Sunday, 14 August 2016

USARF Recruitment Office - Part 1

I've kind of fallen behind with uploading pictures of my USAriadna army and I've been working on them at quite a pace recently!

I'm still really enjoying painting the colour scheme and look forward to playing the faction a lot once the Interplanetary is over. I'm hoping to give them their tournament debut at the Exeter team tournament towards the end of the year.

Anyway, here's the first of the batches that were completed recently.




All three miniatures from this batch are conversions from my second copy of the USAriadna army box. This follows on from my last post which was full of weapon swaps to make up for the overly abundant amount of rifles that you get by default.

I would really recommend picking up two boxes for anything aspiring USA general as most of the minis are fairly easy to do weapons swaps/conversions for and this can give a decent amount of variety.

Marauder - Sniper conversion

Marauder - Sniper conversion

This Marauder has had the flamethrower elements of his gun trimmed off and an extended barrel and scope added. To differentiate him further there's also an extra rack of bags/pouches on his lower back and some battle damage drilled into his chest plate and left shoulder pad. The aim is to give him a bit of a 'veteran' feel.

The Sniper gives a fairly cheap (29/0.5) linkable, Dogged, MSV1 sniper - which is nothing to sneeze at - and I think he'll show up fairly frequently as part of a Haris.

Foxtrot sniper conversion

Foxtrot sniper conversion
This Foxtrot also received a sniper rifle, his original gun having an extended barrel and scope added. Unfortunately (foolishly?) I didn't test fit the arm to the body while adding these elements to the weapon so I actually needed to take a small chunk out of his shoulder so the scope could rest against the body!

He's also had a head swap with the Ohio miniature so that he'll look substantially distinctive when viewed from above.

Cheap snipers are fantastic and, coming from Aleph, being able to take lots of them feels great! As the only camouflage troops in USAriadna, and AVA 4, I really want to have a wide range of Foxtrots and will probably get a second sniper sometime soon.

Ohio conversion

Ohio conversion

So where did the Foxtrot's head go? Onto an Ohio of course!

The head fits almost perfectly on the miniature and because it lacks a helmet seems a bit small compared to the original, having the effect of making the armour seem even bulkier! The right arm was re-positioned down by 90 degrees and still fits well with a small amount of green stuff. These two changes give the model a really different feel from the stock version.

I wanted that slightly grizzled, bullet-scarred look to the model to complement his new look, so drilled in some bullet damage onto his front armour and left shoulder plate. I think it's come out better than on the Marauder as the Ohio has more open areas of armour so it doesn't look as busy.

I really love this simple conversion. even though that hat looks rather flammable....

I'm not sure I'm sold on Ohios in my army yet, but some of the profiles are very interesting. In particular I'm keen to try the AP Rifle version (with Marksmanship L1, X-Visor and two LFTs) as a toolbox option. Firing a BS13 AP+Shock Rifle at +0 out to 32" is an intriguing possibility. They are also the only source of Missile Launchers in the faction.

4 comments:

  1. Looking great there bud, worth the wait!

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    1. Thanks, there's a lot more to come! I'm assembling Traktor Muls as we speak. :)

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