VL Vets ready for painting

I have a confession to make, I put the first five Victoria Lamb Rangers together way too quickly. I suppose it was because they were a present and I was excited to put together my first multipart metal models. I put them together and primed them that quickly that I really dropped the ball with them. I didn't think about the unit composition, I didn't clean up the mold lines, I didn't fill any of the gaps with green stuff. Hell, I even forgot to put gravel on their bases!

So, once my over eagerness had had a serious kick in the arse, I sat down and reworked them. First off, I filled in the gaps and blended the capes into the straps on the torsos as well as cleaning up what slight mold lines there were and added gravel to their bases.

Next came a composite change, first off I swapped the arms on one trooper for a different set. I needed the ones he originally had for a special weapon conversions. The other change was that I swapped out another troopers rifle for a rocket so he could act as the support guy for the squad's heavy weapon. It took a fair bit of clipping and filing to completely remove the lasgun type weapon, so much so that I had to resculpt the thumb on his right hand.

Another minor change across the five guys I did initially was that I broke off their waist pouches, canteens and scabbards, then replaced them with GW IG pouchs and grenades. The reason for this was that after I completed the first five, I realised that other than the bases, there was nothing really that tied them into my current guard models. So, with the next five I decided to make sure there were plenty of visual links to my current guard models.

Being veterans, there's plenty of unit options to include upgrades and therefore tie them into my current guard force. For the three special weapons guys, I went for a flamer, a meltagun and a grenade launcher. Ideally, I'd have gone for three plasma guns as Mike hates plasma but unfortunately, my weapon selection was down to what bits I had and not what bits I desired!

All three specials involved removing the lasgun type weapon, so lots of clipping and filling. I couldn't remove the weapon stocks, so I had to line up the arms and weapons to look like the special weapons came with shoulder stocks. Even though the GW IG weapons look a little large, I don't think it's excessive.

Next was the rocket launcher guy, I used catachen plastic arms for this guy. The muscles on them were far too large, so I filled them down. They're still quite big but with the addition of the rough bearded face, it gives the impression that he's probably the only guy in the squad who could carry the damn rocket launcher.

Finally, the squad sgt, this guy I really wanted to tie into the 41st millennium. So I went for the augmented power sword arm and plasma pistol arm for the high tech look. I did consider removing the shoulder pads but I decided that they actually helped tie the unit in with the rest of my force. Finally, I used a GW command head, specifically for the aquila on the cap.

So here they are, all ready for priming ..... again. Let me know your thoughts in the comments guys.

Mel

Victoria Lamb miniatures

With my invigorated passion for 40K, there comes new models!

My buddy Mike recently bought me a squad of ten guardsmen models for my army. He said they were a gift but there's a little bit of me that thinks he's emotionally blackmailing me to keep my hobby mojo going. Well, if that's the case, it's bloody working! I love these guys!

It's a squad of ten Border World Rangers from Victoria Lamb miniatures. The models are brilliant but they're posing a real challenge for me. It's the first time I've working with multipart metal models, so there's been lots of gluing arms and heads to fingers rather than torso's etc! Now, I'd like to make it clear that this is a fault with my modeling ability and not the models, which are truly excellent.

I really can't fault the detail on these guys, the molds themselves are so clean, I didn't realise they had mold lines until I'd primed the first five. They're perfectly scaled with GW plastic cadians, they're the same height, just a little slimmer, but that's perfectly acceptable as they've got bare arms and aren't sporting flak armour. Each ten man ranger pack comes with 10 legs, torsos, heads (all unique), cloaks, one piece arms and lasgun type weapons along with a good selection of pouches and bayonet scabbards.

The one thing that I am finding difficult is that the standard ten man ranger pack only comes with lasgun type weapon arms. Victoria Lamb miniatures do various other special/heavy/sgt arms for the ranger models that are quite good and could easily be called various IG weapons, it's just that I don't have any of them. I will in the future but right now, this has led me down the path of converting them. Here's my first go at swapping out  the metal weapon for a grenade launcher, let me know your thoughts guys!

All I've got to do now is two more special weapons guys and the squad sgt, so the bits hunt begins! Hopefully, I'll them them converted up pretty soon, I'll blog them when I do and then it'll be time to get them painted and added to 1st platoon. In the meantime, you can checkout the ranger and other future world ranges at Victoria Lamb miniatures, and if you buy any, let her know I sent you, who knows, she might send me some bits for free (cheeky yes but there's no harm in trying guys!).

