Hello everyone! Brandon here from GMM Studios with a little blast from the past.
This is Flashback Friday, where I revisit old armies I have painted from the past. I have painted thousands of models and who knows how many huge armies on commission, and each one holds a special place in my heart.
A little sweat, a lot of love, and some collaboration with another person and who knows what you can create!
I enjoy looking back every once in a while at the photos and remembering the joys and struggles, the hard work and the pure enjoyment of making someone’s vision a reality. But enough of that emotional stuff, let’s get on with it! I miss you, baby!
You’ll always be a part of me,
I’m part of you indefinitely,
Boy don’t you know you can’t escape me,
Ooh darling ’cause you’ll always be my baby…
The army I am reminiscing over this time around is “Keep Calm and Carry-On,” an army I did for the American Team Tournament earlier in 2013. My good buddy Paul Murphy called me up in a big predicament. “My army is old and busted! Literally! I need some new hotness!” he says. So like a good friend I check the calendar. Three weeks to ATC. I got this…
So we take the first few days and take stock, brainstorm, order a few bits. He has a lot of great ideas and we come together around what you see here. We were quite limited due to time, and a lot of choices were based on what was at hand.
Half of the battle was the display. We settled around the general theme of “KCCO” and so I went looking for a box. Local antique stores being a frequent spot for oogling display potential, I found this nice old military footlocker. I bought a model WW2 bomber and made a false bottom for the display. Paul wanted the box to be functional, so the army could literally be packed away and carried on as luggage all in one package.
The comic was actually drawn by my brother, a fantastic illustrator and luckily was willing to do the comic in a hurry for the event. It tells the story of the crashing of the plane, and the Termies using the nose as a drop pod.
The army features Space Wolves as allies, so Logan Grimnar is the first up!
Arjac had to be a pimp! The busted crate showing his true nature. He’s actually has a lot of feelings…
The terminators round out the unit as ablative wounds. These are the Forge World Terminators with custom Storm Shields.
The counts as drop pod is my favorite part of the army. It is awesome to drop on the table and have some Space Wolf bosses pop out! Try and resist making funny noise effects when dropping this in the opponent’s deployment zone.
To go with the theme I completely rebuilt some Valkyries into biplanes. They weren’t incredibly difficult to make, just required patience and time to put the rivets on. I love wood grain and it was nice to be able to revisit that technique.
Mr. Murphy needed a Rune Priest to round out the Space Wolf allies. Luckily I had this limited edition figure lying around! He really fits the theme and to me, feels enough like power armor to be a Rune Priest. The weapon is literally a Runefang from Marius Leitdorf.
A Forge World Empire model for Lord Commissar. We were very unlucky with the Forge World delivery times. This guy and the terminators came in the mail less than a week before the event!
The bodies of the Guardsmen are all Empire Ironsides from Forge World. The heads are Greatsword bits. These were a lot of fun to convert up. I really like the Prussian sort of feel they came away with.
Rounding out the army – Manticores, which are a mixture of Dystopian Wars chassis and Manticore top. The bombs came from the WW2 bomber. Talk about lucky!
I was pretty happy with how the army turned out for just a couple weeks of cramming. Paul was happy and I got to go and watch him play with it in person, which is always a treat to watch such a high class player do his thing. Makes me look like a newbie every die roll!
Hope you enjoyed my walk down memory lane. Keep up with my latest work on Facebook, or connect with me on the blog! –GMM
