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Author Topic: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...  (Read 2686 times)

Offline osjclatchford

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OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« on: July 22, 2020, 03:09:05 PM »
so Ive teased the royston rifles in a previous thread (spacesharks) and I've decided to take some shots and get them online for you guys to see at last!

so the Royston Rifles are a homebrew guard regiment of my own design. originally based on the old metal cadians but this (final?) iteration of them is based on resin models from various third party producers. with gw bits here and there.
I like to mix and match stuff up for lots of individual flavour but the generic soldier is:

torso: anvil industries fatigue, though sometimes alternated with madrobot's colonial marine torso or the victoria lamb arcadian torso.

legs: victoria lamb arcadian legs. I just love those gaters so they are what I generally use though there are a few of badrobot's fatigue legs hither and yon

heads: pigiron's kolony lids. I love how it has the essence of both the dkok and steel legion, yet still is reminiscent of the kasrkin gasmask and is also a bit of a reminder of the classic stormtrooper around the eyes too.
Ive also used the anvil helmeted heads too for non gasmask ones too (but I have gs'ed  that 'square' bit thats on the kolony lids so they match in those cases)
however for unhelmeted heads i'll often use guard, necromunda or more often than not scout heads.

arms: usually anvil fatigue but often guard, necromunda, gsc and even tau for a mix of poses and weapons loadouts...

weapons:
all sorts of different shotguns and lasguns etc but I have designed my own lasgun (luchford pattern) exclusively for the use of Royston riflemen.

its essentially made out of a tau pulserifle cut and shut with a kantrall pattern lasgun and uses the top of a ogryn water can as a carryhandle/sight.

its inspired by the elysian bullpup lasgun.

in fact a lot of this force is inspired by the elysians especially what apologist did with his lambsworld conversions.
however when I started this force I'd not the funds for elysians and then when I did fw got rid of them, cowsons...
so I knew I wanted a real generic look that blended elements of cadians, eysians, dkok and steel legion.
I think I managed it.

the camo is flectarn based and makes painting fast and easy. this collection was an exercise huge conversions and easy paintjob.
so, basecoat/wash frenzy rather than detailed and slow. quick to build and fast to batch paint was the intent. as such they are not the best painted guard but this way ive not gone insane painting them to a crazy high standard. (who wants that!?)

so on with the pics:

infantry
the backbone of any guard force is its infantry. and the royson rifles are of no exception.
considered light infantry, that sepecialise in stealth and infiltration to achieve their goals, there is a large degree of leniency in the restriction of specialist equipment and weapons, even amongst the rank and file.
in fact, improvisation and customisation of kit and weapons is oftimes openly encouraged. victory by any means after all.
this can often lead to a rather less than coherent and less regimented look to the troops. however in battle the riflemen work together like a well oiled machine, years of combat experiance and familiarity with terrain, kit and fellows ensuring profficiancy unexpected from such a loose looking unit...

infantry command:

note the lack of ott weapons. I simply made a longlas out of a skittari rifle and kept the rest to either the old mp40 style voss lasguns and basic laspistols...


infantry squad 1:


feat. gsc shotty and gl, scout heads (plus grafted hats) marine missile launcher, and silencers on some rifles...

infantry squad 2:


feat. another gsc shotty and flamer, necromunda heads, nihilis lasguns and a scout heavy bolter...

infantry squad 3:


feat. more necromunda weapons, more scout heads, converted auto morter and even a sos flamer!


the 'Darkeyes' grenadiers
suspicious of any offworlders, rather than the usual act of accepting a contingent of stormtroopers in operations, instead the toughest, bravest, bluntest and most cussed fighters amongst the riflemen are often reassigned to the rosyton rifles' own force of elite grenadiers, codenamed 'darkeyes'.
armed with the rather heavy yet compact luchford pattern hellguns and encased in carapace armour, the darkeyes are often sent in where the fighting is thickest, the brutality of the squadleaders (referred to as rioteers) savage shock-cudgels leading the assault from the front. although lacking the finesse and stealth usually attributed to stormtroopers it is considered an honor to be selected for such duties.
however, this is not a view shared by many offworlders, who have oftimes been heard to remark that the darkeyes are little more than heavily armoured thugs with high powered rifles.
however this is not an opinion sensibly shared too loudly in the vicinity of a darkeyes rioteer...

as you can see they are based on anvil heavy armour and kolony lids. the hellguns made from reiver grapnel guns for a chunky look.
note the 'rioteer' sgt's simple cudgel/truncheon in place of a more complicated ccw...

dedicated transport

this extra armoured chimera is the fastest way of getting the darkeyes where they need to be, right int he heart of the enemy...

