Briancj wrote:
One of the sad results of post-Chapterhouse GW is a prevent-third-party-parts-use design philosophy.

--Brian

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Well this isn't good.

Not good at all.

It is only the soul-crushing thought of buying and painting rhinos again that keeps me from heresy.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:The original plan was for the Patriarch to be busting out Incredible Hulk style but he's too big, and the car too small for that particular idea. I think it works though, sort of a homage to the old armored Limo.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:It was a night of lasts in many ways. I saw someone do a Chaos Warrior Arbiter in an Inquisition warband and had to do one.

 monkeytroll wrote:
The war rocket is looking great. And big. Great big rocket.


As to the sudden unexpected Nurgle incursion, you wouldn't have to build and paint lots of rhinos.

You could build a bunch of custom flying slug transports instead.....

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
LOL... you are truly a card

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Max Moray wrote:
Can't waint to see how those pipes look painted and weathered. I would not base them, just use some weight as suggested.

In the meantime I need to find such toy pipes...

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Congrats on painting so many of the things! Especially all that infantry

 Meer_Cat wrote:
All this talk about the 'TIE Tank' reminds of a very early computer video game some kind soul sent us during Desert Shield called "A-10 Warthog". It was a flight simulator and had various missions programmed into it. Unfortunately, none us could actually play well enough to make the thing fly and do whatever it was supposed to do. But you could set the player mode to "indestructible plane, unlimited ammo" (essentially: Pre-Beginner level, so you could learn to play well enough to survive flak and dogfights and such) which allowed us to drive the plane over the ground, shooting up tanks. You could drive right through them and because you were indestructible, keep right on playing.

So now I have visions of an up-armored TIE Fighter with treads on the bottom of the vertical wings driving along, shooting up Leman Russ tanks.

Rock on, Kid- rock on!

as for the TIE, I assure you it is fully operational.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


The four arms of unity: Strength through discipline. Strength through community. Strength through action. Strength through pride.

I just realized the RT guys are 32, old enough to drive, vote, drink, join the army, marry a stripper, father a kid, find out she was sleeping with your best friend while you were on deployment, wonder if the kid is really yours want to divorce her but can't because it would break your son's heart and so endure a loveless sham with no escape.

 Viktor von Domm wrote:

I just realized the RT guys are 32, old enough to drive, vote, drink, join the army, marry a stripper, father a kid, find out she was sleeping with your best friend while you were on deployment, wonder if the kid is really yours want to divorce her but can't because it would break your son's heart and so endure a loveless sham with no escape.

that sounds awefully like real life expierience... hope not...

also... i have some already assembled ones with original weaponry if you ever should find the need to have...moooorrree...

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
whenever i read cadians i secretly read canadians... i think someone should act upon it and make a canadian cadian themed army... really... it needs to be done...

 Max Moray wrote:
The exiled Arbites vet, who just returned to the city from the northern wastes is a great conversion.

 Meer_Cat wrote:
too heavily armed."

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Still not a fan of this model. Even with wheels it still looks about 25% too short, the cabin could not possibly hold 10 models.

I had 2 from the Tempestus start collecting box and I'll be using it for my Genestealer Cult. But it's just a bad model.

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
what head does the second ogryn wear?...people need to know...

Let me start by saying that, once assembled, both of the figures on the sprue are gorgeous. The Ogryn with two mechanical claws looks properly beefy and heavy, ready to tear apart a truck. The Ogryn with a gun arm and a wrench looks vicious and scary, you would not want him running towards you! The figures have power cables and servos making the bionics look more industrial than the usual ones. There's also four heads plus a fifth mechanical head to give them some distinction.

The problem is, those the only two you can make. The sprue in this kit literally has 3 arms for 2 bodies, plus a gun arm. Oh yes, you can leave off an arm and make a one-armed Ogryn too. But I can't really consider 'leave off an arm' to be an option, even if the instruction book does.

And even worse, it was not necessary. While there's a limited amount of space on a sprue, there are also a lot of unnecessary parts. The arm gun for example comes in several pieces, as does the mechanical head. Even the eye lens is a separate part! It's hard for me not to look at this and feel that some parts could have been simplified to make room for another arm so every Ogryn could have two arms at least. Or maybe another hand so they could hold something other than the same wrench.

