Spring Cleaning- Drafting new guys into my Sternguard

As much as I hate to admit it, normal space marines seem to be on the out so I figured why we still have rules and I still have old models, why not get together a Sternguard Veteran Squad and make use of the project system to show off my meager talents.

With the rise of Knights becoming more and more popular these days (Adepticon was a real eye opener), I bought the Sternguard kit from my local store and noticed they don’t have guys with a Lascannon option. To my knowledge GW has not put out a new Lascannon figure forever so I dug into my “Never use or will use” Case and found a couple old Devastator Lascannon guys. They weren’t painted very well (well at the time I thought they were okay) and you never used them in 3rd edition because if they moved they couldn’t shoot and you had to red thirst check every turn. Here they are in all their glory (?)

After taking these pictures, I pulled out a jar and some Simple green, this should work wonders considering most of the gun bits are actually metal.

Lascannonguy 1 is taking a bath. Followed right away by Lascannonguy 2

They will be stripped and noticing they are on 25mm bases I will have to go find some 32mm that are to my liking.

It is important to know when your strip models you are never going to get all the paint/primer off. If the model has metal bits those will almost certainly be Really close to completely fine but there will always be a little bit of something in the crevasses. You can go at them with say a hobby knife but if you dig to deep your model will have visible scrapes/gouges even after you re-prime/paint.

Here they are stripped down to the metal/plastic (mostly). At this point I realized that Sternguard Veterans are a little more Ornate then your standard line troopers. The shoulder pad that the lascannon is on is WAY too muddled with other details to really deal with. The left shoulder pad on the other hand is an option, it is of course metal so I’ll probably have to go at it with some clippers and replace the shoulder pad with a plastic one. I will have to fill in the gaps between the metal and the plastic with a little green stuff.

So, I did just that… here they are I clipped them down and added a couple of  Blood Angels Icons I got from popgoesthemonkey’s store on Shapeways onto the Gun Arm Shoulder pads and a couple others I had from the Sternguard kit onto the others.

At this point I painted them up and added a couple of tabards I bought from the lovely people at Spellcrow Miniatures, found a couple bases in my Bitbox that would work and finally finished them up.

So, they are now complete. I do apologize for the delay there was Mother’s Day, My Birthday and a long weekend where I was not at home so I was a bit late getting to the end. I also finally got my airbrush set up so I’ve been messing with that as well.

Thanks for taking a brief view of my small and inconsequential project.

Thanks BoW, It let me get a couple of bits of metal that were in a box of never will be used stuff in the far back of my closet and now I have a pretty decent Sternguard veteran squad on the tabletop.

I had fun doing it and that is the most important part