Category: Imperial Fists

Iron Duke, 15mm Scale Land Raider

On By Chris B.In Horus Heresy, Horus Heresy 15mm, Imperial Fists, LEDs, Painting Recipe, Space Marines3 Comments

The Land Raider is to other vehicles as the Astartes are to baseline humans.

Rogal Dorn, ‘A Treatise on Tanks’

Here’s something a little different – a 15mm scale Land Raider! This cool little model was printed as a gift by a good friend who owns a 3D resin printer. He also threw in some 15mm MkVI Space Marines and a few other bits and pieces to go with it. Models at 15mm scale sit somewhere in between the 6mm scale of Epic miniatures and the 28mm scale of Warhammer 40,000. They’re small enough that they don’t take super long to paint, but large enough to tackle some interesting details.

Painting & Modelling

Like so many of my other projects, initially I said “no LEDs”. But in the end I couldn’t resist putting a few in the Land Raider to make it seem as though the lascannons were firing. This was quite fiddly in terms of drilling, and as you can see in the WIP picture above I ended-up replacing the lascannon barrels with plastic tubes to make drilling the wire holes easier. Each lascannon has a 3V Red Ultra Nano SMD Chip LED (available from Small Scale Lights) at the aperture. The LEDs are in series with their supplied 100Ω resistor and then in parallel with each other. The whole circuit is supplied by a single 3V CR2032 coin cell battery and switch in the base.

The muzzle flare effects around the LEDs – simulating scattered laser light on the dusty battlefield – are made from acrylic gel. I have an explanation for how this is done in my Simple LED Muzzle Flare Tutorial.

The banner is an addition from my bits box, which I think may have come from an old Black Templar accessory sprue. The miniature is mounted on a 65mm base.

15mm scale Land Raider next to Warhammer 40K model ‘Sergeant Scale‘

I decided this Land Raider would essentially be a 15mm scale version of my classic 30K Land Raider ‘Iron Duke’. To paint the yellow, I fell back on my tried-and-tested recipe:

  • Corax white undercoat
  • Averland sunset base
  • Cassandora yellow shade in recesses
  • Yriel yellow (two thin coats)
  • Flash Gitz yellow edge highlight
  • Dorn yellow final edge highlight

Although this gives a nice bright yellow, it is quite time consuming, especially with the multiple applications of Yriel yellow. In hindsight I wish I’d invested in the new Imperial Fists contrast paint and given that a go instead as I imagine that would have been much quicker. Ah well!

So now I have this model, what am I going to do with it? Well my good friend Apologist also recieved some of these 15mm miniatures, and decided to paint them as Emperor’s Children so we could have a cool Horus Heresy themed game with them! You can read the battle report on his blog.

That’s it for this week, I hope you’ve enjoyed this slightly unusual project! I have some more 15mm models to finish, so I’m sure we’ll see some more of this project again in the future. As ever, thanks for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram.

Gregor Dessian, Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists

On By Chris B.In Imperial Fists, LEDs, Space Marines, Warhammer 40,000Leave a comment

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Being a Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists is not about being the lord of one thousand Space Marines. It is about acting as a servant and shield to all Humanity.

– Gregor Dessian

A fun little side project this week, with my take on Gregor Dessian, current Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists. This is for the ‘We Paint Minis‘ #ChapterMasterChallenge on Twitter.

This is one of those very rare occasions (for me anyway) when the miniature survives its translation from my brain to the finished model almost entirely unaltered. When the Chapter Master Challenge themed around the Imperial Fists came up, I knew I wanted to do a ‘modern’ Primaris Chapter Master. I also knew that I didn’t want to give him a power fist or thunder hammer. As much as I love these two iconic weapons of the Fists, I thought that was probably a route that a lot of other people participating in the challenge would go down. Instead I wanted something that wasn’t necessarily commonly associated with the Imperial Fists, but still implied this was a hero with access to rare and valuable equipment. In the end I settled on twin custom plasma pistols as they satisfied these criteria, plus it was a chance to get some LEDs in there too!

