Middlehammer Legacy Strikeforce: Project Update and Mercenary Freebooter

Damn! I must not have been paying sufficient lip service to Grandfather Nurgle, because he gave me one hell of an infection. I have been really ill for over a month and on all kinds of hideous antibiotics (which is not good in these days of increasing antimicrobial resistance!) and totally lost my hobby mojo, other than a few comments online and approving loads of new Middlehammer member requests - it's great to see the group continue to grow! :)


This has meant an absence of any updates on the Middlehammer Legacy Strikeforce project, or any progress on my entry! Apologies to those who are taking part, and many thanks to Pete Grange for the nudge with the very striking Eldar Mercenary he is entering - WIP pics looking very good!

Pete Grange's evocative Eldar Mercenary in the theme colours of Blue-grey and Bright Orange

Rear shot showcasing more of the wraithbone armour, which I love with this colour scheme!

I'm wondering if this months hiatus means we should extend the closing date for entries and the March 31st deadline a bit? If you are reading about the Legacy Strikeforce project for the first time and want to get involved, just leave a comment below, or contact me via the Middlehammer fb group :)

Human Merc with Flamer

Anyway, I've taken the inspiration for my entry from the iconic image of the two Human Renegades from p.172 of the Rogue Trader rule book.

I had a few ideas in mind, but this was the one I could most strongly visualise and I had a promising selection of Oldhammer/Middlehammer bits to work with that would fit the theme perfectly.

I had fun with a few ideas, including a more relaxed attitude as in the picture above, but here is the pose I went for in the end:

I'm still to decide on a name for him. It's either going to be something from 80s Stadium Rock, or an homage to the Alien Films. Not sure yet.

He is deliberately holding his flamethrower like an Ax, and by Ax I obviously mean an Electric Guitar. I adjusted the angle of the head slightly to show off his earing, and I like to think this gave him a little bit more rock star attitude. I tried scarring up the very clean and shiny shoulder pad a bit too.

I'm still far from 100% happy with it but the original Cadian flamer arm was just too scrawny. It needed the beefcake upgrade from a Catachan. Surgery was required!

I hated doing the green stuff on his arm. A slightly misjudged first cut meant more *ahem* 'scultpting' than I had hoped for. Even after getting it to a point that did not look too awful there was something jarring to the eye. I could not figure out what was wrong with it. Then it hit me - He had two elbows! The angle of the arm I've used is completely different to how it has ended up, so the original elbow now appeared to be sticking out like a weird bony protrusion above his wrist.

This was the route of the problem, the angle of the arm was all wrong really, even if it did have the Arnold Scwarzeneger look I was after.

UPDATE - I was so far from happy with this massive glob of greenstuff and extraneous elbows that I cut it out and started again, also removing a piece of detail (a webbing pack I think) from the inside of the piece, which appeared to be floating in the original build and can still be seen in the pictures here.

It's better, but still hideously amateurish. But! It's not that long ago that I would have balked at the thought of using greenstuff in a conversion like this. So, small steps, but progress is being made.

Here you can see the 'floating' ammo pack or whatever. That's gone now.

The fuel tanks for the flamer are made from a set of IG binoculars, turned back to front. The 'Comms' style back pack and webbing come from the same plastic IG sets. At one point I had a combat blade from the RTB01 sprue on his left thigh, but took it off as it was one accessory too far and he looked like he might go buckaroo on me.

Detail of the Batman like Utility belt and the worst shot of the offending elbow putty

I was really keen to start getting some paint on this mean mother sucker, and was relatively happy with the Blue-grey base colour, but then I got ill, and my painting suffered. So I stopped.

I had a bit of a burst about two weeks ago, adding the base flesh colour and a first wash of brown-purple ink, and the orange base coat of Troll Slayer Orange over Blood Red. One coat of Plasma Red ink has gone on, but it did next to nothing. Sadly, since then I've hardly been able to do anything to it and it has languished in need of some attention...

You can see his aerial is slightly on the wonk. It is going to need a better fix unfortunately. I might need to pin it but it is going to be fiddly seeing how small the piece is.

The scarring I did at the beginning has not really come through very well. This photo also shows up the hideous resculpted arm. Gah!

Now though! I'm hoping I've got my hobby mojo back and this chap is number one on my to do list!

I'm hoping some of the other participants are going to share some WIP shots on the Middlehammer Facebook page, and if so I will ask permission to share them with you here too :)

Thanks for looking! Do check out the original post for the rules and then drop me a comment below or via fb if you are interested in taking part!