A Long Unexpected Inquisition...

 Something a little different this time, and something not quite so-Old Hammer.

This is a project that I began several years ago but abandoned incomplete. I can't say exactly when caused me to go back and finish (and dive off down this particular rabbit hole...).

To go back to the very beginning back when the Inquisitor first came out I came up with a background idea for a pair of rival Inquisitors, Ankyra and Tamerlane Voth. The basic premise was that Inquisitor Rastaban Tycho (whose name I borrowed for one of my RT Inquisitors) discovers a twin brother and sister who are unusually both psykers, and both strong enough to not be Astropathed or make a one-way pilgrimage to the Golden Throne.

Tycho took the two into his retinue and eventually both became Interrogators and finally Inquisitors themselves. However their mentor had always been on the radical side of the coin and finally took a dive off the deep end and was declared a heretic by his peers. The Voths were not directly involved in these events and avoided censure themselves.

However their reactions these events were dramatically different. Ankyra, always secretive in her actions became even more so. Tamerlane comes to saw their mentor's downfall as being inevitable and swings to to the Puritan side and becomes suspicious of his sister.

I never actually played Inquisitor and thus nothing every came of it at the time.

Later I started following the Inq28 community and made an attempt to build models for characters I had thought up which is where this model came in. I didn't have much experience with converting metal models so I stuck to plastic parts.

I cannot claim any originality in this model, being based on a model made by Keravin (that I saw on the old Ammo Bunker forum), based on a Dark Eldar Warrior body with a hooded Wood Elf head. 

So this is my homage to that model, Inquisitor Ankyra Voth.

I trimmed down the sharp and spikey bits, like the sides of the knee pads and spikes on the lower leg.

I used a bit of green stuff to fill a gap behind one arm and give her a bit of a neck, as well as covering the pattern on the knife scabbard (although that was ultimately obscured by the sword...).

The original came out long before the appearance of plastic Sisters of Battle so Keravin used a set of metal arms. I originally tried to use the Dark Eldar arms rearmed with Imperial weapons, however I was using a splinter rifle supporting arm and couldn't find anything suitable to put in the open hand. This was the main reason along with failure to find a sword that I liked that I lost interest originally.

After finishing this I went on a bit of spending spree gathering bits for Tamerlane Voth and members of their retinues, I've already built a gunslinger/veteran and an Arco-Flagellant, which will hopefully get painted soon.

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

Happy New Year...

 A Happy New Year to Oldhammerers all!

I managed a little bit of painting over the [INSERT HOLIDAY/CELEBRATION OF CHOICE] period and added a couple more models to my tally for the year just gone.

These were a couple of Grenadier/EM4 scavengers that I still had lying around from a batch I bought a while ago.

The rest of that batch ended up as members of my Broad Arrow Gang. These two however with their hoods/masks/cowls I thought were more appropriate to the Cult of the Incandescent Astral Wyrm so they were added to bulk out that faction which now stands at eleven members.

 I kept to my existing theme for this faction with purple, green and red items over individual colours for each member.

Haven't got around to doing a group shot of the whole lot with the new additions yet, still haven't quite mastered photographing large numbers of models.

Although I abandoned doing yearly retrospective posts some time ago (wow... eight years ago it would seem) I had a look back to when I actually used to set myself targets to achieve and see how well I've been doing.

The targets I set for 2016 were the following (and which I didn't meet then...):

1 - Paint at least 26 models.

2 - Base all my models.

3 - Manage at least one post a month.

This year I managed 14 models which is just over half that target (not of course that I was actually aiming for that number), but is more than the 12 I managed in 2022. Overall giving the limited time I've put into this hobby this year I'm actually pretty happy with that output!

And I've managed considerably fewer than one post a month. I've obviously never been that prolific a poster and giving the limited amount I've had to show off this was a target I was never realistically going to manage.

However whilst I still haven't gone back and yet based many of the models I have done I am at least managing to base all the new models I'm painting, so I've definitely improved here.