Col

Harker finally gets deployed ....

There's a little bit of me that can't actually believe that I'm typing this. It's been over 18 months since I first started Sgt Harker and his squad of devils, to be honest there were times that I honestly didn't think they'd ever get finished.

It's hard to imagine what these guys were like when I first started them, they've had a serious amount of conversion work done to them. All the old catachen headwear has been removed and then they've all had t-shirts, cloaks and berets sculpted on to them. I must admit, I've learned a lot from doing them but I wouldn't want to have to convert every model this much, it'd take years to get an army complete.

Anyway, sorry the light ain't brilliant but there's a couple of closeups, first off, we have the man himself, Vet Sgt Harker .....

Next up we have the three standard troopers, including scar face who got hideously disfigured during his dremmel haircut ....

Then there's the special weapon troopers and yes, the middle guy was another dremmeling accident, it was the first time using a dremmel - lol

Finally we have the demo troopers, luckily, I'd got the hang of the dremmel by the time I'd got to these guys ...

So there you have it, the first squad of first platoon, only six or seven more squads to go. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with them, they're not my best painted models, I'm still relearning to paint after my hiatus, but I'm still pretty pleased. Now all I've got to do is finish the second Starstreak Hydra ...

Harker - planning and preparation

Here starts 1st platoon, a group of hardened veterans who get the job done. It seems fitting that I start a project with something special, and so I'm going to start this one with Veteran Sgt Harker. I picked up the GW model as part of my first months rewards for quitting smoking, but to be honest, I don't like him that much. I don't want to use a different model as I don't think the current cadians or catachens really work as Harker but I do want to do some work on the existing model to make him a bit different.

The problem is that he's a bit too beef cake and not enough professional soldier. First off, I just don't see a bare chested guy fitting into a city fight army, a beach volleyball team yes, an urban combat army no. So, I'm going to cover him up a bit and give him a t-shirt. Next up is the fact that he can infiltrate and has stealth and yet there's nothing on the model to convey these attributes, so I'll be giving him a camo cloak. Finally is his mohican haircut, it just doesn't fit the feel of a veteran sgt, and so I'm going to give him a beret as that has more of a special forces feel than just a bald head. Before I can do any of that, I needed to do a bit of work on him, mainly removing the pouch and strap that run over his chest and down his back. After 5 minutes with a pair of clippers and my dremel, I was left with ....

It's a bit rough but that's not a problem as it's going to be covered by the green stuff t-shirt, which is my next job. So now it's time to give my new sculpting tools and a clay shapers a go, more on Harker coming soon guys.

Thinking about the future - 1st platoon and more ...

It's been a lazy Saturday afternoon, the kids have been playing good and I've been thinking about my guard. There's various projects that have been completed, such as the command section and 2nd platoon. I've almost finished work on the last vehicle for my Russ company for now and even the Field Ambulance is almost finished with only the stretcher bearers and a tent to do to complete it. Once those few models are done, all my current projects will be finished.

So, I find myself thinking about what to do next, specifically what units to do for 1st platoon. 1st platoon is going to be my veteran platoon. I'm not sure on the size yet but I figure a bare minimum of a command squad and five squads, I'm not sure on whether to do the heavy weapons squads or not at the moment. So, I've been working out what I actually want in the way of unit types. So far, this is what I've come up with ......

• Snipers - a unit of 10 counts as ratlings. I've never liked space halflings, so I'm going to use the standard cadian and catachen snipers for the unit, I've already got six sorted.
• Harkers boys - a unit of infiltrating camo'd vets tooled up to do some damage led by my Harker model. I'm planning quite a bit of GS work on this squad.
• Shock troops - a unit of vets in carapace armour, I've got ten of the inquisition storm troopers who'll fit this role perfectly and not clash with the storm troopers I have already.
• Standard vets - two units of standard veterans customised with cadian and FW bits to make them stand out against my normal troopers. 

That'll give me 5 squads of veterans and an interesting mix to 1st platoon as well as a wide range of hobby opportunities which will give me plenty to get my teeth stuck into.

Now, the other project I was planning for this year was my naval beach assault force. I've been thinking lately that I should probably put this on the back burner for a while. Although it's a project I really want to do, it's not something that I'm going to be playing with much and as such I really need to concentrate on painting up models I'm going to use for playing. So, I need to hit the drawing board again and figure out what other things I need to get painted up for my army this year, and yes, that means the valkyrie for a start!

Here's to another interesting year!