Middlehammer Legacy Strikeforce: Hudd Paxton - Human Mercenary

Hello all, and apologies yet again for the delayed updates on the Middlehammer Legacy Strikeforce Project.

Grandfather Nurgle continues to single me out for attention. I can only assume he wants me for an aspiring champion becuase he is working really hard to defeat the best efforts of modern medicine. Bastard...

Anyway! After some chat on the Middlehammer fb group, and continued illness of myself and a couple of other participants the deadline has now been extended right up until the end of March, with entries to be with me by first week of April, and the draw for the lucky winner taking place in second week of April.

I've had another few updates from participants since the last post, so in additon to my human merc, Pete Grange's striking Eldar, we now have Mikael Igge Holmberg's bruising Ork brothers and their pet Snapasaurus (not the official biological name - it is possibly some form of previoulsy unidentified Squig!) - and we've seen grainy black and white security cam footage of a group of Muties, and a Mohawked Merc with a Tommygun! I've also heard rumours of a couple of Squat ex-guilders on their way to join the group!

Big thanks to everyone for their efforts so far - it has been great to recieve your updates and encouragement!

Here are some snaps of Igge's Orks to go with the pics of Pete's Eldar from my last post.

Igge informs me the min-T-Rex is an old orky extra bit from the Foundry - I love it!

These two are great - there's something about the bright orange hat that reminds me of Jayne from Firefly!

Hudd Paxton - Human Mercenary

So I was looking for some inspiration for my Human Merc with Flamethrower, and I was starting to lean towards the 80s Stadium Rock idea. Then something sad happened. Bill Paxton, an actor who appeared in many of my favourite movies growing up, had passed away aged just 61!

Private, 1st Class, William Hudson: "Stop your grinnin' and drop your linnen!"

Suddenly it all clicked into place. For those who don't know Paxton played one of the most iconic characters in the movie Aliens - Hudson the cynical Colonial Marine squad leader. The work of HR Geiger is well known to have been an influence on the development and some of the imagery behind Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader; the Colonial Marines from Aliens definitely had a touch of the snark about them like the human renegades from the banner picture; and it would be an homage to Bill Paxton and the character of Hudson.

I give you Hudd Paxton: Human Mercenary. 

Not the best lighting I'm afraid, not showing the blue tint on the glasses, or the rust and corrosion on the flamer as clearly as I'd like.

Bag straps need to be brown, some more detail on the comms back pack needed too I think...

A better shot of some of the corosion and rust on the Flamethrower

He's still not 100% finished, but I've done enough for a meaningful update, and he is back on course to be finished before the deadline at least!

I've had a bit of trouble getting an orange I was happy with, but also had some depth to it, but washes of plasma red and chestnut inks have helped, as have highlights of mixed Troll Slayer Orange and old school Sunburst Yellow.

Still some more detail to do on the bag straps, and I'd like to add some detail echoing the graffiti on Hudson's chest plate on the Orange Shoulder pad, but that might prove a stpe too far, so we will see how it goes.

Bill Paxton as Hudson - note the graffiti on the chest armour, which ties in really nicely with the RT Human Renegade.s

The bandana is not a Hudson trade mark, but it does tie in nicely with some other Aliens characters, as does the oversized Flamethrower, both of which remind me of the Smart Gunners, Vazquez and Drake.

Colonial Marines Vasquez and Drake armed with Smart Guns - the psycho sexual interplay between these two characters is an under appreciated element of the film imho.

It was the flame thrower that was giving me most grief though. I really didn't want to go for the classic dirty gun metal look, and had been trying to use non-metallic paints for metals, but once I thought about the flamethrower from the original Alien movie it again all clicked into place. The dirty industrial plastic look and rusted metal was perfect, so I set out recreating it as faithfully as I could.

Here you can see the original movie prop in detail. Image from the AVP Wiki.

Here you can see a less knackered version of a later model (from one of the Aliens computer games I believe), but it doesn't have the same character for my money. The gas canisters (made from a pair of Cadian IG binoculars) have been painted red and white, but I'm probably not going to add any warning signs for fear of making the model too busy.

A later evolution of the same model flame thrower as seen on the AVP Wiki.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering what Hudd Paxton keeps in his webbing, this is a good example - a picture of Hudson's technical kit from the Aliens Movie - image, as per all of the Alien/Aliens movie images in this post, taken from the AVP Wiki.

Hudson was the combat technician for his squad, and I like how this emphaises the different roles that marines have to play in combat - much the same reason I choose to include the comms style back pack on my human merc.

Anyway - apologies again for the lack of regular updates, but hope you enjoy seeing progress so far!

The project has a few more weeks to run and then we will hopefully get all the entries together for a group shot before they head off to their new home (where ever that might be!)

Thanks for stopping by and stay tund for more updates :)

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!

Brother Orlando - Rainbow Warrior

This week I've been painting a classic RTB01 Space Marine in the style of the Rainbow Warriors. A much maligned but endearingly remembered chapter of Space Marines from the Rogue Trader era that, for various reasons one might imagine, was phased out as the Grimdark (tm) descended.

I'm not painting it because of that though.

Asslessman from Leadplague started a brilliant tribute idea on the Oldhammer fb page for the community to paint Rainbow Warriors to show our support for the LGBTQ community in the wake of the hate crime (I hesitate to call it a terrorist incident, although that has clearly been an aspect of this case) of the massacre at the Pulse Nighclub in Orlando last week.

I was immediatley on board with this, but I have to admit I struggled a bit with the inherent and potentially distasteful irony of painting a man with a gun to commemorate and show my support for the victims of a mass shooting. I took the opportunity to ask my mum and her partner for their reaction when we saw them briefly for a family event this weekend.

My mum has been out for over 20 years. She is one of the bravest people I know. Her partner (her wife and my step mother) is an ex-Church of England minister. They have both suffered homophobic abuse and institutional prejudice in their lives and careers. They put their love first and they got married, but they had to leave the Church to do so. That broke their hearts. Gladly they have now found semi official acceptance from the Church, an acceptance they always felt was there from their congregations and communities... at least some of them. They've also spent their lives supporting the downtrodden and marginalised in various ways. I felt they were well placed to give me an honest reaction to this idea for a tribute.

Their reaction was positive. They immediately recognised what I was trying to achieve and it was me who quickly brought up the contradiction at hand. They agreed, but my mum very clearly said that her first instinct was that she was glad that the community was responding in this way. We talked about ways that I could have made the tribute more poignant. Removing the gun, placing it at his feet etc.

I also talked about my other idea for a tribute. If I had not gone with Brother Orlando, a close rendition of the picture from teh Rogue Trader rule book, I would have gone with a metal Mk6 Sgt. and called him Sgt. Stonewall, in honour of the struggle that the LGBTQ community have had to fight to get this far. They have had to fight, but they've never had to resort to terroism to get the message across. Love is winning them the struggle. Love is what is going to win against terrorism and hate, and that's what painting Brother Orlando was all about for me.

The pose is as close as I could get to the original picture in the RT rule book

The banner is not a faithful recreation, and was mangled by my 3yr old son before I even managed to get a pic, but I'm calling that wear and tear from the Love Parade. That gun fires party foam by the way.