This weekend I’ve assembled two projects that I’d been kicking around in my head for some time. This first one is actually a second go at my very first conversion project. I wanted a “Daemon Prince” in my army, but I didn’t want an actual Daemon Prince in my army. I thought I could make a vehicle that would counts-as the Daemon Prince and keep my “no daemons” theme going Unfortunately what I came up with was much too large to counts-as a Daemon Prince, so whatever it actually is it will have to have some kind of DIY rule to play it. I’m still working on that, but here I’ve had a much more successful run at making my “Daemon Prince that is not a Daemon Prince” to lead my Iron Hounds into battle.
So here we have “Thegn Volundr’s Clockwork Idol”, a construction of brass, iron, and hate that the Iron Hound’s mad Tech Marine put together to spite his nemesis, the Nuncio Callixtus, in the hopes of getting the Jarl-Captain to see Callixtus is not necessary and off him quiet like. And so that I can have two Daemon Prince models in my army list without breaking my fluff. But anyway, here are the WIP modelling shots:
First up is the legs. They are from a Sentinel kit (the same Sentinel kit that I bought to get the cockpit for the original attempt at this). I was originally thinking I’d have to use big gobs of greenstuff to get the legs on, and I wasn’t looking forward to that. What I did instead was to use a plastic tube system. A while back I bought two sets of tubes, one set to fit snugly inside the other. I totally can’t remember what the plan for them was, but I remembered that I had them somewhere and hunted up the pieces. I was inspired to do this after I constructed the Sentinel legs, and was playing with them because they were articulated and pose-able. The little tubs attached to the legs, and then slid inside of the large tube that I had attached to the hip-joint area of the Daemon Prince torso.
This allowed me to have a mostly assembled body to pose on the base. It wasn’t as hard as I was thinking it would be to glue the model in the desired pose. I started with holding it in the position I wanted it in to get an idea where the feet would go, then glued the feet down. With the feet in place I could hold the model up and drop glue into the joints to get the right pose.
It was important to me to get the model to be more dynamic. One of the biggest criticisms I got of the original attempt was that the pose was terrible. It was my first conversion attempt, and in that respect I think I did awesome, but they were right about the awful pose. I also didn’t want this model to be too tall. The Sentinel legs could have raised him up to tower over a regular Daemon Prince, but I wanted them to be approximately the same height. Since I would be using a jet pack instead of wings he could be a little taller and it would still balance out. In the background there is the Nuncio, my Daemon Prince model I built after the conversion failed to achieve what I wanted. I had him on the table during the initial modeling to keep the size right. Also because he’s cool.
And here’s the model with the arms, head, and jet pack attached, viewed from more or less straight on.
A more oblique frontal view to capture more of the head and hammer details.
A view from the other side, probably the best view I managed to get. The Deff Dread arms were the perfect amount of pistons and whatnot, but they cold have been slightly smaller. It was also wicked hard to mount the jet pack correctly because the shoulder pads of the Daemon Prince kit kept hitting it and moving it around when I was posing the arms. The arms were the hardest thing to get right. They required great gobs of greenstuff to hold on and to pose correctly. I’m sure it could have been done better, but I’m not a conversion master, I’m just a guy trying to get his fevered visions onto the tabletop so I can have a unique army. I ended up using such large mounds of greenstuff for each shoulder socket that the only thing for it was to cover them with the Daemon Prince kit pauldrons, something I hadn’t originally planned on doing. I think it works, though.
If I have a regret about this model, it’s that I couldn’t quite get the arms to be held out as much as I wanted to. I wanted to show the legs off more, but there was only so much that I was going to get away with using my gobs o’ greenstuff attachment method, and the jump pack being in the way.
Some angles show off the legs pretty well, though.
