Today’s post features my final model from June as well as one of my early completions from July. After my little rant as part of my previous Last Chancers post, it’s good to see that there’s nothing here that could possibly offend any… oh.
I kind-of jest here. “Demolition Man” is obviously partly-based on some Russian and Soviet stereotypes, but there’s a little more to it than that. While his headgear is a Ushanka, (as also worn by the Valhallan Guard), and his Lasgun has a long, sickle-style magazine, reminiscent of Kalashnakov rifles, the cut and style of his pants look to be based on Cossack pants, so he’s really much more of a 40k-style composite of tropes and elements – kind of like the Space Wolves who are Scots-Irish Viking Celts covered in Wolfskins. Still, I went with those feels and painted his lasgun in the orangey-plastic colours of the “traditional” AK, and the fine lines on his shirt to turn it into a telnyashka – though in my research it turns out that a lot of other countries in the Post-Soviet region wore in their militaries as well.
“Animal” has much more of a Pentinent Legion feel to his sculpt, though I’m not sure why you’d gove someone like that a chainsword and a meltagun. The chainsword looks way oversized, and that’s because the sculptor appears to have simply slapped a plastic Astartes chainsword onto the green’s back – and did the same with the Auspex scanner tucked under his right arm, resulting in his gear looking comically oversized, which is a key reason I painted them dark – to make them a little more understated than if I’d painted them in bright ’90’s yellow – as was one of my first thoughts. Since Animal also has that (explosive) collar, I decided to paint his pants in a “prison orange” which again serves to draw the eye away (at least a little) from his Space Marine-sized accessories. I also gave his melta-barrel the old heat treatment by putting it onto the stovetop until it discoloured. Possibly.
The reason Animal wasn’t completed for June was because I wanted to add some serious tribal tattooing to him – in the style of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. It just seemed to fit, but then when I got ill, painting those fine details just wasn’t going to happen. I also wanted to continue with the subtle variations of skin tones that I started with Warrior Woman and continued with on Brains and Shiv, so I went a little more ruddy with Animal using my old hex-pot-era Citadel Dwarf Flesh, to give him a more sunburned look. It’s really become apparent at this point that attempting to paint in the whites and pupils of these models’ eyes is a fool’s errand, as most of them have only sculpted slits for their eyes rather than the more usual sculpted eyeballs. They do have some nice eyelids, to be fair, and the models still work very well.
I’ve really been enjoying the painting of these models quite a bit, as their status as (now-classic?) unique characterfully-individual sculpts really lends them to taking more time than I would with mass-army models.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great work on these.
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Thanks mate!
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Now these two I really like! 🙂 Very nicely done!
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Thank you, John!
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Lovely job mate! Yeah, the bits and bobs on Animal are a bit oversized so nice job on downplaying those… best not to dwell on the logic of a magazine on a laser gun though 😂
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Cheers Alex – I’m sure it’s just a much larger capacity power pack/battery. Like adding one of those oversized power banks to your phone. 😀
I do miss the days when the Imperial Guard came with Autoguns as often as Lasguns, though…
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Great work on both mate, like the nods to actual representations as well as the 40K elements, and great work downplaying the sculptors laziness ! LOL Have you got many more of this group to finish ?
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Thank you Dave! I’ve now got 2 more painted – just needing photos and a post written up, and then another 2 on the paint desk, and then a final three untouched.
…and then onto the other weird and wonderful Individual Guard (and adjacent) models I’ve collected over the years.
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Niiiiice man
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Chers mate! More to come in a few days, too! 🙂
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Great work mate I know what you mean about the chain sword, you did your best to hide it.
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Thanks mate. It’s something that I feel like stands out a lot more when it’s pointed out (or when you have to paint it), so on the table I reckon it’ll be fine.
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Great looking pair and really nice work on those tats! Animal is my fave, but I’d be pretty tempted to try and saw off that Chainsword!
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Haha that’s pretty funny, given that it’s a hard-pewter model and that the chainsword covers the space and transitions between bare skin back/musculature, belt, pants, legs, bare feet, etc. 😀 It’d be far easier to build an updated verison using plastic IG and Necro models.
Besides – and more importantly – given that these models are long OOP, I prefer to kepe them as untouched as possible. A few of them had their pentinent arrows filed off them in the distant past, but that’s a pretty minor detail overall.
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I’d hesitate for sure, but I wouldn’t put it past me to commit such an atrocity and slap a backpack on him! 🤪
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…and a leg pack, and an ankle pack, and a topknot-pack.. 😀
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Very nice work on both of these. They have a lot of personality to them, just as I would have expected from the Last Chancers. I wouldn’t mind it if GW released some more squads like the Last Chancers. I’m guessing that these models were made after the Black Library novels took off like Eisenhorn or Gaunt’s Ghosts (though I could definitely be wrong on this!) and that is what it takes for something like these to get made but I’d love to be wrong on that!
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Thanks! These models were released around th saem time as the first Gaunts’ Ghosts book, but given lead times and how novels and miniatures are developed in very different silos it’d have been more coincidence than anything else. Eisenhorn came a couple of years later.
The good news is that these days there are plenty of other 3rd party models and STLs that can do a whole “characterful Imperial Guard” thing, as well as a fair few other models that GW has released in the intervening years – ssveral of which I’ve got and will be painting to sort-of add to this growing group of ne’er-do-wells and commandoes…
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You have excellent memory, mate! I think these were out when I played 40k but I had no idea who the characters were and didn’t go for Imperial Guard either so I didn’t follow them closely. I figured GW cherry-picked characters that are popular from Black Library to make “special” releases from time-to-time but I’m glad to hear it isn’t always that simple.
I bet you’re right that STL’s, in particular, have lots of options for nostalgic Warhammer fans. I don’t follow that space much and tend to forget about it as part of the market for some reason. Regardless, I’m excited to see who else you got for your Imperial Guard Expendables (or something along those lines!) 🙂
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Yeah, these guys just sort of came out of nowhere – which is much less like themn these days, but the sort of thing they did more often back in the day. This wasn’t too far off the heels of all the different metal Imperial Guard regiments being released, so they had a lot more scope within ranges in a lot of ways back in those days – though even then it was surprising to see just how far they went with the Guard regiments – they must have had someone in management very much onside at the time.
Once I finish the official set of Last Chancers, I’ve got… quite a few cool GW models from different eras, a nice selection of Victoria Miniatures not-guard, and I found a nice batch of Kickstarted models last night that will also supplement them very nicely.
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