A Week in Miniatures: September 5th to September 19th

Well, okay, it was two weeks.  Most of which was spent assembling things because of a nasty chest cold.

It takes a lot more focus and concentration to paint models than to assemble them, which is why I sat in front of the TV watching Fringe and Farscape on Netflix while assembling Space Marines.  I have a few highlights of the last two weeks.

Space Marine in MkII Armor with nuncio-vox.

 I needed some nuncio-voxes for my Legion Tactical Squads, so out came the Forge World resin kits that have been sitting unused since March.  Since I thought it would be nice to have some visual variety in the Tactical Squads (what with the various marks of power armor included), I went ahead and built five Mark II and five Mark III models.  Three out of the ten were outfitted with the nuncio-voxes.  Since the long backpack antennae was resin, I went ahead and replaced them with lengths of paperclips to avoid any breakage.  Breakage is bound to happen with the thin resin, so I felt it was better just to avoid it entirely.

Of course I ran into problems assembling the resin.  My super glue is probably shot, as it is not curing anywhere near as quickly as it should be.  Which led to holding the resin parts together for 5 or more minutes before it was cured enough to set down.  Otherwise assembling the resin Space Marines is much like assembling the plastic ones; they just required more time to clean up and assemble.  What can I say? I want all my Space Marines to look nice.

Another MkII Space Marine with nuncio-vox.

 With ten more Space Marines assembled, I have sixty tactical marines for Horus Heresy games, which translates to three full Tactical squads.  Since that also translates to six tactical squads for 40k, I felt it time to assemble a bunch of Space Marines with heavy weapons and special weapons.  I had enough parts to build ten each of: Heavy Bolters, Flamers, Plasma Guns, and Missile Launchers.  I probably have the parts to build ten Space Marines with Meltaguns too, but I haven't sat down and figured those out.  I want to get the current crop of special/heavy weapons built first before expanding again.  I'll also need to obtain more foam to store models in before I do any more major expansions.  It continues to amaze me how many Space Marine parts I have accumulated over the last decade or so.  Granted, most of the infantry I have at present were accumulated in the last year or so, but most of the non-infantry stuff was obtained long before 2015.

Kit-bashed Legion Tribune

 I was fortunate enough to obtain a Legion Tribune when he was available at Games Workshop Stores, and finally found a head I felt was suitable.  Since I do not plan to run him as an off-the-shelf Legion Tribune, I still need to build a combi-bolter/storm bolter to attach to the model.  The head comes from the plastic Ultramarines upgrade kit that GW sells.  It only required me to trim off the hemisphere off the bottom of the neck to fit into the model.  Of course, this was done before putting the chest plate on; there's no way any head would fit in after that!  I stuck an Ultramarines icon on the top of the model because I wanted something extremely obvious to indicate which legion the model belongs to.  I call this an Iron Halo when running him as a Praetor.

Legion Sergeant with Artificer Armor

My existing Tactical Sergeants were drawn from the original metal Sternguard Veteran set.  There were five of them and they already have bolters that are equipped with alternative ammo.  These guys were pulled and regrouped into a Legion Seeker Squad, leaving me without Sergeants for my Tactical Squads.  Since Legion Veterans tend to pale in comparison to other options after about 1500 points, I broke up the lone Veteran Squad and re-purposed them as the beginning of a third Legion Tactical Squad (which is why there are now sixty Tactical Marines instead of forty).  The missile launchers formed the start of a Heavy Support squad.  But as I needed two new Sergeants, I bashed some fancy looking ones together.  In 30k, they have Artificer Armor.  In 40k, they are Veteran Sergeants.  I utilized some upgrade parts I had for Ultramarines; both the plastic set and some Praetorian torsos I'd ordered from Forge World.  The sergeants for the Heavy Support and Tactical Support Squads also used special bits to distinguish them.

Legion Sergeant with Artificer Armor

I took the time to make sure every single Tactical Marine has a bolt pistol, combat blade, and grenades.  Not because the people around here are uptight about What You See Is What You Get, but because they look nice when they're kitted out.  I could attach ammo pouches and what not as well, but at a certain point there's just too much clutter.

Terminators got assembled, including a lone Fulmentarus Terminator.  I decided to magnetize the left arm as there are four different melee weapon options for the squad.  I'd prefer a power maul or power sword, but I don't have enough pieces for all five of them.  Their ranged capabilities are fixed; a combi-bolter and a Cyclone missile launcher.  The missile launcher bits from Secret Weapon work perfectly for them too!  Almost like they were designed to go on Space Marine Terminators...

Anyway, this week will be spent painting the Sylvaneth, as I feel well enough to paint again.