Rogue Trader - Bombots - Fan Sculpt

Hello, quick Oldhammer post today, a few months ago I was pleased to be offered a trio of fan sculpted Rogue Trader homage Bombots by their creator Curis over on Ninjabread and quickly assembled these five piece models and slapped on some paint. (I love saying creator when referring to robots :D)

Imperial Army pioneers - Bombots and Operator

He's done a really fine job from concept to final piece, working with very little source material, a quick description and rules on page 121 of the Warhammer Rogue Trader rulebook and a small snippet of what looks like was once a larger illustration.

Bombot illo from Rogue Trader rulebook p.121

Bombot rules

I went for a simple codex grey colour scheme for these miniatures with the dangerous bits in red, a bit of weathering and shinny 'ardcoated green lense, they were a fun paint job although I am a bit out of touch now when it comes to batch painting.  

Once I had finished the robots I felt they needed an operator, I'd recently seen what Curis had done with his over on his blog with a Space Marine operator and how the colours married them up perfectly, I loved the effect.  I wanted a someone who would compliment the low tech Bombots and fit in with the unit codex grey colour scheme then I thought who better than a candidate from the Imperial Army.  Initially I was going to go with the Rapier spotter holding the binoculars but then opted for the Tarantula operator as I think he is a perfect fit with his smaller gun slung over his shoulder and operating a remote control, I guess that was for the Tarantula, it was a simple tie in which works for me.

Now for some more photos.

Imperial Army Bombot Unit out in the field

Bombot 1 - side

Bombot 2 - side

Bombot 3 - side

Bombot 1 - front

Bombot 2 - front

Bombots on the move

Imperial Army Operator - front

Imperial Army Operator - side

Imperial Army Operator - back

Imperial Army Operator - side

Imperial Army Operator - higher angle

The Bombots remind me of the WWII German pioneers Goliath remote mine and I would hope they were in the mind of the author at the time of writing, here's a Goliath model kit below, stick a R2D2 on top and you have a Rogue Trader Bombot.

German Goliath Team

Here's a link to 'the Creator's Blog post here and another super job on these miniatures here.

thanks for dropping in

J

Rogue Trader - RT01 Space Marines - Flesh Tearers Part 2

Hello! welcome back, in todays Oldhammer post I've gone back to my slow burning Flesh Tearers project which I aim to build the chapter totally out of Rogue Trader era miniatures, you might remember my first post here. The first post featured some of the more pretty Space Marines armed with more exotic close combat weaponry but if I am to ever game with these guys I would have a serious lack of standard Bolter armed marines so with this in mind I went diving into my loft to dig some out and am strictly now painting marines with standard bolters until I have a good number.  

Not the greatest photos the winter daylight is tough here in the UK but I had a go anyway.

Another 6 Flesh Tearer Space Marines finished

First up we have Brother Sheer, a nice standard bolter marine and check out the greaves pattern it's the one thing I love most about the Rogue Trader era marines that ther doesn't seem to be a standard sculpt everyone is in artificer armour, the miniature is a variant of Brother Froth who was in the first wave of RT01 marines, did Brother Froth cause mould issues? maybe, it appears an addition gun light and slightly wider pauldron was added to fill a void I think this was this due to original tearing moulds post casting? not simply Citadel Miniatures appetite for more miniatures. During prepping I added a 3D printed chapter icon decal from Mars_Forges on ebay which I really like the curved print sits quite well on RT marines. Painting I added some checkers and battle damage to my tried and tested Flesh Tearers colour scheme.

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Sheers - side

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Sheers - front

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Sheers - back

Brother Sheer vs Brother Froth comparison

2021 Brother Sheer vs 1988 Brother Froth paint jobs, Froth was soon stripped after

Brother Sheer and Brother Froth - front

Brother Sheer and Brother froth - side

Next we have Brother McCarthy or just Marine No 8 in the White Dwarf 100 advert, this marine is really dynamically posed, is he wearing a breathing mask and visor or has he just taken the back/top of his helmet off you decide.  He is also carrying a pair of severed heads, one human and one eldar, victims of his latest venture. I added the new Necron paint to his visor Tesseract Glow which produced a nice effect which I don't think is reflected in the photos.

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother McCarthy - front

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother McCarthy - side

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother McCarthy - back

Brother McCarthy Work in Progress, eyes look better here

Brother McCarthy appears in this Epic 40k artwork

Following on we have Brother Hamilton, advancing forward with his bolter poised for action, he has those cool little air intakes sculpted onto the back on his greaves, it details like these that make RT marines the ones for me.

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Hamilton - side

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Hamilton - back

Next we have Space Marine Brother Reeves, a great firing pose with his helmet stowed on his armour, bolter fitted with a sight or light.

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Reeves - side

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Reeves - back

Rogue Trader Space Marine Brother Reeves - front

Stepping away from the RT01 Space Marines and to add some more variety I fished out the 1988 Talisman Timescape Marine, a great sculpt by Trish Morrison (Carden) but an awful casting and have not seen a good example and I have owned 3 of these over the years, plenty of green stuff was required on the studless pauldron, like a lot of miniatures of this era their are some really nice details which I painted in on the back only to be obscured by backpack, on the original advert the marine had no backpack but the game counter below did.  A little tip with this one dry fit the backpack first, I super glued it on only to find a 3mm gap which looked odd and really bugged me so off it came ruining the paint job, I had to then file the pack mount down, repaint and was done.

