Warhammer 40,000: Hive Fleet Behemoth

 

Something a bit different, a post that showcases my wife's amazing work completing the Tyranids from the Leviathan box, bought over two years ago now.

Winged Tyranid Prime

I think the first thing I should mention is that my wife has only been painting miniatures for about as long as its taken to complete these Tyranids.

Screamer-Killer Carnifex

While I might have guided her on colours and techniques, I think its fair to say its her own talent that's produced this amazing finish.

Neurotyrant, Neuroloids  and Von Ryan's Leapers

Obviously, having chosen Macragge as the landscape for my marines and the Ultramarines as the chapter, the Hive Fleet Behemoth colour-scheme was a no brainer.

Psychophage

I think she's used all Citadel Paints, contrasts for base painting, washes to add depth, and colours for highlighting - with maybe Vallejo for basics light white, etc.

Barbgaunts

Basing was the traditional black rimmed base with liberal use of Games Workshop's 'box'o'skulls' and various manufacturers' tuffs.

Termagants

This was to represent the mountainous, rocky north, where the Ultramarines had their last stand, and we tied in some base colouring with the marines I'd already finished.

Hormagaunts

I think there's a box of Hormagaunts in here from the Tyranid range as well, an addition which my wife graciously accepted into her painting queue - because they didn't come in the Leviathan box and I *really neeeeeded* them 😝

Neurogaunts

I really do think she's done an amazing job with these Tyranids and I'm stoked that I have a completed army of them.

Ripper Swarms

I guess its up to me now to finish the Ultramarines from the Leviathan box, which is in the queue after I've completed my AWI collection.

Multi-Scale: Sci Fi Industrial/Post Apocalyptic Scenery

 

Yep, old plastic containers, bits off of bottles, a massive raid through a giant bits box, and the use of a scenery kit purchased nearly 20 years ago. Nothing was held back over the last year as we feverously built up a table's worth of Sci Fi terrain.

Having been inspired by the motto of the 131st Pi Orionis Mechanised Hover Infantry, I thought a table's worth of run down, weather beaten terrain from one of the mining planets in the Pi system would be perfect.

But having a large collection of 15, 28, and even 25mm sci fi figures and vehicles, I really wanted to make the scenery usable with all these scales.

Its definitely worked with the 40k stuff and the terrain scales well with both the Tyranids and Ultramarines. 

In fact I don't think I'd do anything more to this stuff before being happy having a game with it at 28mm.

The 15mm stuff on the other hand, while it works reasonably well, I think it will need some additional scale pieces done in the same style before it sits well.

But there's now plenty of terrain to set up a full table top for a game.

Some bunkers for firebases are a must for any game.

A lot of the pipe and installation greeblies are from a Chemical Plant Construction Box I bought many years ago - a couple of places like ebay and Pegasus Hobbies are still advertising them for sale.

Other parts are from plastic supplement bottles and even chocolate boxes. These were heavily sanded first, to take the printing off or to dull the shine of the plastic.

Earlier this year my brother moved into a smaller house and donated a giant box of spare parts collected over the last 40 years of modeling.

Suffice to say that greebly time is now made a lot easier and the box was used extensively with this terrain. I think there's some EVA foam on some of the pieces as well.

These ash/tailings piles were made by first bending cardboard into cones, gluing them on the base, then covering them in ground cover.

But this was done old style without printing a single part - although there's a couple of printed bits on the piles. And a further thanks to my wife who decided she wanted to finish off at least half of the pieces and patiently matched the style I'd started off with.

6th Maryland, Patterson’s Massachusetts, 7th Pennsylvania, and Virginia Light Horse

 

Another push to get this entire collection painted, with only another 6 standard Black Powder units worth left to go now. This time its three standard infantry units for the American's plus a small unit of light horse.

The flags were from a random search on Mr. Google and the uniforms are once again, straight from Baccus' excellent uniform guide.

Patterson’s Massachusetts Battalion

This is one of the last two units, from the 8 boxes of Italeri American Infantry, which I bought back in ~2014. Not sure if the drummers wore reversed coats but for ascetics I thought they'd look cooler in buff coats.

7th Pennsylvania Regiment

The last unit from the Italeri boxes, I couldn't go past the 7th Penn as a unit. 

I've issued these guys a BPL MkII (Bush, Portable, Low) for the same reasons as I did for the 2nd Canadian, just a fact of life for these aging 1/72 scale figures and the varying pose quality you get in the sets.

6th Maryland Regiment

A few years back I could be heard saying that I'd never buy any more 1/72 scale stuff. For the most part I've stuck to that focusing on 15mm and 28mm. But then earlier this year HaT Industrie released their American Infantry set.

So this is the first unit from the box I bought (😆) but in my defense, I'm not going to be using the IMEX stuff as I wasn't happy with the Green Mountain Boys unit I made using them, as I didn't really like their poses.

The same can't be said for this HaT box though. You get enough figures (96) to make 4 standard BP units, with great poses (marching, firing, loading, and ready).

Virginia Light Horse

Another light cavalry unit made up from the old Revell, Set 02573, Austrian Dragoons, with head conversions from the A Call to Arms, Set 65, British Infantry 1775. As per previous units, some of the detail had to be 'assumed' and painted on, so these don't bare close inspection.

Only a couple more standard infantry units to go, along with a small unit of light infantry, and a few artillery crews left for the Americans.

