The Age of the Imperium

[EricF]

Thank you for the lovely comments.

I recently acquired the super cool boring machine from Ramshackle Games, along with a few extra armour panels (thank you Curtis) that I'll need to do some scratch building with.
Anyhow the termite, ahem, boring machine is a lovely big lump of resin that needed no cleanup. I pondered how dirty to make the model and opted for a half way house leaving it fairly clean despite it's passage through the earth! I went for one of the colour schemes in the panted examples on Ramshackle's site. I also wanted to keep the model colours fairly simple so I could use it in both my 40K games and my Retro Raygun games.

 

[symphonicpoet]

^That's a gorgeous paint job on a really neat model. The dirt on the drill is particularly nice, and I love the stains dribbling down the body of the beast.

 

[twisted moon]

looks great. i've got a similar one from ironclad miniatures which i've painted up for my skaven.

 

[EricF]

Since I had the camera out for other snaps I thought I'd catch up on the mobile section of my Imperial Fists. I finished up a couple of vehicles last year to add to the rest (although I've yet to post the beakies) which I shall post up over the coming days. First up that classic lump of lead the Landspeeder...

Never my favourite of miniatures and that didn't hugely change when painting it, but it's a classic and you can't but somewhat love the misshapen lump of lead. My concession to the modern world was to use a newer flight stand so the thing doesn't fall over every ten seconds - which is how I remember the model from my youth. Nothing much snazzy in the paint job, other than picking out the control panel between the marines with more TLC than I may have in years gone by!

 

[Orjetax]

Beautiful yellow


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[AranaszarSzuur]

Looks adorable XD .

 

[ManicMan]

Ah, back when the Landspeeder was a light fast vehicle instead of the... whatever the new lump is meant to be..
great paint job

 

[EricF]

Hehe, nothing light about that chunk of metal!

Thank you for the kind words everyone, let's move onto the next whizzy flying things ...

Once again on modern flight stands - whoever designed the old hex flight stand was a sadist. Generally I've been mounting flying things on metal rods painted black in recent years (often then fixed into a scenic base featuring a nice heavy stone), but for some reason I popped all three of these flyers on clear stands. Slightly wishing I'd put the jet bikes on shorter stems however - since that's an option with the newer stands, but I won't bother changing them now.

I was always rather fond of the jet bike, extremely useful when you need to get a giant spanner to the other side of the battlefield quickly!

 

[ManicMan]

^_^

yeah, them old small hex bases could be a real pain.. really don't counter balance the figures well, so a larger footprint is sometimes better... well, that or a bit of metal to add as a balance in the base.

 

[symphonicpoet]

Jet bikes and flying sofas for the win! They look good. The numbers are a very nice touch.

 

[EricF]

And to finish up the transports (well except for the two bikes I forgot to photograph) we have a pair of Rhinos. Both somewhat rescued and restored and painted up to go with the rest of the Imperial Fists.

I was missing a hatch on the second Rhino and couldn't face either months of hunting in old boxes or paying someone through the nose for one on eBay. So it became an open hatch and a handy half marine popped in perfectly. All I ended up doing was running two strips of plasticard round the hatch to give it some weight. The dozer, smoke launcher and antenna on this one are of course newer pieces that were sat in my bits box looking for a cause!

 

[Citizen Sade]

Great weathering, photography and your yellow really pops. Very nice indeed.

 

[symphonicpoet]

Nicely done! Did you sculpt the vents and straps on the back of the rider? Looks familiar, but I can't quite place him. Looks great like that. Makes it more believable that he just crawled out of the hatch.

 

[EricF]

No, that's how that model comes - I've got another copy on a bike sidecar along with the legs, but this was just a spare torso I had lying around. I don't know the backstory of why this marine doesn't have a backpack - there would be space on the sidecar above the seat for one so it's not that, maybe just one of the more fun quirks from the earlier marines?

 

[popevaderii]

Beautiful work, thanks for sharing it!!!

 

[ManicMan]

wait... the torso of the guy sticking out was from the bike with sidecar? the Vincent Black Shadow? That didn't come with Marines (well, not the main part, but did have some legs)...

Ah wait.. double checked.. they reissued it with metal marines and this is from that that.. Okay, no problem.. Always had the feeling alot of the backpack was breathing stuff. Would a helmet less marine need it? (though.. i don't think it is just for that.. but i always got that impression.. Breathing and heat vent..

 

[Fimm McCool]

 

[ManicMan]

Ah.. mostly air and breathing but some minor power..

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Wait, armoured what? Didn't realise it was a solar-powered. I thought it's a fusion power plant or something like that O_o .

 

[symphonicpoet]

^Yeah, I'd never noticed that before you threw that graphic up the other day. Was kind of scratching my head and wondering how the designer thought the thing would get solar power. I wish there were an arrow pointing to the "armored solar panels." (Also, why the heck is a Brit spelling armor our way? Was the illustrator secretly a spy from TSR?)

I swear, I've pored over that illustration countless times. I absolutely loved it when I was a a kid painting my first beakies. But I don't recall ever having noticed the word "solar panel" in the thing before. Wild stuff!