Painting a Jungle themed Imperial Guard

By endurance we conquer.

Two years back, I went through a lengthy process of converting more realistic Imperial Guard from Elysian Drop Troops and making molds for them. I was really fortunate to have the talented Polysmith create some female heads to go with the models, due to a relative lack of good options from Games Workshop at the time. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to properly paint one of these completed Imperial Guard models. With the increased hobby time I have had due to the current pandemic, I decided to rectify this!

Imperial Guard: Painting a close quarters specialist

These Skies are Dead.

For over a year now, I have been converting and making molds for some Imperial Guard models with a focus on realism and scale, rather than ostentatious “grimdark” elements. While Eric quickly assembled and painted a few for Iron Sleet’s Thorn Moon Crusade, they were more of a proof of concept rather than my final vision of the models. After a lot of consideration, I decided to paint my first of the Imperial Guard models as soldiers who excel in urban warzones. Although it was a slow process, I completed the first model and wanted to talk about the painting process!

Imperial Guard: Painting an infiltration expert

Only in death does duty end.

Recently, I converted a reconnaissance soldier out of one of the newly released Van Saar models. The Van Saar armored bodygloves seemed ideal for converting a oberative that engages in all manner of espionage and infiltration missions. I am happy to say that I was able to find the time to paint the model recently, and wanted to talk a little about it!

Mare Solum: Painting a mercenary

Dead industrial atmosphere.

I only just finished converting my jetpack-wearing mercenary for Mare Solum, a less than a week before the event is taking place. This only left me with a few days paint the model, a schedule much faster than I normally like when painting a model. Despite this, I took challenge and even found time to test out a few new techniques!

Mare Solum: Building a mercenary

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Over the last few years, the Inq28 movement has steadily been increasing in popularity, as evidenced by more and more collaborative events, such as the Pilgrym and Tor Megiddo. Relatively few have taken place in the USA, however, aside from the Curse of the Alabaster. Vince Fiore, of the Dark_Tech_ fame is looking to change that with his world-building collaborative project Mare Solum. The setting has a great deep-sea diver/nautical theme that I thought would be fun to explore. Having just spent a lot of time converting and creating molds for some Imperial Guard, I decided this would be a great opportunity to see what diverse things I could create with them, trying to make them visually distinct from the stock models, but also fitting with the Mare Solum theme.

Imperial Guard: Building an infiltration expert

“I'm just a man who's good at what he does. Killing.”

With the recent release of the plastic Van Saar for Necromunda, the hobby community finally has plastic models that are wearing body gloves (armored in this case), something ubiquitous in the background (and was popularized, and maybe coined, by Dan Abnett) but curiously absent in model form. Having spent much of this year converting and casting Imperial Guard, I thought these new models would make an excellent foundation for converting a recon specialist for them (taking suitable cues from Metal Gear Solid, of course!). What started out as a relatively simple project rapidly escalated as I attempted more and more sculpting, both to distance the model from the Van Saar and to make the model fit its role as a master scout.

INQ28: Converting a Militarum Tempestus Scion

To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.

Only a week after the release of the Militarum Tempestus Scions, we have already seen a surge of activity around the blogosphere involving the kit. They are particularly well suited for Inquisitorial operatives; both Jeff Vader and Henry South have excellent examples of this.  Wanting to experiment with the kit myself, I picked up a box and set to work. Now that I have actually seen the components of the kit, I am even more impressed than ever with Dave Thomas’s work. He paid a lot of attention to detailing the hands of the models. I was particularly impressed that he thought to model one of the Scions hands such that the operator’s trigger finger is not on the trigger of the weapon! Their fighting knives are also really neat. I particularly like that they are simple straight blades and that they have a fully enclosed finger choil (kind of like a karambit, ha ha).

Militarum Tempestus: Plastic storm troopers finally arrive!

There are no miracles, only men.

Rumors have been circulating on the internet for years that Games Workshop has been working on a unit of plastic Imperial Guard storm troopers. I always looked at these rumors with a cautious optimism. The caution born from many false leads and the disappointment of not getting them when the Imperial Guard rolled into the 5th edition with steel treads and the stomp of standard-issue boots. But it was hard to not get excited about each of the rumors, because more so than for any other army in the 40k universe, the Guard are something that we can all relate to. Flesh and blood of men and women trying to survive the brutal dictatorship of the Imperium and the continual assaults from virtually any imaginable horror. Afterall, there are no miracles, only men (a line that has always stuck with me, from John Bergin’s ambient industrial rock soundtrack for Dan Abnett’s seminal novel Traitor General). But with the release of this week’s White Dwarf magazine, all of that uncertainty is gone. Plastic storm troopers are finally being released next week along with a supplemental codex, Militarum Tempestus, detailing an entire army composed of storm troopers (renamed Scions)! Now seems like as good a time as any to discuss the new plastics and consider them in light of the earlier versions of storm troopers (and to find my 30-40 metal storm troopers and prepare them for battle, he he).