This is an ongoing issue with GW kits. They are increasing being made for display rather than modelling and converting. They have fewer options and almost no cross-compatibility with other kits. For example the neither the heads nor the hands in this kit work with the fantasy Ogre kits, further limiting your options. And for a gang-building game like Necromunda this hurts our ability to make our own gangs and models.

So... if you only need 1 or 2 this is a fine kit but if you intend to make a whole gang you'll struggle to differentiate them with only 3 arms for every 2 figures.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Not bad, but just an awful kit. It really needs the wheels to even start to look good, plus plasticard to cover the windows.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

The throne is from the new objective pack and... was a challenge. It's too narrow for most figures (forget getting a marine into it) but a Taurox driver worked after some filing. It's also too tall, and the lectern is also taller than most figures. But the end result with his feed dangling is kind of appropriate for the Imperium, making him look small and overwhelmed by the trappings of office. If you want to use the objective throne I'd leave off the lectern and have a figure stand in front of the throne.

 Eilif wrote:


I think you saw these years ago, but maybe you'd find some inspiration for bashing spaceships here:
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/?s=spacecraft

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
And the entire drop regiment, 130+ metal dudes.

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
And the entire drop regiment, 130+ metal dudes.

Yowza! Impressive work Kid.

 Miguelsan wrote:
When are you getting back to Japan? We need to play horde vs horde.
(And I have to take out the boys for a group photo too)

M.

Spaceport Lethem

-1-
The captains drank and the captains lied.
They sat in cantinas and in taverns. In squares and on broken chairs leaning against walls. They drank everything from imported off-world brews to local rotgut refined from fuel waste. They were all “captains” even the ones who only commanded a one-man cargo shuttle, even the ones whose ships hadn’t flown in years, captains one and all. They hailed from every world in the sector and a few points beyond.
But the stories were all the same.
“Next time I’ll have the perfect cargo lined up.”
“Next time I’ll be up and flying from day one.”
“Next time I’ll make enough to buy a berth and get off this world.”
“Next time… next time will be different.”
But while they waited for next time, they drank.
Many places claimed to be the center of nowhere, but only the spaceport attached to Lethem settlement could make the claim it was build because it was the center of nowhere. Sitting on a blasted plain, still dotted with craters from some long-forgotten war, it was almost equally distant from the savannahs and ranches to the south, the hills and mines to the west and the lumber camps and tropical forests of the east. To the north lay the road to the distant city of Puerto Dolor, and sure enough the next sizable settlement was about as far as the ranches, mines and camps Lethem served. The exact middle of nowhere.
The town had only a few hundred full-time residents. There was a fueling station, several salvage yards, a comm tower and couple of shops, several locked warehouses, and several dozen places to drink. Around the town square there was a small constable’s office and a shrine, and a sealed bunker.
And just south was the spaceport of course.
The spaceport was perhaps an overly grandiose name for a semicircle of landing pads, surrounded by several miles of packed earth which could, in theory, hold a shuttle if you weren’t too picky about how you land. Over a dozen ships in various states of repair were parked there, none of them were less than a century old. A few were so old they could have been part of that first flotilla that settled the world millennia ago.
Flies buzzed among them. Stray dogs lay beneath their shadows. Occasionally a captain walked out to check on a ship, maybe even briefly power up the systems.
A few had sunk into the earth and would never rise again.
This day was like every other. A caravan of trucks arrived from the north, dropping off liquor and ration bars, picking up a load of lumber from a warehouse. A captain managed to get his engines to start after several months of work. An old man was found dead in a ditch. The constable had to drive off the dogs and rats so he could be buried.
And then the great dish on the comms tower twitched. It twitched and it began to turn. And it rotated until it pointed skyward.
Everyone froze, everyone watched. And then they ran.
“A ship!”
A ship had arrived, and now everything would be different.

