Author Archives: Christopher Roe

About Christopher Roe

The Artist Formerly Known As Mel Ebbles. I'm a programmer, 3D modeler, papercraft designer, gamer, and tinkerer. I live in the Republic of Texas with my wife Gin and 4 cats.

Stupid Bitz Tricks #3: Aliens-style Heavy Stubber

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Introduction

I’m a firm believer in the old adage “waste not, want not”, so when I carve up something for bitz, I’m always looking for something to do with the leftover pieces and scrap. The sentry gun from Stupid Bitz Tricks #2 yielded several useful pieces that I decided to put to work filling another hole in my Imperial Guard roster: the lack of squad automatic weapons. I had a pintle mounted heavy stubber in my bitz box, and I’d always wanted to find a way to make it a handheld weapon system. However, it wasn’t until after doing the sentry gun that I realized I could convert the heavy stubber into something that looked like an Aliens smartgun. This is the result:



Construction

The images below show the bitz used and their configuration. (Click the photos below to view them at full size.)



Design

The main parts used are a spare set of Cadian flamer arms and the heavy stubber from the Imperial Guard Vehicle Upgrade sprue. The flamer was sliced apart in two places so that only the rearmost segment with the handgrip and the sling remained attached to the arm. The heavy stubber’s barrel was shortened by clipping out everything between the muzzle and the ventilated shroud, then gluing the muzzle directly to the shroud.

Next, the upper surface of the heavy stubber was shaved clean of all large protuberances (the lever-looking thing and the sight hump), and the rearmost end of it was squared off so it could mate nicely against the flamer’s handgrip. The bottom was also shaved flat, then glue was applied to the front of the flamer handgrip and the front sling swivel on the right flamer arm, and the heavy stubber was then pressed into place. The ammo drum was the ribbed section of the autocannon barrel that was left over from the sentry gun project, which was shaved flat on both ends and then glued into the notch on the bottom left side of the heavy stubber.

The sighting system is a Space Marine targeter that was left over from the sentry gun also, its front end having been sliced off to serve as the sentry gun’s sensor lens. The front of the targeter was sanded flat, and the targeter was then glued to the upper right side of the heavy stubber, above the ejection port. The next step was to incorporate the visual suggestion of a waldo system, so I rooted through my bitz box and found the lascannon barrel that was left over from the sentry gun project. On the bottom of the barrel, there’s a long rail–the frontmost, tapered section was sliced off.

The lascannon barrel rail segment was glued to the bottom of the heavy stubber, directly in front of the flamer handgrip, so that the flat end was flush with the heavy stubber’s receiver and the tapered end of the rail segment was pointing to the left side of the heavy stubber. This is what gives the visual suggestion of a waldo system. The next step was to add a vertical handgrip on the side of the weapon, in order to make it look more like an Aliens smartgun, and I used a leftover autocannon ammo drum handle for this purpose. The ammo drum handle was cut so that only one flange remained on it, and glued to the lascannon barrel rail segment.

Conclusion

If you happen to have leftover heavy stubbers from Leman Russ or Chimera kits, this is one way to make them man-portable. It’s also not a particularly difficult conversion, and it follows the same basic Aliens-inspired theme as the sentry gun.

One other fun thing you can do with the Imperial Guard Vehicle Upgrade Sprue is to use the tank commander parts to make a junior officer with upraised hand and binoculars, which would be a good stand-in for Lieutenant Gorman. You could also just use the tank commander’s head with the Cadian sergeant bitz to make a more heroic-looking lieutenant, so long as you remember to shave the sergeant stripes off the chainsword arm.

I think the weapon is a bit large, however, so I’m going to shorten the flamer handgrip and the heavy stubber body the next time I perform this conversion. I figure if I shave one or two more millimeters off the overall weapon length, it’ll be snugged in a little closer to the body and look a little less oversized.

