Monday 19 March 2018

Getting a Little Tech Support

It just so happens that I managed to get hold of a ticket to the Necromunda event at Warhammer World on 21 April. Whilst I could easily use an existing gang or group of figures, I decided I wanted to use the event as motivation to put together a new faction.

I happened to see some really lovely white coverall-clad plastic Tech gang conversions by sump dweller over at Yaktribe and liked the stark monochrome scheme so much, I decided to paint up some classic Techs in a similar fashion.

Techs are cool. And probably geeky.
Attendance at the event requires a 1,250 cred gang built using one of the published gangs in the Gang War books or the Gangs of Legend list. House Van Saar is thematically the obvious choice for a Tech gang, and as the House list hasn't yet been published, I'll be using the Gangs of Legend list. I pulled together my favourite Techs and made a preliminary shooty-style list with boltguns, plasma guns, lasguns and a grenade launcher. I also added in a pair of close combat fighters just in case!

After some initial assembly and converting work, the gang looked something like this:


There's a nice mix of Tech gangers, including the Jes Goodwin Leader, some of the nice Mark Copplestone and Roy Eastland gangers, as well as a Marauder miniatures Tech (I think by Aly Morrison). Several figures were destined to be stripped at this point, and I was still planning weapons load-out and arm donors!

The first two figures to get painted are the pair of lasgun gangers - Celerity and Sinclair.

I knew that I wanted at least one female Tech. After rooting around in my boxes I settled on using the old Citadel Venus Bluegenes figure from their 2000AD range in the mid-1980s (If you think this sounds familiar, that's because I've already used a Venus Bluegenes for Kitty Hawke, plucky pilot!).

Venus had a lot of potential as a Tech - her combat trousers were similar to the Tech's work trousers. She also had a primarily bald head with a Mohican which could be clipped away.

I kept the paint scheme pretty monochromatic with the white workwear and black boots and belts. The only real concession to colour are the little flashes of orange and blue.

Celerity's left arm was made from a plastic Confrontation arm mated with an Adeptus Mechanicus piece. I had to shave down the plastic arm significantly as it was a bit too muscular originally.

Here you can see the sculpted holster to ensure that all Celerity's weapons are represented on the model.

I'm not sure where the backpack came from - I cut it down from a vehicle part I think. Note Celerity's cranial insert!

The little doodad on Celerity's belt is from those Age of Sigmar dwarf sky pirates. I forget their correct name.


In the end, I did quite a lot of adaptation, including the removal of both arms, the addition of a new gun, sculpting the right arm and adding a servo arm. I also altered the shape of her head (which was quite flat) and added some techy gear.




Celerity came together with the paint job I think - it helped to conceal all the transitions which I was worried about before I painted her.

Sinclair was a simpler model than Celerity, with only a little modification needed. He's a standard Copplestone Tech with standard plastic Rogue Trader Imperial Guard etc. arms. I did have to carve down the arms to get a closer fit to his body. I also sculpted a new trigger finger and resculpted the fingers of his supporting hand.

Sinclair got a white set of coveralls and some natty steel-capped boots.

Like Celerity, the scheme is monochromatic apart from a few details picked out in orange or blue.


I'm pretty pleased with how well the arms went on. Bringing them closer to the body really helps to sell the pose.

So that's two out of ten gangers painted. I'm hoping to get another pair painted this week to swell the ranks!





31 comments:

  1. Really nice work Jon. It will be fun watching the buildup to the event. ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Tom! Hopefully I can take some pics at the event too :)

      Delete
  2. Are you using the Marauder guy with the little shoulder launcher as the grenade launcher? Thats my plan. I the one in the back row middle an unreleased model?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am indeed planning to use the Marauder guy as the grenade launcher! Seems like we're wholly in sync :)

      The guy middle back is more correctly uncommon and uncatalogued rather than unreleased. I think he's also a Roy Eastland sculpt, but he's not quite got the same look as the others.

      Delete
  3. I like how when you want to put together a new gang quickly you can turn to your pile of very OOP miniatures and knock something together. ;)

    And these are going to be great, as evidenced by the first two.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a happy by-product from long term hoarding :)

      Glad you like these first two.

