Unpacking and finding inspiration

Greetings once again. Well, now I am officially moved in to my new place of residence and life is regaining some sense of normalcy, I have the wonderful job of unpacking everything and figuring out where the heck everything goes. Regretfully I had to move into a smaller place with no garage which means I have lost my workshop for the immediate future. While this hampers what I do quite a bit, it will not stop me. Things will just have to be on a slightly smaller scale and manufactured with different methods. The two main tools I will miss having access to are my drill press and my scroll saw. But, life goes on, I have a loving wife, two loving cats, a roof over my head and a stable job. Life is pretty good overall despite the bumps in the road.

Ok, on to the hobby side of things. As you may note with my Imperial truck conversion (with thanks again to Dave Taylor for putting out the templates for the cab) I like to keep an eye on what Forgeworld is doing with their miniatures for their Orks. As many of you know, background fluff material for the Ork designs is that very few designs are truly from Ork origins and are most often made from battlefield scrap and salvage. A design that has caught my attention is the new Ork Kil Krusha tank. You can find pictures of this pretty easily by going to Forgeworlds website (I will not post one of their images as I do not want to get lawyer hammered). Strip away the orky gubbins and bits and you have an archaic Imperial design. What I see is a Medusa siege mortar carrier with the fully enclosed upgrade with the cupola on top mounting the hull heavy bolter in the primary position and a heavy stubber in the secondary position. Not exactly an elegant design, but it would definitely fit within a more archaic group of Guard.

This archaic vehicle got me thinking about a guard regiment where such a vehicle may be found and inspiration struck. I know that many of you have various favored bits sellers, mine happens to be thewarstore.com, and with a bit of browsing I came up with a bits list to make a small group. What I found that drew inspiration are the scale armored legs from the High Elf group from the Warhammer Fantasy line. Combine those legs with a Cadian torso that has been shaved down and rounded so that the carapace looks more like an old style breast plate, and again use the Cadian arms with the pauldrons for the armored shoulders and simplicity of arming with the lasguns and other weapons. I intend to use the bare and beardy heads from the new Space Wolves kits, further lending to the ‘primitive’ warrior styling. Taking this a step further I found the Silverhelm horses and rider legs which will make fine Roughriders for the group. I will also be working in Dark Angels bits and other more ornate elements into the conversions as well such as the bike banner pole onto the backs of the roughriders (depending on scaling and how it looks together once I have the bits on hand) drawing inspiration from the Cossaks of ancient Russia. The feel of the army will be very Imperial / Tzarist Russian, not entirely unlike the Vostroyan Firstborn. Do not get me wrong, I like their figures just fine, I just do not want to be limited to just the few poses and models GW has produced for them for an entire army.

BUT, this army will stay on hold and on the pages of my sketchbook until I have everything that I have assembled for my WWI themed force painted and done and a group of 4 enclosed Griffon heavy mortars converted and done. Now if I only had a scanner to show you all my sketches of my ideas…