So what does this little exercise tell me?

Mainly that I'm rubbish at keeping to targets, and that if I'm going to set myself any (which I no longer think I do) I should probably more realistic about what I can likely achieve, what with other hobbies and commitments.

Anyway, I wish you all a happy new year, and good painting!

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

Balancing Terra...

So... its been a while...

But I have done some painting!

This started with me considering my Star Trek inspired Imperial Guardsmen and wondering whether there were any any other opponents for them that could also draw inspiration from classic Trek.

Two options came to mind. First Orks and Klingons, which do actually have a lot in common. However the original series Klingon uniforms are a rather nondescript and a bit... well... uniform (not very Orky). Plus I'm pretty happy with my current Ork scheme so I moved on.

Next was also quite obvious Eldar and Vulcans (Star Trek's very own psychic space elves...). Except apart from Spock (in his Starfleet uniform) the only other Vulcans featured in the original run are mostly civilian and also not really opponents for my Redshirts.

Fortunately Romulans exist and they actually have a bit more interest in their uniforms. So I tried to replicate these uniforms on some Eldar models. This also gave me the opportunity to paint the Eldar Trader from the Adventurers range who I've had for a while but hadn't been able to come up with a scheme for. In keeping with my preference for more alien Eldar I gave them blue skin (so they've become more a mix of Romulans and Andorians...).

So we start with Count Torma-Loch. The coloured half is on the opposite side to that of the inspiration but worked better particularly with the armoured model below.

 

I gave Torma-Loch a bit of female company in the form of the Talisman Sprite.

  

She suffers from one of the jankiest face castings of the era but still. I tried to replace her flowers with gemstones and gave her a bun to match better with the trader. I painted the wings as a slightly fleshy-bone colour as a sort of wraithbone decoration rather than actual wings.

Finally I painted them a bodyguard, hopefully with more to come.

 With this one I tried to bring in the blue of the lower ranked Romulans and the gold helmet. Tried out a new "prismatic" technique on the sword blade, definitely haven't quite mastered it although the sword probably wasn't ideal with the flat back of the blade.

And to finish the obligatory group shot.

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

*For those not deeply versed in Star Trek and wondering about the post title, the Romulans first appeared in an episode entitled "Balance of Terror"*

It was my pleasure...

This one is a bit of an oddity for me, not something I originally was planning on painting back when I started the blog.

One of my original projects back then was my Cult of the Incandescent Astral Wyrm, visible on their own page linked above.

The cult was deliberately a fairly generic possibly heretical religious cult from a backwater Imperial world, with no specific leanings towards any of the common cult types seen in the 40K universe. But I always intended to add some additional elements that could transform the basic cult into a definite Chaos or Genestealer cult.

Now I realise that in the original Genestealer cult list it was entirely possible to be both, but for whatever reason I don't particularly like the aesthetic of mixing the two. So I planned to add two separate groups of models that could be added to help turn it into either of those cult types.

Whilst the Genestealer elements are still planned for this post I've been working on the Chaos side of things. I decided to add some daemons to the mix, which is where the oddity comes in...

I've never been a particular fan of Slaanesh out of the Chaos Gods, and never planned to be painting any Slaaneshi Daemons. However the one daemon model I already owned was the original Keeper of Secrets model that had been bought and painted by my late elder brother (previously shown here). So it made sense to use that and add some lesser minions to aid this big boy.

I wasn't going to repaint the greater daemon as I wanted to preserve it in my brother's memory. So I needed to match the new models to the scheme he had used, unfortunately it was painted in original citadel paints, most of which I no longer have. So I've tried to match the colours as best I can with those I have available.

 

 

I'm really very happy with how the blue skin and red claws have come out on these, even if they don't exactly match those on the greater daemon.

Annoyingly I appear to have chipped the paint on one of the claws of this one, didn't notice till I took the picture.

