Colnel Blazdemona Kurn - Converting a female Imperial Guard Commander like it's 1995

 

A few weeks ago, I was flipping through an old White Dwarf and came across that famous article about Steppenwolf. I'm not sure if anyone remembers it, but basically, a guy who worked for GW in France had created a Chaos barbarian hero who was his general through tike and Space- 40k, fantasy, necromunda and more all in different variations from mounted and on foot, on a chariot and in terminator armour. I always loved that article.

Recently working on my Valhallans I had an idea - maybe I could convert my own general, something unique for the army. Many years ago in about 2008 when I came back to warhammer, I had my first guard army. The army was for a custom planet called Haddrack- a sort of volcanic Death World where gas-masked warriors lived beneath a barely breathable sky in hive cities. Ithe army sort of never really blossomed, but they had a few squads, a sentinel and a chimera and several games mostly against the Tyranids. 

At the time I had an idea - wouldn't it be cool to have a female commander? - there weren't any at all at the time, so I bought a metal battle sister model with a heavy bolter as the gun was separate so I could replace the arms. I  converted her with a big fur Pelt over her shoulders and different weapons, but other than cutting away the details it was pretty basic and still looked a lot like a battle sister. Regardless,the Princess of Haddrack appeared on the scene and left them I to the battle. The old army colours was a reddy-orange armour and grey coats. They were all converted using cadian plastics and to be honest it was a bit of a mess. 

Anyway, fast-forward to 2026. I'm digging through some boxes of old models. The army was long retired and what they had was drafted to other projects, but what couldn't be saved was basically just spare parts. I found the model I'd made and had a thought - what if she survived that last battle where she died to a pack of genestealers... and what if she joined my Valhallans. Somewhere I  the back of my mind d, memories of Steppenwolf and the fact she was a 1990s metal model sealed the deal. I stripped off the dodgy old conversion and went to work rebuilding her. 

One thing was for sure, I wanted her to look a lot less like a battle sister than before. I also wanted to keep her armament pretty similar which back then was a sort of hand made power fist with a circular saw blade built in for reasons that mostly relate to playing Quake 3. I didn't try to do the saw, but went looking for a new power fist. 

The build was completed in a day, but I spent a good few hours fiddling with her - first of all, I had to clean the model and cut away more from her old conversion. It's a shame I don't have a photo of the before and after. For her years commanding the original force from Haddrack, she had been converted with a fur Pelt across her shoulders with a lot of the original battle sister pads remaining. I cut those away with clippers and also cut away the remaining robes that hang from her arms. The hat came from a Vostroyan and was in my bits box for many years. I cut both the hat and her head ever flatter until the two pieces fit convincingly. Actually no greenstuff was used on this model, and all the sculpting was in standard milliput. Seemed more 90s, and actually I like the softer material and the durable finish. 

In terms of parts, I had a pair of plastic shoulders from a tank crew frame, and the canteen on her waist is an old cadian part. Her bionic arm comes from a skitarii ranger while the fist and plasma pistol come from the heresy Mk6 marine kit. Her cape is a 5th edition fantasy chaos warrior bit which actually was glued to my old unfinished "King of Haddrack" who was part of the same old project. The last part used was something I can't identify. I had a metal tube that looked like a smoke stack in the bits box with a round cup on the end with a skull on it. I cut the cap off and used it to replace her medallion. Copious quantities of milliput were used to make her upper arms and to meld everything in, as well as to build the bottom of her great coat and all the fur trim once the model was dry enough to handle it. I haven't gone to these lengths in a long time to convert something.

 Here's a work in progress of the model glued together and filled in:

To match her new model, I wrote a short back story. I love a good back story with a couple of hooks in it... GW should give me a bunch of money to write the book! Okay maybe not, but I enjoyed it, and she has been back in action. Always nice to cobble a model together from spares and create something you like. For second editions she is being used with a power fist, bionic arm, refractor field and master crafted plasma pistol.

Haddrack, the death world. A violent landscape of simmering volcanoes and seismic cataclysms. A world where a once proud warrior culture thrived in scattered hive cities buried beneath the surface - fuelled by an economy born of rich mineral deposits and industry.

A decade ago, without warning the Tyranids came. Terrible ships descended from the scorched skies upon the benighted surface and war raged in the ashen wastelands. In the final battle, Blazdemona led her people as Crown Princess alongside her father the King of Haddrack, but her command squad was overrun. Summoning all the martial prowess of her people, she slew three genestealers in single combat - her Haddracki disc gauntlet hewing their alien bodies with horrendous power, but it was not enough. With a roar of rage, one of the beasts tore her left arm from her body and she was cast to the ground. Just when all seemed lost, the King of Haddrack intervened. Bundling his only daughter's stricken body into his royal cloak. He threw her on the back of his Fire Dragon Harkonus and whipped the beast towards the evac point. She was evacuated in the final off world transport mere moments before the surface was ignited from orbit by an Imperial cruiser in a roiling plasma wave that destroyed all life on the surface. The imperium had triumphed, but there was nothing left and the king had sold his life to ensure his daughter's survival.

