State of the Hunt, week 43/2020: Blood on the tracks

Hey everyone, I have been sitting on this next update for quite a while, but it has been an “eventful” couple of weeks, so you’re only getting some new content now. It’s also nothing special, really — just a few more kitbashes I have been working on recently. But anyway, here goes:

On the one hand, I am currently still working on a couple of additional kitbashed World Eaters, bringing what was originally planned as “The Hateful Eight” to something that would be more correctly dubbed “The Hateful Sixteen-ish” — but I already suspected this might happen, so yeah… 😉

First up, here’s one of the models I shared with you during a previous World Eaters-related post a couple of weeks ago:

I only messed around with his pose a bit (as his arms and head have not been properly glued in yet) and added some some gear to his belt:

But messing around with the model again gave me an appetite for kitbashing yet another World Eater. And when I ended up looking at some of the unbuilt Blood Warriors from the 1st edition Age of Sigmar starter box on my pile of shame – these gentlemen here…

…I came up with an idea for the model in the in the top left spot and created this jolly chap:

Believe it or not, what actually kicked off this entire conversion was my observation that the little round vent from an old CSM backpack would neatly fit into the middle of that breastplate 😉

I really love the brutish, overgrown look of this guy — it’s also why I gave him that almost neanderthalian bare head from the Blood Warriors kit (minus the “Abaddon-lite” topknot, that is). Oh, and he’s wielding a proper chainaxe, too — in fact, the head of his axe is a venerable bit from a really old plastic CC weapons sprue, even predating the plastic berzerkers — hard to believe, I know 😉

Here are both models in a comparison shot:

An interesting conversion note for these two models is that they also serve as examples of two approaches to converting Blood Warrior legs into CSM legs: In both cases, the Blood Warrior lower legs were carefully removed from just above the knee down, then to be replaced with Astartes greaves: The first model uses plastic Mk. III legs that, while completely appropriate from a design standpoint, are maybe just a fraction too small and slender. They still work reasonably well if you don’t scrutinise the model too closely, but in an ideal world they’d just be a bit bigger.

Meanwhile, the new guy uses greaves from the new vanilla CSM kit, and they really do perfectly match those Blood Warrior parts — at the same time, they make a conversion that was already hilariously wasteful even moreso 😉

In other news, something completely unexpected happened to me while I was working on those kitbashes: I suddenly found myself setting aside hobby time to work on a freaking RHINO!

In my defense, it was all a reaction to seeing Apologist’s incredible Blood Angels Rhino that actually almost works as a character in its own right. And discovering that brilliantly realised model made me think of something I had wanted to try for quite a while. So I took one of the Rhinos I own (I put those together cleanly and meticulously, but without much flair, years ago, mainly because Rhinos were something you needed for a World Eaters army, but not something I was all that interested in). Anyway, here’s what the model looked like when I started:

It doesn’t show up in the picture above, but everyone who has already worked on a Rhino model will be aware that there’s a tantalisingly huge bit of empty space where the driver’s compartment of the APC should be. And if you have been following my blog for a while, you may remember that I’ve developed a bit of a thing for adding cockpits to models.

Now adding a fully realised driver’s compartment to a Rhino is something I had been thinking of every now and then, but it was Apologist’s attention to detail that finally took me over the edge, so I started to look for reference material that would help me.

This article over on Spikey Bits gave me a good idea about where to start. Even more important was Captain MAGpie’s conversion of a Command Rhino. And there were some “official” illustrations that proved to be an invaluable resource:

A Predator poster that came with an old issue of White Dwarf (in the early aughts, if I remember correctly). If you take a closer look, you’ll be able to make out some specifics regarding the cockpit/driver’s compartment:

And there are the schematics for a Damocles command Rhino — from a Forgeworld publication, I believe?!

So here’s an early mockup of the driver’s compartment:

The driver actually uses a torso from the new CSM kit as well as a head from the Havoc kit — the latter seems like a brilliant fit for a Rhino driver, what with all the cabling and bionic eye. And I did want to bring the model in line with the new CSM models.

There’s also a lot of emergency gear stashed in the driver’s  compartment — such as some extra CC weapons (in case the driver gets to join in on the action), some extra promethium and some spare pieces of tank track to allow for field repairs:

With the basic shapes blocked in, I next made some tweak to the driver and the area surrounding him:

And here’s what the whole ensemble looks like with the front armour in place — getting this all to fit together smoothly was more work than I thought!

Several people online suggested adding some kind of basket or platform below the turret hatch on the left part of the driver’s compartment. And while I didn’t manage to throw together an entire basket, I think this might be a pretty good compromise:

As you can see, there’s now a little metal platform directly underneath the hatch. It hasn’t been glued to the Rhino’s roof yet, though, and on second thought, might work even better if turned around by 90 degrees:

From a utilitarian standpoint, this whole conversion is completely pointless, obviously. But it has been a lot of fun to delve into exploring an area like this that doesn’t normally get shown, and come up with a believable setup for it. I imagine I’ll be working on this for quite a bit, and of course I’ll also be thinking about some additional decoration for the rest of the Rhino, in order to turn it into more of a character, so to speak.

So yeah, that’s it for today’s update. It goes without saying that I would love to hear any suggestions and feedback you might have.

And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!