Far Corfe: Heapster Heavy - Part 1

"It's unreliable, bulky and prone to overload, but I had to choose the mining laser, just for the retro-chic..."

When I returned to painting as a serious use of my dwindling spare time in November of 2017 there was no clear plan as to just what I wanted to achieve, save for working on something vaguely inspired by the release of the third edition of Necromunda.

I pulled out a lot of Rogue Trader era miniatures that I'd hoarded and never gotten round to painting and some original Necromunda sclupts, and these started to get painted with a thought to putting together a gang of Underhive Scum.


But as I worked on them, some seemed to gel together and not with the others, and as I'd been toying with two ideas for the gang, they ended up being split between Boss Sass's Saggy Bottom Boys (traditional Underhive Scum) and the Heapsters (a gang of painfully hip Bus and Penny Farthing gangers from the upper end of the local rubbish dump.

Neither one of the gangs had an official heavy to bring in the required extra firepower, so I resorted to the bits box to build one for them, using parts mainly from the Genestealer Neophyte Hybrid sprue, the Broken Infantry Sprue from Maelstrom's Edge and some old-fashioned green stuff sculpting.

Front (obviously)

R Side (showing the sleeve pocket, of which I am unreasonably proud)

Back

L Side

L Side again (just because)

The massive drawback of the Neophyte Hybrid sprue is obviously those spindly and chitinous limbs, and in the case of those supposed to hold the mining laser, the whole extra one that needed to be hacked off and covered up.

I hoped that adding the padded sleeves and shoulder pads, as well as warps around the hands would be enough to disguise their nature and blend the model together as a whole, but the next challenge will be painting the mini in a style that fits in with the sharp, pinstripe look of the other Heapsters.

In retrospect, I might have varied the legs of the mini if I'd had more bits to play with (which shouldn't be an issue in the future after I accidentally won two whole sets of Tempestus Scions on Ebay last night), but the Broken head with it's over the top hairstyle should go some way to differentiating him from the other models kitbashed from this sprue.

I'm toying with the idea of painting his sleeves up in the style of a varsity jacket, but still remain unconvinced.

My next task is to put together a heavy for the Saggy Bottom Boys, which I think will use the massive, dirty great heavy stubber from the Neophyte Hybrid sprue, and, of course, to paint this guy, so I'll try to post pictures for anyone interested soon.

Also, apologies again for the poor quality of the photos in this post - I have recently purchased a small light box, and I'm hoping that this will allow me to achieve better results and share more images of my stuff.

As always, please let me know what you think in the comments below.