Beakies Redux... In which I bring the readers up to date on the progress made on "The Beaky Project"

An early Space Marine from the Rogue Trader era.

Faithful readers of the blog will be aware that I have been working on getting some of my oldest minis painted up (or repainted), so I can replicate the army that was lost in the last move.   That army was one I assembled in the late 80s, but didn't take with me when I was stationed in Greece, so it was nicely painted in a clean, grey and white pattern with a rising sun on their shoulder pads by my friend Mike M., who moved to  Japan with them, but returned them to me a number of years later. 

These are some 2nd ed "statue marines" that Mike painted up in the same scheme as the missing company.

Those minis made up my shockingly competitive "Everybody Walks" 3rd edition Space Marine army (51 or 52 minis spread out over 6 tac squads, a veteran squad, an HQ, and an "on foot" assault squad.  All models but the commander had just one wound, and the commander only had two).  I put the army list together after my divorce, when most of my things were going into storage, and I needed to be able to transport my army, books, templates, dice, and other gaming supplies in a backpack, so I could take them places on my motorcycle, or easily bring them with me when I went TDY with the GA Air Guard.  Nobody thought it would be very competitive, lacking buffed characters, heavy support options, and vehicles, but I just wanted to play games, meet new friends, and enjoy the hobby - winning  was not the be-all, end-all.

The boxed set that made space marines the standard science fiction infantry for tabletop wargames.

I do not paint nearly as well as Mike does.   However, I experimented a bit with red and gold over black, and eventually came up with a down and dirty crimson and old gold over a heavy black wash color scheme for my marines way back in 1998, and painted up a single squad to test it (did I mention that I am a really slow painter?).  I never had to finish painting up an army in the red and gold, until the painted army was accidentally left behind during my last move (tragedy!).

Of course, there was a problem in that GW changed their entire paint line a couple of times since I painted my test squad, so I played around a bit with the new "contrast" paints, and made it work.

Here are the last few of my assembled (or re-assembled) plastic RTB-01 marines, along with a bunch of metal marines from the Rogue Trader era.  There are still about 30 more metal marines to finish up, and I have to decide whether or not to cut some more plastic beakies off of sprues to beef up the army - The Sun Dogs (according to my version of the backstory, the are the Sun Dogs Legion of the Adeptus Astartes - the expurgated 2nd legion).

I have several copies of the guy on the left with the long bayonet.  You'll see them mixed on with the older pictures from the project. This one is differentiated by the addition of an Ork shoulder pad.

I particularly like these sculpts, which have a lot of character when painted up.

More early metal marines.  Note the shuriken catapult - which was a valid SM option in RT days.

Melta gun on far left, and did you spot the autogun?

Love the guy with the chainsword bayonet.  And there's another copy of the autogun equipped marine. The three on the right are plastic.  Tiny kitbash in the center, as he has a later model bolter.

All five of these guys are plastic.  I ran out of beaky heads, so the one in the center has a bare head.

The flamer marine with the bare arm is a great sculpt to paint.

Not an action pose, but it has a lot of character.

The last things I do to my marines are adding backpacks - some won't have them, and some will have flight/jump packs - and painting the rims of the bases to indicate which squad each mini is in.   I will probably have to look at the current rules and create army lists before I get to that step.

I've started to acquire some classic rhinos to build appropriate transport for the army - since my RT era rhinos were also victims of the move.  Here is a work in progress, showing the way I like to builkd up frontal armor on the vehicles, using Ork Battlewagon wheel plates.

For those of you just joining the blog, I'm now going to include some pictures from previous blog entries about The Beaky Project.

Classic RT era dreadnought.

Techmarine, Standard Bearer, and Apothecary.

There's one marine in this squad who is from a later era - because that was only the second melta gunner sculpt available.

Classic tactical squad.

Another tactical squad.

Small tactical squad.

Assault squad - currently on foot.

Special weapons section - the grenade launchers are all kitbashed.

Heavy weapons section.

The commander (front) is actually a later model, but was one of the painting "test" models. 

Plastic scouts from the RT era.  The one at the front right is metal, and has a shuriken catapult.

A group shot of some of these minis.  As my friend Jim V. has said about his father's army painting style "While individually the models were painted to an ok standard, en-mass they looked fantastic as part of an army" - which is exactly what I am trying to do here.

A squad of "retro" marines - 3rd ed and more recent plastic SMs  assembled with beaky helmets.