-2-
The Phoenician Son broke into real space at the edge of the system, its arrival heralded by howling detectors throughout the system. After exchanging greetings (and bonifieds) with the out-system defenses, it turned its nose in-system and began the nine-day trip towards Yana, the sole inhabited world of any note.
It was an ancient leviathan, its hull distorted by centuries of use and modification. Here and there craters poxed the hull, scars from meteor showers, shuttle crashes and even an old pirate attack, but the ship still cruised onward. Field modifications could be seen with makeshift comms towers, jerry-rigged cargo cranes and private towers for wealthy passengers dotting the hull. Some jutting dangerously far from the ship’s main structure and its protective armor and shields.
Within an hour the aether around the Phoenician Son virtually crackled as thousands of communiques arrived from Yana. Many were routine and expected, long-standing commercial arrangements with the merchants who ran the ship’s cavernous cargo holds and fleet of cargo shuttles. These merchants would haul the high-volume, low-margin, loads of grain, ore or meat. For them it was simply a matter of confirming tonnage, rates and timing.
But within the miles-long ships hull there were hundreds of smaller holds, leased and sub-leased and divided among any number of free traders who frantically reached out to Yana offering their space for the right cargo or passengers. With only a few cargo crates of space they bargained for the highest value loads they could find, talking to dozens of traders across the whole of Yana, making offers for everything from uncut fire gems to used cognator parts to perishable flowers.
No one aboard the Phoenician Son could really say how many free traders there were. They squatted in huge holds that had been partitioned again and again. Unused spaces had been converted, holes cut into the hull for access. Cargo crates had been welded to the hull, jutting out like cancerous growths. In one particularly egregious case, a midshipman secretly rented an emergency airlock to a trader who locked his shuttle’s ventral port to it and rode the ship like a barnacle. The trader then rented his dorsal docking port to another shuttle, who then contacted a friend. In the end a tottering tower of eight shuttles rode the ship for months before being detected by a lost maintenance crew. When he learned of this, the ship master arrested and marooned all of the shuttles, as well as their crews and the discharged midshipman, on a feral world bereft of the fuel or parts to ever reach orbit again. As far as anyone knew they were still there.
Still it carried on, a floating bazaar and warehouse crammed with every sort of mundane and exotic good. Passengers ranged from refugees and indentured workers bound for any port that would have them, to wealthy pilgrims in luxury suites and a small party who locked themselves in their quarters and did not emerge until it was time to leave the ship. In addition. there were an unknown number of stowaways and deserters, but the many hazards of ship life, from radiation, to starvation, to decompression kept their numbers under control.
It was not the only ship that made this run, but the Phoenician Son was by far the largest and richest of the trade ships and its arrival was always cause for celebration on the world below. Lessor vessels would only call on the largest ports, picking up routine cargos. Only the Phoenician Son offered opportunities for even the least ports to trade off-world.
When, after nine days of real-space travel, it arrived in Yana’s orbit a several vast tenders, each one the size of a hab-block but dwarfed by the cargo vessel, were waiting to sate the ship’s thirsty fuel tanks and feed the hungry power cells. As they performed their careful dance to mate with the ship, the Phoenician Son launched its small squadron of interceptors and gunships to fly a circuit around the vessel. Their deployment may have seemed pointless to some observers. Anything powerful enough to threaten the vast leviathan would surely laugh at the stings of a few puny gunboats. But their purpose was not to fight, but to control local space for what would come next.
Finally, the Phoenician Son opened its many docking ports and launch bays, dispatching a veritable invasion of cargo craft to ports across the planet. Almost simultaneously an answering flotilla rose towards the ship carrying megatons of cargo upwards. The ships would rise and fall several times in the next week. Most performed routine, scheduled runs between the ship’s main cargo holds and well-maintained planetary ports. Others raced to snatch up lucrative opportunities or take advantage of last-minute orders.
Passenger shuttles lighted gracefully in the planet’s main cities, carrying couriers, skilled workers, wealthy travelers, and mid-ranked crew members entitled to shore leave. The Ship Master arrived in his person yacht for a dinner with the planetary governor. A shuttle-load of crew who had finished their contracts landed to seek a new life in the outer worlds. A few bulk cargo shuttles headed for penal colonies, mines and prisons looking to buy workers for the lower decks. The ships hunger for fresh flesh was insatiable.
But most ships were filled with goods. Tons and tons of machine parts, processed food, fuel, lubricants and other more esoteric products. They were crammed into shuttles or every class, size and description, many of them as heavily modified over time as the Phoenician Son itself. From boxy and utilitarian Roq-150s held aloft by their anti-grav plates, to fast and stylish Storm Piercers propelled by their plasma jets, to ancient Columbia-class glide shuttles, a veritable parade of the history of trans-atmosphere travel was on show.
Some shuttles would never return to the ship; victims of mechanical failure, human error or financial shortfalls. Others would never return to the planet, having through fortune or guile secured a berth on the ship, a chance to join its unending tour of the sector.
Finally after a week, or perhaps a bit more, the Phoenician Sun will sound a final call for boarding, turn its nose star-ward again for its next jump. There were still five more outer worlds to visit before the ship spirals inward towards the wealthy core worlds. Then it would begin again, returning to Yana in a year or two’s time.