Stupid Bitz Tricks #2: Sentry Gun

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Introduction

I’ve wanted a couple of the Forge World Space Marine Tarantula sentry guns for a while now, because I’ve had a thing for sentry guns ever since watching the director’s cut of Aliens. In that movie, there were a couple of scenes in which the Marines deployed some UA 571-C sentry guns and used them to fend off the xenomorph onslaught. However, I have some problems with the Forge World Tarantula models, namely the facts that they’re too expensive at the current GBP-USD exchange rate, Forge World doesn’t deduct the 15.5% VAT for overseas customers, and I’d actually like something a bit smaller anyway. So, I decided to check my bitz box and see if I could make my own.

The Prototype

I found enough of the right bitz, and this is the result:

It’s small, looks the part, is surprisingly easy to make, and can be made solely from leftover Cadian and Space Marine bitz.

Construction

The next two photos illustrate the bitz used and where they go. (Click on the pictures to see them at full size.)

The Design

I chose to use Cadian heavy weapon bitz because I wanted the sentry gun to be plastic and fit in seamlessly with my GW plastic figures. The main body of the sentry gun is a lascannon with the entire barrel removed, and mounted on a tripod. The front half of the sentry gun is a heavy bolter with everything behind the ammo feed/ejection ports removed. I took a Cadian grenade launcher arm and removed everything except the drum, then cleaned it up to serve as the ammunition drum for the sentry gun. The drum was glued to the feed port of the heavy bolter.

At this point, the sentry gun looked a little unbalanced, so I added the muzzle brake from an autocannon to lengthen the barrel. I also sliced off the carrying handle from an autocannon ammunition drum and glued it to the top of the lascannon body. Next, I needed some sort of sensor cluster on the left hand side of the sentry gun in order to balance out the drum and make it look more like a sentry gun, so I rescued the grenade launcher’s barrel and shaved it down to serve as a large sensor housing. The rail along the bottom of the grenade launcher barrel makes a nice mounting point, so I applied glue to the bottom of the rail and attached it to the side of the lascannon body. The targeter from the heavy weapon sprue was glued above it, along the angled portion of the lascannon body.

I liked the way it looked, but it still didn’t quite say “sentry gun” to me yet. I decided it needed two more elements: some sort of control box that would make it look like a remote weapon system, and the sensor I made from the grenade launcher barrel really needed a lens in front. I went through my bitz box again, and found a Space Marine targeter and a baggie full of spare voxcaster backpacks. I sliced off and glued the front of the Space Marine targeter to the grenade launcher barrel, and it finally looked like a proper sensor. I cut off the bottom half of a voxcaster backpack and removed the long antenna from the top. To form the control box, the bottom half of the voxcaster was glued to the right side of the lascannon body, behind the ammo drum, and the antenna was glued to the control box to finish it off.

Conclusion

You can make a sentry gun out of one $13 heavy weapon team box and leftover bitz from a box of Cadians, and still have enough bitz left to make a missile launcher team and a mortar team. Use the kneeling legs for the mortar team, and the missile launcher bitz work with regular standing Cadians pretty nicely. You’ll use the included 60mm base for the mortar team, and the sentry gun will need a spare 40mm base. If you buy the $35 heavy weapon squad box, you’ll get 3 sentry guns, 3 missile launchers, and 3 mortar teams out of it.

I’m thinking about using the leftover sandbags and stuff to set up a sentry gun control station, with some sort of scratchbuilt command display, a communications unit, and a couple of kneeling guys on a 60mm base. One of those could control multiple sentry guns, and it’d look pretty cool on the tabletop.

Looking at the completed sentry gun model the next day, I think I’ll do it a bit differently next time. The heavy weapons sprue has two autocannon drum carrying handles, so the next sentry gun will have two carrying handles on the top of the body, along the angled bits of the lascannon body, which would make the sentry gun look like it could be carried by a couple of guys. The smaller targeter from the heavy weapons sprue would be moved up top, between the carrying handles and close to the front. I’ll probably leave the larger sensor on the left side of the sentry gun exactly where it is to visually balance out the drum on the right side.