All in all I am very happy with this conversion. It was nice to be able to go back with a little more experience and revisit an early project. For this project I used:
- Chaos plastic Juggernaut for the head
- Chaos Daemon Prince for the torso
- Imperial Guard Sentinel for the legs
- Ork Deff Dread for the arms
- Grey Knight Nemesis Dread Knight for the big hammer
- Revell SnapTite 1/100th scale A-10 model airplane kit for the engines to make the jet pack
I’ve since added a broken and stomped on Chaos Icon and an Ecclesiarchy Icon next to it that I’m going to cover in blood. The idea behind the Iron Hounds is that they are extreme religious radicals who worship “the Old Dead Gods of Mankind” through a “Chaos Bodhisattva” (it makes sense, trust me) and aren’t all that into the “big four” Ruinous Powers. I’m rewriting their IA to have them be exclusively descended from Iron Warriors, because if the Iron Warriors did get religion it would definitely be of this bizarre variety that I’ve dreamed up. “No Gods, No Masters” and all that, the Clockwork Idol is basically a robot programmed with an aggressive AI that the Iron Hounds use both as a focus for their religious/spiritual expression and as a way to stomp enemies flat. And it should be noted that stomping enemies flat sums up a lot about their religious practices in itself, but more on that when I get around to actually rewriting that IA…
And for my next trick…
When it comes to discussing 40k online, I haunt the Bolter and Chainsword power armor forum almost exclusively. They have a community project called the Legio B+C, and the idea is that it’s kind of like the Death Watch in that different chapters loan individual members to create it, but instead of being a chamber militant under the control of the High Lords it’s instead a fraternal organization to promote fellowship and cooperation between the different chapters. I think it’s mostly an excuse for us B&C members to make a little “mini me” figure, which is fine with me. I believe the mini me part came from a contest a long time ago, but people still do it every once in a while, and I thought I would take part in that.
So this is “Mini Max” as a Veteran Bike Scout. I chose scout because when I was in the US Army I was an 11-H, which is Infantry Heavy Weapons Specialist… and also the exact same thing as a 19-D, which is Cavalry Scout. We rode around on Humvees with missile launchers, grenade launchers, big machine guns, all that fun stuff, all “Rat Patrol” style. Since I didn’t want to do a Land Speeder, even though it would have been more representative, I decided to do a bike. I’ve been a scooterist for years, riding Vespas and the like (flight jacket, fishtail parka, Fred Perry, Doc Martens, No. 1 crop, all that jazz), so a bike made all kinds of sense.
The sword is because I’m a martial artist who does kendo and iaido, have tried out Olympic sabre fencing, and when I was a kid me and my friends made our own armor and beat the heck out of each other with sticks pretending we were knights and barbarians and stuff. I have always loved swords and medieval stuff. That’s also why the medieval helmet is chained to the bike.
The bike has a grenade launcher as a nod to my 11-H days when I was a qualified Mk-19 gunner. I had a Heavy Bolter that was going to represent my .50cal gunner position (which I did more often than anything), but it was weapons overload so I left it off.
The book on the back of the bike represents my love of reading, and also my status as a creative writing major at university. Back when I was in the Army I always had a book with me, even when I was in the field. Even in Basic Training, actually. I never went anywhere without something to read, and my home is full of books and bookshelves.
Everything else is just for mood…
I’ve done a couple things to the model since I took those pictures. I added a Thor’s Hammer to be hanging from the right side of the Scout Bike, to represent my Asatru/Heathen spirituality, something I wasn’t going to talk about on the B&C post I made about this. I’ve also added some more bullet holes in the sandbags. I figure that after everything is modeling and painted I’ll dab some extra glue flowing out of those holes and put modeling sand pouring out for extra effect. And I realize the sand bags are over large considering the scale of the Astartes figure, but cut me some slack, it was my first attempt at making greenstuff sandbags…
I’m thinking my chapter of origin will probably be the Lamenters. There are many things I like about that chapter, and if I were ever to do a loyalist chapter it would probably be the Lamenters, though I’m also fond of the Black Templars. I’m also probably going to do a Chaos Space Marine mini-me at some point, just to do it. The B&C rumors I heard was that a Legio system for Traitors might happen, so I will wait and see.
Reviresco!
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