[Cripsin]

Well hello there fellow lo'ers. I recently dusted off my old warhammer case (which was hidden away in my old apartment) and decided to take up the hobby once more. My collection is currently 30 (ish) tactical marines, a couple of inquisitors, a couple of retinues, and about 120 cadians....

I have however become dissolutioned with both the new guard codex (my men are all camo schemed and used to have light infantry and camoleoline under the old rules, and were an effective all infantry force, no longer....), and the recent grey knights dex, (no allies?)

Now my idea is to convert these disparate sections of moddeling mayhem into a number of armies. That number currently being 2....

The first is an Astral Claws space marine contingent. I intend to construct an army using my marines, and a number of cadians to create a tyrant's legion army list. This will be the base of my modelling from now on, and gives me the scope as my forces grow to still field smaller IG or Marine army lists, (even perhaps chaos).

The second army I have not fully decided upon.... Model wise, the army is going to consist of an inquisitor and his vastly swollen personnel retinue of followers, hangers on, advisers and enforcers. Here comes the problem...

Option 1: use the new GK codex for this (coteaz and 6 retinues), the issue here is.... I don't like vehicles, and I have no intention of buying or fielding any. This fact would make a henchman army cool but... Well.... Pants...

Option 2: Demon codex...

I will go into more detail later, but all of my conversions will be based upon cadians and empire mini's (as I have these in great supply), and I will be going for a gothic (in the baroque sense, not the cradle of filth sense) technology look.

Work on this project will commence next week (when I return to university), as I begin to strip my minions ready for change.

Any input, interest, suggestions, declarations of insanity, or general ramblings welcome until then.

 

[Cripsin]

I have made small amounts of progress on this... My thoughts have evolved somewhat. First off I attempted to strip the paint from a plastic model using white spirit, and while there is no longer any paint on said model, the results were shall we say... Face-melting.

Any suggestions on a paint removal method available in Britain for use with plastic?

Also I am now toying with the DE list as the counts as for my inquisition force. I have been through it, and the rules could all easily represent elements of the force I am aiming for. Perhaps the most important one to clarify would be 'power from pain' which I would be representing as 'righteous zeal', my troops gaining heart from the destruction of xenos and heretics alike.

I also have a paint-test model for the guard contingent of my astral claws in progress, pics in a couple of days.

ANY comments welcome.

 

[Mechatius]

There are several guides in the tutorial section but for starter, here's one by [MENTION=23691]Tekore[/MENTION].

 

[Cripsin]

I have looked into this before and even found a site that sells simple green in the UK HERE

However £18 for a litre (incl P&P) is a tad pricey given that I have at least 100 models to strip... Suppose I should stop whining and get on with it though really...

Plus the fleeting bastard that is my Student loan came through today....

 

[Jimmy Carmine]

Dettol, just the basic brown coloured antiseptic stuff for cleaning cuts. It works beautifully on acrylic paint on both plastics and metal miniatures.

Here's the good stuff, £2.69 for 750ml from Tesco.

Soak your miniatures overnight to really give the paint a good seeing to, then scrub the miniature with a toothbrush in a bucket of water to get the gunk off.

Word of warning, sweetie tins like roses are not waterproof. :lol: The kitchen was stinking after we made that mistake. I'm using a tubberware cake box, one of Tesco's 4.5l resealable ones. You will also want gloves, the paint gunk sticks to everything.

 

[Cripsin]

TO TESCO's!

Edit; Tesco's trip completed, dettol obtained, model soaking as we speak. Thanks for the heads up (+rep!).

 

[Cripsin]

Ok so brown dettol works perfectly, models stripping down as I type. Thanks once again.

I am intending to push ahead with the begininings of my inquisitorial force in the next few days, but have still not decided upon a list to use for it. My three choices are as follows:

1: GK codex. This is what I SHOULD use, and would create the least problems with other gamers, it would also however be fairly boring and not very competative as I have no intention of using either GK's or transports....

2: Demons. Massive bonus of irony, fairly competative, could make for some interesting conversions, army would consist of horrors (henchmen with rapid fire weapons, likely converted from lasguns or bolters), plaguebearers for objective claiming, (augmented henchmen, possibly bionics), Chariots of tzeentch (no idea as of yet).

