Blog Tk'ya'pyk's Modeling Attempts (Scratchbashers Beware)

They needed a pop of color, and mushrooms are kind of the tie-in theme for the Gloomspite, so it made sense.

 

Ahem...

TROGGOTHS!!!

Meet Finn, Gill, and Hook. These guys like hanging out in the swamp near the troggoth caverns and eating fish... and the occasional stupid adventurer...

 

So at the moment, I have several armies.

For Age of Sigmar, I have:
Troggoth (~1000 pts)
Orruk Warclans (mixed Big Waagh, Bonesplittaz/Greenskinz, 2000+ pts)
Clan Moulder (~2200 pts)
Mixed Skaventide (~1200 pts)
Legions of Nagash (~1200 pts)
Seraphon (~2000 pts, but not a coherent force)
Barony of the Isles (Cities of Sigmar force with custom units, not actually useable at the moment)

For 8th Edition WFB I have:
Ghezzik Khan's Goblin Wolfridaz (Orcs & Goblins; This is a tiny force - 15 goblin wolf riders, 1 chariot, and 2 Bosses on wolves)
Kibolti of the Border Princes (Dogs of War using Frostgrave Gnoll miniatures; Not a coherent force but has 100+ figures already)

Finally, for 40K:
Tiger Kump'ny (Ork Grot Tank army, ~2000 pts?)
Skaviir Dominions (Former R&H Astra Militarum army, current points value unknown - lots of currently unusable units)
World Eaters and the Skull Jugglers (Heretic Astartes, current points value unknown)

There are other minis in there as well - a smattering of kobold figures, some old Chaos Warriors, Perry Bros. historicals that I was going to use for my Dogs of War army, that sort of thing. At the moment though, I'm just trying to get a coherent 40K army together. While my Grot Tanks are fun, I don't have a tank/bike/whatever HQ for that army yet. The Skaviir Dominions are being worked on, but that is officially my oldest army (I started that back in 1992) and it is hard to keep focused on it these days because the minis are showing their age.

So that leaves the Chaos Marines.

Currently, that means Berserkers, more Berserkers, Hellbrutes, Predator Tanks, the odd Brass Scorpion (Defiler) conversion, and of course, my Skull Juggler Cultists. I'm converting them from Escher Gangers for the most part, but I wanted some themed HQ to go with them. For the army theme, the Skull Jugglers used to be an all-female Imperial Guard company known as the Shadevari Red-Wolves. Shadevari's PDF and Guard regiments were all named in a similar manner - White-Wolves, Black-Wolves, Blue-Wolves, and so forth. Alas, over time the Red-Wolves grew more interested in bloodshed and killing than serving the Emperor's Will, attracting the attention of Khorne. The more of Khorne's attention they garnered, the more skill they seemed to gain in combat, and the more melee-focused the regiment became. By the time Khorne's blessings began to show, they were long past trying to hide their changed allegiances.

Colonel Kaliva, through her deeds in melee and reaping skulls for Khorne, has become a daemonic monster, with broad, powerful bat wings and an aura of evil about her. She still leads the regiment, her old carapace armor having morphed into something akin to the power armor used by the Heretic Astartes. Nobody really knows where the regiment's Chaplain came from - she was assigned to the regiment after they left Shadevari - but she fell into heresy along with the regiment and is now a Dark Apostle...

...and since I needed a themed HQ to go with the Cultists, here she is!

She is a simple conversion of a Sisters of Battle Cannoness. Carved off the fleur-de-lis and Sisters iconography, used a bloodletter skull on her Cursed Crozius, and so forth. I need to make the spikes on her halo longer and more chaos-y, but otherwise she and her Dark Disciples - converted from Escher gangers - are ready for basing and paint!

(Edit: I have also been told that she apparently needs more skulls. Go figure.)

 

Wow... it has been almost a year since I posted anything here. I should PROBABLY fix that...