combat engineers/sappers
specialists that excel in demolition and infiltration are often trained as combat engineers, carrying explosives and subterranean equipment, these elite sappers are send UNDER enemy lines to destroy key enemy targets, buildings and vehicles.
armed with automatic shotguns for the ccb expected in trench warfare and clad in greatcoats and carapace armour they are not to be trifled with...

inspired by the dkok engineers, these are based on anvil industries parts again, with kolony heads and lots of pockts and kit from guard, gsc's and scouts to represent all the gear needed for subterranean trench warfare..


sniper teams
specialists in marksmanship get kitted out sniperrifles and work in squads of six, three snipers three spotters...

as you can see Ive used the huge rifles from anvil industries to represent somehting akin to a barret .50.
theres no way it could be fired without laying down but even then, perhaps they are too large in hindsight, but I wanted it to look like a rifle that could take out an astartes or even a light vehicle with a single shot.
the spotters are armed with the luchford pattern lasgun with the scope from a boltrifle to help them fit visually with the three snipers...


Ogryn abhumans




three heavily armed and armoured big-uns ready to get stuck in!


Riders of Royston
often remarked as dangerous at both ends and crafty in the middle, a recon team of horsemen are still the fastest, and most efficient scouts available to the royston rifles. armed with short-range grenade-lances, these fleet-footed mounted troops can easlily cross difficult terrain and rocky mountain passes, native to Royston's northern continent with an ease simply impossible in a motorised vehicle.
although best suited to recon, they are just as effective at storming enemy camps in a hail of lasfire and explosives and leving before a counter attack can be mounted...

shamelessly stolen from apologists rough rider designs, these horsemen are based on the wood-elf horses (because they are the prettiest horses available from gw imho) with a rider bodies from madrobot minis.
the panzerfausts are also from madrobot as are the gasmasked horse heads...
panzerfaust-jousters? yes please ;)


Command HQ
Led by the dashing and cunning Lord-Marshal Tufflex, the accompanying bodyguard squad of the Royston rifles supreme-commander is made up of the toughest and meanest soldiers handpicked by the marshal himself exclusively from the darkeyes.

again, inspired by apologists lambsworlders, this command squad is based off of scout/cadian hybids with catachan arms (for an even bigger, toughguy look) and features a medic, vox op, standard bearer and grenadelauncher specialist.
the marshal himself is built the same as the bodyguard (shaved cadian torso on scout legs)with a scout head, but also features the jacket from the stormtrooper sgt and a scratch built lighter and cigar pose.
in truth the marshal was kinda an attempt at a plastic creed conversion...

dedicated transport

not content with a chimera marshal tufflex is the proud owner of a rhino apc...

company commander

an alternative commander figure. clearly a visual reference to Stallone's Barney Ross from the expendables movies...

artillery

basilisk


artillery crew


classic mk1 rhino, used as a counts-as artillery tractor for this:


scratch built heavy mortar


dispatch rider's bike


scratchbuilt lascannon


autocannon conversion


kromlech heavy bolter


some tank commanders


a "BOSS" character I made based on the idea of the Uber-soldat from the game rtcw...
bit silly this one, I know, but i guess it would count as an ogryn bodyguard in-game?

objective markers:


a stranded pilot


a stash of gold! (another wolfenstein and/or kelly's heroes reference)

so thats it...

Ive a scratch built bomard thats been on the go for years now but who knows when/if that will ever get done...
I don't think I'll be adding anything else to this army but its here nonetheless...

if there's any interest or even if I can be bothered, I'll get the camera out again soon and get some shots of the guard models that are even older than these and what I used to represent these before the resin stuff was available!
Ive also a couple of steellegion and valhallan conversions in the same style and also a big-ol kill-team I did with all of my favourite old guard/necromunda models that I used to represent schaffers last chancers...
« Last Edit: August 09, 2020, 04:17:21 PM by osjclatchford »
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Offline Stormwind

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2020, 07:46:56 PM »
Gawd, I love seeing that old Rhino!  Good work all around!
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Offline horizon

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2020, 08:05:40 PM »
That's is an army worthy!

Good job. The engineers and the commander are especially cool.

Offline Lord Borak

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2020, 08:06:03 PM »
Why does your stuff have you be so good?  :o Now I want to crack on with my own Guard stuff...... ::)

Offline osjclatchford

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2020, 08:35:56 PM »
Born with it..? Lol

You know, others and I feel the same about your work too...
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Offline osjclatchford

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #5 on: July 29, 2020, 09:25:01 AM »
some scenery:
an 'asp' class light inteceptor.




so some time ago the buddy that gave me all his bfg stuff gave me a 20% constructed valkyrie with about 40% of the kit missing...
yeah. what to do says I? so rather than just making a pile of scrap or crashed valk, I decided to knock up a space-fighter-interceptor model.
at one point (up until quite recently, actually) it had been sitting in the box, fudged together as some kind of proxy to a battlestar viper. unpainted and unloved as I could not bring myself to paint it and ruin it in a failure to paint white well...
however i've been watching vast amounts of sg1 again recently and the spike of interest got me thinking.
F302!

well a quick rejig and this was the result.
the rear solid-fuel engine is simple plumbing fittings.
why asp? its too small to be a lightning proxy and has no autocannon so I decided to give it its own designation, and, well, they are Egyptian snakes... very dangerous... ;)
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Offline Ragsta

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2020, 10:31:46 AM »

Yaaaay, Royston Rifles at last!

