m3lvin:
___________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: Only because I paint my steel legion models like nazis doesn’t mean I myself am a nazist.
I dont think anyone here is silly enough to belive I am, but I’m writing this anyhow just in case.
I do not in any way share their political, racial nor ethical views. So please, no flaming.
Everyone knows that the steel legions was designed to be “WW2 german paratrooper” look-a-likes,
just like the valhallans are heavy influenced by WW2 russians, Catachans by american vietnam soldiers/rambo,
death korps by WW1 germans, Tallarns by middle eastern soldiers (the magasines on their lasguns are curved FFS, ak47-style :D)
and so on,
Therefore, I decided to paint them to look like nazis to make everything even more obvious.
I’m no more nazi than someone playing the axis side on call of duty, or thinking that der untergang
is a good film.
One thing I can give them though, is that they had good taste when it comes to dressing (uniform, colours, weapon design etc.)
and that’s probably why I’m drawn to the steel legions anyway.
__________________________________________________________
The work for Golden Hat XI is finally over, and I have a weeks holiday from school! wonderful 
With all this spare time on my hands I thought about getting somewhere with my long time stalled
steel legion project.
I will give them a week of work during the holidays, before I go back to my Chaos Dwarfs again.
----
To give you the most satisfying experience, I take you back to the very beginning of this project:
The first imp models I bought was 5 snipers, unaware of what it would escalate to.
Firstly they were meant to be played in a modified necromunda game my friend was working on.
Since I had seen “behind enemy lines” too many times, my choice was obvious 
It’s from start 2 cadian snipers and 3 catachan snipers, with some minor conversions.
This was about 2 years ago, and I was pretty much new to greenstuff.
The second sniper was brutally shaven with a modelknife, and was converted to have my (by that time)
current hairstyle, representing me in the game :D.
Then, I for some reason got tempted to start collecting imps, probably due to the discovery of the totally awesome
Death Korps of kreig models. Although being a poor student, they were merly dreams :~
Second choice was Steel legion, and fortunatly my friend had a force he’d gotten bored of long time ago.
Honestly I can say now that I’ve been working with my steel legion for some time, that I find them atleast or even
more appealing than the Death Korps.
The models I bought was about 3 infantry squads, in decent/good shape, for about 55 dollars.
I thought it was pretty decent price, since they’re otherwise pretty expensive and hard to find.
(a new infantry squad costs about 40+ dollars here.)
My thought was first to make a ~400 pts army of them, for 40k in 40 minutes battles.
But, when one of my other friends mentioned he had some old steel legions for sale,
I got a bit greedy :P.
His force was a bit larger then the one I already had, consisting of the same amount of infantry squads,
+ 10 stormtroopers and a heavy bolter.
The conditions on these models was much worse, they had been painted several times, and even if it appeared that
someone had tried to clean them, I had to re-do it.
He wanted 70 dollars for these, which I thought was pretty much (considering all the work I would have to put
down on them to get them back to decent quality.) He was also aware of this, and was nice enough to include
some nice tank and tyranid bitz in the deal. I couldn’t resist
This was what I had when I combined the two forces, the empty bases was models that I hadn’t bought yet,
but which I needed to complete the units.
Here are some examples of the varied shapes the models were in.
The missile model in the middle was covered in white paint and superglue,
leaving almost no details left. :~
The former owner had used motor oil, trying to clean them up.
Although, this only resulted in the paint being left in the recesses, being rubbery,
and almost impossible to remove.
I needed something much stronger! :sick
Below are all the models I cleaned. I had to brush them one by one with a toothbrush,
after I dipped them in a yar with some dangerous goo. (hey! it worked! ;P)
Since I played a Steel legion army, I thought it would be wrong to have some stormtroopers without
gasmask/respirator/whatever. IMO they look pretty silly when they show their faces.
Since I was new to greenstuff at that time, my original idea was to make greenstuff molds on the masks and
glue them into place, however, the result was not very satisfying:
I then made the for that time drastic decision to sculpt them myself, and I was glad I did so.
The result was way much better, and the effort was smaller!
I was very satisfied with the result.
two stormtroopers guarding a portable missile launching device (read objective marker :D)
It’s made of sprues, tank accessory bits and a pen.
A problem that occured was that when collecting a large army with a small range of different models,
many models look the same, which is boring. Metal miniatures are not the easiest models to convert,
but I put som effort in making small changes, which later makes a big difference.
Here were conversion sketch for my 6 identical missile loaders:
(the outcome of the converting can be found further down in the thread)
A simple but effective conversion, re-positioning the heavy bolter ammunition feeders head:
Next up, I had to complete my force. (at least to a playable state).
So I bought the remaining models new from a website.
I knew it would get pretty expensive, but I thought it would be worth it, since I’d gotten away so cheap
with the bulk of my force (and when I already put so much effort in it, There was no stopping :yar)
The models I bought was…
*1 Steel legion Commissiar (stand in for senior officier)
*2 Steel legion lieutnants (junior officiers)
*1 steel legion sergeant
*1 steel legion with plasmagun
*2 steel legion heavy bolter teams
*1 steel legion Lascannon team
*1 chimera (with forgeworld twinlinked heavy bolter turret :)) I was heading for a heavy bolter heavy army.
1 Hellhound
+7 paint bottles, 1 spraycan, slotta bases etc.
It all came down to 300 dollars… yikes,:o
Ahermm… Anyhow, now the army was pretty much what I wanted it to be, And I was ready to start painting.
but no, a fantasy tournament got in the way and It was all about finishing my WoC army in time.
This was what the army looked like in november 2008;
Summer came, (this was last year) and the new Imperial Guard codex was released.
