Thursday, January 17, 2019

Warhammer 40k Project: SoB Order Of Our Sacred Lady

     After a few months of figuring our a name for this Order of mine, I decided on the fairly simple Order Of Our Sacred Lady. They are the followers of a canoness who hailed from the Order of Ebon Chalice who became a saint after she defeated not 1, not 2 but 3 Ork Warbosses in a single battle and chased a daemon back into the warp. Her exploits were such that the survivors were allowed to start their own order. They chose their primary color blue for her armor was stained blue after she wounded the daemon before chasing him into the warp. All soft armor is black. All straps are a raw umber that dries slightly glossy. The tabards and weapons are primarily white with gunmetal colored parts.
      The following is the start of my 2 canoness's and a battle sister squad after starting them last Thursday. With winter weather threatening the area again and one heck of a whip lashing cold snap, expect next week's update to merge with the following weeks as I work out of a shop some miles from home. Other than that, here are a few pics.

     The 2 canoness's are on 32mm plastic bases as everyone else is on 25mm plastic bases.

     I am surprised to discover that dark blue with the thinner medium accidentally created ultramar blue. Oops. I have been a big user of apple barrel and the likes for many, many years and I relatively have little issues with them.

     The boots went satin black to differentiate them from the soft armor.

     All straps, grips and pouches went raw umber that dries glossy.

     Next comes the tabards. The white paint I used was a bit thin so it took 2 coats to fully cover nicely.



     Then comes the weapons being painted. Simple to do with a few variations between some of the bolters.


     What comes next is up for debate but I am gonna paint the gun belt that same gun metal color as all of the actions a brighter shade of gun metal. After that it will be the gold decorations that is not part of the armor as those will be painted in different colors to separate them from their rolls. However this does cut back on tactical flexibility so I may not do that. If the weather holds up, I should be done with these 12 ladies by months end. Also some heads from statuesque had arrived so I will show you my goo/ super glue method if next weeks update ends up being short.
     As usual, leave your comments here or on the FB page The Officer Factory and all complaints will be filed and sent to the Ordos Hereticus. Chao.

Officer Factory: December 2018 Projects completion

Just a few pics of client projects that have been completed by me. A mix of D&D minis and Dust 1947 marines.












Thursday, January 10, 2019

Shieldwolf Miniatures Sisters of Faith/ Warhammer 40k Sisters of Battl

     Shieldwolf Miniatures is a small company that one can say is known for their mostly all female plastic miniature range. They began with their fantasy line of miniatures and last February expanded to sci-fi. The Sisters of Faith, their self proclaimed first all plastic female paladins was a simultaneous release of their fantasy Sisters of Talliareum set.
     The following is my out of box review, assembly cautions and conversion steps to turn the Sisters of Faith into Warhammer 40000 Sisters of Battle or Adepta Sororitas.
     When I pre-ordered these, they had them as sets and despite me ordering the wrong one, a quick email to Shieldwolf Miniatures and they changed it for me so yay; smiles. The one set of 20 had a free sprue and the second set was 40 miniatures and 2 free resin miniatures. I must admit I had forgotten the first one had a free sprue so when I counted, I was quite pleased that I had an extra sprue.
     First up are the resin miniatures. The only hard part about these was opening the packages! I had to use an x-acto knife to pry the backs open! The miniatures are protected by a foam pad that we warmers are accustomed with to seeing in blister packs and I say yay because I need them for an upcoming project.
     These are the ladies assembled with warhammer 40k bits glued onto them. It is a shame that the guns have no magazines in them, my one true grief with these but with so many extra bits from the plastic sets; this is not really a problem for me.

     My dad taught me a neat trick. I use the stuff called Goo and a touch of super glue or cynoacrylic (?) and in time it dries HARD!

     Even though it may not be easy to see, there were 2 air bubbles I encountered. One was at the very bottom of the back pack so I ignored that but one was on the knee pad and was a bit more visible. So that needed filling. Overall, I am quite pleased how these came out. I did wash them in case there was mold release still on them and the mold lines was easy to remove.

     Now onto the Sisters of Faith. This is the front box art.

     And the back of the box. I still have no idea what most of these weapons are supposed to be on the sprues.