 As always, I hope you find this blog post inspiring.   Please feel free to leave constructive comments, questions, or suggestions.

Kitbashing and Toybashing - works in progress

I haven't been able to do a lot of work on minis lately - but it's been for good reasons.   Most of my "miniatures-time" in the past two weeks has been spent tidying up, organizing, and packing, because I am moving later this spring, because my house offer was accepted. This means I will no longer be a renter!

Here are a few things that I have been working on, as I try to clear my hobby area:

The first is a super-basic - but "old school" Rhino kitbash, using the classic RT era Rhino model and the tread plates from the wheels from the RT era Ork Battlewagon (which were later released as part of the "Gubbinz Bag").    The model still needs to have a few more things added, and then be painted, but is basically assembled and primed.

This Rhino is a "rescue" from ebay that I pulled apart and re-assembled in my preferred "assault" style.   You can see where the prior owner's decals were not completely covered by the fresh primer.

Next up is a "toybash" of an M-113 APC  made for action figures, modified into a heavy transport vehicle, through the addition of Predator side sponsons with heavy bolters, the turret from a 1/35th scale M-41 Walker Bulldog kit (giving it a long barrelled, high velocity autocannon), and a bow mounted heavy flamer.  Even with all those weapons and their crews, this one could easily transport at least 10 power armored minis.  Again, it hasn't had all the trimmings added, and is primed, but not painted.

It does make a pretty huge target.  Probably why the Imperium withdrew this model of "super-rhino" ("Hippo"?  "Dino"?) early on in production - but a few prototypes remain (I have the parts to build another).

Today's last model is another "Toybash" - this time of an ABC Robot from the Judge Dredd action figure line that I'm pretty sure is out of production, but is still available online.   I simply added a heavy bolter and heavy flamer to this one, seeing it as a construction or mining construct that has been pressed into service - either by gangers (Necromunda) or a Genestealer Cult (40k).  The classic RTB-01 Space Marine model is there for size comparison.  While giving it a quick and dirty paintjob, I realized that I should probably go back and cut and flip the flamer tips, so the igniters are under the flame nozzles.  ;)

Big and intimidating - but that one pigeon toed foot just kept bending back, no matter how many times I straightened it out.  ;)

As always, I hope that my efforts interest and inspire you.

Creating diversity in your tabletop army.

I was recently involved in a discussion thread on BOLS (Bell of Lost Souls) regarding the "need" for GW to add more "diversity" into their games.  The discussion was mainly about increasing the number of female miniatures, but there were also some calling for GW to present more "ethnic" miniatures.

Like many GW customers, I'd love to see more female minis for most human/human-ish factions in tabletop games, or even just female head options on every sprue, since this would keep me from having to go to 3rd party manufacturers who cast such heads in resin (I prefer working with plastic).  I think GW really missed a trick by not having the current Escher gang come with heads that could easily be added to other GW human miniatures.

One thing I said that some found controversial is this: "female Space Marines" already exist in the 40k universe - and they are called Adeptas Sororitas - so there is no need to change the backstory of the 40k universe to "create" gender integrated Space Marine chapters with female space marines.  That said, it has taken forever for the AS/SoB (Sisters of Battle) to get a revamp, but the new models are finally arriving.

Another apparently "controversial" statement I made was that I don't really see a need for GW to manufacture "different ethnicities" of each human model line.  This is not because I want the dark future to be "lilly white", but because I see this as something hobbyists can do for themselves, during the painting process.*

Hopefully, this is not going to come across as a rant, but more as an explanation of how to add ethnic diversity, without it being hand-fed to you.  Please note that I didn't paint anything up specially for this, just used a recent project.

From early on in my GW hobby experience, I have had ethnically mixed armies, due to experimenting with painting faces differently.

Here are some classic RT era scouts I recently painted up.   Notice the faces.

Having a variety of skin tones is one way to individualize monopose models, adding some visual variety to your army.

Different skin shades.

Different skin shades.

Different skin shades.

Different "caucasian" skin shades.

The "mohawk" hair style can easily be painted in colors that fit any ethnicity.

And here are the Sgts (one is repeated in both pictures):

Light and dark.

Dark with and without reddish tint.

The "block cut" is another hairstyle that can be painted to work as any ethnicity, as can another popular option with minis - the "cue ball".

Even a wilder hairstyle can be painted up to represent more than one ethnic look.