I find it always a bad thing when a new armybook is released, cause it always messes things up with
your already existing force. And as I feared, the list I put so much money in to complete in a cool
looking way was not as excuisitly executed anymore. I had to change many things due to the new force organisation chart.
Although, as always, GW releases some cool looking models to make us look past this (our old lists and tactics being raped that said :D),
and the awesome valkyrie model, and cool rules for Manticore, Deathstrike missle, and Master of Ordnance took my fall this time
After getting used to the new rules I actually find them better (as it always is), but I still dont like how GW wants to simplify things.
(I really miss the Doctrines).
I got the Valkyrie model as a present from my girlfriend on my birthday, which got my interest back on my steel legion again.
Although the valkyrie dont really fit in with the WW2 theme, It’s too awesome to look past. It can be a transport for my stormtroopers cough paratroopers cough
One annoying thing with it though was that you had to paint the inside of it before you glued it toghether, or atleast I thought so,
until I discovered that I could leave the roof unglued, when it already was to late grumble :~
I put some conversion work into making the gunner look like a steel legion dude
Then, In the middle of the summer, I brought together all my existing models steel legions to take some pictures.
I was tempted to start painting them, but at that point I also had other, greater deeds in mind …
It was back then I started with my Chaos Dwarves, and If you’ve watched my blog, you’d noticed I’ve been quite busy with them sfter that.
So the Steel Legion was put aside again, and hasn’t been touched since then, until now…
Here are the pictures from last summer:
HQ:
this is my army’s command squad. I chose to use the commissair model as a senior officier, since he follows the theme so well,
and he has a bigger hat/ feels more dominant than the other lietnants, therefore I chose to use them as junior officiers instead.
The guy hunching in the back is the medic. He’s a converted missile model that the former owner used as a sergeant, but I thought It
was a pretty silly pose for a sergreant, so I gave him a bag and made him a medic instead.
The regimental standard is made from a sergeant, with a chaos marauder arm and chaos warrior standard.
one thing that got messed up in the rule changes is the vox casters, since they have another purpose now,
so they are not exactly tactical placed within the units. I have to get some more of them to make it work with the new rules.
I also plan to make a master of ordnance to have as an addition to the command squad. they’re so fun to use
Elites:
I use my sniper models as a stand in for the ratling models. It’s easier to field them as ratlings, and it doesnt look as cool if there’s
spotters joining them.
The stormstroopers will be the paratroopers in my nazi army, and will deepstrike into the heart of the enemy with their parachutes
I’m planning on doing a deep strike marker just for fun, where there’s a paratrooper dangling down from the sky with a parachute. so cool.
Troops:
Ah, troops. the joy and the pain of every imp army. I’ve only filled the two troop slots that has to be filled, the minimum, but still have over 60 models in those slots! :S
There are two infantry platoons, simply named 1 and 2. the first one contain 2 infantry squads, named 1a and 1b, while the second contains 3 named (you’ve guessed it) 2a, 2b and 2c.
Infantry platoon 1
platoon 1 command squad
infantry squad 1a (note afrika korp sergeant, experiment colorscheme)
infantry squad 1b
Infantry platoon 2
platoon 2 command squad
infantry squad 2a
infantry squad 2b
infantry squad 2c (former iron fist squad)
The chimera is, as mentioned, upgraded with a twin linked heavy bolter turret from forgworld, because its so cool
Since I haven’t bought the imperial armour book I have no clue of what the twink linked heavy bolter costs, points wise.
I usually pay for double turret mounted heavy bolter 5+5 pts, against players who allow it. Against other, boring players not allowing it (really dont know why),
I just use it as a single turret mounted heavy bolter.
I also made an attempt to make some interior for the tatk. Not the prettiest, but I didn’t make such big deal out of it,
being that when the roof is on you can only see in thru the back door.
The open/close-able back hatch is also a nice and easy-made feature, making disembarking so much more fun 
Missile launcher Heavy weapon teams, Note the small changes I made with details to make them look different to each other.
As for the objective marker I was just bored, and it was great fun to make! In some special scenario it can work as a objectiv marker shooting like a hunter-killer missile,
or something, who knows. I will warn you, more crazy things like this will appear later in this thread 
Fast Attack:
A Valkyre and a Hellhound, nothing out of the ordinary here.
I bought the hellhound because its such a cool tank, and it’s very good,… or was, in the last codex.
In the current one they made him less awesome, but it’s still a very intimadating tank. BURN!!!
The Valkyrie is also a must have since it’s such a cool model. but I dont know what his role is on the battlefield.
I thought It would be a transport for my Paratroopers at first, but since they can deepstrike, they really dont have any use for it.
I’ll guess it will just hang around, drawing some enemy fire on it, instead of on some more, important units.
perhaps I will convert it to an vendetta, who knows.
Heavy Support:
Here comes the biggest shock, There’s no entry here!
Later on, I’ll probably fill some slots here aswell. I already have some converting plans for both a manticore and a deathstrike missile.
A big tank would be nice aswell. A punisher is a very interesting tank indeed, but miniguns are not that nazi WW2 (unless you’re playing wolfenstein, ofcourse :D),
So I probably settle for a honest old demolisher.
So that’s it. There’s been one change since these pictures were taken, and that is that the Hellhound has been painted.
It was due to a painting competition with a tank theme and I thought “why not?”
Although no pictures of that has ben taken yet, so I’ll post them later.
I have some more material (start of conversions, colorscheme, armylist and such) already done, but that’ll be in my next post, I’m done for now.
This is officially the longest post I made (I think).
I’ll get back soon and it would be fun to hear some Comments & Critics.
/melv