More Citadel Wash testing

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Following up on the Citadel Washes review I posted a few days ago, I painted a couple of human figures to see how the Citadel Washes work on clothing and flesh.

2 Copplestone troopers and one of the bots from the review

(Now, I’m nowhere nearly as good a painter as I used to be in my youth, back when I could actually see what I was doing with the brush, so pardon the lack of eyes and absence of fancy highlighting.)

The fatigues are a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Caiman Green and Vallejo Khaki, while the boots, undershirts, weapons, and gear are a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Black and Vallejo Cold Grey. The fleshy bits are a 3:1 mix of Vallejo Dwarf Skin and Elf Skintone. The lady’s hair is Vallejo Scorched Brown, while the guy’s hair is Vallejo Beasty Brown. The fatigues and gear received a wash of Devlan Mud, while the exposed flesh and hair received a wash of Ogryn Flesh. I applied a coat of straight Future to seal the paint, and brushed on a layer of Vallejo Matte Varnish after the Future dried.

When I get some more air-drying clay, I’ll be blending the figures’ integral stub bases into the slottabases, then finishing the bases properly.

Citadel Wash Set Review

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I mentioned in the Carnifex review that I had also purchased the new Citadel Wash Set, which comes with all 8 of the new washes. I had a chance to try them out earlier while painting up some Copplestone Castings Terminator Robots to use as security robots.

The washes, with a Vallejo Game Color 17ml bottle

The 8 colors, in order of usefulness, are: Devlan Mud, Badab Black, Ogryn Flesh, Gryphonne Sepia, Thraka Green, Baal Red, Asurmen Blue, and Leviathan Purple. They come in dinky little 12ml bottles that, at first blush, made me grumble a little about how it seems that every time Games Workshop comes out with a new line of paints, the bottles shrink and the prices grow. I popped open the lids, and was annoyed to see that the bottle design doesn’t significantly improve on the problems that the older flip top bottles had. I’m planning to transfer them to spare Vallejo dropper bottles, because I really don’t like flip top pots.
The next step was to paint something so I could give them a try. Since I needed the Copplestone robots for an upcoming game anyway, it was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I basecoated the robots in Vallejo Sombre Grey, then painted the weapons, shoulders, hip actuators, knee actuators, and the thigh piping a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Black and Vallejo Cold Grey. The same 1:1 mix of Black and Cold Grey was applied to the bases.

I had 5 robots finished, so I looked over the colors. I decided to use the Badab Black wash because I wanted a dark, slightly desaturated, and somewhat oily look to the robots. I basically just dipped the brush in the pot and glopped the stuff all over the figures, with the occasional pause to wick away the excess with the brush. This is the result:

Group shot: 5 Copplestone Castings Terminator Robots
Close-up shot

I was more than a little surprised at how easy the washes were to use. The consistency is quite a bit thicker than than I expected, they go on smoothly, and they settle down into the recesses nicely. Straight from the bottle, they do stain and darken colors significantly, so they would seem to work best with lighter shades of the colors you want to use. I think they would be terrific to use for beginners, or getting those boring figures that you have to paint a lot of out of the way quickly.

I don’t think advanced painters are going to get much out of these washes, especially if they’re already used to mixing their own washes and glazes. For beginners, though, they’re a good confidence builder, as the initial results are fairly tableworthy, and they can move on to layering and highlighting from there. Also, they dry pretty flat, as you can see in the photos. (The figures aren’t even varnished yet.)

My initial grumbling about the small quantity and flip top pots aside, I like these washes.

Update: More testing here.

Tyranid Carnifex Review

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Introduction

My wife and I visited the local gaming store the other day just to pick up some dice I needed for a game. We walked out with a brick of green 12mm 6-sided dice, the new Citadel Wash set, and a Tyranid Carnifex. Heh. So much for just buying the dice.

