Sector Mechanicus #4: Thermic Plasma Conduits & Rogue Trader Pipeworks

Sector Mechanicus Thermic Plasma Conduits & Rogue Trader Pipeworks

More scenery today – the first pieces from a set of Thermic Plasma Conduits, alongside the matching pieces from a Kill Team: Rogue Trader box. Aside from various personal issues going on, my work has been shut down for this week due to (at least) one positive COVID test. Thankfully I had no direct or even indirect contact with the individual, though one of my close colleagues did, so we’re hoping her test comes back negative. Without being flippant, there’s some stuff I can do remotely, but as it was an unforeseen shutdown and is only for a few days, for the most part it means I need to keep myself busy – and so more terrain is the way I’m trying to keep what’s left of my sanity. Along with Assassins Creed: Odyssey (I consistently get to these games 2 years late) and starting to watch The Witcher. Which is only …okay, so far.

Sector Mechanicus Thermic Plasma Conduits

As with so much of my stuff, I built these quite some time ago, sprayed them black, and these ones even had a (bad) spray of metallic applied. Before being forgotten and left in a box for months if not a couple of years. So now that I’m this current scenery kick, it was time to get them out and spend a couple of days working on them to get them finished to a level I’m happy with. So, well, that’s what I did.

Sector Mechanicus Thermic Plasma Conduits

This first batch is relatively small, only eight components. They’re from my first box of these before more became available later via additional terrain kits, Kill Team boxed kits and the like. I might have gotten some from Conquest Magazine as well? Basically, I was trying not to use all of  my first boxed set of pipes in case I wanted to do something more interesting with some of them later on. Now with addiitonal sets and parts, I’m not so worried about that – so as these drew closer to completion, I started working on a few more simple pipes from that first kit, and now I’ve found a second set worth of sprues in a box and have started assembling those with a (little) bit more variance.

Sector Mechanicus Rogue Trader Pipeworks

For the time being I’ve kept the pipes to a relatively flexible and neutral metal tone. I do like the looks that rusted off-white and also dark red-painted pipes give, so perhaps a future set of two might look different. For the next two waves of these, I’ll stick with a compatable look to these, though. The actual pipe sections could fit in with some modern settings, as long as we don’t look too closely at them, though the segments with the servo-skulls wouldn’t fare so well. Unless that side of the panels was up against a wall, I guess. Otherwise they’ll work well in any sci-fi or many post-apoc settings, as well as (obviously) the Warhammer 40k universe.

Sector Mechanicus Thermic Plasma Conduits

Doing all these dials was a bit of a pain, and I decided to use the rounded panel as a kind of “Aliens” or “Fallout”-inspired monitor screen, with light green text glowing on a dark green screen. As with almost all of my most recent posts, I’m also calling these finished models good for Dave Stone’s Winter of Scenery Challenge!

Thanks Dave for keeeping my motivation up!

Grenadier Miniatures Future Warriors: Future Savage Humungus (Mark Copplestone)

Grenadier Miniatures Future Warriors: Future Savage Humungus (Mark Copplestone)

Today we have another old sci-fi model. To recycle and slightly-update some older text:  it’s one of Grenadier Miniatures’ Future Warriors models, sculpted by Mark Copplestone and sold in the 1990’s which I bought, well, rather a lot of. No, sorry, none are for sale, but if you poke around, you’ll find a hell of a lot of them still available today from Mirilton and EM-4 Miniatures, as well as very close relatives from both Wargames Foundry and of course the sculptor himself – Mark Copplestone. All at very reasonable prices.

Grenadier Miniatures Future Warriors: Future Savage Humungus (Mark Copplestone)

In fact, here’s the specific pack this one comes from. These models are just part of the post-apoc looking models that are rather perfect for a variety of post-apocalyptic settings like Fallout, and have enough versatility to fit into Necromunda or 40k as general scum. THis model in fact was started in the 1990’s as part of my necromunda gang, though he didn’t get very far and all that was really done were the weapon swaps to 40k weapons from a Necormunda Weapons Pack, clothing basecoated black, skin base tone done and of course the flame-orange hair that I have eliminated all trace of.

Grenadier Miniatures Future Warriors: Future Savage Humungus (Mark Copplestone)

While there was no pressing reason to finish this figure, it’s one of the ones that The Tray allowed me to force a finish onto. And of course, all that base skin gave me a reasonable canvas to practice some mroe of my small-tattoo freehanding techniques with. I’m not sure if I got enough fleshtone into the mix this time, as they are rather dark, but blending them in to give that “under the skin” look is always a tricky aspect. This model was also an attempt to create two “sleeves” that were still made of somewhat distinct tattoos, rather than just, you know, washing the arms in black ink or something…

Grenadier Miniatures Future Warriors: Future Savage Humungus (Mark Copplestone)

In the end, it feels a bit more like the “Henry Rollins” type of tatto sleeve that I’ve accomplished here rather than the “Randy Orton” look, but there will be plenty more models to keep practising on in the future, assuming I manage to survive our current worldwide pandemic. It was also an exercise in different black tones, with different looks atttempted for the leather pants, straps, boots, pouches and hair. I feel like they were more distinct before hitting him with the varnish, but whaddayagonnado?

Grenadier Miniatures Future Warriors: Future Savage Humungus (Mark Copplestone)

Don’t forget to Jam That Jam!

Finally, some tattoo close-ups. On the stomach we have “Thug” (in case you couldn’t guess that part) and on underside of the left arm, we have “Jam That Jam”, which is a pretty obscure wrestling in-joke about Terry Bolleas’s script tattoo.

Grenadier Miniatures Future Warriors: Future Savage Humungus (Mark Copplestone)

Placeholder text for my sore knuckles!

And to conclude, my smallest (semi) legible lettering yet. Knuckle tattoos on a 28mm model. I admit the lighting glade on the varnished model doesn’t help a lot, but can anyone actually read that?