So, quick background. I first started in Warhammer 40K back in 1993 or so. One of my friends from High School had the Rogue Trader book (Warhammer 40K 2nd edition was JUST being released at the time), so we scrounged up some money, went to our local hobby shop, and picked up whatever we could get cheap to convert. My buddy had (at that time) mixed Space Marines and some Squats (he still has them, but the mixed Space Marines are mostly Ultramarines now). I, on the other hand, could not decide what to get. I didn't have a lot of money, so my options were limited. Then I found these:



8, monopose Skaven clanrats, which at the time cost $12.50. After some looking through the other options, I picked up some Necromunda and Gorkamorka weapon blister packs (yes, back then you could buy packs of JUST WEAPONS for converting minis! I miss those packs and wish they still sold them in local stores). The minis were chunky and monopose, the weapons were chunky and kind of boxy, but the resulting conversion was, well...


Not horrible.
Skaven in space.
Rogue Trader did not have rules for space skaven, but there were hints about them in the book. Ratling Snipers existed back then, and you had to pick toxins for their sniper rifles. Guess what? Skavenbane was one of those toxins. We never played a lot of games of Rogue Trader before swapping over to 2nd edition, and as you can see I never really got around to painting them.
I kind of kept the Skaven in Space idea on the backburner for a while after that and switched over to playing the Imperial Guard. But in the late 90's, with the end of 3rd edition 40K, things changed. Plastic Catachans came out, along with the multipart plastic Clanrats (the ones people called 'skaven monkeys'). A bit of tinkering proved that the parts were pretty interchangeable! Thus were born the - yes, this is a bad pun - Ratachans. Eventually this was followed by plastic Cadians, by which time the Eye of Terror campaign had started. It didn't take me long to decide the Ratachans were Chaos-aligned, so the army was soon modded (pretty easily to be honest) into a Lost and the Damned (Traitor Guard) army.
These Clanrat/Night Runner + Catachan/Cadian conversions still form the backbone of my Skaviir Dominion army. They don't look completely horrible...

 

Now, the Lost and the Damned had some interesting twists to it. It was mostly a revised, tweaked Imperial Guard army, but you could add a few units/character from the Chaos Marines, as well as certain... other... things. Like the Defiler, which had just been released for the first time. Alas, I have no remaining pics of my Defiler conversion, dubbed the "Squeaky Death Tank of Doom-Doom." It has long since been dismantled and turned into Bitey, my Brass Scorpion Defiler.

Unfortunately, things went downhill for my Space Skaven rather quickly after about 2005. I got a promotion at work and had little to no time to work on minis, and then I met my future wife and got married. Between 2005 and 2012, 40K went through several editions, and I was on hiatus from the hobby for most of it. Lost and the Damned became the Renegades of Vraks (which was an okay army list) but by 8th edition, they were practically unplayable. It doesn't help that I had to sell a LOT of stuff in 2009, including all of my tanks. So sad. I had an entire Armored Company once, and enough Basilisks and such for an Artillery Company too. All gone now.

But that didn't matter so much. During that time, the Ratachans (such a terrible pun-name) went through some background changes. The first was to change the name. Ratacha was now a planet in their empire, which was now the Skaviir Dominion (because taking Skaven and changing that into Skaviir was slightly less comedic than adding 'rat' to something else). The Space-Skaven were now the rattikin, citizens of the Dominion.

But as mentioned, 8th edition 40K put a stop to any work on the army, all because of two annoying words. Those two words are "Objective Secured." While the Renegades and Heretics (former Renegades of Vraks, formerly Lost and the Damned) had 8th edition warcards in the Forge World Compendium, they did NOT have a codex, which means they did not have their own version of Objective Secured. That makes it VERY VERY VERY hard to hold objectives, since it only took 1 Astra Militarum infantry pud or Eldar Guardian to hold an objective, even if I had 10, 20, 50, or 100 of my Dominion infantry on that objective!

So... into the box they went.

Recently though, a friend in Germany pointed out that I wasn't running the Skaviir as Chaos-rats anymore, and had not in a long time. They were really more like a Xenos army that used captured Imperial tech. I pondered this for a while, and began to convert enough of the army into an Astra Militarum force to let me use those rules. Didn't take much, really. I have some stuff I cannot use without custom-warcards and my opponents' permission, but I can work around that 99% of the time.