3: Dark Eldar. Again Irony bonus, and this is looking like my favourite, fairly competative (an all infantry webway portal list), saves and stats similar to humans, albeit well-trained ones (perfect really), power through pain represented similar to WH faith rules, warriors (henchmen), Grotesques (advanced combat servitors), I'm thinking reavers (small imperial jetbikes), incubi (inquisitors personel guard), harli's (death cult assassination team), and talos/chronos, (similar to a penitent engine or GK dreadknight). They also have some anti-psyker rules, and poisened weps fit well with ordo xenos.

I'll post models in a couple of days when I get round to it. Alas dissertation and bar work takes up most of my free time.

Any thoughts?

 

[Cripsin]

Dettol, just the basic brown coloured antiseptic stuff for cleaning cuts. It works beautifully on acrylic paint on both plastics and metal miniatures.

Here's the good stuff, £2.69 for 750ml from Tesco.

Soak your miniatures overnight to really give the paint a good seeing to, then scrub the miniature with a toothbrush in a bucket of water to get the gunk off.

Word of warning, sweetie tins like roses are not waterproof. :lol: The kitchen was stinking after we made that mistake. I'm using a tubberware cake box, one of Tesco's 4.5l resealable ones. You will also want gloves, the paint gunk sticks to everything.

The dettol works great and strips the minatures, reducing the paint to a black gunk. How do you get this gunk off? I have tried scrubbing with a toothbrush as you suggested but this seems to spread it around rather than remove it... Any ideas?

 

[Jimmy Carmine]

I dunk the miniatures in warm water and scrub the paint off under water, every now and then you need to wipe your toothbrush clean but the paint gunk should sink to the bottom of the water.

 

[Cripsin]

Ok cheers, I'll give it another shot this evening.

 

[Khornz]

Yeah, I encountered with the same problem when striping my own models. It seems that the sprayed on Black base coat from GW makes black blobs that are a pain in the arse, they come off after quite a while. Second are the Black GW bases, I warn you, do not put these in with the model, it ruins the model with this blackish gunk that gets into the nooks of the model. Remove them if you already have in, I learned this at the cost of a SM scout squad.

 

[Cripsin]

OK thatnks for the heads up. So remove the bases then soak in dettol, clean in a bath of warm water. Will try this this evening. Thanks again guys.

Edit: Also Khornz, remind me to rep you later. The library computers don't like me being kind to fellow lo'ers....

 

[stayscrunchyinmilk]

I'm interested in what you're going to do for daemons, or dark eldar - how are you going to convert them (I'm not doubting, just curious how you would do it?)

 

[Cripsin]

I am by no means intending to convert guardsmen into DE (pretty sure I'll go with this list now), and to be honest until the bits I've ordered arrive I'm not entirely sure myself.

I'm aiming to achieve a decadent guardsmen kind of look by kitbashing cadian and empire mini's together, I'm thinking of using cadian bodies (makes sense for kabalite armour's 5+ save), with feathery empire heads, and puffy sleeved arms. Esentially guardsmen drawn into the service of an inquisitor and given extra training (to represent the improved stats). And the best equipment available, (weaponry and the more affluent look I aim to achieve)The main reason I'm thinking DE is that the phsyical stats (S and T) remain the same as humans, so there woun't be any problems there.

I'm knocking together some tests now with the pieces I have but am unsure what to do about weapons atm. My two WIP's are either bolters, (splinter rifles are statistically bad hellfire round bolters from the SM codex), or heavily modified lasguns 9the one i'm working with is a lasgun, avenger shuriken catapult hybrid atm), I'll try and post pics later but alas they will be taken by my HTC....

The other issue I will have is none kabalite warrior models. I'll steer clear of anything too impossible... I'm currently thinking of representing heamonculi as indentured techpriests. Fluff wise this works quite well I feel and allows me to swap the rationale of genetic tom-foolery (for wrack and grotesques and the like) for mechanical augmentation.

Harlequins will potentially be (fluff wise) a squad of death-cult assassins, serving under my Inq. Not sure on models as of yet. I'll think of a cadian way to do it lol. No point letting them go to waste.

I'm also working on some guard-ridden Imperial jetbikes for reavers, and guardsmen jet-pack equipped scourges. progress on the bikes is slow but steady....