-3-
News spread like a shockwaves across the blasted plain.
Heavy lifters took off from the mines, their holds filled with unprocessed ore rushing to be at Letham when the ship arrived lest they miss their scheduled appointments. Drovers led thousands of heads of cattle north. With only nine days they feared they might not reach the port in time. Tractors dragged sleds of timber along dirt tracks. Caravans of trucks began to assemble. They came from every small settlement, overloaded with anything the owners thought they could sell to the off-world traders.
Within a day, thousands of people were moving towards Letham, in groups or as individuals. In the mountains a solitary hermit lashed his mobile shrine to a shaggy pack beast and began his descent to the plains. No one quite knew how he got word. A trope of travelling minstrels cancelled their next few shows and turned north. A group of boys slipped the razor wire around the camp and moved under the cover of night. A scavenger tribe abandoned the ruins they were searching and rode hard for the south. A miner dug out his box of costumes and makeup and rehearsed his jokes as he climbed onto the back of a truck. For a few days he would not be a lowly miner but a star.
Slowly these drops coalesced into streams, and then into a mighty river of humanity. Roads, trails and paths were clogged with vehicles, animals and people.
Far to the north an armored flier was loaded with a mixed team of inspectors and armored troopers. It sped towards Letham landing outside the sealed bunker. The lights came on, the sensors began to spin, the cannon on its roof swept the sky. The revenue men had arrived.
Within a day it was joined by fliers from two banking houses and an insurance firm. Under heavy guard they opened their shutters and began making short-term loans and issuing policies. Traders lined up outside.
The town itself was just as busy in preparation. The hands on the great dial on the comms tower spun to the number nine and began counting down.
Captains and traders waited for hours to use the few broadcast lines in the comms tower to reach out to free traders on the ship offering their services and their wares. Bartenders opened their cellars and took stock. Teams of workers cleared the landing pads and fields beyond it of any debris. With buckets of white paint and orange flags they marked temporary landing sites in the dirt. Guards were hired for the storehouses and the tents that had sprung up beside them. Three people were shot. The sole fuel vendor adjusted his rates and posted men and dogs at each pumping station. Captains and crews furiously fueled and repaired their ships, making them ready to fly at a moment’s notice, or trying desperately to make them fly again. Two well-dressed women, as alike as twins, wandered the streets watching everything. Mechanics, both trained and self-proclaimed, combed the ship boneyard for any useful parts. Children caught every lizard within three miles for the vendors selling fried reptiles on a stick. The priest wandered among the shuttles blessing them for a modest donation. A merchant sold a pair of cracked anti-grav plates for twice what he’d been asking the week before. His wife scolded him. Had he waited a few more days he would have gotten five-times his original price.
The dial spun day-by-day towards zero. Bunting hung on the shops and homes. Colorful tents appeared around the town. Vendors, buskers, beggars, and preachers wandered the streets. The town’s sole medic set up a triage tent for the inevitable carnage that would follow when men, machines and alcohol mixed too closely. The constable deputized twenty more citizens to keep order. It would not be enough.
The Town Master tried to coordinate the new arrivals, designating areas for entertainment, for vehicle storage, for the market, for sleeping and so on, while trying to keep the roads clear for cargo. He had men dig latrines and mark paths with lights. His efforts had limited success.
With three days to go the school teacher sighted a new star in the sky with her optic set. She charged a coin for townsfolk to come and see incoming vessel. By the time there was just one day to go the ship’s plasma trail was visible to the naked eye. It was after midnight when the ship anchored in high orbit. And hours past that when a new constellation of stars appeared around it. By then the entire town, its numbers having swelled to over ten thousand, was awake and watching.
The shuttles were coming.