With no home, the remnants of the Haddraki defence force were absorbed into the Guard. Some units were taken as far as Armageddon Prime to be refitted. Blazdemona was left behind, her wounds so severe that she spent over a year recuperating before finally being fitted with a new bionic left arm on Valhalla. Thirsting for revenge against the aliens, she enlisted immediately where her skills helped her rise to the top once again on that strange frozen planet so unlike her home world.

Some say that even a decade after the tragedy on her homeworld, she still longs to return. One rumour even has it that the Royal skull pendant she bears is actually a cypher that can open the ancient blast doors of Haddrack once again, and that in their final hours the warriors had created a weapon known only as Omega. A weapon that still lies dormant - just waiting for a command from the royal line. 

Valhallan Ice Warriors - 90s Imperial Guard Army

I've always been a big fan of Imperial Guard, and there's something fun about having an army of ordinary men on the field in a future full of monsters and superhumans. I do have a Steel Legion force, but when I started playing second edition, I wanted to work on a force that would be styled classically and be bright as can be.

I always wanted a guard army in the 90s and there's always been a certain attraction to Valhallans. They remain great characterful models, and the old scheme with green cammo over white is nice and striking. I've never actually painted an army in camouflage before so that was new. Like the originals, I went with quite a bold pattern intentionally as I sort of don't want it to work - I've played with camo once or twice and have seen if it actually works it will blur the details and outli es which on a miniature, especially on a table view can leave them looking indistinct and muddy. 

So far I've painted about 750 points with more on the way. In old money, that makes for a command squad, psyker, 2 units of 10 men, and a Leman Russ Battle Tank. My commander is heavily converted from a battle sister using a mix of parts, and I am going to do a separate post with details of her build as it's a long story how she came about. I was tempted to use Chenkov, but I wanted something a bit more unique and it was happy to be able to use a model from the 90s that was around in the right era. 

I had a spare plastic Advanced Hero Quest wizard and as he was looking sort of like a suitable psyker he got drafted to the force. Actually I bought a batch of miniatures to get hold of an old metal cannoness and he came for free. As he looked the part and was from the right era, I figured he would work well. I added a little fur trim to his jacket just to sell the look and get him to match the force. 

The Leman Russ has the old metal tank commander in attendance - ready to wield that storm bolter wargear card in anger! 

Actually, I haven't mentioned, but I intentionally adjusted their colour scheme a bit. Original Valhallans had dark green casings on their guns, rather than the red and yellow parts. I wanted to lift the scheme a little bit more just to make them eye-catching on the field. Looking at old White Dwarf magazines, there's a great shot on the back cover of that issue with the blood angels Blasma Cannon guy on the cover with valhallans and Tyranids. It's very early 3rd and the Valhallans are done with tan/yellow coats much like Steel Legion. I think it was an odd choice in retrospect as they were already one of the more realistic schemes in the range with the main colours being white and green snow cammo with dark green guns and fatigues. It was in the era of making things more serious for 3rd, but looking back I'm surprised they weren't just re-based on less garish bases for the new edition. 

The other thing to mention is that out of necessity there are a number of repairs done to models in this force. I got a mortar crew with no mortar so the mortar seen is a pen cap with a few spares added. I used the pen cap as the main thing to making it look original for ke was the large barrel size. 

The missile launcher guy also came with only one arm - and no missile launcher at all. I used a space marine hunter killer missile and a cadian arm with a bit of milliput to build a suitable cuff on it. 

The sandbag scenery is just chopped up hard board for a base with a stack off original milliput bags built up on top. Basically forming little beans one by one, I stack them and use a paint brush handle to shape the tops so they look heavy and sort of uneven, then after stacking a bunch, I score around the middle of the visible sides to make a seam. 

Anyway, here's a full zoomed out shot of the entrenched Valhallan 94th - they became the 94th as that's what their metal tabs say - sculpted in 1994! 

Don't forget to check them out in the Battle for Bunker 111 - a battle report here on the blog featuring this force: The Battle for Bunker 111

 

2nd Edition Sisters of Battle, Order of Our Martyred Lady

Armour as black as a dark thing... robes also very dark black. Yep, I really didn't notice how GW changed the colour scheme over the years for the Order of Our Martyred Lady.I do actually really like the darker look though - very nuny ... nunny(?) ... makes them look like nuns. I like the few additional red trim bits too, but I've introduced a little yellow to lift the characters and vehicles. Everyone likes hazard stripes - even nuns. 
 