Sometimes a close up totally ruins the effect.

And, as you may have noticed, I'm not even a particularly good painter.


Perhaps what they should be asking GW for is an expanded range of "flesh tone" paints.

* And if you have a "sealed helmet" army, who is to say what color the skin is under those helmets?

What's your favorite color baby?

First post of 2020: Beakies update

Here we are in 2020.   I thought I'd share the progress on my RTB-01 Beakies project.

One thing I really need to do - and failed to accomplish over the winter break - is to clear space on a work table so I can do some "battle posed" photos with minis in terrain.   Not sure if that's in the cards for the next few months, as I need to prepare to move house later this spring.

Repainting this RT era dreadnought was my first project completed in 2020.

The new base certainly has a lot more "leg room" than his old 40mm square base.

Anyway, here is the mass photo of the RT era beakies I have painted up so far.  These include  plastic RTB-01 minis as well as RT era metal miniatures (although I stuck with either bareheaded, or beakies for this project).

A whole tray of beaky goodness!

There is a bit of variety in how the basic color scheme is painted on these minis.   The current, Contrast Paints based, color scheme is "Grey Seer" primer, then a coat of "Basilicum Grey" for weapons and equipment, and a coat of "Black Templar"  for the body, with "Flesh Tearer Red" shoulder pad/s (at least one), and  lower leg armor (usually on the left leg), along with gold ("Retributor Armour") accents (on more "modern" SMs, this means the raised rim of the shoulder pads), and "Iron Hands Steel" for bladed weapons (with a blue ink wash for power weapons).  Faces are done with a variety of contrast flesh tones over different undercoats (more on this in an upcoming post).  This is a painting scheme designed for "table ready" - so if you are looking for Golden Demon level painting, you'll need to find another blog.  ;)

Mixed in this lot are touched up/repainted minis from my old "solid color" standard of black (or sometimes dark blue) bodies with red shoulder pads and lower legs, one squad of touched up/repainted maroon bodied SMs, and a half squad of touched up "camo" SMs.   I'm guessing these must be veterans, troops on loan from another Legion/Chapter (or another company of my own Legion), non-conformists, or some other kind of special squads.

Here are a few special characters:

Techamarine (wonderful and creative sculpt) with toolbox, Standard Bearer (standard is a photocopy from -iirc - Chapter Approved Book of the Astronomican) and Medic.    The mini I used for the Standard Bearer was one of my favorite metal minis from that era, and I will have three included in this project when it is complete. 

Here are some cleaned up work in progress pictures taken of these minis last year.

Fresh builds (and rebuilds of stripped minis) to add new recruits to the project.  The dark blue plastic minis are from the '80s, while the tan ones are from the early '90s.

This squad was originally maroon, with a blue left shoulder pad.   There is one "non-beaky" in the squad, a 1990s era metal SM with melta gun.  I decided to leave him in, since he has been part of this squad since they were first painted in 1993/4.

Tac Squad, flamer, missile launcher, Vet Sgt with combi-weapon (bolter/plasma).

Tac Squad, flamer, heavy bolter, Vet Sgt with power fist.

Tac squad (reduced), flamer, heavy bolter, Vet Sgt with power fist.

Assault Squad, one marine is delivering the "universal one fingered peace salute" to humanity's enemies.

Special weapons in reserve, including flamers, melta gun, and grenade launchers (remember when SMs could take grenade launchers?).

Heavy weapons in reserve, including a heavy bolter and a variety of missile launchers.

I also painted up some RT era scouts - including one metal mini, and others from (IIRC) Advanced Space Crusade.  The size of the plastic scouts is interesting, as the scouts themselves were noticeably smaller than the Scout Sgts  that they came with - because regular scouts are not yet fully bioengineerd into SMs.  The metal scout fits in with other metal SMs from the same era.

Each of the Scout Sgts has some kind of minor conversion work.   The mini on the far right of the front row is a metal SM Scout with Shuriken Catapult.

One of the oddities of the era was how huge the Heavy Bolter for the scouts was, when the plastic heavy bolter sold at the time for other minis (from the lasgun & heavy bolter sprue that came with the Squat box set) was much more modest in size.

Diminutive scout gets issued bulkier, heavier model of heavy bolter than full-on marine.   Typical of military supply systems galaxy-wide.  ;)

As always, I hope you find something cool and/or enjoyable in the post, and hope it inspires you.

Happy 2020!