The kit bashes look great, as is the painting. I like the background too, not your standard 'glory and honour' tin hat polishers for sure!

Yes, please do post up pictures of your other stuff, I'd love to see them! I have a significantly kitbashed Guard force too, actually, though not as nicely painted as yours. I think I may have to share... Their commander has also commandeered a Rhino! Extra points for that old school version by the way  8)

Asp came out nicely - nice save of the kit.


Ragsta

Offline osjclatchford

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - the history of the royston rifles, and freinds!
« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2020, 04:30:14 PM »
thanks. as there is a bit of interest I'll get this up online after-all...

the history or the royston rifles:

no, not a boring load of fluff for the force, this is an actual pictorial history of the physical development of the army.
as previously mentioned in the op, I've a reasonably large collection of models from the guard range and its time to share in that history of the modelling highs and lows that eventually led to the royston rifles creation.

so where did it start? cadians, where else? ;)
no, not those plastic starship-trooper clones you kids love so much, I'm talking classic metal guard:


an example squad (you seen one cadian you've seen 'em all eh?)
this colourscheme is (clearly flectarn as on the other models) largely inspired by the uniforms of the American airborne 101st as I was watching band-of-brothers at the time.
thusly, I also converted and painted up some valhallans to represent the same guard, but in winter gear (think bastoigne)

from there I went on to some steel legion.

these are converted and painted to represent the panzergrenadiers you find in the kugelstadt levels in the game rtcw.

did a packhorse conversion to go along with these. based on an old barded brettonian steed with lots of kit and gs mask added.
I guess these were the pre-empt to the combat-engineers I ended up doing...

from there I decided it was time to start looking into resin minis for ease of conversion and just to try something different.

I started with these which are almost entirely victoria minis arcadians with a few headswaps using (surprise surprise) scout and guard plastics and also some 3d printed helmet-gasmask combo's from secret weapon minis...

the look is there, I'll give you that. the mix of weapons, the ragtag yet uniformed look. the poses but, I was not (and I'm still not) really happy with the quality of the casting from victoria minis, especially the arms. lots of warping, bubbles and miscasts...
also I knew I had to do something better than the god-awful quality of those 3d printed helmets.


that's when I moved on to the formula of the kolony heads and the anvil stuff was soon to follow...

still in the meanwhile:


the prototype for the darkeyes were based on scouts!

and the engineers were neophyte hybryds!

Around the same time, I had also experimented with a small squad of kasrkin in the colourscheme:

putting the camo on the armour panels and simple dark grey under-fatigues... yeah, I know, bit meh...

so that's it really... its not exactly exiting and amazing but, yeah its all part of the development and has a place here.


OTHER GUARD
now, as promised some other guard stuff and some other 40k stuff altogether!

steel legion
the flectarn coloured SL are not the only I own. I had also previously converted some up to represent an artillery unit:

as you can see it features not only SL but also comnverted cadian and valhallans in there too...
the colonel reminds me of Lennie Meclean, he's even got the coat he had on in lock-stock!

I made a little dug-out and mortar mini-diorama to go with the figures too


this prone legionaire is a conversion I'd been meaning to do for a long while. note the different camo. I've a whole squad in this colour but they're un-converted/standard-issue models so are not really in need of a pic. again, you seen one steel legion, you seen 'em all haven't you...

oh, and just for a giggle, this:

is what my steel legion looked like back in 2001! LOL thank god for nitro-moors eh?


last chancers

as mentioned, a while back, I converted some of my truly favourite guard and necromunda minis to represent penal legion troops.



what can I say. I love that creed model and he's a much better model than the official schaeffer... ;)
in point of fact I think these were the first models I ever tried that flectarn scheme on. so you can blame these for everything else in this thread!


doom meets 40k.
it should be of no surprise to anyone that I love a good fps. doom and 90's era stuff especially.

the first blister pack that truely got me doing more than just the occasional dabble into 40k was the scout with shotgun/bolter pack that came out in '97. I first saw it in wd227 and had to have it.
I just looked at it and said to myself: thats doomguy...

now, Ive painted and stripped and repainted many scouts more times than I can truly remember but these are still my favourite models that gw ever has produced. its  such a shame that the plastic kit that followed them is so poor (except for nicking heads and kit from). now these models are quite an age old now so don't judge on the painting too bad...