It's not a big force yet - 6 sisters, a classic Rhino, Cannoness (yet to be named) and 5 Frateris Militia. The militia back then were basically similar to imperial guard conscripts with a brutal WS 2 BS 2 profile. The only good thing is you get a plus to BS with some guns at short range which isn't bad for a meat shield... I mean valuable citizen that the sisters would surely not use as a meat shield every single game...

I've had the metal sisters for a number of years and picked a bunch of them up off eBay in about 2012ish for an old army. They army had fallen out of use a long time ago, and these were crying out for for a new life. I got the cannoness more recently in an eBay bits lot for a few pound, but she was missing her raised icon, so I gave her a power maul to replace her missing hand. 

The legendary Frateris Militia came straight from my junk box. Led by the famous Peter Crotchplate ... an old 90s Goliath ganger who had been rolling around the bottom of the drawer as the butt of a number of jokes. Next to the left is Greco - legendary Wardancer with a weird gun conversion who also was in the junk pile. Further to the left... a bretonnian archer with a 90s chaos warrior head and a few milliput additions. Added to them was an ancient catachan and a 90s Orlock ganger. Many if these had been converted as Diggas for a Gorkamorka campaign that never really happened, and now they've been pressed back into service on the front lines of 2nd edition.  They were quick to paint too. My new tip is that if you thin gore grunta contrast it makes a good skin tone contrast!

Official frateris militia models do exist, but they're pretty rare and expensive. At some point I hope to get a few to scatter in the units for good measure. 

Back to the ladies firing guns on a sunny day in the grassy green fields of what was once not quite such a grim dark future. That said, a full suit of armour on a hot sunny day would probably get grim pretty quick. No wonder the battle sisters were angry! 

I did my best to copy the freehand door designs on the side of the rhino and they came out pretty good. I'm not a huge free-hand lover (well, I like looking at good freehand...) as I get inpatient if a design is complex, but these were good fun.

The original lore for Sisters of Battle puts them very much on the front line - functionally being the first line of defence for imperial worlds. There's no mention of Planetary Defence Forces and while waiting for Space Marines or Imperial Guard, they were there to save the earth from the scum of the universe. It also explains why Militia were a thing. It was also amusing to read that Militia were made up in part of ecclesiastical admin workers and other hopelessly unprepared types - which also explains the less than shining stat-lines. 

Exactly what job Peter Crotchplate had in the ecclesiarchy was a mystery. Master of re-education would be my guess...

2nd Edition Tyranid Army (1000 points complete)

 

Finally, a project several years in the making has burst forth from the cupboard of shame - yipping  and dribbling with oddly adorable grins, they burst forth onto the battlefield ready to tear some imperial beakies limb from limb!

A few years ago I posted a hive tyrant and then a few years later a carnifex. I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition for several years now, and do love the old game I grew up with. Back in those days, 2nd edition was in full swing, but I couldn't afford to play a second game - the price or a new starter set was way out of reach, but I still spent hours staring at the old models. Actually I remember at about age 10 spending an afternoon with a piece of tracing paper building a picture of a cool space marine force by tracing out a range of different terminators and marines! Anyway, I also wanted some tyranids. I collected these over a few years, but about 6 months ago finally got a little inspiration and picked up the termagants and warriors to really get things started.

After playing so much fantasy, I'm no stranger to a huge pile of old metal slag. A bit of building work and an undercoat and they were ready to go. I find the trick to pai ting in a second edition style is generally to start with your brightest colour and then highlight that. These warriors were given a few coats of whatever you call Blood Red these days and then highlighted with s0me oranges to really get the colour as hard as possible. Love the metal warriors too. They're so different I  design to the Space Crusade type plastic ones that they would have passed as something else altogether! You need to have a venom cannon too! 

As a side point I should probably also mention the scenery as I built that too. Cliffs are the thing of the day and were in abundance back then - as was flock ... so both were built and used liberally. I made them stackable so for photos built a big pile of them to try to fill in the back. At some point I'd like to do a painting to fill in the open sky, bit for now a furry white blanket is masquerading as clouds. 

The classic carnifex is a must - as we're a number of termagants and genestealers. Actually the old metal hunter-slayers came from my brother who got them from someone else and they were already painted. They matched my scheme so well, I decided not to strip them and just kept the 90s paint as it was. At some point I will tidy them up a bit. 

