I only have two answers for the question of heresy, and both of them are fully loaded! – Reiver-Sergeant Bast, on the eve of the Jotun Offensive.

Reiver-Sergeant Bast is the second member to be completed for my Reiver squad, and also my entry for the Everchosen nationwide painting competition that Games Workshop are running tomorrow.

The role of the Reiver has two aspects, just like our skull helms and the human faces underneath. One is the stealthy infiltration of our targets. The other is the application of instant and overwhelming force. – Reiver-Sergeant Bast, squad initiation.

When I was first planning how to assemble this unit, I decided I wanted to go for very dynamic and aggressive poses. I was imaging them deploying via their grav-chutes, opening fire on their targets before they were even on the ground.

This conversion may look a little complex, but it was actually fairly simple. There is no left-handed bolt carbine on the Reiver sprue, but I simply cut the hand from the right-hand from bolt carbine that doesn’t have a hand on the forward grip, and then glued it onto a left combat knife arm. The LED muzzle flare effects were achieved as described in my tutorial here. Both LEDs are connected to the same battery in parallel. As they are identical LEDs there is no need for any additional resistors (the current draw is obviously the same for both). There’s no actual in-game effect for having two bolt carbines on the model, it’s just for show!

The image above shows the model with the LEDs switched off. Normally I leave the resin unpainted, but that of course means the muzzle flares are resin white when the LEDs are not on. As an experiment for this model, I painted some Fuegan Orange shade into the recesses, and then painted the whole muzzle flare with Lamenters Yellow glaze. As you can see above it makes the muzzle flare resin look better when the LEDs are off, but doesn’t seem to effect the brightness at all, since the shade and the glaze are both semi-transparent. I’m so pleased with this look that I think I’ll go back and apply this to all previous muzzle flares.

More Reivers to come soon, and I’ll post an update over the weekend about how Sergeant Bast does in the Everchosen competition!