Today is a short post with some recently finish Thunder Warriors (or Thunderstorm Soldiers) from Tortuga-Bay Miniatures.
I really like the lore for Warhammer 40k or pre-30k in this case! One time period is the Age of Strife and the Wars of Unification, when the Emperor of Mankind was conquering Terra with his legions. This was pre- Space Marines, so he relied on massive amounts of human soldiers, his Custodes and of course... Thunder Warriors. These folks are the giant, rage filled, gene-enhanced warriors that the Emperor needed to conquer all the Mad Max villain's that ruled Terra at this time. I won't go into all the details of the Thunder Warriors, but they are superior to Space Marines and just short of a Custodes in combat, but were much more unstable, both mentally and physically, due to the process of their creation being much more haphazard than it would be later.
While I rarely play Warhammer 30k or 40k these days, I still do a little converting and modeling, when I have time. I picked up a few squads of Thunder Warriors from Tortuga-Bay and was amazed by the quality of the resin miniatures I received. There was almost no clean up needed and the detail on the miniatures is top notch! I also have ordered some Thunder Warrior heads from Liber Daemonica miniatures, but have not received them yet.
I wanted to stay away from the shiny gold and silver armor of much of the artwork for the Thunder Warriors and go with a much more worn and dirty look. I dry brushed silver and then used Olive Drab splotched in on any large surface, leaving the edges still bare metal, my intention was for it to look like the armor was originally OD, but most of the paint has worn off. However, I don't really love how things turned out for these first two miniatures, so I may try a darker green for the next batch.
First up is a heavily converted Captain for my Thunder Warriors. This miniature is a mixture of parts from Tortuga-Bay's Primarkh and Captain-General miniatures. There are a lot of great extra bits with the Captain-General miniature.
Bases are still a WIP.
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| A captain for my Thunder Warriors. |
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| I see this captain as being more of a champion than an officer. |
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| I used some Custodes bits and even a piece from Kingdom Death. |
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| I really like the pseudo-guardian spear! |
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| I really went with dirty for the armor, but it would probably look great in gold! |
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| The first basic Thunder Warrior. |
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| I added a chainsword. |
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| I love the MK I armor. |
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| This is my WIP Thunder Warrior Primarch. |
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| A comparison between the Captain and warrior. |
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| A comparison with a Custodes. These boys are big! |
