This Christmas was pretty good. More than pretty good actually. You see, ole Santa Claus got me something I’ve been after since 1989.
Yep!! The Imperial Guard plastic boxset! Now admittedly, the photo above isn’t exactly what I got. No box And no lovely untouched sprues. Id love to own the box, don’t get me wrong, but I just can’t justify the costs...plus I need both my kidneys! However, I got the next best thing, or maybe the most important thing...I got the minis. Old, painted in twenty coats of thick acrylic and needing some tlc. But after all this time...I got them!!!!!
Since Christmas I’ve been incredibly busy with work, so zero painting time, but I have managed to strip a few here and there. Over the past few weeks they've all been prepped and now I’m ready to go...
But me being me...I have made a pivot on the project, as I also have some of the old metal guard that I want to add to these ranks, and as painting time is elusive at the moment, I decided to work up some extras for my guard!
Two particular minis I’m pleased I’ve managed to get hold of, are the medic and a wounded guardsman (a wonderful gift from a good friend of mine) ...which I think is older than the 1988 wounded guard you can see here:
In fact, I think I may have a wounded imperial army grunt...but I need to keep looking to find the actual catalogue number. (Any help on this always appreciated!) Normally this mini should be laying prone, and I had planned to have him and the medic on a shared base, with the medic about to dispatch some pain relief, via a las blast to the head.
However, I noted that this particular mini was fully sculpted on the reverse. He’s a 360 perfect sculpt. So if I’m clever I could stand him up...hmmmmmm. Lightbulb moment! Indecisive as ever, I did a quick poll on Twitter...
Turns out, having him stood with the medic giving him a helping hand was the favourite. Ok...cool! It’s more dramatic too. Hero medic struggling to drag a poor guardsman to safety under heavy fire. Imagine that on the table!!
So with this in mind, I needed to sort out the medics arms. You’ll note in the image above, he’s got the modern Astra Militariummuumuu (whatever they’re called) sergeant arm. The ones with the big shoulder pads. I nearly went with this, but those shoulder pads just don’t work on these older minis. So instead, I cast about for some good proxies. I’ve used Genestealer cult arms on these before, and they kinda work, but I wanted something more like the originals. At first I was going to use some arms from Mad Robot Miniatures, as they make some amazing proxies for old 80s guard. See below...Amazing aren’t they?
And they’re quite reasonably priced. Unfortunately they’re based in the USA and the shipping costs make them unaffordable for me...which did make me cry. A lot.
However, If you’re in the states or have mountains of disposable cash heres a link: https://madrobotminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9_19&products_id=309
Instead I opted for some StarGrave figures. These aren’t quite as good as the ones above, but they’re better than the Genestealer cult arms. They’re also pretty reasonable when it comes to price! £5 for a whole sprue, plus extras like backpacks and knives!
New arms were eventually fitted and as you can see, they look pretty good!
Next step was the medics left arm, which I wanted wrapped behind the wounded guardsman, like he was being held up. To do this I took an unusual arm figuration, a pointing sideways and shooting arm (Sorry no image...but it was a weird configuration) which this particular Stargrave sprue had (I picked this sprue just for this arm). And after some careful slicing with a scalpel, I had replaced the hand. Here it is, glued to mini and attached to a larger base.
Next step was to drill and pin the wounded guardsman so that he would stand up. It was at this point that I realised that I had lent someone my drillbit attachment for my dremmel...aaargh!! So the old trusty hand drill came to the rescue....although it did take me an age...plus cramp. What we do for this hobby!
Once drilled I pinned with a paperclip cut to size! I pretty much always use paperclips, as they’re sturdy enough, cheap and are the exact same diameter as my drillbit!
Finally, I attached the wounded guardsman to the medic on the base with superglue, and there it is.
I’ve since repositioned the hand on the back, which will need some greenstuff to fill, to give it a better fit. But essentially, conversion done. Next step is painting them & the other 30 guard!! Look out for part 2!