Sisters of Battle Penitent Engine - A Dark Redemption

From this to that. The Penitent Engine is finished. The Penitent Engine mini epitomises the dark side of the Imperium. Even the purity of the Battle Sisters has a dark side. Who should be strapped into such a lethal machine of painfully visceral redemption? The wicked are punished formally and through the law. And in any case are too untrustworthy to be made a component of such a powerful weapon. Hence the troubled innocent troubled with a great conscience over trivial misdemeanours will be strapped in for their redemption and doom. Once importuning for punishment and forgiveness reaches an unsatisfiable pinnacle the Cannoness ruling their order will have them strapped into one of the Engines. These Innocent Penitents demand that their sins require a  purgation  through sacrifice in the fire of battle such that  no mission may be permitted by their conscience to be merely a suicide mission to end their suffering. Endless battle and suffering is their fate until the inevitable happens and they are pitted against a superior foe. Should the battleground  be held by their Order the remains of the engine and penitent will be salvaged to be patched together with other components for the next penitent. In trying to create the feel of such a machine the only colours used for the engine itself were metallics and washes.

Sisters of Battle Exorcist Kit Bash

The 40k rumour mill predicts a new Grey Knights codex for next year. Originally I was going to post my Grey  Knights here, see below but in the meantime kit bashing instead of painting or finishing has been happening.

To the kit bash. The GW Sisters of Battle Exorcist has many fine details to recommend it. The 40k stat line making it a powerful bit of hardware in the game. And the mini itself. The Kit comes as an Immolator with additional metal bits. But no instructions. However it is straightforward to assemble if a due regard is paid to the images on the GW site and the supplied parts are carefully dry tested.

The model itself has amazing detail which is not immediately noticeable on the GW site images. The Launcher is loaded by a servitor loader with an automated missile magazine and and missile rack. There is a maddened battle sister playing the launcher keys. Aspect of the kit that gave me trouble were extra armour supplied by the metal plates and the access rhino hatches. After all its not a transport anymore. Access is required for the missiles to be loaded and the driver to climb in but otherwise nothing else. So the plasticard was brought out and new side armour and a rear door assembled. Here are the pictures below. Nothing is glued at the moment so there are gaps. Blue tack is the master.

Second Sisters of Battle Rhino Progress

Here it is. Not yet finished. The hull top and one side are still not finally glued together to allow access to the interior to finish painting this. I have forgotten to photograph the interior so that will be left for another day. Now it`s almost complete I am thinking of acquiring another squad of the Sisters. Costly as the price with GW has rocketed and also in parallel the prices on ebay have gone up. Anyway needs must. Here it is with laudhaler, pintle mounted storm bolter and hull mounted storm bolter. The paintwork needs tiding up and some additional tank tools added.

Penal Legion

The second squad of penal legionnaires approaches completion. Left to do are the shoulder pad transfers. Skulls to indicate condemned men and seals with indictment's of their crimes on the opposite shoulder. Here are the 2 squads:

Bits from the bits box used usefully I think.I like the second custodian with his Mordian head and WFB militia club. The "kilted" 2 were bretonnian archers. All the heads were catachian and balded to fit with the codex description of the penal legion.

Next time I hope to have some progress on my second Sisters of Battle Rhino conversion.

Favourite Minis - a bit off topic

A favourite range of minis from the GW has to be the Mordian Iron Guard. These are now on the collectors pages of the GW site but are not out of production. I find the poses and facial expressions better than the current Cadian plastic range which is reminiscent of modern infantry. The Catachians with their simets and US marine combats are too jingoistically yankee for my taste. Perhaps my preference is just nostalgia on my part as the Mordian Iron Guard were the first IG regiment I collected. I still have one squad left. The remainder have over the years been given away or sold on ebay. Whenever I can use them as veterans such as in an Inquisitor Lords Retinue, or as a veteran squad I do. The formal dress uniform of the Mordian Iron Guard is a bit a a Dan Dare type of futuristic army. Other IG minis I admire and feel are suitably scifi are the Steel Legion naturally and the Vostroyans. The plastics as on the box are unfortuately too retro for my tastes. Unfortunately because metal minis are so expensive now and getting ever more expensive as the GW refocuses it range on its plastics.

Penitent Engine Progress

OK, here is some progress with this. I envisioned the penitent engines to be recyclable. Strap in a penitent and throw him of her into battle until redeemed through glorious death for the Emperor. Repair the engine and strap another penitent in. These machines would be functional easy to repair and crude and battle filthy. The scheme I chose uses only metallics and washes except for flesh and banners. I have used magnets to hold the 2 parts of the body together making it easier to assemble and paint. The arms are to be attached with wire or possibly magnets if I can find small ones strong enough. Here are the pictures.

Steel Legion Meltaguns #2

I posted some time ago about a Steel Legion meltagun conversion that I attempted here . I was not too happy about the pose but as a first attempt I thought it could be OK. Later blogger stats revealed that the post was getting quite a few hits and the unease that I felt about the conversion was shared by Tyrus and Dizzy here .

The consequence is a revision and here it is with what seems to be a more convincing pose. Note the mini is not yet painted. Same mini by the way, different arm. More later.

The 40k Universe is a Horrible Place or the Belisimite Dogs

The 40k future where there is only war to sustain humanity is a bleak and vile anti utopia, an idea germinated from the black future visions of the 1970s when it seemed that the world would shortly end in a nuclear holocaust. Yet when getting down to construct an army for the board killer lists abound with space marines, or chaos space marines or mechanised IG battle forces. The dark elements of the 40k Universe are sanitized out of the picture with the squeaky clean elite units of the Imperium. Yet billions of unknown souls toil hopelessly living in polluted hive cities to serve vast planet spanning industrial factories. The IG is essentially an infantry army using hordes of poorly equipped and trained guardsmen thrown into battle unprepared in the face of unpredictable threats as the elite forces of the imperium are stretched to respond to recognized attacks.

Hence one of my battle forces is the IG Belismite Dogs. Work started on this with the previous IG codex. I am slow I know . But today I feel it is getting close to shaping up. Here is a first picture of the grimy fluff.

There are 3 troop choices, and 2 elite choices, one HQ