A New Ride

So I came home from work Thursday evening to find that my APC from Pig Iron Miniatures had arrived.  I think it's a nice looking kit though a bit longer than I thought it would be.  It's the same width and height roughly as  rhino but about a couple or so inches longer.  For a squad of Imperial Guard stand ins, ie my Inquisitor's naval shore party, it should work more than fine.


There are only a few bits to glue together with the majority of the kit being one piece.  This is a resin bit but it's hollowed out on the underside so it's not too hefty of  a model.  Then there is a resin turret and eight metal bits.  One is the back of the vehicle, two are options for the gun on the turret, a bit that covers the mold point on the turret, a hatch cover, and then three accessory bits.

side view

hollow underside

front side

with rhino for comparison

directions and bits

closer view of the bits

the turret assembled

the rear view and turret in place

All in all, I'm pleased with the kit and wouldn't mind a couple more perhaps.  It definitely has that landing craft feel that I was looking for for the naval infantry.  I didn't find any flaws or bubbles or any other issues at all, so I'm impressed with the quality of the kit.

So that's all for now and I'll see about getting some more of the Lions posted this weekend while I'm off work.

The Inquisitor Himself

Inquisitor Jaemes Kaelleon, Ordo Hereticus, Radical Inquisitor (Libricar)
    Flagship - Faith of the Ancients, Dauntless-class Light Cruiser

    Jaemes Kaelloen started his career with the Inquisition when he was discovered by the Inquisitor Jaenelle Lyrius.  He was a tenacious investigator for the Adeptus Arbites in the Trescott System.  He was assigned to assist her investigation into a local cult and the Inquisitor ended up recruiting him.  Jaemes' ability to almost mystically see through a lie while also finding the most hidden of clues to continue an investigation made him a invaluable member of the retinue.

    After serving under Jaenelle Lyrius for several decades, Jaemes found himself slowly drawn into the Libricar sub-faction of the Radical Inquisitor line of thought and belief.   His ever increasing desire to see all corruption purged finally led him to turning over his own mentor Inquisitor Lyrius to the Inquisition for her failure to fully root out several minor cults in the Hive Cities of Ingallus III.  Following these events, Jaemes was elevated to the rank of Inquisitor and began to for his own retinue as he began to purge any heresy, lack of faith, or corruption he could uncover.

     Kaelloen currently is based out of the Cymru System where he's formed a solid working partnership with the Lions of Harlech.  He is known to spend hours listening to ancient music recordings of an instrument called a vi'lin while he contemplates a case.  Jaemes is a man of hard firm beliefs and is unwilling to compromise them even just a little.  He enjoys the recognition of when he's done a job well but sees it more as a way to gain access to better and more resources to continue his investigations.

 

Kaelloen started out as a Freebooter Imperial Captain miniature with a purity seal added.  I didn't add more weaponry as I see him more as a leader and commander than an actual combatant.

Captain Octavius Haadrin
Commanding Officer of the Faith of the Ancients, Dauntless-class Light Cruiser
    Captain Haadrin has been assigned to transport and assist Inquisitor Kaelloen in any way possible.  This was done by Admiral Trenton in recognition and repayment where Kaelloen uncovered and prevented the spread of a chaos cult within Admiral Trenton's fleet.

Captain Haadrin is just a Commissar model with no tweaks to it as I just don't think one is really necessary.  The commissar makes for a pretty good flag rank model with the embellishments that a commissar model has.

So Thursday I'll be putting in an order.  This will be for my Imperial Knight and for the Pig Iron transport mentioned in the previous blog post.  Having seen the new pics of the upcoming new Stormtrooper models ... I think Inquisitor Kaelloen might just be getting access to some sort of 40K version of the Imperial Navy SBS squad.  Suggestions on what to call that team are welcome.

On the menu for today is a game in the afternoon against RTVortil's foul xenos though not sure if I'll be facing tree hugging Eldar or kinky Eldar.  I'll try and get some good pictures and get that up as a battle report.  That's all for now fans of the Lions and I'll see you all later.