anyway:

doomguy coloured scout. again, this was repainted resonably recently.

then the shotgunguy I painted to match the look of the doomguy from the titlescreen of doom2

then as time moved on and other models released I moved my attention towards the kasrkins to achieve my goal

kasrkin doomguy. this was painted a while back now... back when the kasrkin were 1st released...
but, that plasmagun is just pure bfg ain't it. the backpack is an old bounty hunter model as it has a shotgun and chainsword on it and loads of shells and kit.

from there I couldn't stop and decided to make a litle guard force entirely made up of doomguys and based on the plastic cadians:

as you can see theres loads of conversion going on to create character and more interest than just a bunch of lasguns and camo...
I went for a cartoonesque vision that suits the classic doom sprite imagery.
note that the second one in on the top image is actually based on the player model from quake2!
the medic also has a beserk pack on is back too. lots of homages and references all round...
also the observant among you may have noticed the guardsmen with the xbow.

this and the model next to it are references to raven software's 'heretic' a kinda 'sword and sorcery' fps based on the doom engine.
the ethereal crossbow and even the phoenix rod from heretic!

and other fps fans need not feel left out:


quake stuff. the shambler head was actually just a gs doodle I did ages ago with some gs whilst on the studio phone once, I'd mixed up just before the phone rang and didn't want it to go hard but the call went on and this happened! rubbish but i kept it and painted it anyway!


halflife headcrab


even a 'malice-for-quake' drone! only hardcore fps fans will know this one!


this guy is an arbites/pdf trooper inspired by vaulve's counterstrike (a game that I used to lan-party till late hours with old buds of mine more than a few years ago now...)


anything else?

yeah sure:


a scout inspired by the uniforms from both universal soldier and sg1...


a small desert-camo fireteam


oldman-yarrick but with his classic crab-claw restored


sniper behind a wall


eclesiarchy and witch hunter


ad-mech


squigs!

ok I thats all for now methinks, you've enough to look at for a bit...


oh, yeah! please see the end of the opening post for some edits to include some of the stuff I forgot the first time round!
'
« Last Edit: August 02, 2020, 11:37:35 AM by osjclatchford »
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Offline osjclatchford

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2020, 11:33:30 AM »
SO! just an fyi Guys,
I've amended the first page again for the last time to put the final pics of the 'missing' stuff I forgot to photograph the last time round.

(more shots of ogryns, alternate company commander, autocannon and heavy bolter, objective markers and an ubersoldat!)

so all in, the stuff in the opening post is the 'official' royston rifles models/list, the rest in the subsequent posts are just experiments, alsorans or the other odds and sods that needed a place online but didn't warrant a whole thread dedicated to it.

as such anything else in this thread from now on is actually likely to be pretty much generic 40k stuff I'm working on at the time as, as I say the Royston rifles are finished now...

well. exception of the bombard conversion but that's probably a long way off now...
« Last Edit: August 02, 2020, 11:39:37 AM by osjclatchford »
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Offline Stormwind

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #9 on: August 03, 2020, 01:05:17 PM »
Love all the Inquisitor retinues especially!
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Offline Ragsta

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #10 on: September 23, 2020, 10:30:38 AM »

Firstly, can I just say that if my current paint jobs were like your 2011 ones I'd be very happy - stop putting your stuff down or it's the Penal Legions with you!

Seeing the old metals looking so spiffy is really balm for the veteran soul - I now bitterly regret selling the abortive metal Cadians I once had. The evolution of your project has been really cool to read through!

I am c. 20 figures away from 'finishing' my own Guard force. Maybe then it's time to think about what Anvil Industries have done for their Emperor lately?


Oh, and we demand army shots!! Your references to other squads that were too similar to warrant photos are unacceptable!! *Primes las pistol*


Offline osjclatchford

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Re: OSJC's Royston Rifles - A guard army...
« Reply #11 on: September 23, 2020, 12:08:10 PM »
thanks!

as for army shots? I've literally not the space to take such shots in this house (I do mean literely. no big enough room to have or put up a table and if I attempted to use the lounge floor Ide have nowhere to stand/sit to get the shot... the curse of a half-bedroom bungalow...) and much of my other older stuff has recently been sold to fund the current hobby and simply to make space for new... even since writing that lot.

all I have un-photographed now is the squad of peadot-camo steel legion and a few gsc neophyte conversions. the rest (classic cads etc) is gone to pay the rent!

glad you enjoyed the read through though. feared it was a boring slab of text that many would simply bypass to look at the pics. I however I like reading other's blogs and stuff for inspiration so I figured I should share... a bugger to remember a lot of the stuff I did but fun to go down memory lane and remember and laugh at the old stuff, and equally mournful to lament the lost stuff from even longer a yesteryear(flood/damp mould damage... back in 2012)

oh and that SL banner guy was from 2001... not 2011... ;)
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