Talisman Marine game counter

Talisman Space Marine - side

Talisman Space Marine - back

Next up is Death Squad a 1986 C100 Space Marine, sculpted by Bob Naismith, armed with a Judge Dredd weapon which were later used on the C100's and terrifying chainsword like the innards of a garbage grinder unit, the C100's with all their little quirky computers, vents and the gorgeous backpacks still make these a joy to paint. Not long after Rogue Trader was released the C100 marines were absorbed into the RT01 range.

C100 Space Marine Death Squad - front

C100 Space Marine Death Squad - back

Next we have the Captain another 1986 C100 Space Marine and again sculpted by Bob Naismith, he has the classic marine commander look with his bionic eye, festooned in imperial skulls, eagle and armed with a power glove and the mysterious weapon from cover of the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue trader rulebook which fans have speculated for years on its name and purpose.

I think he got a bit of a refresh with Brother Sawyer in 1988 here it states Brother Sawyer is armed with a PowerFist and Hand Flamer although not the hand flamer of others or depicted in the rule book, Captain Crabb carries a proper one.

C100 Space Marine Captain - front

C100 Space Marine Captain - back

Finally another miniature I recently completed is a lesser known miniature from around November 1990 a helmetless variant of the Jes Goodwin sculpted RTB15 Space Marine Strike Force miniatures, since I first purchased this miniature at GW Brum I have revisited this miniature every 10 years until finally finishing it now, what gave me the final push on the miniature was Curis's post here last year and I was bloody hell I have this guy and keep abandoning him.  So I again found him battered, bruised with plenty of lead on display and thought now I know you are a bit special I'll give you justice. 

He was assembled and hair sculpted with fine milliput back in the day, he was going to be a new chapter marine and had a coat of elf grey unused aircraft decals but resembled a Space Wolf so I went back to that. I designed my own pattern bolter for maximum close assault, named by @Leaky_cheese on Twitter as the Fulfordius pattern :D

Helmetless Strike Force Space Marine - front

Helmetless Strike Force Space Marine - side

Helmetless Strike Force Space Marine - back

Helmetless Strike Force Space Marine - side

Helmetless Strike Force Space Marine - side

Helmetless Strike Force Space Marine - front

Thanks again for dropping by, plenty more coming soon

J

Rogue Trader - 'The One Big One' Human Renegade

Hello, something a bit goofy for todays blog post, a project I started back in 2014 and lost during our house move only for it to resurface when I was bored of my current paint jobs and was in the loft looking for an interesting distraction, let me introduce you to my take of the Rogue Trader 'Human Renegade'. This character is pictured in the (1st Edition) Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook on page 172 in an image labelled 'Human Renegades'. 

This image has always been a favourite of mine with the 'The One Big One' character sitting there in what could be described as a space adventurers tavern looking all menacing with his flash mate and a pair of pints and some documents on the table, hit contracts, bounty instructions, who knows? The image has always been popular Oldhammer circles and I know of at least two other paint jobs out there of this character on RT01 metal marines, fans on various forums have asked questions like "who are these guys", "what's their story" and "are these still a thing", myself they have always reminded of the kicked out penitent marine character in one of the early 40K novels, out adventuring on some distant planet without any care for the grimdark, I am sure the creative writers out there could knock up a great story.

The build was simple enough, chop up and reposition a RTB01 plastic Space Marine, fill with green stuff, the end product a pretty rough looking sitting down miniature, I built him a seat out of plasti-card and das promo modelling clay. There's a cool looking rifle is depicted in the image which I attempted to copy by chopping up a variety of early plastic weapons, sticking them together and filing the gaps with plastic putty, I enjoyed giving the rifle a wooden stock, for the backpack I used an RTB01 one and shaved down the grill bits to get a smooth top.

Paint job was the fun part as the character doesn't follow Space Marine Codex schemes so I was forced to come out of my comfort zone and get creative with my paints, plenty of dark washes and weathering was required to try and achieve desired outcome, armour graffiti is a bit rough and I really struggled gettting the 'KISS THIS' on the end of the gun barrel.

Back in 2014 I started to build up the pieces to make a whole diorama of this image and have a rough build started on the other character using the first plastic Space Ork shoulder pads, for the table I have an old lead piece from Citadel Miniatures early days which sizes up nicely and for the room I have an even older resin dungeon room made by a company that probably doesn't exist anymore, you'll see more details on all of this when I pick the project back up, happy to here any ideas that might influence build.

On to the photos... and there's quite a few as I was struggling to get that golden angle, enjoy!

'The One Big One' Human Renegade

Human Renegades on page 172 of the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook.

Rogue Trader Human Renegade - side

Rogue Trader Human Renegade - front

Rogue Trader Human Renegade - another attempt of trying to get the golden angle

Rogue Trader Human Renegade - other side

Rogue Trader Human Renegade - backpack

The finished miniature has gone down quite well Twitter so I thought it deserved an immediate blog post.

Thanks for joining me on this fun project, more to come soon

J