But that still left me with an issue. I had sold all of those tanks and my tracked artillery. I still had a pair of heavy mortars and a thudd gun, and a pile of Sentinel walkers.

But several games have proven to me that I need something a little, um, heavier.

 

Which brings us to my current scratchbashing project! I liked the idea of having the Skaviir use walkers instead of treaded vehicles, and they originally had cavalry (back when Rough Riders were a thing). This is why I have 8 Sentinels. But I wanted something a little bigger and heavier, and couldn't for the longest time figure out how to make a Sentinel-Tank. Recently though, while looking for something else, I came across this:


I do not know who made it, couldn't find any info on it, but it is clearly a mix of Sentinel parts with some bigger weapons, and it has inspired me! Taking a moment or three to think, I gathered some materials and kits and prepped to make one of my more ambitious projects:
The IKIT-CLASS, Mk IV, Light Stalk Tank!!!
We start with these:


Two Sentinel War Walkers (one of the newer kits with the poseable legs, and one older kit with the rigid monopose legs because it was on sale for cheap) and a pack of Baneblade Sponson sprues. Added to this will be some sheet styrene and styrene square stock (to reinforce joints) and a pile of tools:

Most of them are pretty normal. Pin drill with bits, razor saw, hobby knife, and so forth. However, one tool I find very useful for this kind of build is the NWSL Duplicutter. https://nwsl.com/collections/duplicutter-ii/products/the-duplicutter-ii Mine is an older Duplicutter-i model, but the idea is the same. It allows you to set the depth on the device and make multiple pieces of, say, stripwood or sheet plastic the same length. You don't NEED such a device, but it is very useful for making buildings and vehicles.

 

It should be! When I mentioned on the Lustria Discord I was going to try to make my own version, someone suggested I should document the conversion attempt on here, so that's what I'm doing.

Back to the fun!

So, IDEALLY, the first thing you have to take into consideration is what your conversion will be a stand-in for. This will dictate your armament and what you'll need to add to the build to equip it. In this case, I have decided that the Ikit Class, Mk IV Light, Stalk Tank (known as a Light Du'Keld in short by the Skaviir soldiers who work alongside them) will be a stand in for a variety of Chimera-chassis and other Toughness 7 Astra Militarum vehicles. This primarily includes the Hellhound (with the Chem-Wolf and Devil-Dog alts), the Salamander, possibly the Griffon mortar vehicle, and my personal favorite option, the Carnodon. I think that Manticore, Basilisk, Wyvern, Deathstrike, and Medusa armaments will be a tad on the big side for this chassis. If I ever figure out a good way to do it, it may also include the Chimera itself, but the Ikit Class is a little small to be a troop transport.

The next thing to think about is part size and compatibility. This is easy for much of the build. It uses a Sentinel cab and legs, so that kind of dictates a lot of the sizing, but since this is a tank of sorts, it needs a turret. To build the section under the turret, we first need to know how big the turret is.

For this mod, I'm using the turrets on those Baneblade Sponson sprues, so I started by taking the relevant parts off of the sprue and cleaning them up.


The next thing I did was remove the rivets. Sentinels don't really have rivet detail, and I like to think that the Skaviir are more advanced and use, y'know, welded joints instead of piles of rivets like an ork.



Then we assemble. Now the nice thing about this is the recessed turret ring under the bottom plate. It is sized almost perfectly for the ring-magnets I like to use for tank builds, so I will likely magnetize this turret like I do for my other ones. I assembled the turret, and while that was setting up I tackled the gun barrel. For this first build, I decided to go with a Devil Dog (Devil-rat?) loadout, with a Multi-Melta and a Melta-Cannon. This was partly because I already had a couple of Multi-Meltas on hand that I wanted to use, but how to make the Melta-Cannon?

Kind of hard to see in the pic, but I used the rear half of the lascannon that came with the Baneblade Sponson sprue, added in a suppressor chunk from an ork Loota's Deffgun, and the business end of an autocannon from the Cadian Heavy Weapon Team sprues. There are other ways to do this, obviously, but this is the route I went. More later as I get things built.