The hormagaunts were the most difficult thing to paint in the arms - lots of pointy arms on there! I do love the old design though. You can just imagine them going to town with those ferocious looking spring loaded stabby-arms. Love the long lobe type heads too. Actually these are probably the models I deviated more from the official scheme of the day on.

The genestealers were painted in a single 24 hour period. I tried to keep them pretty classic looking and used a bit of drybrushing to speed them along. Their bodies were given a solid coat of Vallejo dark prussian blue mixed 50/50 with Royal Purple as a nice saturated base to work on. I gave them a quick drybrush of this same colour with a little white in it. I then painted transparent red in all the bits that were to be pink and slowly built them up largely by drybrushing vallejo magenta with ever higher amounts of white in the mix.

The army had their first outing today in a few skirmishes. Next up might be the old zoanthrope, although more terrain also looks like a possibility. 

Genestealers break from cover to ambush a Sisters of Battle patrol

Infinity scale Sci Fi Cars - scenery/terrain project

 

I'd been wanting to get my hands on a few cars to compliment my new Infinity terrain I've been working on, and was scratching my head for some time. The best option for a while looked to be trying to get hold of some diecast models. There are a few proper options out there, or resin 3d prints maybe, but it was looking a bit expensive. I don't like putting too much money into terrain pieces. While pondering this, I had a flash of inspiration- what about that box of run down old Scalextric cars that had been in a drawer for 20-30 years?

So I pulled them out and hey - the scale wasn't bad. Maybe a little on  the big side, but who knows how big cars will be in the future right? - I'm not a perfectionist for these things. The other advantage was that they were really really dirty... no wait that wasn't the advantage, the advantage was that as they were race cars of a few types they already looked sort of non-mundane and a bit futuristic. Also according to Downfall (an Infinity book/novel - which has been really good) there are still cars that don't fly and even sports cars. It was all coming together. 

With nothing to stop me, I set about the task of cleaning the dust off of them. I decided to keep the clear windows as were, so I put masking tape on those, and then undercoated them with a bit of black spray. 

Some airbrushing later, a few very hasty panel highlights and a freehand go-faster-stripe and here we have the finished result - apparently ready to deploy my Yadu multi-rifle and tacbot into the fray!

It's always nice to repurpose something from the junk heap of life. These cars almost went in the bin about a year or so ago during a house move, so it's a cool thing both to have for the field and to rescue from oblivion. 

Original photo below of the condition  of the cars when they were found. You could almost just clean them up and pit them on the table if you don't mind the cheap plastic look and are in a hurry, but I wanted then to match the aesthetic of the game. I pulled 3 cars for the initial batch. So far I've only finished one, but it's a start. 

Well, that's about it for today - I posted this really in the hope that one day someone else could do the same.  We'll see if the idea catches on.

Infinity Aleph Rudras GunBot

 

Work on odd Infinity pieces continues. A big part of the appeal of the game is the high tech cyberpunk style aesthetic and rules. In that vein, I've painted a rather nice Aleph remote. In terms of the game it functions similarly to a fast heavy Infantry, but also comes with a handy repeater installed that allows you to use it as a sort of hacking hub to expand the reach of your hackers. 

This also gives me a slight opportunity to show some of the infinity scenery I've been working on. It's a mix of different MDF kits and I'm keeping yhr bright colours coming. I love a bright and exciting looking board, so I've had that in mind with the scenery too. I really want it to pop on in the table, and nothing says futuristic like neon bright colours! 

The paint scheme for the Rudra matches my Aleph. Essentially based around a white grey base airbrush blend with everything else being jist normal brushwork. The numbers and letters are all freehand too. 

All the metals are non-metallic style on this thing too. It's a technique I've experimented with a bit over the years, and have made decent progress on. I think to do it really well takes a very long time, so for me I'm happy to get only passable/decent results if I can do it relatively quickly!

Infinity Aleph Army - showcase

Jist a quick post to drop photos of my burgeoning Aleph army for Infinity. It's still a work in progress force, but these are the finished models so far. I've especially enjoyed working on the remotes (robots) for them- some great designs and they also feel very distinct compared to most of the warhammer type stuff I've painted recently. 

I've had these for a number of years, and this was a project almost a decade in the making

 I had a stuttering start on Aleph a number of years ago, but I wasn't happy with the paint scheme and lost momentum on the project. Compared to the official scheme, I've introduced more yellow and gold style non metallic models. 

Speaking of the non metallic metals, it is quite a basic recipe for the gold/yellow - basically, baler brown with Skeleton Horde contrast on it. Then highlighted up with demonic yellow (army painter) and then mixing more white in before finally adding the pure white highlights. It works great on the smaller areas, but I probably need more practice for the bigger areas!