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Gregor’s master-crafted twin plasma pistols, Brick and Mortar are a rare treasure from the armoury of the Phalanx. Their power cells are charged directly from plasma vented from the battle station’s reactor, ensuring the Chapter Master always carries with him a direct link to the beating heart of the Imperial Fists Fortress monastery.

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As you can see in the image above, the connections for the LEDs (in this case Nano Chip LEDs) run through each arm, through the torso and down one of the legs into the coin cell battery hidden in the base. If you’d like to have a go at a similar conversion, then I used the techniques detailed in my Simple Plasma Weapons tutorial.

That was a fun diversion for this week. Next week, back to the Crimson Fists!

Imperial Fist Breacher – True Scale

On By Chris B.In Imperial Fists, LEDs, Space Marines, True Scale, Warhammer 40,000Leave a comment

Something a bit different today; I thought I’d take a break from painting Kantor Blue and remind myself of the “fun” of painting yellow! So here’s a Breacher for my Age of Darkness ‘True Scale’ Imperial Fists.

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I started this army back in 2014, when there was no such thing as Primaris and if you wanted an embiggened Marine you had to do it yourself!

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This is my fifth completed Breacher, making the squad half done. Although the other models are at least assembled and undercoated.

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The idea behind this army is that it represents mid-late Heresy Imperial Fists. They’ve seen some action; they’ve been to Mars to recover the prototype MkV and MkVI armour, they’ve completed missions for Rogal Dorn in the Segmentum Solar, but now the Warmaster is closing in and they’re rushing back to man the walls…

Previous True Scale Imperial Fists

My Imperial Fists haven’t really featured on this blog very much yet, so here are a few more pictures for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t seen them before. There’s even more information in this log that I used to run over at the Bolger and Chainsword forum.

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The blue LED helmet eye lenses use my standard method as detailed in this tutorial. In fact these were the first models to pioneer the resin casting technique! Some of them are still on their original CR2032 batteries – five years later!

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The volkite energy flare is one of my favourite LED effects that I’ve done so far. You can see more of my Imperial Fists on Instagram, if you scroll down far enough.

Anatomy of a True Scale Astartes

If you’re wondering what parts I use to build my True Scale Marines, I’ve done a break-down below. This technique was heavily influenced by the work of my good friend Apologist. Check out his Death of a Rubricist blog for more True Scale goodness and general painting excellence.

I refer to this armour pattern as MkVI-S (the S is for ‘Stark’). In my mind it represents an early variant of MkVI. It’s still recognisable, but didn’t quite make it into full production after the Heresy.

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1. Head – MkVI head taken from the Ravenwing Black Knight sprue. Skull badge removed from forehead. Aerial removed from left side and left side re-sculpted in Green Stuff to match right.

2. Torso – Custom Green Stuff sculpt over standard Space Marine torso. Only the neck socket and plug for backpack remain on show and unmodified.

3. Shoulder pads – The left shoulder pad is a plastic ‘blank’ Terminator shoulder pad with the recesses around the edges filled in and studs added. The right shoulder pad is the Forge World Imperial/Crimson Fist Terminator shoulder pad with a lot of the detail (like purity seals) removed and the recesses around the edge filled in.

4. Arms – The arms and hand are a mix of from the Tactical, Assault and Grey Knight Terminator sprues. They have had reinforced ‘cuffs’ added with Green Stuff.

5. Bolter – Forge World Umbra pattern bolter.

6. Backpack – Forge World Legion MkVI power armour backpack.

7. Legs – Forge World Legion Tartaros Terminator legs. The ‘sunken’ panels on the thighs have been filled in to increase the diameter of the thighs and give a smooth appearance. Although if I was starting this army now I’d definitely use the plastic versions!

8. Base – Plastic 30mm rolled shoulder base with milliput, sand and slate top.

Anyway, I hope that’s all been informative, and a fun break from Crimson Fists and Genestealer Cultists!