Next task, we tackle the main frame of the build, but that will have to wait as I dig out my sheet styrene which I appear to have misplaced...

 

Soooo, back to work. My next sub-assembly is the cab. Pretty straightforward. Sentinel cab with the armored sentinel sides and top, but without the power plant. I also cut off the mount for the operator's storage box.

Now that this is assembled, we can work on the body. The reason we have to assemble the cab first is so we know how tall to make the first body section (yes, I said first - you'll see) so that the cab doesn't interfere with the turret motion. So onward to building the body. We start with sheet styrene.

This is where the Duplicutter comes into play. Since the body section needs to be taller than the cab, we start by measuring the cab.

So about an inch. Now we set the Duplicutter. Hmm. I should learn not to wear plaid shorts with a plaid shirt. That does NOT go together, but I'm on my day off and not leaving the house, so meh.

Pretty straightforward. Insert the steel ruler under the locking bar, slide the stop plate over, and use the black locking clips to hold the stop plate at the desired size.

Slide it in, lock the red twists down to hold the clamping bar in place, and voila. Cut with a hobby knife or razor blade (carefully if you do that option), and voila!

A perfect piece of plastic sized to fit.

 

Ooookay, back to the project.
So with that strip cut, we can slice it into smaller sections of equal length and add some square rod stock as braces like so:

This assembles like so:

...and a bit of gluing work and you get...

But one isn't enough.

So we make two.

 

Now, after squaring those up, we'll switch for a bit to let the glue set. The Devil Rat (dog) loadout requires a Melta Cannon turret and a Multi-Melta on the hull (or heavy flamer, but if you're going to do one melta, why not do two?), so we need to mount a multi-melta somehow. Since we're using the cab of the Sentinel, that provides a mounting point for a heavy weapon. All we need is a multi-melta...

On top is a stock Sentinel Multi-Laser. Below is one I have modded into a multi-melta. Chop the front off of the multi-laser, replace with the business end of the multi-melta from... um... I think this one came from a Land Speeder at one point? Instead of the twin canisters to either side of the body, I cut the inside one off and mounted it on top so it'll clear the Sentinel cab side. Quick test-fit proves it works fine. Now, back to the body.

Glued some end caps onto the boxes, and done. Now we need to connect them. What could we use to connect them...

Hmm. Got a lot of old slotta-bases...

Glue them back-to back...

 

Those get glued between the boxes. This... well, it is a prototype build. I'll probably call it the Mark III, and the refined one will be the Mark IV. This works, but makes it a little more boxy than I like. I think for the next build, I'll make some kind of large-diamer (but short) ball-joint so I can pivot the body segments left and right a little to pose them. Still, this will do for now. The observant will note that the boxes are the same side, but as rectangular boxes, the left one is set on a taller side, while the right one is set shorter. This was on purpose.

A strip of styrene under the body, mount the cab-ball-mount on the end of that strip, and then test-fit the turret and the cab. Not horrible. Next we have to work on the legs. This is going to take some planning and thought, so there will be a pause while I consider that... and work on the ork squiggoth that arrived in the mail a few days ago...

 

Side distraction: more grot tank madness!

Tiny tiny grot tank vindicator!!!
I will either use this as a lobba or a kannon (big gunz) or, if forced to do something more up to date (big gunz are Legends now) as a Grotzooka tank.

 

Excellent! Love that it's a vindicator too

 

So back to work on the Sentinel-doggy (ratty?) kitbash. Where were we... oh yes. Legs. So I started with the rear legs, simply because as fixed-angle parts, they were easier to begin with. A quick test-fit of the legs against the hull told me... that the rear section of the hull didn't feel right. It felt too long.

So I did a quick measurement job, and then cut it down a little shorter!
While I was waiting for the glue to dry after putting the rear plate back on the body, I pulled out a 120mm oval base and prepped it for use.

