Sanctum Imperialis Kit

The GW 40k building kits have for a long time, here at least, been seen to be of questionable value. Basically it seemed that there wasn't enough kit provided to justify the price. But having stated that finally 2 have been bought. Firstly Ruins of Osgiliath - which was bought provide material for stonework ruins basing for the Seraphim squad, also Saint Celestine, and a bit of scenery - and it has been at the end of the day value for money. So subsequently and very recently with the aim of creating an Ecclesiarchy Immolator to transport the Ecclesiarchy Battle Conclave the Sanctum Imperialis kit has been acquired. It was a choice between this and the Shrine of Aquila. Without giving away anything about the plans for the Ecclesiarchy Immolator here is what you get in this kit.

 Opening the box

 Everything laid out

  One of the 2 identical wall sprues

Ecclesiarchy Priest with Eviscerator

Here he is, looking slightly differently. The neck chain has gone a priestly cowl has been added instead from green stuff. It is truly a pity that GW does not make a priest with an eviscerator at present. The mini has a weapon composed from the hilt of a WFB Empire militia broad sword plus 2 Cadian chainswords.

This is the initial component of the squad proposed in an earlier post :- "Add a Preacher to a squad of death cult assassins and put them in an Immolator for toasting the target prior to assault. Then you have 5 x Weapons Skill 5, Initiative 6, Strength 4, Power Weapons Attacks 2 with re-roll for any misses. Give the Preacher an eviscerator with 2 attacks and a re-roll and rosarius for survivability for a total of 145 points plus Immolator at 65 points. Becomes slightly scary as a serious total disruption and decapitation assault unit, no?"

The harem of death cult assassins are now on the painting table. The conversion of a SoB Immolator  to an Ecclesiarchy style is then next step.

Steel Legion Meltaguns

The starting mini for the meltagunner conversion is the same as for the flamer. The arms are again converted from Empire Militia spares. The tricky bit to source are the meltaguns. GW sells metal meltaguns as bitz. They are scaled for Space Marines and so look a bit bulky in the hands of the Steel Legion. Alternatively a meltagun could be scratch built. One of the meltaguns was in fact scratch built using the vented mussel of a space marine melta but ultimately this was too much like hard work for the subsequent conversions. The Death Korps of Kreig weapons set from Forgeworld suppplies an appropriately scaled if expensive alternative and so were used for the remaining 2 conversions.

Steel Legion Heavy Flamer Conversion

The starting point for this conversion is the Steel Legion Sergeant that is not waving an Ork head. That is this one here to the left. The laspistol arm is detachable. The chain sword arm needs to be sawn off at the shoulder and the blanket roll on the back needs to be cut off and the residue sanded away. Removing the blanket roll is probably the hardest work. Next the flamer/heavy flamer is probably best created from the plastic Cadian set. Glue the flamer fuel tanks on his back. This is why the blanket roll needs removing. Then cut the Cadian arm off at the wrist leaving the hand holding on to the flamer. Now for the arms. The easiest right arm is the plastic sword holding arm from the empire militia box set, the arm with a dagger strapped to it. The left arm comes as several bits. The Cadian hand that holds the grenade launcher or flamer works for this, plus the left shoulder of the empire militia bowman. After that depending on the post the 2 bits of left arm may need an extension to reach out far enough to hold the flamer. The easiest way to do this is drill holes on the ends of both arm bits for a bit of paper clip to hold the ends far enough apart. Once the glue has dried and the arm with linking paperclip bit bent to the needed shape, fill in the gap with green stuff. And that's it. The  flamers shown here are heavy flamer conversions but the process for a flamer conversion would be identical.

 

Steel Legion conversions - Guide to converting metal minis

If you have been following this blog for a bit you will have seen that several conversions for metal Steel Legion minis have been tried. Now that the Steel Legion troops choices are almost finished it seems appropriate to pull together all the conversions. So here they are, firstly all together.


Converting metal minis is a dauntless task but can be done without major use of power tools. One key choice before attempting any conversion is the selection of the mini to convert. Ideally it should have an open stance and if weapon changes are to be part of the conversion then ideally both arms should be clear of the torso and easily detachable. Next a source of replacement arms or other limbs in plastic should be sourced before conversion is attempted, otherwise headache ensues.

The simplest conversions above are the Officer , the sniper, and the lascannon team.

The Officer had an ornament added to the top of his helmet, along with a comm aeriel to the side of his helmet and two small skull-heads to his trench coat to depict a senior officer.

Likewise the sniper conversion required a minimal modification with the removal of the original lasrifle barrel, the addition of a longer gun a barrel, from one of the original lone trader plastic lasrifles and the addition of a sight from the flash guard from a plastic Cadian lasrifle.

The lascannon team was slightly more complex as the chassis of the lascannon was modified to allow the addition of large balloon tyres from redundant space marine bikes. The axles and other chassis modifications were derived from the plastic Cadian mortar team mortar stand. Any connections were green stuffed, as were the hub caps.

That's all for now but the more complex conversions will be explained in future posts, that's 5 sergeants, 3 meltagunners, 2 heavy flamers and an autocannon and mortars.

