The Mechanicum Transport

This is an old project that has recently gotten a bit of momentum after receiving a GSI Tentacle Maker for Christmas. Mmmm... tentacles. This is an awesome tool for creating textured tentacles or, in this case, cabling for Mechanicus conversions. Very easy to use and pretty robust, I suspect it will find extensive use in the future. 

But onward to the model, the transport vehicle (counts as Ghost Ark) for the Tech-guard. The idea for model came to mind after seeing another person's Mechanicum transport at my local GW store which was very pretty indeed. But seeing that model reminded me of another type of transport from a totally different, yet underrated, game. I present the UEF air transport from Supreme Commander.

Simple,utilitarian, effective. All the hallmarks of a Mechanicus vehicle, the only problem is that it is not red. The model I built is based on the Space Marine Storm Talon, elongated with the barrel of the Necron Doomsday cannon. The Storm Talon's tail was cut off (carefully) at the first section of armour plating and the Doomsday cannon was shoved (carefully) into the hole.

The next thing to wrack my mind was how to do the harnesses. The idea I had was buy a Space Marine Drop Pod and use the harnesses from that, there are 10 in a box, I thought I was so smart. This idea gave me a whole host of trouble as I tried to fit them on. I finally settled on the following configuration and I'm happy with it. Simple, utilitarian, effective.

After receiving a tentacle maker I just had to use it. No vehicle of the Mechanicum is complete without bare cabling all over it. It was easy to go over board but I really restrained myself to not go crazy. What I ended up adding was just a few cables running from the main 'head' of the vehicle into the spine. 

This is what the transport currently looks like. 

The only details left are the holes for engines and the front of the transport. I decided not to give the thing engines and was planning to put the Machina Opus on either side. That's the symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus for the non-cyborg nuts. Now, I suck at free-hand painting so I'm trying to find a skull big enough to fit the bill to stick on. I think I've found a piece, so we shall see how that goes. The Ghost Ark itself has the ability to repair Necron warriors on the fly, and as a skimmer I've always had the image of some form of bottom feeder look to the front. Crawling through the wreckage of the battlefield, salvaging bits of men and equipment to fix back up. So, I took some small Necron claws, syringes and lashes from the Spyder kit and made Cthulhu. These are currently blue-tacked on as I'm still contemplating how to aesthetically attach them to the main body.

More to come when more work gets done.

AdMech Conversions

Being an Adeptus Mechanicus nut I always wanted my very own army to represent this secluded and relatively unknown faction of the Imperial alliance. Previous attempts at making an AdMech force was met with failure as the procedure to convert viable models was long, labourous and quite difficult to replicate consistantly (usually consistency is not a problem for the AdMech but I wanted some coherency to my force).

The Trooper

The kitbash I settled for was a conglomeration of the Tau Firewarriors,  Imperial Guard and Forgeworld bits. Simple head and body swaps (or arm and head swaps depending how you look at it).

The breakdown of these little troopers are as follows:

Head - Forgeworld Elysian drop troop head

Torso - Tau Fire Warrior (with the standard backpack)

Arms - Imperial Guard Cadian arms

Weapons - Lasguns with the barrel replaced with the Tau grenades

Legs - Tau Fire Warrior

Very simple kitbash with promising results. The only crux is that the Tau Fire Warrior torso is slightly weedy compared to the common man and as a result the Imperial Guard weapon arms do not match up perfectly in every case; some tiny cutting of the sleeves usually solves this but it is difficult to get a snug fit everytime (good thing it is easily hidden away).

Like a Boss (I really need some explosions in the background)

Heavy Weapons 'Team'

All foot sloggers need some fire support, and initially I had based the AdMech army on the Imperial Guard Codex this meant the support came in the form of Heavy Weapon Teams. The Mechanicum's love for walkers was what made me make this cute beastie. 

The main body and legs come from the Forgeworld Necron Tomb Stalker model, the weapon was raised so that it ran parallel with the body using Green Stuff and this was attached to the back 'spine' of the Tomb Stalker body segment. 

The GS section is a bit ugly but as a prototype it shows that the kitbash can work and soon a multitude of these guys will be gracing future battlefields. Further improvement planned is to magnetise the weapons so that I can swap the load outs for a bit more versatility.

Other areas for improvement is the front of the body segment, as it looks very bare. I was thinking of covering it up with purity seals and scrolls to hide the fact I can't sculpt. 

Other Source Material

A great resource for Adeptus Mechanicus conversions and scratch built Titans.

Dakka Dakka is always a good place for inspirational material.