Like a Baron!

So I haven't gotten nearly the number of games in to keep going with my tactics articles, hopefully that will be remedied a bit this weekend.  So what have I been doing? Sitting on my butt? Ya, mostly . . . but I've also been doing some painting and conversion work.  One of the units I've been working on getting ready for play is my Hellions.  They aren't quite done, but expect some pics coming soon.

I've also been doing some minor conversion work.  While looking for some bits for another project (that got pushed to the back of the workbench) I came across an old partial conversion that I got from a friend in a trade.  It was meant to be a hellion skyboard for an Archon in the previous edition, simply a part of an Eldar Vyper with some small conversion work.  Problem was it got broken and never completed.

"Hey, I need a Baron Sarthonyx to go with my hellions, and joing my beasts.  He needs a cool skyboard!"  As the though went through my head the bits started flying.  A couple evenings worth of work I got what you see below.

Comin at you

So as you may be able to see, the central board is made from the rear half of a Eldar Vyper.  One of the wings was broken, so I trimmed it down to the body, did some slight re-gluing and then filed it flush.  The new wings are the bottom part of some left over Raider rudder blades.  The guns were just the barrels off a couple extra splinter rifles that come with the raider kits.  You can't see it in the vents, but the reason they are so centrally located is because of the location of the vents and corresponding jets on the front and back of the board.  Finally the board needed a bit of greenstuff to hide the center line (this was done previously by whoever started the board, but I wanted some slightly different details, so it was removed and redone).

Quite the "pigstikka"

So I had an awesome looking board, now I just neede a Baron to ride it.  Since I had been working on 10 out of the 15 total hellions that I had, I tried putting one of the half assembled hellions on.  He just didn't quite  have the look I wanted.  I started going through other bits, and came across the legs to one of the Venom passengers.  A quick pop off of a Hellion body from the legs, some dry fitting with Blue-Tac and I had something that looked like the start of something.

Next I needed a Hellglaive.  My first though was modifying the powerspear from the Scourges set, but the pulled back nature didn't flow with the pose.  While I was digging for that bit though, I noticed the spear from the Raider passengers.  This was a wicked looking hook, and had some promise.  I built out the glaive blades by trimming down the top side of the spear head so it was flat and then adding a second spearhead .  I did this with another non-wielded spear, and then trimmed down the handle on both spears and glued them together.  A quick check of the Baron's wargear, a pistol arm, and some more Blue-Tac and the model concept was dryfit together.

Looking down at trouble.

I still want to add a flowing component to him.  I'm going to steer clear of the superman capes that seem so prevelant.  My goal will be one of the sleeveless trenchcoats similar to the old incubi that came with Vect's Raider.  It should be a good test of my sculpting skills, but I may take a few days to do some testing with tissue paper to see how I want it to flow.