Kageboshi
New member
Greetings!
This will be a plog about the beginnings of a Vostroyan army, which I've wanted to do since they were introduced with Cities of Death eight years ago. I love the grim dark feel of the Cossack and Hussar inspired outfits along with the technology of the 40k universe and they are, so far, my favorite IG army GW has put out. I bought a big lot of them off of a guy on Bartertown in 2012, and aside from a few figures for test paint jobs, they've been gathering dust ever since.
That is, until my brother and some friends talked me into trying out the 40k RPG Only War. I was playing the sgt. and decided to paint up a Vostroyan figure for it. Due to painting red a lot with previous armies (Blood Angels, Saim Hann, Khador, etc) I wanted to try something different and while I was digging through my large paint collection, noticed that I have a lot of green paints that I never seemed to use. I also decided, due to only having two short evenings to work on the figure and painting very slowly, to do a limited palette of a dark green coat, bronze for the majority of the metals, and try to give any other colors used a green tint where possible. This is as far as I got in those two evenings before the game:
While I have played the Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader RPGs and enjoyed them, Only War just seems like a really drawn out version of the tabletop 40k game and most likely I won't be playing it again. I was bitten by the painting bug when I saw how nice the Vostroyan looked in that paint job, though. Another modeling site happened to be starting up a build/paint contest and I figured I'd join in to help motivate me to get some figures done.
I'm starting with a Company Command Squad consisting of a commander, 4 vets with a vox, regimental standard, medicae, and a plasma gunner. They will be joined by a commissar with a powerfist, an Officer of the Fleet, and a Master of Ordnance.
Now, as much as I love these figures, I do have an illness that makes it almost impossible for me to build a figure 'straight from the box', and I wanted to make the command squad as unique as I could while trying to get it finished within a decent amount of time so I can pledge more figures to the contest. I'd say I'm pretty decent at converting, but weapon swaps on these guys would be a total nightmare and take up a lot of precious time, so the plasma gunner's only change will be removing the feather from his hat(the feathers being one of the few things I dislike about the figures). To limit the palette even more after the test scheme on the sarge, I'm going to paint the boots black. Here's a shot of the plasma gunner in the process of being base coated:
Just as a note for this initial post, I've been working on these guys for about two weeks and most of them are still in-progress and this will get me caught up to where I currently am on each figure.
The normal vox trooper figure I had planned using for the Master of the Ordnance, so I grabbed another figure in a pose I liked and slapped a vox on his back:
Since the sgt. figure above showed me just how out of practice I was at painting flesh, I was going to try to limit that as much as possible, which means the normal standard bearer figure wouldn't work. Now, I think the Vostroyan standard bearer is one of the best ones GW has ever done and I really like the figure, but I wanted to do something different. First things first: remove the bearer from the standard!
I looked around for a sacrificial lamb to turn into a new one, and went with the sarge with the bolt pistol and chainsword. First thing was to remove the arms and grind away the chainsword from his shoulders:
Some old WHFB chaos plastics made the ultimate sacrifice to re-arm the bearer, and trying out a pose to see if this would even fly:
Not bad, but looks a bit stiff. A little tweaking...
Better! Now, rebuilding the arms and covering up the exposed half of the face:
The new eye lens looked like I had it positioned correctly while I was sculpting but I noticed how it was a bit too high once I got the pictures into the photo editor. It'll be changed at a later time.
Prepping the normal vox trooper for his transformation into a Master of Ordnance:
Instead of worrying about trying to make new legs, I just cut off the feet and pinned them to the body with brass rod and started sculpting the long coat:
Starting on a sash for a little display of his position:
For the Office of the Fleet, I began with the commander from the Bandblade kit:
He didn't stay the same for long.
For the commissar, I'm using a Death Korps of Krieg model from FW. Since the left arm was a little flawed, it wasn't too heartbreaking to cut most of it away for the powerfist:
I liked how it came out, but I've done several custom powerfists in the past, but they were always rectangular and boxy and I wanted to try a more rounded shape. I tore off the top layer of the GS and tried again, and failed miserably. So bad, I didn't even take a picture of it, but the good news is that when I sculpted the boxy version the second time, it came out much better!
For the commander, I have a really involved idea that won't work with the time frame of this build contest, but a couple of years ago I bought a Finecast Ursarkar Creed to convert into a Vostroyan, so I went with that for now. Here he is with the initial GS shape for the hat and the still-wet work on giving him a suitable coat:
Adding the fur to the hat and giving him some facial hair suitable for a son of Vostroya:
Before trying to sculpt the fur on that hat, I did a few attempts on some of the other figures, as Vostroyan elite are often depicted in artwork with a fur cloak, or at least some fur on the shoulders:
For the seventh and final figure of the squad - the medicae - I had been trying to come up with something the whole time I was working on these other figures because I don't like them being posed like they're working on wounded when all the others are clearly not actively engaged in combat. Problem was, I really like the upper body of the Vostroyan medic figure. Out came the saw for him and a Cadian leg donor:
Getting the coat, left arm, and medicae bag underway:
I did all of that in one day, and it was, hands down, the most GS work I've ever done on a single figure in one day. Hooray for speeding up curing time with a lamp!
Kitting him out and giving him a carbine version of the regular Vostroyan long arm:
And now we're caught up to my current progress!
C&C welcome and thanks for looking.