Steel Legion Veterans

The Steel Legion Veterans are completed except for the 2 remaining squad members to be recruited. Probably they will be a lasrifleman and a grenade launcher guardsman. The question to be resolved is where to get them from. There is ebay, but sometimes the prices are crazy, with prices higher that the GamesWorkshop and then there is the GamesWorkshop. Steel Legion minis are still available there in the collectors section. Again pricey for single minis but the original 10 man box set is still available for £20.50p. This includes a grenade launcher (£6.15) individually, sergeant (£6.15) individually , and a missile launcher team (£10.50) individually, plus 6 lasriflemen. The pricing does not make much sense but it could make more sense to splash out on the box and sell the remnants on ebay.

On a different note, how many conversions are in the squad so far - answer 5.
The sergeant, the autocannon gunner, the auto cannon, the heavy flamer and the meltagun.

Preacher with Eviscerator green stuffed

Nothing like a close up photograph to show were things need tiding up!

Ecclesiarchy Preacher with Eviscerator

There is no GW mini for a preacher with an eviscerator at present. The only minis with eviscerators currently available are the SoB Repentia. A future planned unit for the SoB Emperors Angels minor militant order is a battle conclave with 5 assassins let by a preacher with eviscerator, ideally mounted in an Immolator. In the absence a suitable mini from GW for the preacher a trip to the bitz box was the order of the day. Here is the first attempt at an eviscerator armed preacher. Bitz used, from the bottom to the top of the mini are:  part of the inner door assembly of the old style chimera, legs from a brettonian mini with the torso sawed off, torso and outer robes from the empire militia, arms likewise from the empire militia set - using the 2 handed sword pose, the eviscerator is two cadian sergeants' chainswords combined and finally the head is a catachian head with the bandanna sanded off. The mini needs some more imperial and inquisitorial insignia which I hope I will find in the bits left from a box of Grey Knight terminators.

Gameswork Shop Tools a personal view

How many GW hobby tools do you own? Here there are five.

This is a brief opinion based review of their usefulness here.

OK. The five are from top left to bottom right, to spell out the contents of the picture, the vice, the saw, the green stuff modelling tool, the clippers and the spray gun.

Scoring them out of five with five being the best and one the worst, the tool that scores five is the saw.

The saw is the best value and most useful tool that GW sells in the opinion here. Why? Because the blade is thin, the teeth are ultra sharp, cutting metal easily, there are few if any alternative products that are easily accessible, the height of the blade helps make straight cuts, the handle gives an excellent grip and all in all when working with metal minis only a dremel is more useful.

In second place is the vice. If something needs to be sawed off then the mini needs to be held stationary and the model vice does exactly that despite being simple in design and operation.

In third place is the green stuff modelling tool. If you don't convert and use green stuff then it is of little use. The cutting end of the tool is also of little use but the manipulation and smoothing end is excellent for controlling and sculpting green stuff. Just keep it clean and moist when using green stuff.

In fourth place are the clippers. They are useful tools but there are many other ways of clipping parts off sprues. Where the clippers come into their own is when converting plastics, their design makes it relatively easy to safely cut through quite thick plastic components avoiding injury to the hobbyist. There are scars here to affirm this assertion.

In fifth place and only of value due to its low price is the spray gun. It is usable. Mainly as a one shot use. After the first use it is almost impossible to clean the gun the to again give as good a result as the first time. In addition the cans of propellant only work well at ambient - room temperature - so the spray system does not work outside well except in the summer. If you cannot afford to spray paint inside it will not work well at all. But on a positive note it can be considered as an economic one use disposable spray system particularly when compared with the cost of buying a proper spray painting system with compressor etc.

Which GW tools do you have and which are the best in your opinion?

Steel Legion Sergeants with Orks Head

There are only 2 Steel Legion Sergeant minis. Neither are particularly satisfactory. One is static pointing his laspistol and chain sword, while the other waves a severed Orks head. The static sergeant has been useful for heavy and assault weapons conversions as seen in my previous posts about meltaguns and heavy flamers for the Steel Legion. The Orks head Sergeant is OK but looks a bit out of context when fighting anything but Orks. You have to ask why would someone want to wave an Orks head at Chaos or Dark Eldar and why would they care. It would probably smell as well. So here are 3 conversions from this Sergeant. The Orky arm is sawn off at the shoulder and a new arm substituted with weapon of choice.  When converting the other sergeant to assault weapons etc there is usually a spare right arm. Simple and effective.

Steel Legion Lascannon Mods

The Steel Legion Project marches on. Here is the first Heavy Weapons Squad with typical Steel Legion Lascannons, except that for a slight conversion of the lascannons themselves. From the fluff perspective it always seemed impractical for 2 men to lug one of these lascannons, along with its power pack and tripod stand across a battlefield, particularly after the weapons have been fired and got hot. So a simple conversion. The wheels came from space marine bikes minis. The chunkyness of the wheels suggesting balloon tyres adapted to the ash wastes across which the Steel Legion march. The axles for the wheels are the plastic mortar support struts. The third central leg of the lascannon tripod is retained. This is glued to the underside of the lascannon. The axle is superglued to this. A bit of green stuff was used to hide the join under a bit of a military weld and blobs of green stuff used to finish the outer ends of the axles.

To finish the bases were painted to suggest some rain on the ash waste has turned it glutinous.

The plan for the Steel Legion is to provide one squad each of mortars and missile launchers to the heavy weapons support pool.