I included the little daemonette familiar model as well.

And a shot of them all with their master for comparison.

That's all for now.

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

Beep Boop Beep...

 Hello once again Oldhammerers.

As I mentioned in my last post I was working on the final member of the crew of the Perennial Sparrow.

One major character from the source material was still missing, but no longer.

It took me a while to find a mini that I wanted to use for this character. I finally settled on this robot from Lead Adventure miniatures, from their Astropolis range.

The mini is clearly inspired by the character in question, with an added steampunk/classic diving suit aesthetic.

Anyway here he is.

I stuck pretty closely to the source scheme for this one, which fitted very well onto the model due to it having the same inspiration. Originally I left the inside of the "visor" black but then remembered the little orangey-red light that there is on the front of his dome and repainted it to ape that.

Just a pic showing off my freehand of his top pattern

He was a fun little mini to paint and completes this part of my Astral Conflict project.

Here he is with a "special" friend.

Finally a shot of the completed crew.

And as a last bonus here are the other two robots that came in the same set.

 The one on the left (who I have taken to calling PHL-NX) was painted inspired by his similarity to the naval Phalanx CIWS. The one on the right was inspired by the scheme of some of the imperial droids on the Death Star in the original movie. I painted their "visors" when I decided to paint the first one, choosing blue and red colours in this case.

And apparently this is my 100th post on this blog, so I guess... Hooray!!!  🎉 🎆 🎉

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

It's not my fault...

 Hello once again fellow Oldhammerers...

I've managed to crank out a couple of more figures recently, both for my "Astral Conflict" inspired project (which you may notice now has its own page on the blog).

First up we have the second to last member of the crew of the Perennial Sparrow (I have the last one currently in the works, although I do have an idea for one more if I ever got my hands on the appropriate miniature...).

Anyone recognise this guy?

   

This is Glamdo Cartesian, an old associate of Hanz Ollow. Unusually for me I have actually modified this model, in the form of a mustache. Its a bit bushy compared to the inspiration but at this scale needed to be a bit more obvious. The colouration of his slashed sleeves was base on the lining of the original's cape (I did consider adding that as well but don't think my greenstuffing skills are quite ready for that yet).

I saw it mentioned somewhere that one of the old Adventurers range Techpriests bears a resemblance to the inspiration's cyborg assistant. And quite unintentionally I actually had previously painted the Techpriest in a pretty good matching scheme.

 

 

As an slightly related aside Billy D. Williams is one of the only two members of the Star Wars cast (the other being Warwick Davis) I've met. This was at a Sci-fi convention in London many years ago, where I amused him (and annoyed his handlers) by paying the fee with a huge load of small change. I probably still have the autograph somewhere...

The second model is a third poorly camouflaged goon for Inquisitor Thrad. This model was the mostly heavily armoured I could find to match up with the first two I've painted.

   

Otherwise he's basically painted in the same way as the first two.

This next shot is me trying out some different photography, although it didn't work out as well as I would have liked I'm going to show it anyway.

Finally I finished the last piece of the 3d printed scatter terrain I showed a few posts ago.

I decided to suggest some form of dangerous contents by going with the hazard strips. Those are pretty rough as I free handed them but looks ok from a distance.

Anyway...

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

New Year, New Girl...

 Happy New Year fellow Oldhammerers!

 I spent some time over the festive period painting an addition to my Necromunda Escher gang.

She's painted to match the rest of the gang with the black and blue parts tying them together but with more individuality in pants and hair colour.

She wasn't originally planned to be particularly season appropriate but with the white hair and the present-like thing on the base...

The package was made from some left-over greenstuff I had before it fully cured. Originally it was supposed be some kind of box but I didn't manage to get it square enough so tried painting it as some form of bound package.

And here she is with the rest of the gang, now all fully based as well!

Overall that makes a grand total of 11 miniatures painted during 2022, which is one less than I managed in 2021.

Oh well, must try harder...

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk