Snap Marines

Everyone’s talking about Space Marines right now, so I figured I’d jump on the bandwagon...

Pretty much since the dawn of Warhammer 40,000, there have been snap together Space Marines.  When I started playing, back during third edition, Games Workshop was actually selling fire squads to get rid of old stock.  Anyone else remember that little box?

They’ve still got snap-together Marines today, of course, and they’re almost indistinguishable from the regular ones.  About the only bad thing about them is the fact that they are pretty much solidly one pose.  There’s not much you can do except maybe add on a few more purity seals or a pouch here or there.  This also means you’re pretty much screwed if you lose or damage part of the Marine.

I’m guessing that’s why I keep finding some of these guys in the bitz bins.  Usually they’re missing the front hands-bolter piece, and sometimes their backpack, too.  I tend to grab them if they’re not too chewed up or overpainted.  It’s easy to replace backpacks, but the bolters are a little more work and would eat up a lot more resources.  And just the other day I realized an easy fix for them.

Y’see, there’s only so many ways to hold a bolter, especially when the model has it close to their chest.  As it turns out, a lot of the Space Marine Scout poses mirror the regular Marine poses.  And since I modeled my Scouts with either shotguns or pistol/ccw combos, I have a bunch of these pieces with a bolter and two hands on it.

All I had to do was check a few to get a close match and then cut off the arm at the wrist.  That’s it.  It took about three minutes per Marine and I didn’t use anything more complicated than my hobby knife and some glue.  This would work with the snap Marines right out of the box, too, if you wanted to customize them a bit.  Once they’re painted, they’ll blend right in with the rest of my Relictors.

Helpful Hint

Just a quick reminder...

We are now in the Halloween retail season.  That means your local discount stores probably have tons of really cheap plastic skulls,  tiny coffins, weird glasses, and tons of rings and necklaces that are decked out in tiny bones of all types.

You can go drop three or four dollars and come home with a pile of items that could make decent objectives, super-heavy details, scenery details, or even whole scenery pieces.

So go check it out and see if there’s any gothic you could add to your grim future.

Ogres to Ogryns, Pt 2.1

Two quick things...

First, wanted to show the Ogryns with some paint on them.  Not a lot of paint, mind you, but right now they’re in the “broad swaths of color” phase and it’s enough to get a general sense of how the conversion turned out.  As I’ve said many, many times, painting is not my strength.  If we waited for me to finish, the blog would probably go another four or five months without an update...

Assorted Ogryns, ready to pound the jungle flat.

The Bonehead with his pauldron.

Assorted pouches, straps, and "frag grenades."

Not bad, I think.  I’m happy with how the ripper guns turned out.  The putty abs look good, and the gear really helps carry them out of Fantasy and into 40K, even with some of their bags and bear traps. 

The second thing was a big Friday the 13th sale that one of my publishers, Permuted Press, is having.  Almost all of their ebooks are under five dollars, most of them are just 99¢.  That Times of Trouble anthology there on the right is on sale.  So is my mash up novel, The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe, and also my novella The Junkie Quatrain.  Grab them all by Monday morning when the publisher gets back in the office and resets all the prices.