Simple Combi-Flamer Conversion

Hello! You might have noticed my love for combi-weapons before in my tutorial for combi-plasma conversions. I'm fond of flamethrowers too, so this post will be about converting a combi-flamer using as basic bits and techniques as possible.

1. Basic materials

Yes, for this conversion you'll need not much more than a regular bolter and an orkish slugga pistol! You can find this particular slugga in Boy Mob kits, as well as in the Assault on Black Reach box.

2. Merging it together

I think the pictures are self-explanatory here. First, carefully cut off the boltgun's muzzle. Then, cut off the slugga's frontal part and glue it onto the boltgun. File the surfaces first so the new muzzle is exactly in line with the boltgun - you don't want to leave the gun with a bent barrel!

3. Adding a fuel tank

As an optional decoration, you can take krak grenades, split them up, file them and glue them onto the weapon. They'll make good fuel tanks for the flamer.

And that's all! The final product actually looks quite similar to the "Vulcan pattern" combi-flamer, which can be seen at Lexicanum. You can even try to put the krak grenade part under the barrel, to make it nearly identical.

Here you can see the finished weapon on a commander:


And here you can see the weapon again, with some paint:


Anyways, I hope you found this tutorial helpful! As always, comments and criticism is most welcome.

First Genesis Chapter Bike

I'm working on my new Ravenwing Battleforce and I have just finished the first Bike. Since I still have six more to do, I thought I'd share pictures, in case I'm doing something wrong.

So, here it is!




As you can see, the marks show that the marine is an Assault marine of 2nd Company, 7th squad. I didn't put squad number on the bike, even thought it should be there according to Insignium Astartes. It seems illogical to me that the bike should show squad number, but not a company marking, so I didn't paint the squad number at all. After all, according to the fluff, bikes belong to the chapter Armoury, and not to Companies (as do Rhinos and some other vehicles); the Companies instead request them according to mission requirements.



This picture shows a better detail of the base. I modelled the base according to a tutorial that was available on the Games Workshop site, but it looks like they took it down now! The base is covered by a thin layer of Green Stuff - and the bike track was made by pressing a spare Bike wheel into it. The effect is pretty cool, and complements my idea of a swamp planet pretty well, although most of the track is covered by the bike anyways. Here is a detail shot of the base, before I put the bike on it:


Regarding the bike model itself, it can be seen that it's mould dates back to the third edition. The detailing is simply not that good, but luckily a good paintjob can cover that well! I hope I have achieved that.

And that's about all for now, so - thanks for reading! As always, comments are most welcome. After all, I still have five more of these to do, and an assault bike as well!

Genesis Chapter Tactical Squad Revisited

You might remember my first Tactical Squad. It missed squad markings and consisted (mostly) of basic AOBR marines, so I've decided to revisit it by adding markings, and mixing in more "advanced" marines.


Probably the most important change is the Sergeant. I've decided to supplement the flamer combat squad with a new Sergeant; particularly because I wanted to arm the squad with a stronger close combat weapon, and particularly because I've grown quite allergic of the stock two-dimensional AOBR sergeant.


Sergeant Malleus, 3rd Tactical Squad, 2nd Company

As you can see, the new one is quite an improvement. The axe is a power weapon from Assault Squad sprue, and the other parts are standard Tactical Squad bits. I got quite bored of bare head marines, so I gave this one a helmet - in blue color, to represent sergeant status. I also stopped to paint marine eyes in Blood Red and instead went for Iyanden Darksun.

I've made minor changes to my first Rhino as well; after reading Insignium Astartes, I've found out I got the markings all wrong. So I've replaced them with a 2nd Company insignia and a tactical mark; note that the large tactical arrow is yet to be added. I also added a large Genesis Chapter logo on the back doors.




