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" 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 "Balace 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 Astopolis 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

Civies and Commissariats...

 Greetings once again fellow Oldhammerers...

I have managed to maintain some painting enthusiasm and painted up a couple of more figures to add to my (tiny) Imperial Guard force (now dubbed the Foederati MDCCIst, or "The Redshirts").

First we have a boltgun armed trooper who will form part of Commander Tzerchov's Command section.

Nothing too special here, just the same scheme I have used on all the other troopers I've painted so far.

Next up to maintain discipline (in their loyalist incarnation at least...) I've also painted up a Commissar. It took me a while to find one of these at an acceptable price but I finally found one. He was missing his laspistol barrel which has been replaced with a slightly more modern (and chunky) plastic example (also my first attempt at pinning!).

Anyway here is Commissar Rötenborg in all his glory.

Sometime ago I found a blog post where someone had painted several commissars in vibrant colours instead of the traditional black. I decided to go a similar route (although I didn't go quite as vibrant) and also tie him into the Redshirts a little better. Unfortunately I can't remember who made the original post and a few searches have failed to find it again, so apologies to whoever that was, but thanks for the inspiration!

The only suitable place I could find for the hazard stripes I use to tie the members of the force together was the chainsword, but this seems pretty appropriate (although originally I went with more thinner stripes which didn't work as well).

Finally there are actually a few other models I painted ages ago but then never got around to posting on here, so I'm just going to throw those in here.

 First a small group of additional civilians to fill out my growing collection.

 These are a set from CP miniatures. I didn't put a lot time into them but they've come out ok I think.

Also I actually painted some terrain, these were some cheap 3D printed bits I picked up at a model show earlier this year.

I still have a second one of the crates to paint at some point but I'm sure they'll come in useful at some point.

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

Inspiration grows from the barrel of a gun.

Orktober Returns!

 I have once again returned from the wilderness to paint something Oldhammer related, this time I actually remembered that it was Orctober and have painted some Orks!

This is also a first attempt to actually paint a whole unit (well mostly, I do intent to add some more members later) in one go...

 

These are mostly models from the original Ork Raiders boxset including Thrugg's right-hand Ork Hrukk from the Battle of the Farm in the RT rulebook. I'm pretty happy with how this lot have come out and think they'll match up well with my existing Orks.

As is normal for me these were painted with a mix of Citadel, Vallejo and even Humbrol acrylics.

And few images of individuals starting with the Nob. He has some shinier brass and bronze detailing that the other lack to mark him out a bit.

 

 

The 'eavy weapon Boy.

 

  And the rest of the boyz.

The last two have Bad Moons symbols on their shoulder pads, these were a bit of a last minute addition, I struggled a bit to paint it between the scratches.

 The eagle-eyed may have noticed that unusually for me I have actually based these! A very basic job, will have to go back do some more work on them since they are still a bit glossy.

That's about it for now, hopefully I might retain this recent enthusiasm.

Till next time...

 

Cap'n Smyrk