I took a look inside the box last night, but didn’t have time to really get into it since I still had some work to finish. Today’s a light day for work, so I figured I’d take a poke at building the thing. Here are my impressions:

The size of this thing is unreal. I knew it was big, it looks big on the box, and it looks big in photographs. Seeing it in the flesh is something else…this thing is big. It towers over everything else I have by at least a good inch and a half, and that includes my Space Marine dreadnought and the Tau battlesuits. Here are some photos of the finished model:

Group shot with my Space Marines and a couple other Tyranids

Same setup, Carnifex rotated for a side view

Box Contents

The box contains a glossy black and white instruction booklet, three sprues, and a 60mm base.

The first sprue contains 5 and a half 2-part heads, a pair of Devourer arms, a pair of Deathspitter arms, two large scythe arms, two decorative head bits, six carapace spikes, a spiked mace tail attachment, and a scything tail attachment.

By “5 and a half heads”, I mean five whole heads, with an optional damaged half that can replace the right side of the normal head. The normal head is pretty much just that, a huge version of the normal Tyranid head. The other 4 heads are: one with a pair of very prominent tusks, one with a giant dripping tongue that would do Gene Simmons proud, complete with a couple of scrotum-like venom glands hanging off the chin, another head with a gaping maw showing a bio-plasma weapon, and a strange head with two very prominent vane-like structures arranged like a pair of horns and three pairs of eyes.

The two decorative head bits are a blade-like protrusion that sort of looks like a rhinoceros horn in profile, and a ridged, V-shaped bony mass. Either one of them fits on the frontmost ridge of most of the heads.

The second sprue contains a 3-part upper torso, two giant crab pincer arms, three choices of carapace, a pair of legs, the lower torso, and half of the ball socket attachment that secures the lower torso to the upper torso.

The three carapaces included are: a smooth carapace, one with spore cysts, and one with spine banks.

The third sprue contains weapons and accessories. There are two smaller scything arms, a pair of Venom Cannon arms, a pair of Barbed Strangler arms, four spikey shoulder armor bits, a large Adrenal Gland biomorph bit, and some scrotum-like Venom Gland sacs that the instructions suggest gluing to the arms.

The Barbed Strangler arms come in three pieces. The right arm is holding the weapon, and the left arm is holding a giant sac filled with spheroid projectiles, which connects to the weapon with a long, meaty-looking hose. The third piece is a barrel half for the weapon itself. A cute touch is that you can see round bulges along the hose, which visually suggests projectiles being moved to the weapon from the sac.

The Venom Cannon arms come in two pieces. The right arm is holding the weapon, and the left arm has the fingers growing into a long tube that enter the weapon body on the left side.

The instructions also show several possible configurations and armament options for the model.

Build Notes

The lower body was pretty simple, only requiring that you glue the legs to the sides of the lower torso, glue the feet to the 60mm base, and then glue the hemispherical ball socket dealie onto the “waist” part. The legs are not posable, and use rectangular slots and tabs for fitting. I didn’t use any of the optional tail attachments.

The upper torso comes in two left-right halves, and a third upper center piece that fills the gap between the left and right halves. Building the upper torso was kind of like building one of these old ERTL USS Enterprise models from the 1980s–a little frustrating and requiring some clamping and a lot of cleanup work. The last part to go on is the carapace, and I chose the smooth carapace.

All of the heads assemble identically–just glue the halves together, glue on either of the two optional decorative bits, then glue the completed head into the neck socket. I chose to use the tusked head.

I still haven’t decided what arms to put on the thing, but they all connect to the torso by way of a ball at the shoulder and 4 sockets on the upper torso. Right now I’m leaning towards the large scythe arms to fill the two uppermost arm sockets, and I’m torn between giving it a pair of Deathspitters or using one of the larger weapons.

Conclusion

I really like this model. It’s big, it’s frightening, and because of the large number of included options, you have a lot of choice in how you want the thing to look. I feel like I got my money’s worth out of this model, which is a pleasant difference from how I felt about the Space Marine Terminators I reviewed a couple of months ago.

Update: I decided to use the 4 scythe arms and tool it up into a giant slashy stabby bitey endgame boss. I also took some photos for scale and added them to the entry.