I'm still solving out my army list, and I'm thinking about actually putting this Tactical Squad into a Razorback, so that's why the Rhino still doesn't have squad markings. For some time though, the squad will use it as a dedicated transport, so here they are together:


And here is a better look on the squad markings, which are variously placed either on shoulder-pads or knee-pads:


As you can see, the squad is the third squad of Second Company (indicated by the golden shoulder-pad rim), Genesis Chapter. I'm afraid I quite messed up the Sergeant's banner, because the squad number insignia there looks too similar to a company badge - see the picture with Rhino to understand what I mean. I'll definately use different style of markings on future banners.

Anyways, thanks for reading! I hope you like the squad. As always, any comment or criticism is welcome. Do you think I should re-do the banner, to make it more apparent that it displays squad number? Or is it apparent enough?

First Alaitoc Guardian

Hi again! Just wanted to share a picture of my first painted Alaitoc Guardian. I didn't really use stippling here (I save it for vehicles), but I had great fun painting the carapace armour with Enchanted Blue, Ice Blue and Asurmen Blue wash. It definately looks better than my first try on Alaitoc, which ended up a bit too dark-coloured.


As you can see, there are still many things to improve on the model - for example the fingers holding the shuriken catapult could get some washing, and the jewels could be more detailed as well. I'll probably return to this model when I'll work on other Guardians, but right now, Genesis Chapter is the priority.

Also, I experimented with the basing a bit. You can see a piece of ruin there with an Eldar hieroglyphe (which is actually the symbol for Guardians). The plan is to make the Eldars look as if they are guarding an ancient sacred place.

Anyways, Merry Christmas (or Chanuka/Kwanzaa) and happy New Year! I'm sure about to have fun with a new Ravenwing Battleforce that I'm about to use for my Genesis Chapter army.

Gotta love the Ravenwing upgrade sprues... They make me think about assault cannon Razorbacks.

Anyways, see you in 2012! That is, unless the mayan prophecy turns out to be true.

Deffkopta Squadron finished!

It took a while, but all my three Deffkoptaz are finally finished! Let's take a look at them first.


I spent so much time on these that I actually don't know what to start with! Each of them was painted in very different circumstances and it can be seen on them. Let's look at them one by one.



The first one was actually the first vehicle (if you will) I ever painted; it was finished back in June 2010. Since then, I haven't improved it much. Main change is the basing - when trying it out in a test game, the holding pole broke and I had to improvise. So I took some sand and rocks, a piece of sprue and few toothpicks, and made the ruiny stand you can see now. Lately, I added a plant as well.



This is the Deffkopta my girlfriend was working on. She finished it this summer, and as always, her work inspired me. On this model, she extensively used Bad Moon Yellow, and in quite a different scheme than I did (I used to pay only little attention to engines, and this model proves that was a mistake).

The base was done by me last week. I bought a large terrarium plant for like 5 euro, chopped it up and planted it into drilled holes in the base. The result looks pretty good, I think I'll try to make a whole terrain piece (a small forest perhaps) using this method.



I painted this one recently; in September or October, I think. I like to compare it to the first one I painted; I definately made progress since 2010. There are more colors and the Deffkopta seems richer. It's the same model as the previous one, without any conversions, yet the two look very different from each other. The check pattern is fundamental for this model's individuality. The basing was done last week as well.



On the picture above, you can take a better look at the rokkitz and the basing. One more neat detail there: notice the right Deffkopta pilot's head. My girlfriend really did a good job there - something as simple as a yellow strip gives the model a lot of character!

Last picture is sort of a teaser:



Yep, I got a Predator nearly finished! Still have to paint some details and battle damage on it though.

To be honest I'm glad I'm finally finished with the Deffkoptaz. They are great-looking models, but painting them was annoying because of the two-dimensionality of Assault on Black Reach sprues. Anyways, most of my AOBR units are painted now - only thing left is a bunch of Boyz!

Anyways, I hope you liked the orky machines and the new basing. These things took so long to get finished, but I feel the result was worth it.

See you soon! I'll try to make another post within a week or two, to make up for November.