Why a base? Because like a Sentinel, walkers just work better on a base. Thin (1/8 in thick) cork sheet chunks, modeling putty, and some chips of slate. Add some glue, and let it sit. I plan on having one of the legs on top of that big blob of modeling putty, making it look like it is climbing the rock. Or rather, the dunes. My Skaviir Dominion army, better known as the 13th Sand Rats, are on a desert planet. While the chips of rock will be painted to look like, well, rocks, everything else will be covered in a thin layer of fine sand (though I think I will leave some of the cork showing and paint it to look like a ruined road of some kind).

Now, back to the body. The legs need mounting points. Huh, look, Sentinel parts and a razor saw. Put them together...

Original part is on the bottom-left of the sprue in the pic. I cut this one down to use the ball-mount for the cab, then cut the posts and their bearing mount sections away from the rest of the mounting plate.

Dry-fit to see what looks best, then we pull out a ruler and a marker.


Clean up the parts I cut away from the Sentinel's leg assembly, a bit of glue, and...


And we have the mounts for the rear legs.

Next step is to do the same thing for the front leg mounts, and cut the remaining parts to the legs and feet from the sprues to prep them for cleanup and use.

 

So back leg mount is done, time to make the mounts for the front legs.

So after some quick part comparison, I opted to set the front legs back a bit from center, but at a slightly higher level than the rear legs. You will also notice that I cut a slope in the front of the torso, right behind where the cab sits. Squared off, there wasn't a lot of play in how the cab could sit, and I wanted it to look like the driver could turn the cab/head for better visibility and targeting. Plus it would look cooler if I could position the head at an angle, rather than forcing it to look forward. Makes the whole build look less boxy, too.

Here it is with the leg mount attached.
SPEAKING of legs...

The older-model Sentinel legs (on the outside left and right of the pic) as mentioned, are monopose. The newer ones, as seen in the center (bottom and top) are somewhat pose-able. More parts to clean and position, but it makes it easier to give the finished model a more natural pose on the base. I attached the feet to the back legs, put them on, and rough-positioned it with a drop of superglue to temporarily hold those legs in place. Once that was done, I put the front legs together, put them on, and then began to fiddle with the positioning of the front legs to see what was stable and looked nice.
End result:



Clearly not done yet, but it is coming together! Looks a little like an AT-AT, doesn't it? I'll bury the feet a little in the fine sand I'm planning to cover the base with, to make it look like it is walking through dunes.

The next step will require a bit of tinkering. I know I have the magnets I need to mount the turret, I just have to find them. Then I need to mount the cab, find my box of 4th/5th edition Skaven Clanrat shield bosses and add some details. It needs exhausts, some hatches, possibly a fuel tank or two, and so forth...

...oh, and a tail. This is a Devil Rat, and it needs a TAIL...

 

So we add the weapons. Cab is straight-forward. Glue the Multi-melta to the cab mount, add the battery pack. For the turret, we use ring-magnets. You can use normal disc magnets, but I like rings for turrets. They seem to work a tad better for turrets.


aaaaand then we assemble everything and add detail bits!


Skaven triskele is from the old Clanrat shield bosses. Angled hatches on the front body are cut from a 'Russ turret (old model). Exhaust and cab details are stock Sentinel parts, and the top hatch on the rear section is from the Baneblade Sponson sprues!

Voila, one walker tank! The only thing it needs now is finished basing, paint, and - this is KEY - a freaking TAIL! I'm working on that. I know how to build it, I just need to source parts. I could add a pintle-mount Heavy Stubber or Storm Bolter, since this is supposed to be a stand-in for a Hellhound/Devil Dog, but I think a pair of Melta-weapons are sufficient for a light walker tank like this.

There we have it, one mostly-finished kitbash/conversion! I give you:

The Ikit-Class, Mark III Light Stalk Tank, Devil-Rat configuration, for the Skaviir Dominion's 13th Scout Company, the Sand Rats.

Also known as a Du'Keld Devil-Rat by the line troops, because the official name is quite a mouthful...

 

I very much like the concept. Wargames atlantica grognards heavy weapons would be a good kitbashing source for bits

 

Awesome work mate!! Such a wonderful model it has become.

Can't wait to see it painted up.

Keep up the great work!

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Really fantastic conversion