photo below and he was really on his game with all of these.

These fellows came out after the release of 40k 2nd edition, I believe, but I've always had a soft spot for them.  They came out ok for the most part, but once again the eyes were my downfall.

'We shall ease the machine's pain!'

The army list requires that some mode of transport be provided for an Adeptus Mechanicus section, and I was happy to comply.  I gave them this old school Rhino painted in a desert camo scheme.  I still painted a few bits bare metal.  Not very realistic, but it gives the rig a little more flavor, I think.

"This able beast shall get us there!"

So that's that.  I still want a 2nd platoon, an HQ section and commissariat, and a rapier multi laser battery for the company, and a squad or two of penal troopers with a couple of human bombs.  If I can ever get all that together, I'll happily call my Imperial Guard company done.

Classic Mini Boxed Sets: Rafm's Shadows & Steel #1: Wizard's Adventure Party (1985)

The intrepid wizard Amadeus leads his adventuring party into the vale of Tandaloor, hoping to find glory and riches!  But will they find wealth and success?  Or horror and a lonesome death?  This was the first set in the Shadows and Steel  line of boxed sets sculpted by Bob Murch and released by RAFM.

Although its a fun set, this project was a disappointment compared to the Iron Brotherhood set.  My painting failed to match up to my work on the brotherhood.

Here is Amadeux, the adventuring wizard, his chair carried by the mighty troll-beast, Ross.  This is obviously the most important piece in the set, both in terms of combat power and visual interest, so it was disappointing to find that the Ross casting was marred by a great ugly mass of flash that ran from his horn to his forward foot.  His eyes are also uneven.  I cut and filed away at the mess as best I could, but he still didn't look as well as he might have.

As with the other Shadows and Steel sets, the figures came with D&Dish statistics and a mass of fluff.  Storylines, personalities, and a general idea of how Amadeux's party fit into the world of the Tandaloor campaign setting.  Finding extras like this in a box was a great deal of fun for me when I was a kid.

This fellow is referred to in the fluff as "Gomer the Ever Eager" and is Amadeux's scout...

The flip side of the sheet shown above.  Fluff galore.

Desirei the archer.  This figure was borrowed for the Wizard's adventure party from one of RAFM's historical lines.  When I painted The Iron Brotherhood, I wisely decided not to try to paint any of the eyes on the human characters as they were so tiny that I felt that trying to paint them could only lead to disaster.  This time I couldn't resist the urge to try and screwed most of them up.  I warned me, but I didn't listen.

Each of the Shadows and Steel sets also provided a two-sided map depicting some encounter area within the campaign setting.  This is a map of the courtyard of Vlad Tandaloor's castle.

Fado the Osprey, Amadeux's familiar and another useful scout.  I painted him as a hawk rather than an osprey.

Map of the throne room of the Vlad Tandaloor, the Vampire Prince for whom the valley is named.

Ice Wolf, the barbarian fighter...Useful muscle for Amadeux's party.  This figure looked ok until I tried to do the eyes.  Now I hate it.

Puc the Pious, the cleric who annoys everybody with his sermons, but whose skills are crucial to the party's success.

More fluff and a painting guide included in the box.

Max the elf champion...

Maps and more general information about the valley and its inhabitants on the flip side of the sheet shown above the picture of Max...

Amadeux's adventurers run afoul of The Iron Brotherhood!  Will our heroes live to tell the tale?????

Knights of The Mittelmark Pt 3: More Bretonnians/Imperials

Two more knights of the Baron Von Refn's army, mustering their troops for battle.  These are part of a push I'm making to try to get my Warhammer Bretonnian/Empire army battle worthy before the end of the year.  Most of the figures are Old Glory Medievals.  The musician is an old Grenadier LOTR Boromir mini.

Captain and banner bearer are Mark Copplestone Fantasy Warriors.

This is one of 2 great weapon units I'd like the finished army to include.

One of the Old Glory figures here...

There are also quite a few Wargames Foundry figures in the unit.

Chop chop!

Wargames Foundry Knights....

I'm terrible at painting the designs on the shields and caparisons but I felt I had to try to get away from using decals all the time.  From a distance they I hope they don't look too bad.

Since the infantry are meant to represent the retainers and henchmen of these particular knights, I painted their clothes to reflect the colors of the knights' heraldry.  My plan for the near future is to have one troop of nice with caparisons and one without, perhaps to represent lower ranking knights.

Using the same colors on both the knights made it easy to create a unifying color scheme for the infantry regiment.  A Wargames Foundry axeman and...

...A nice old Josef Ochmann figure and maybe my favorite of the whole bunch. 

Ready for fightin'!  I now have 2 1/2 infantry regiments, 30 crossbowmen, 6 knights and a whole ton of peasant auxiliaries.  In the end that does't add up to much on the table top.  Long way to go, yet.

Rogue Trader: More Space Ork Motorboys!!!!

I told myself that I was finished with Der Afrikorkorps and wasn't going to do any more troops for it but....

...I did some more troops for it.

I had so much fun doing the first batch of biker boys that it turned out to be hard to stay away, especially after I realized that I had not included Sleazy Rider in the group!  That simply had to change.  So Der Afrikorkorps has grown by 5 more biker boys.  Here they are.

I had forgotten all about the existence of Sleazy Rider, but while lying in bed one night thumbing through an ancient copy of White Dwarf (from 1988 or thereabouts), I noticed him occupying the bottom of an advertisement for some special limited edition releases.

Grrr!!!  How could I have put together a whole squad of RT biker boy conversions without recalling this fellow?  He was a perfect fit for Der Afrikorkorps!  It took a while but I tracked a casting down.  The muzzle of the gun on the casting I bought was broken so I converted his weapon into a double barreled shotgun by adding two lengths of wire.  I actually like it better than the original weapon.

With the bike squadron swelling to 10 models, I wanted to add a special weapon, so I added a plasma gun.  The model wasn't not easily convertible, so he's just sort of awkwardly perched on the seat, no hands on handle bars, but his biker jacket with the ripped sleeves and biker boots are certainly appropriate.

 For the most part I'm pretty happy with how these guys turned out, though.

 Rooooommm!  Rroooooommmm!!

This guy wasn't supposed to be the boss, originally, but I really like him so he probably is the boss now.

Der Afrikorkorps crashes through my home built alien desert scrub forest, lookin' fer a fight!   Waarrgghh!