AWI: Queen's and Butler's Rangers, 16th Light Dragoons, Artillery Crew

Back in the dark depths of 2013 or 2014, I sent a batch of AWI figures off to Shri Lanka to get painted. Then I started collecting more and more boxes of AWI, discovered Black Powder and started painting up an army for each side myself. There's been a few more commissions since then, and even a spread sheet to cope with colours and units.

More recently, a crazy thing happened. 

Because I'm a total geek, I colour-coded units in the sheet to show whether they were painted or not.

I'd been doing a fair effort of getting units done over the years and a couple of weeks back I opened the sheet and realised there was hardly anything left to paint (about 12 standard BP units).

Never one to shy away from a challenge I started a serious effort to finish the collection of about 6 BP brigades a side (of approx. 4-6 standard infantry, and supporting cavalry, light infantry, and cannon). I now only have about 9 units left to do of the entire mountain of AWI shame. Here's one of the first batches done recently.

Queen's Rangers

I've based these as two small units of light infantry in skirmish formation, which can be lined up to represent them going into line.

Bases compressed into line so that the BP frontage is correct.

The figures are Queen's Rangers from B and B Miniatures (which I couldn't link to at the time of writing as their website was down) and are some of my favorites from the manufacturer.

I'd started off the collection by individually mounting skirmishers but after a couple of games, it really hasn't mattered that they were on individual bases and it was a pain moving them round the table.

The flags were from warflag.com but that seems to have disappeared now as well.

Butler's Rangers

More B and B Miniatures, this time Butler's Rangers in hunting shirts. Suffice to say that their blue tassels over green hunting shirts didn't take an hour to highlight... 😡

But there's some good detail on these figs, like the Queen's Rangers above.

As per those QRs, I went for a regiment made up of two small BP units in skirmish formation.

Also as per QRs, they've been based some that they can also be compressed into line, producing the right frontage for a BP small line unit.

16th Light Dragoons

Another small unit of cavalry for the support of a BP brigade, the famous 16th Light Dragoons. These are from Strelets Set 119 British Cavalry (Egypt) and a dismounted, light infantry option from Set M071 British Light Infantry in Egypt.

Like other units painted previously, at this scale, using early Napoleonic sets as proxies works well and you'd have to look close to see the differences in uniforms. 

Artillery Crew

Finally for the Brits, another round of artillerymen from the IMEX, Set 554 American Artillery. I've used American because for some reason the American and British sets were swapped around during conversation from 1/32 to 1/72 scale, and the water bottles are a closer match for the Brits. 

Also, a big shout out Monty my stepson for helping light the figures and for providing some of the Gaslands photos on a previous post👍.

Random Stuff Challenge

We've been a bit pushed for space for the last few years and have been hell bent on actually reducing the amount taken up by the pile of shame. Above is my wife's amazing efforts with some of the Tyranids that came with the Leviathan box, and her work on my stepson's Krieg, Leman Russ - the Salamanders were a joint effort from all three of us.

But we've got a "doesn't go back in the box" rule in that, if I take it out to swoon over, I now have to fully paint, base, and store it properly - so it does actually go back in another box... in any case, here's what was 'out of the box' over the last few months.

First, from out of a small salt shaker box, some 28mm cowboys from a manufacturer I forget, for a game I forget, with a group of friends I vaguely recall. My wife took over to finish them after I drew a complete blank with them, after putting base colours down.

Next some Crimson Skies aircraft that were rattling around in bubble wrap for years. Bought about ten years ago because they looked cool when I was browsing the Iron Wind Metals website.

Finally, some random peasants from a Saga box of random peasants, carts, and bits and bobs. I've armed them with pikes because I had hundreds of metal spears from Aventine.

Random. Not sure there's much stuff left outside of the collections I'm hoarding, er, I mean collecting. But if I find some more weird and wonderful in amongst my mountain of shame, they won't be going back in the box.

 

Gaslands: More Metal for the Carnage

 

Following on from the last Gaslands post way back in '23! We've had a go at some Buzzards, added to the Warboys, and finally got some snaps of cars we finished shortly after the last post.

Suffice to say that we had some excellent fun running quite a few games at home and its high time we ran some more.

Buzzards

We grabbed a couple V-Dubs, the closest thing we could find to the film, and spent painstaking hours cutting and gluing individual spikes on the cars using metal paper binders. Pain because they were sharp and by the time the gluing was finished, you couldn't pick the thing up without stabbing yourself!

Then it was a rifle through Northstar's Punks for drivers and passengers. There's a heap of detail on these guys including skull masks!

Warboys

Added a harpoon platform on a pickup to add to the general mayhem, including a spare passenger to fight in all directions from Northstar's Wasteland Warriors Drivers and Passengers.

They look the part against the buzzards and both driver and passenger sets really get that 'witness me' type of feeling happening. We also made up a War rig from a slightly oversize random die cast truck and trailer set.

Looks pretty good against the Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars we've used.

Misc. Teams

Finally, here's some of the cars we've converted over the last few years.

Some generic modifications from my stepson's and wife's collections.

And a shot of his stuff and a jumping Buzzard.

Did a heavy technical team with lasers and super fast engines.

And even finished up a campervan after the errata was released with rules for it, although we haven't used it yet.

We've also been finishing off some scale-agnostic sci-fi/post apocalyptic scenery which we realised could be used for Gaslands. They're nearly finished so we might have a game using all of this soon - and will snap some shots.