Spring Clean Challenge 2022 - Project: Ghostmaker

Here’s the thing. I love Gaunt’s Ghosts. Have done ever since that first short story from issue 4 of Inferno!. I make a point of re-reading the series every other year or so, and am currently listening to the Audible versions as they come out (although the wait is becoming agonizing for each one). One thing I have always had on my hobby bucket list though is to build & paint a Tanith 1st Imperial Guard army, using whatever suitable minis & proxies I can.

So I have all these prior versions of Gaunt & co, and indeed brought a second set of the more recent plastic set to use as parts & conversion fodder, but it’s not really enough to build an army from (before even getting into how hard it is to acquire the metal Tanith troopers nowadays), and over the years have looked up alternatives.
One of the inspirations for this project is the great Dave Taylor. His initial version using Jungle Fighters and other metal IG minis from the period is a brilliant attempt for the time, and his subsequent commission work  (as documented in the frankly superb Armies, Legions & Hordes – a book I’ll be referencing frequently during this project) looks great, but I didn’t fancy using plastic Cadians as he has, or at least not the the same extent.

So my first port of call was Victoria Miniatures, and the Border Rangers kit, but I also ordered their male & female Arcadian and Victorian trooper kits, a number of characters, and a bunch of camo-cloaks, to add variety and represent the subtly different battledress of the Tanith, Verghast and Belladon elements of the regiment, as shown in Anna Lakisova’s excellent illustrations from the Sabbat Worlds Crusade book.

A month or so ago I finally got a round to cleaning all of the resin parts I’d amassed for this endeavour, even going to the extent of clipping everything off of their sprues and organizing them using divider trays for the Really Useful box I’ve been using for storing everything.

Now, this is a major project and honestly I do not expect to have it complete by the end of the Spring Clean Challenge. For one thing I am still waiting on parts that a friend is 3D printing for me but is having issues with their printer. Instead I have a more modest end goal: To paint up the plastic Gaunt’s Ghosts kit, and to build & paint one squad of Ghosts from the Vic Minis parts. 16 models. No problem right? ……..