A Few Henchmen More

So I've continued to work on that Naval shore party from the light cruiser Faith of the Ancients.  I've about decided on a color scheme for them as well though the way I don't enjoy painting they'll probably spend a while as just primered first.  I'm thinking of white uniforms for them which should help set them apart as naval and not regular imperial guard.  Just white primer, base coat white then a real thin black wash to get a bit of shading in the recesses.  Then brown leather for the boots, belts, and such, followed by a light olive green for the shoulder pads, helmets, and packs.

So we've got 6 more lasgun armsmen up first.  They're missing the gun tips as I've run out of the bit I was using and am awaiting my next order of Kotobukiya MSG bits to arrive. (In case you didn't see the last blog post, I love these bits for adding details.)

Fanning out to secure the area

Then we've got a single grenade launcher armsman.

Just a bit to the left .... FIRE!

And then last of all, we've got a single mortar.  The base got a little full with the sandbag bits, so I intend to put a lasgun armsman with the man on the mortar if they actually ever get on the table.

He just doesn't seem to trust those fuses it seems.

It's been a lot of fun working on a small side project like this, though I think I'm starting to wander into Cheef's territory with these little fluffy units that are going to be extremely marginal at best if they even see a tabletop.  But from a converting and fluff part of the hobby, it's been a great bit of fun.  Still to go are a few more lasguns to get it to a full 2 squads if need be (which means a second senior armsman ... or less senior armsman since he answers to the first I guess .. to run the second squad), and then lastly a heavy bolter and an autocannon done up as field guns

And then I'm considering transports.  I don't want to do normal chimeras as they'll look a bit too much like regular guard then which isn't what I'm going for at all.  So what I'm considering is this.

It's roughly the size of a chimera and is made by Pig Iron Productions.  It's got a nice landing craft naval feel to it which should work perfectly for what I'm doing.  I'm also looking for ideas to turn a model into a naval corpsman so if anyone has some great ideas out there, let me know.  I'd rather avoid just painting a red cross on a normal infantry model if possible.

So that's where the Naval Infantry Shore Party stands at the moment and I'll see you all again in a few.

More Henchmen

So it was quite a bit of fun to work on that first batch of Inquisitorial henchmen so ended staying at it yesterday and today.  So today we've got another round of Inquisitor Kaelloen's retinue.  This means you all get a quick extra post in follow up to yesterday mornings.  So added to the cast of characters we have the following.

Cyrus Nishin
Investigator
    Cyrus was a midlevel investigator on the Hive World of Gaaltor III when Kaelloen discovered him.  Kaelloen was looking into a departmento munitorum administrator who was taking bribes as well as encouraging smuggling for still more income.  Cyrus has a intuitive almost psychic ability to discover the hidden gem of a clue amongst piles and piles of gathered data.  Kaelloen often uses Cyrus to begin looking for signs of potential corruption to begin a new investigation.

 

Cyrus is a fantasy engineer for a basis as I think the raven could easily pass for a cyber version and with all his scrolls, pouches, and such, he definitely looks like he's been looking into various things.  I added a purity seal and a couple more bits and think he works well.

Ibrahim Haaskim
Interrogator
    Ibrahim comes from the world of Tallern.  Kaelloen heard many things about the deep desert tribes of this world and went there to recruit an interrogator.  Travelling to the far reaches of the high deserts far from the cities of Tallern, Kaelloen found just what he was looking for, a man capable of almost inspeakable methods of extrating the truth from a person.  He was persuaded to take hire, and joined the Inquisitor's retinue.

Ibrahim is mainly a Forge World Tallern model (from the previous post's "bits box of I don't know where I got these bits from but I like them") with just a few bits added to round out the model.

2nd Lt. Rawling
Junior Officer on the Faith of the Ancients, Dauntless-class Light Cruiser
    2nd Lt. Rawlings has been assigned by the captain of the Faith of the Ancients as liason and assistant to Kaelloen while their ship is at the Inquisitor's disposal.  He often draws on Senior Armsman Quentin and his shore party of armsmen and ratings to augment his abilities to protect the Inquisitor when he's out investigating or executing the Emperor's Justice.

