I've been wanting to make these ever since I saw them in the Warzone Ultimate Edition armylist. Pretty much an elite airdrop unit for the Imperial Corporation. Anyone that's played Warzone against me, no matter which army I play, usually end up dropping an airborne unit behind their lines to cause some major disruption.
Based on the concept artwork, these guys resemble standard Imperial Regulars with rocket packs on their backs and all are armed with Mandible shotguns rather than Invader assault rifles. Their squad support specialists have the Charger Heavy Machine Gun and the Gehenna Puker Flame Thrower (I love that name).
Accumulating the right components was the first task. Imperial Regulars was the easy part, especially over the past few years when Prince August bought up the remaining stock of the plastic Regulars and Bauhaus Ducal Militia and put them up for sale at some pretty reasonable prices. Prior to this, the only way you could get them was by buying the Warzone 2nd Edtion Boxed Set. I happened to pick up a lot of them off of eBay that had some missing pieces but I got them dirt cheap.
Next I needed were shotguns. The official Mandible Shotgun is not readilly available so I had to look for a decent proxy. What I found were some really nice weapons from
Hasslefree Miniatures. Number 27 looked like a sci fi combat shotgun that closely resemble what I needed. I started by removing the arm from each plastic Invader Rifle. Then removed the grip and the stock (seems most Warzone weapons didn't have stocks, and it made them fit the model better).
My biggest hangup on the parts was the rocket pack. The Capital Wailing Banshees rocket packs seemed too big and there wasn't enough to scrape up. GW Space Marine jump packs were even bigger and looked too high tech. Then while painting some of my
Hydra Miniatures Galacteers I got the idea for the perfect rocket pack. I emailed Matt Beauchamp at Hydra Miniatures asking about purchasing some loose Galacteer Rocket Packs. Matt was more than helpful in setting me up with parts (it also helps if you place an order for a War Rocket fleet
).
I removed about 2mm of material from the block molded into the back of the figure (where the backpack snapped over). Then drilled a hole in the center to locate and hold the rocket pack (which has a small locating pip on the backside).
I assembled the troops, woth various poses. To finish things off I added some belt pouches.
I then decided to make the HMG specialists a little different from the Regular HMG specialist (which has some heavier overcoat). I used the same Regular grunt torso and added the Charger HMG and arms.
For the Flame Thrower Specialist, I found a loose Gehenna Puker in my bitz bin. I used the Regular HMG specialist torso (figuring the heavy overcoat was better protection from the flame thrower). Cutting up the arm and hand to reposition the limb allowed me to pose the figure holding the weapon.
For the Sergeant, who was armed with a Shotgun with Under Barrel Grenade Launcher and a Punisher Sword. The grenade launcher is made from a loose Junkers combat shotgun from Void 1.1. I wanted the head to look a bit different, but really wasn't crazy about just doing a bare headed figure. I found a good head in my bitz bin from Secrets of the Third Reich, a spare head from a British Sniper Team.