-Kageboshi
This will be a plog about the beginnings of a Vostroyan army, which I've wanted to do since they were introduced with Cities of Death eight years ago. I love the grim dark feel of the Cossack and Hussar inspired outfits along with the technology of the 40k universe and they are, so far, my favorite IG army GW has put out. I bought a big lot of them off of a guy on Bartertown in 2012, and aside from a few figures for test paint jobs, they've been gathering dust ever since.
That is, until my brother and some friends talked me into trying out the 40k RPG Only War. I was playing the sgt. and decided to paint up a Vostroyan figure for it. Due to painting red a lot with previous armies (Blood Angels, Saim Hann, Khador, etc) I wanted to try something different and while I was digging through my large paint collection, noticed that I have a lot of green paints that I never seemed to use. I also decided, due to only having two short evenings to work on the figure and painting very slowly, to do a limited palette of a dark green coat, bronze for the majority of the metals, and try to give any other colors used a green tint where possible. This is as far as I got in those two evenings before the game:
While I have played the Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader RPGs and enjoyed them, Only War just seems like a really drawn out version of the tabletop 40k game and most likely I won't be playing it again. I was bitten by the painting bug when I saw how nice the Vostroyan looked in that paint job, though. Another modeling site happened to be starting up a build/paint contest and I figured I'd join in to help motivate me to get some figures done.
I'm starting with a Company Command Squad consisting of a commander, 4 vets with a vox, regimental standard, medicae, and a plasma gunner. They will be joined by a commissar with a powerfist, an Officer of the Fleet, and a Master of Ordnance.
Now, as much as I love these figures, I do have an illness that makes it almost impossible for me to build a figure 'straight from the box', and I wanted to make the command squad as unique as I could while trying to get it finished within a decent amount of time so I can pledge more figures to the contest. I'd say I'm pretty decent at converting, but weapon swaps on these guys would be a total nightmare and take up a lot of precious time, so the plasma gunner's only change will be removing the feather from his hat(the feathers being one of the few things I dislike about the figures). To limit the palette even more after the test scheme on the sarge, I'm going to paint the boots black. Here's a shot of the plasma gunner in the process of being base coated:
Just as a note for this initial post, I've been working on these guys for about two weeks and most of them are still in-progress and this will get me caught up to where I currently am on each figure.
The normal vox trooper figure I had planned using for the Master of the Ordnance, so I grabbed another figure in a pose I liked and slapped a vox on his back:
Since the sgt. figure above showed me just how out of practice I was at painting flesh, I was going to try to limit that as much as possible, which means the normal standard bearer figure wouldn't work. Now, I think the Vostroyan standard bearer is one of the best ones GW has ever done and I really like the figure, but I wanted to do something different. First things first: remove the bearer from the standard!
I looked around for a sacrificial lamb to turn into a new one, and went with the sarge with the bolt pistol and chainsword. First thing was to remove the arms and grind away the chainsword from his shoulders:
Some old WHFB chaos plastics made the ultimate sacrifice to re-arm the bearer, and trying out a pose to see if this would even fly:
Not bad, but looks a bit stiff. A little tweaking...
Better! Now, rebuilding the arms and covering up the exposed half of the face:
The new eye lens looked like I had it positioned correctly while I was sculpting but I noticed how it was a bit too high once I got the pictures into the photo editor. It'll be changed at a later time.
Prepping the normal vox trooper for his transformation into a Master of Ordnance:
Instead of worrying about trying to make new legs, I just cut off the feet and pinned them to the body with brass rod and started sculpting the long coat:
Starting on a sash for a little display of his position:
For the Office of the Fleet, I began with the commander from the Bandblade kit:
He didn't stay the same for long.
For the commissar, I'm using a Death Korps of Krieg model from FW. Since the left arm was a little flawed, it wasn't too heartbreaking to cut most of it away for the powerfist:
I liked how it came out, but I've done several custom powerfists in the past, but they were always rectangular and boxy and I wanted to try a more rounded shape. I tore off the top layer of the GS and tried again, and failed miserably. So bad, I didn't even take a picture of it, but the good news is that when I sculpted the boxy version the second time, it came out much better!
For the commander, I have a really involved idea that won't work with the time frame of this build contest, but a couple of years ago I bought a Finecast Ursarkar Creed to convert into a Vostroyan, so I went with that for now. Here he is with the initial GS shape for the hat and the still-wet work on giving him a suitable coat:
Adding the fur to the hat and giving him some facial hair suitable for a son of Vostroya:
Before trying to sculpt the fur on that hat, I did a few attempts on some of the other figures, as Vostroyan elite are often depicted in artwork with a fur cloak, or at least some fur on the shoulders:
For the seventh and final figure of the squad - the medicae - I had been trying to come up with something the whole time I was working on these other figures because I don't like them being posed like they're working on wounded when all the others are clearly not actively engaged in combat. Problem was, I really like the upper body of the Vostroyan medic figure. Out came the saw for him and a Cadian leg donor:
Getting the coat, left arm, and medicae bag underway:
I did all of that in one day, and it was, hands down, the most GS work I've ever done on a single figure in one day. Hooray for speeding up curing time with a lamp!
Kitting him out and giving him a carbine version of the regular Vostroyan long arm:
And now we're caught up to my current progress!
C&C welcome and thanks for looking.
-Kageboshi