      Delete
  4. Very nice mate - lovely conversions, great paint job, and good thinking to use these as Van Saar!* I reckon these will do you proud mate.

    *To be fair, I say that with a certain lack of modesty - I’ve been eyeing my Confrontation Techies with the exact same thing in mind ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks mate! I don't think I'm the first or last person to consider Techs as Van Saar. I certainly won't be copyrighting it :)

      Delete
  5. I love these guys, look forward to seeing them in action when you take them in to play!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm looking forward to getting them on the table.

      Delete
  6. These turned out brilliantly!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Having the gang ready for the event is pretty ambitious but I'm confident in your ability to nail them nicely and quickly !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Plenty of time! They're 80% built and 20% painted already :)

      Delete
  8. Techs and Scavvies were my fav models in the Confrontation range and I still kick myself for not picking up more back when I was a lad. Glad to see you put some of those lovely old sculpts to good use though and I really like the idea of a utilitarian white clothing scheme. Good stuff mate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was always fond of Bratts myself. It's really fun to revisit the models after years of gathering dust. Glad you like the white threads!

      Delete
  9. The contrasting B&W colour scheme really shows of the details Axiom. I keen to see them all finished :)

    Will there be a blogpost coming from that April event at WHW too?

    Cheers mate :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm also keen to see them finished. That was another reason to keep the colours simple - speed!

      I'll endeavour to put up a nice event report for you :)

      Delete
  10. Fantastic! I'm right there with Dai, the Techs were my gang back in the Confrontation days. This really takes me back!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad to be able to facilitate a trip down memory lane!

      Delete
  11. I find the mishmash of ranges that've gone into making this gang really stirring. Especially the use of the 2000AD figure. Great work.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Curis. I've always been fond of pulling together minis from disparate sources to make a group. The Techs are somewhat unusual in that for a niche concept with only a dozen or so figures, 4 sculptors had a stab at them. I couldn't resist pulling a conversion of my own though ;)

      Delete
  12. This is definitely THE ONE that I've been waiting for from someone of your skill and talent!

    I have my own tech gang in the making, but thanks to me being poor and the old tech minis being expensive, it's going to be made up from Tempestus Scions, Genestealer Neophyte Hybrids and heads from Puppets War.

    Do you know if the Copplestone Techs are still available from any online retailers?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's very kind of you to say! The techs are a really fun concepts - I'd be interested to see your gang come together.

      The Copplestone Techs were produced by Citadel, so won't be available unless they're second hand. I picked mine up from ebay and trading groups over a couple of years. It might be worth looking at some of the Copplestone sculpts for Grenadier Future Warriors range, or even Copplestone Castings. He did quite a few figures for the first incarnation of Warzone too.

      Delete
    2. I definitely endorse the simple paint scheme that you're using here, mainly as it's resulted in two blog posts within 24 hours!

      Thanks for the tips about the sourcing of the models as well, I do have my beady eye on some of the Copplestone Castings (his "Road Warrior" is very nice), so I'll check them out and see what I can find.

      Do you mind also telling me where the Techs that you refer to as "Marauders" come from?

      Delete
    3. Marauder was an offshoot of Citadel, producing figures sculpted by Aly and Trish Morrison for Games Workshop games. Most of the figures were produced in the early 1990s and were marketed in White Dwarf / available in Games Workshop stores. Many of the figures were alternate versions of the main Citadel ranges (chaos thugs and space orks for example).

      Several gangs were sculpted for Marauder- including techs, ash waste nomads and scavvies. There's a good resource over at Stuff of Legends:
      http://www.solegends.com/marauder/index.htm

      Delete
    4. Ah, I knew Marauder existed, but I seem to have been totally unaware that they released anything other than fantasy minis!

      I'm guessing one of those is the "Tech Baron"?

      Delete
  13. The Tech Baron is actually one of 3 Leader models sculpted by Jes Goodwin for Confrontation. He has Tech Baron on his tab, but is referred to as Leader 1 over at the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki: http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Necromunda_First_Releases_(Confrontation)_-_Collectors_Guide

    ReplyDelete
  14. The limited palette works well in this case so good choice I say!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks very much! Glad you like them :)

      Delete