I was thinking of including a chronos, and fluff wise I see this functioning similarly to a penitent engine, with the conversion perhaps based upon either this, perhaps a sentinel, or the new GK knight model.

Vehicles will be avoided, while I think I can justify small scale implementation of anti-grav tech (i.e. reavers), I'm not so keen to attempt to justify a 'raider' mounted force.

My only real problem is how to justify the Web-way portal that the army will tactically rely upon.... An advanced inquisition teleport homer? Any ideas?

EDIT; Turns out I had more modelling ideas than I thought lol. Apologies for the essay.

 

[stayscrunchyinmilk]

EDIT; Turns out I had more modelling ideas than I thought lol. Apologies for the essay.

Keep it up, that's how great armies are built (My admech started off with 10 spare driver torso's, and sort of grew from there)

The webway? well, some of the more radical Inquisitors use all sorts of tech, and it could be a warp portal (is he renegade or loyalist? Loyalist forces use it - the new GK's for example)

I do wonder, as someone who converted a lot of guardsmen, you could skip stripping them entirely if you're hacking off the heads and arms anyway - the legs and torso's will be just fine with a undercoat on top (and taking a scalpel and file to the area it was in is quick and easy)

If you can get a bunch of catachan swords It could be easy to do paired swords for the combat guys (or, in fact empire swords - duh me ) and some catachan heads will help make them distinguishable.

Things can be done to lasguns quite easily, chop off the barrel and drill in (for shotguns is quite common) swap the ammo clip for other easily obtainable weapons (boltguns?) to make them better.
A scalpel and file takes the wingedf skull off quite easily too (If you wanted to the mini aquilla from FW small brass etch go on quite well in it's place to ensure variety)
- I don't know about the chaosy ones, but bet am very interested in the scale and if it'd work)

Sentinal legs work well for penitant engines, or I used a defiler whip arm for a chaos sentinal legs before - that could work

 

[Kev]

Hiya Crispin, little late in the day I know but I stripped some plastic mini's last year and made a blog post about it which might give some advice:

Lifeless Loser: Stripping Plastic Miniatures - Part 1
Lifeless Loser: Stripping Plastic Miniatures - Part 2

Good luck with it mate

 

[Cripsin]

To be honest with you guys the stripping is more of a symbolic thing than for practicality, The level of detail on cadians is not really such that they need to be stripped to be re-painted, I just wanted to do it in order to have a 'clean start'. Also, I find when converting that if i use a mixture of clean and painted parts that it throws off my image of what the model should look like. I don't think I explained myself too well here but hopefully you get the picture.

My force will be loyalist, the rules change is simply to make fielding the army a bit more charecterfull and hopefully (with the webway list) more enjoyable and challenging to play.

Thanks for the suggestions peeps, as I said earlier, I will attempt to get some (albeit bad) pics of my WIPS up later on. MUST DO DISSERTATION....

Edit: WIP's;

A guardsman I knocked up in the astral Claws Colour scheme:

an example of my old colour scheme:

And on a command Squad model (company banner):

A marine squad I converted and painted on impulse a few days ago, I know I said I was going to do astral claws but what can I say.... I get easily distracted....
Sergeant:

Random Squad member:

Whole Squad:

And now some rough conversions for my Inquisition army, first up a weapon conversion for a henchman:

A guardsman with bolter:

Weapon Servitors:

Lantern Man?!?

And two terrible pictures (allready painted black which has worsened the quality), 2 Ideas for Imperial Guard Jet-packs, 1 sensible, 1 a tad ostentatious...

Any thought's comments or suggestions welcome peeps, especially on the inq conversions. And sorry for the terrible quality photo's, taken from my phone.

 

[Cripsin]

Potato bucket account Success, and a minor victory in my favour.

Also could some friendly passing mod perhaps add (pic heavy) to the thread title? I intend to upload more as progress allows.

 

[stayscrunchyinmilk]

Nice! i like the Heavy weapon servitors best, and the jump pack imperial guard/ no wait, the primach sanguinus, no wait, i'm confused, anyway, made me smile.
And the astral claw sgnt could well be a techmarine, I liked that.

 

[Cripsin]

I did say it was a tad ostentatious lol....