 IGtR= wrote:
Great kit, and (as I have said in other threads) I am always a fan of you glamming it up so that the machines are not carbon copies. When you look at a board it is nice to see unique vehicles rather than row upon row of the same vehicle, and in practice, most vehicles have some modifications etc. to them so that no two are alike. Your plog certainly has variety

Thanks for sharing

 DJJazzyJeff wrote:
You’ve got some work to do!
And the painting skills of Kyoto Secunda are quite good. Way to raise ‘em right.

Meer_Cat wrote:UPS colors- pretty ugly, alright!

Cool scatter terrain and excellent demonstration of use of M-Edge bits sprues.

Llamahead wrote:Your not planning to start them on an Airfix Spitfire . Your definitely not British as I would guess it's 95% of British peoples first plastic kit.

 DJJazzyJeff wrote:
That's a really cool crash. Did you decide to wreck it because you threw away a panel? Or was it a happy accident?

 Meer_Cat wrote:
"Chin Hook"- geez I'm slow! I've parachuted out of them and didn't get the pun until you actually explained it!

Excellent build- the kitbash gives a very solid, satisfying 'lift anything' vibe.

 Theophony wrote:
Always loved the idea of Field Police, even converted a few back in the day to go with my Adeptus Arbites. The store I worked at had these eyeglass repair kit displays at all the registers, each one had flashing red lights that attached to a AA battery pack. I condensed those down on a daily basis and brought home all the light kits when the displays ran empty. The Field Police had The older Rhinos with the flashing lights . "Pull over Abbadon you !"

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Seriously though where did all these marine bodies come from? I've not bought marines in over 10 years!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Seriously though where did all these marine bodies come from? I've not bought marines in over 10 years!

I once sat down with the parts to build 20 Assault Marines and finished the session with 30 Assault Marines.

It can happen!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I've seen people converting Blood Bowl humans into Necromunda minis. They work surprisingly well.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Now my Closet of Shame ain't got nothing on HBMC's who manages to find whole unpainted armies there but it's OK.

"Rorque Monteban is a man who enjoys the finer things in life. As a leading import-export specialist at Spaceport Letham he can afford those things. Three livers to screen toxins, four beating hearts to ensure adequate blood flow, and the sense of security that only 500 pounds of vat-grown muscle can bring.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
First model of the new year!

Discovering that Marvel Crisis Protocol was plastic is NOT good news for my ability to focus!

"Rorque Monteban is a man who enjoys the finer things in life. As a leading import-export specialist at Spaceport Letham he can afford those things. Three livers to screen toxins, four beating hearts to ensure adequate blood flow, and the sense of security that only 500 pounds of vat-grown muscle can bring.

He's a big boy, I knew MCP figures were big and Kingpin is huge even in that crowd. I feel like he needs more though. I'd planned to use a Marine head but the scale was just too off, he looked even more pin headed than he does now. Maybe a servo skull or a servant on his base?

Myrthe wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
First model of the new year!

Discovering that Marvel Crisis Protocol was plastic is NOT good news for my ability to focus!

"Rorque Monteban is a man who enjoys the finer things in life. As a leading import-export specialist at Spaceport Letham he can afford those things. Three livers to screen toxins, four beating hearts to ensure adequate blood flow, and the sense of security that only 500 pounds of vat-grown muscle can bring.

He's a big boy, I knew MCP figures were big and Kingpin is huge even in that crowd. I feel like he needs more though. I'd planned to use a Marine head but the scale was just too off, he looked even more pin headed than he does now. Maybe a servo skull or a servant on his base?

Great idea to use Kingpin !! What about pairing him with a cyber animal ? Granted, most might be too small in scale next to him but, perhaps, a wolf from the Space Wolves ?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Oh and a surprise which is in questionable taste.