     And the sprues. All 5 of them. Enough for 20 miniatures. The bases were supplied in amply sized zip-lock baggies but had none for the free sprue so I grabbed 4 spare warhammer ones that I had in reserve. In case you are wondering why the bases are not in this pic, I had merged them all into 1 baggie.

     A closer look of the sprues.

     The boxes I feel are a tad small to squeeze in all 5 sprues in them.

     The first 22 built. This includes the 2 resin miniatures.

     The variety of poses and individual heads and arm poses makes each one feel different and a few bits of gear added to them and the results are lovely. There are the usual mold lines but nothing too hard to get rid of. There are a few places where I feel where the sprue is attached to the part are a tad hard to snip but I have toe nail clippers and other weird cutters that do the job quite well.

     The one true grief I have are the back plates. They do not fit quite well and leave a gap. It is visible where the grenades are. To be honest, the gaps are hardly visible at a distance. It is just an annoyance.

     The first 10 built and primered.

     The 2 resin miniatures primered.

     The next few photos will show how I made a multi-melta work for the Sisters of Faith. I found a backpack with easy to cut nozzles that are on the side of them. Do not be fooled, this plastic is HARD! Luckily, a good blade made quick work of the task. As well as a cut finger so ... yeah. Caution is advised. No; suggested. Heck, just don't cut yourself, ok?

     I them lobe doff the nozzles off of the multi-melta pack. This was a bit easier to do.

     Huh. I wonder why there were holes there. No matter; they made great location points to glue the other nozzles onto.

     This was a bit harder to do. Remove the space marine hand since theirs are twice the size as these models hands. As they should be. I think I did an ok job.

     Next was to lob off the space marine arm. Ouch.

     Finally, the trigger hand was removed from the marines cold dead hand.

     The modified backpack is glued higher than normal and the head turned in the direction of where the multi-melta will be aiming at.

     For flamers, meltas and storm bolters, the following steps are the same. Find a let tor right hand that I need.

     Lob off the trigger and gun hand and swap and glue onto arm.

     The multi-melta is now done.


     There was a gap in the hosing that I filled with a purity seal. Hey, the emperor protects, right?

     Here we have a normal Sister of Faith with some warhammer bits glued onto her.


     And here we have a flamer.


     It is hard to see because of the flash but I took one of their own multi-melta looking weapons and trimmed the nozzles way back and added a thin brass rod and made it a heavy flamer.

     My brother and I encountered a french animated show called Wakfu on Facebook and the scene was dedicated towards General Frida Mofette; who is a battle crazed woman. We loved her so much frothier antics that we were inspired to paint these Sisters of Faith/ Battle to match her colors.

      So onto scoring and final thoughts. I must admit I have a slight bias towards Shieldwolf Miniatures and loved their Shieldmaiden Infantry/Rangers (Krumvaal® Northern Alliance) set and want to get 2 more for Ral Partha Chaos Wars.
     These I felt were a bit more challenging to build but that is because of the extra few parts. The only part I foresee anyone having issues with are the swords. I have a few that are bending at the hilt due to handling but as this is plastic, it is easy to bend back. I would have to give it a 7/10.
      The gap issue for the back plate and the backpacks not fitting 100% into the back plate are gonna cause grief for the more perfectionist of us modelers and figuring out what arms or hands to use can cause headaches for the beginners but after a while, I could figure out without dry fitting what arm goes with what for the poses I was looking for.
     I would not recommend this for beginners but for those with some modeling experience. I had similar issues to Dreamforge Games Eisenkerns for the arms but theirs had excellent instructions; something that I feel is missing.
     Overall, these are great kits to build a mass number of minis quickly at a good price and I look forward to seeing more from them in the future.
     2 years ago, they launched a kickstarter but stopped it. The Sisters of Faith were a stretch goal as the Sisters of Wolves was suppose to be the primary. They do have plans to continue with that but they want to see how the Sisters of Faith goes. This comes direct from Shieldwolf Miniatures themselves.
     As usual, please leave a comment, suggestion at The Officer Factory or here. If you have a complaint, please file it in the trash.

Future Projects: Hex Foam Terrain: Alternate Russo-Georgian War 2007

     Well, this is gonna be something.      I recently found myself involved in a sub-genre of miniature wargaming called Micro Armour or...