2nd Lt. Rawlings

Senior Armsman Quentin

Small squad of armsmen

Ship ratings

These are all based on imperial guard models (or are we suppose to be calling them Astra Militarium now?).  The 2nd Lt. is from the commander of the chimera kit.  The armsmen all have variant backpacks.  Their lasguns have the tips removed and replaced with Kotobukiya bits to give more of a carbine look.  The ratings are the pilot models from the Battle for Macragge set with packs added for that resupply look.

Hopefully the models I've got coming for a couple of the other figures, including the Inquisitor, will be here in the following few days and I'll continue on this project.  By the way, big fan here of the Kotobukiya conversion bit kits.  They're really inexpensive though a Japanese model site is the only place I've found to order them though instock, or lack there of, can be a pain at times.  (Ordering in Yens is a bit confusing and expect a couple or three weeks for them to arrive.)  But from rotatory cannon tips to vents to armor plate to nozzles and such, they make a great line of bits for converting with though they're primarily for different gundam and such models which are popular in Japan.  They work great with 40K stuff as well though.

That's all until next time and enjoy this extra quick post.

Inquisitorial Henchmen

So wanting to take a break from the normal and start work on something a little different, I started working over the last few days on modeling one of the Lions' Inquisitor allies and figuring out a retinue for him.  As this is more for fluff and fun reasons than to use on the tabletop, don't expect a good combat formation here.

The model I'm going to be using for the Inquisitor himself is ordered and hasn't arrived yet so I began working on some henchmen first.  This project is going to be Inquisitor Jaemes Kaelleon, Ordo Hereticus, Radical Inquisitor (Libricar) and his retinue.  I've got in my head that Inquisitor Kaelleon is a very persistent and direct acting type and so his retinue is going to be based around either the investigative type to help discover corruption and traitors or the direct action type to permanently deal with said corrupt or traitorous types uncovered.


Sgt Davos
Space Marine (penitent questing)
    Sgt Davos was part of the Steel Sons space marine chapter.  They served as a fleet based chapter near the Eye of Terror until just prior to Abbadon's 9th Black Crusade.  During that time period the Steel Sons began to suffer grievous losses that were not readily explainable.  Their enemies always seemed a step ahead of them tactically and strategically.  It was discovered that one of the chapter's chaplains had fallen to the lure of chaos and was a traitor from within.  The remnants of the Steel Sons destroyed themselves while trying to purge this rot from itself.  Sgt Davos believes himself to be the remaining brother of his chapter and is on a penitent crusade to atone for his chapter's failure.  He had attached himself to Kaelloen's retinue as Davos sees that purging other traitors to the Imperium will prevent what happened to his own chapter.

Due to his being both the sole remaining member of his chapter as well as being on a penitent quest, I didn't want him to look like a normal space marine.  Thus he started out with the body from a chaos fantasy warrior with some space marine arms and helm added.  This gives him a nice knightly appearance which to me works with the questing theme.



Lt. Luk Saito
Veteran Imperial Guard Sniper
    Lt. Saito is from the Takoma System where he served in the Imperial Life Guards.  These regiments make up the planetary defense force.  Saito has an uncanny ability as a sniper and was recruited by Kaelloen during his search for a traitor arbites colonel who had fled to Takoma to hide.

Saito (yes, name inspired from Ghost in the Shell) started with a marksman model from the fantasy empire range with high tech scope added to the rifle, a purity seal, and a guardsman backpack from the "bits box of I don't know where I got these bits from but I like them".

MK.III
Gun Servitor
    This servitor was gifted to Kaelloen when he assisted in the removal of a rogue techpriest who was close to destroying several of the power plants on the forge world of Haalon.  Kaelloen hasn't bothered to name the servitor and just refers to it by it's type, a MK.III.

This was the simplest to model being just a techmarine servitor with a multimelta from a landspeeder for the gun arm and a bit added for a powerpack for the multimelta.

So that's it for this installment and we'll see what I come up with for next time.