I'm still painting the first six models of my gang, but in the meantime I couldn't resist making another batch. I've assembled one of the elite models, with a high elf arm, a cultist autopistol and a militia knife arm. I'll also be painting an adventurer model (labelled "spacer") as another ganger, and another ("bandit"), armed with a tiny hand flamer, as an underhive scummer:

  

The tech leader is a one-piece model, and a fantastic one at that. He's joined by a tech with a vehicle-crew laspistol and a militia knife, and another with a plasma gun. I grafted the stock of a militia handgun to the body of a Space Marine plasma gun - as well as making it fit nicely to appropriate arms, I think this conversion gives a hand-build, improvised feel to what would otherwise be a blatant military weapon:

A work in progress shot of the Bounty Hunter:

A lot more to do, but I really like the way he's looking. The grey and green is his own personal colour scheme, although the yellow weapons and armour plate (as well as a few other things I'm planning) will help tie him in to the rest of the gang.

The first four models are now based on a mix of coarse sand and fine slate chips, and primed.

I've used a form of zenithal priming, spraying first with Citadel Chaos Black from all angles, touching up with Imperial Primer in the recesses, then a light spray of Halfords grey primer from high angles. Finally, a light dusting of Citadel Skull White from above. This takes a little time, but is especially useful for metal miniatures since you get great coverage, and it makes small details much easier to see when painting.

I also added two Tech Gangers:

The first has arms from the Empire Knights kit (the Knights of the White Wolf parts, which have cloth on the upper arms, armoured bracers and heavy-duty gauntlets) with a knife from a plastic Necromunda Orlock, and a metal lasgun from a Necromunda conversion pack. The other has an arm and laspistol from the Imperial Guard vehicle crew.

These six models will be my initial painting project for the next few weeks.

The next two members of the gang don't need any construction.

On the left is a model from the Iron Claw Space Pirate line. She was called Loritta in GW flyers in the late 80's, although the her base tab simply reads Cybergirl. I figured she'd be a good fit for my gang as it'll mostly be Tech Gangers, and she's covered with quite subtle cybernetic enhancements. Certainly, it's nice to have a woman in a gang that's not the all-female Escher.

On the right is a Confrontation ganger whose tab calls him Elite, and he's got some swagger - a braided, fur-trimmed jacket over one shoulder, a finely-crafted flak jacket, and that snarling hound at his feet. He was almost certainly designed as a gang leader, although he might not end up in that role for me.

The Necromunda rules describe a Bounty Hunter as having a vast number of weapons, more than I could ever model on him, and I'm not keen to cover him guns either. This does mean that I can have him holding pretty much anything I like. This Bounty Hunter's head is slightly elevated, so he'd suit a weapon raised to the sky.

I've attached a Forgeworld resin chainsword to an Empire militia arm, and the other arm is from a modern Imperial Guard vehicle crewman, with a resin boltpistol also from Forgeworld. It pains me to cause permanent damage to such a venerable mini, but there's only one way to turn him into a robust gaming piece, so I drilled the shoulders and pinned the arms on.

Using the rules for a Ratskin Scout, the Dogskin can be armed with one of several basic (two-handed rifle-type) weapons, and a maul, bludgeon or axe. As he's largely bare-chested, unclothed arms would fit best, and a good source of these is the Empire Flagellant kit.

I've chosen an autogun, taken from a plastic chaos cultist from the Dark Vengeance set, with the chaos symbols and the supporting hand carved away. I kept the cultist's pistol grip hand, and grafted it to a flagellant arm just above the wrist bracer. The other arm already has a suitable spiked maul (which echoes the model's spiked collar), so I just cut away the distinctive chains from the bracer and maul base. There's a lot of movement in the pose, so I've tried to fit the arms to match, without letting them obscure the details of the face or chest.

More to come tomorrow!

Hi! I'm Galaspar. I've decided to take my hobby in a new direction by embracing the the ethos and aesthetic of Oldhammer. Exactly what Oldhammer is, and what it means to me, is probably a subject for another post, but primarily it's about celebrating Citadel miniatures from the 1980's and early 90's, and rejecting the more recent trend for ever-larger war machines, tournaments and huge pitched battles. I'm starting by building and painting a hive gang, suitable for games of Necromunda, using figures from the Confrontation range circa 1988 and the Rogue Trader adventurer and mercenary lines. I already had a few of these models in my collection, sitting around unloved for twenty years or more, but a recent lucky find in a charity shop has bolstered their numbers with some rare and unusual figures.

I have a deep bitzbox of useful parts, and I'm aiming to build these models as dramatically as I can, while keeping the look appropriate for the era. I'll start with two of my favourite models, a Bounty Hunter and an Underhive Ganger (a precursor to the Necromunda Ratskins, sometimes known as a Dogskin):

Confrontation models shipped with a sprue of bare plastic arms, or (as in the case of the models I bought back in the day) the same clothed plastic arms as Imperial Guard figures of that time, along with a sprue of Imperial Guard las weapons. I've got a few of these parts around, but I want to avoid using them here, as they lack detail compared to the metal bodies, and tend to create static poses without much variety. When the models have got as much great detail as these, I also want to avoid closed poses (ie. holding a rifle across the chest) in favour of something much more open and dynamic. I'll add further posts as I build and paint this project.