Steel Legion Veterans

Progress has been slow for many reasons including some fiddly conversions particulartly as all the minis and at least original metal steel legion torsos and legs. The veteran squad at the moment comprised 8 minis. An autocannon team, a heavy flamer, a melta gun, a sergeant and 3 lasrifle men. There are 2 minis to acquire. One must be a lasrifle man and one may have another special weapon, but which from a flamer, a sniper rifle, a plasma gun, or another meltagun. There is no easy answer. With and antocannon the squad has reasonable long range fire power and with the heavy flamer, excellent short range fire power. Is the solution another meltagun, or a plasma gun? Transport wise should it be a Chimera or equivalent from the Forgeworld Krieg range or a Valkyrie?

Valkyrie                                      Krieg Centaur

The colour scheme has been finalised with light bleached bone webbing and dark red helmets and rebreather masks to distinguish them from the other steel legion squads.


Here they are so far, none are actually completed.

Forgeworld Greater Daemon of Khorne

It is probably finished. 

Blood for the Blood God. 

Defiance

For the Emperor

Sisters of Battle 3 Squads Completed at Last

Finally 3 squads of Rhino mounted SoB are completed. These are Emperor Angels.

When are the plastic SoBs that were rumoured to be ready for last summer going to be released?

What's new in the pipeline for the SoBs here? Saint Celestine has been acquired and the Ecclesiarchial contingent are getting a squad of assassins and an Immolator to deliver them. A second penitent engine would also be nice but that is on hold until the plastic penitent engine is released by GW. Should be this year.

Steel Legion Veteran Squad #1

This is definitely a work in work in progress. There are only 6 minis in this squad so far. At present there are 3 legionnaires with lasrifles part painted. An undercoated veteran sergeant - another Ork head sergeant with the Ork holding arm removed and the laspistol arm from the standard sergeant added.

A standard sergeant part painted with both arms removed to be converted to a heavy flamer armed legionnaire. Finally to take advantage of ballistic skill of the veterans there is the autocannon conversion. This a Catachian metal autocannon was acquired on ebay. It has been mounted on a mix of plastic legs from the plastic mortar  and a green stuff axle and mountings for the wheels. The gunner is another conversion from the Ork head sergeant with plastic arms from the bits box. The squad needs to recruit 2 more lasrifle holding minis and 2 more special weapons, perhaps 2 plasma gunners.

The easiest way to distinguish the veterans from the standard Steel Legion troopers given that converting metal minis is hard work has got to be a paint job. Hence the red helmets for the part painted minis.

Bloodthirster Greater Daemon of Khorne Progress

Almost finished. Mounted on a larger base to add some heroic Imperial Guard.
Those with sharp eyes will note that its dangly skulls are missing. An unfortunate handhold weakened the chain and as it is so thin it will not superglue easily back. Job for the green stuff later.

Greater Daemon Wing Attachment

Those of you who have been following this blog will have seen that a Forgeworld Greater Daemon of Khorne had been inherited. While it has not featured in recent posts work has been progressing. One hold up to finishing the model has been how to securely attach the wings to the body of the figure. The wings themselves are quite heavy and the curvature of the under surface of the wing attachment and that of the locations of the wings do not match. It proved impossible to locate the wings snugly into the body sockets. Initially it was hoped that some pins would support the wings but pinning and superglueing did not prove robust enough.




The next attempt used green stuff to raise the level of the torso sockets for the wings and to match the curvature of the wing attachment surfaces. 4 pins were also fitted to each wing socket. Finally the dried sculpted green stuff socket surface was covered in liquid green stuff to try to ensure aherence between the surfaces across as large a surface area as possible. The pins were superglued into holes on the opposite surfaces as well. Once the superglue had dried and ramining gaps were sealed with liquid green stuff. Painting the joints back up to the colour scheme has now commenced. More on this in a later post.  

Steel Legion Veterans 1st Squad

The first Steel Legion veteran squad has only just commenced. There are 6 minis available. A missile launcher team, 3 riflemen and a sergeant. Adding 2 veterans squads to the existing 2 Steel Legion platoons will give the Steel Legion army 4 troops choices and extra assault and heavy weapons. It will also allow the Steel Legion IG army to ally with the Sisters of Battle with minimal but hard hitting troops choices (2 veterna squads when finished) allowing the maximum allied  points to be spent on long range artillery of some sort, which the sisters tend to be short of.

Adding a heavy flamer to the veterans squads gives a squad with 2 heavy weapons, which sound good, so the second heavy flamer steel legion conversion is underway. The mini for this conversion is the vanilla sergeant from the Steel Legion boxed set, which by the way can still be bought from GW for around £20 (UK), including p&p. No need to pay crazy ebay prices for 10 Steel Legion. Last weekend a used boxed set of 10 standard vanilla steel Legion went  on ebay at auction including p&p for £25. Why, when GW are still selling them?

Back to the conversion. this requires one vanilla sergeant with detachable laspistol arm and attached chainsword other arm. To fit the heavy flamer simply saw off the chainsword arm (GW saw recommended) and remove the bedroll and water bottle from the back of the mini (GW clippers and emery boards from where they are cheapest). Next the heavy flamer and 2 replacement arms need to be constructed.

Here is the start position after removal of surplus bits :  

Steel Legion Mortar Battery Finished!

Finally done and sheltering behind the remains of Osgiliath. Where next with the Steel Legion - perhaps some veterans. The question is how to distinguish them from the standard Steel Legion minis given the difficulty sculpting metal figures.