Grymn Tunnel Fighters... above and below.

[inso]

Once upon a time there was an idea... and it wasn't mine:



A fellow Grymn enthusiast decided to try a head-swap on a standard Grymn and used Pig-Iron Productions 'Kolony Inner Guard' heads. I saw the conversion, thought it looked great and asked him if I could borrow his idea... and this is what happened:



I raided my miniature boxes in the search for Grymn to convert and as soon as the heads arrived from Pig-Iron, I could get going. My Grymn were slightly more sculpted than the ones I took inspiration from because I wanted a 'hump' on each of the Grymn's backs to house a re-breather system which went with the helmets. I knew that these troops would make excellent tunnel fighters so the Tunnel Fighter army was born. 

Initially, I didn't have a plan as to how to organise my troops so while I decided what to do, I just kept converting and painting Tunnel fighters that were a mix of close combat, standard infantry and heavy weapon troopers. Pretty soon, I had around 45 ready so I thought it was time to organise things. As it happened, with just a few more miniatures, I could organise each unit into 9 troopers.

Each squad would consist of:
Leader 
6 basic Troopers (depending on role they would have pulse-guns, twin pistols or shotguns)
2 specialists (either special or heavy weapons).

Very quickly, I had six complete squads. and colour coded them accordingly so I knew who was in which squad.



Then I thought about support and I just happened to have some Vulkan battlesuits from an OOP game called Warzone. They were solid and looked perfect for tunnel fighting:



So I quickly put them to use.

[inso]

After a while, I got fed up with the basic units and didn't really have very many Vulkans to work on... so I thought about a few specialist units. Command, K9, Medical and Drone units were quickly created:

Command



K9



Medical



Drone



Then I found this and the whole idea behind the army suddenly changed:



Obviously, it was too tall to walk into the smaller caverns that the Tunnel Fighters were required to fight in... so the theme went from just Tunnels to Tunnels and surface fighting.

[inso]

So... now that the fighting could take place above and below the ground, heavier support and transport would be required. This wasn't difficult to decide upon so a quick bit of shopping and a lot of hard work later, the support was assembled:



Closely followed by the basic transports:



As all this was going on, the troop units were getting filled up and it soon became apparent that they would require comms. That meant finding a suitable comms unit and I found it in Ground Zero Games' 15mm range:



Adding one of these comms robots to each unit brought the troop number up to ten so it was always destined to happen.

With a few successful bids on Ebay and a bit of additional thought, the Vulkan units were expanded to match those of their smaller brothers and ended up looking like this... after a re-name, they were known as Clankers:



The final troops to be collected together were a group of special command models; including a pair of venerable OGrymn and a veteran in archaic Clanker armour:



But they caused me a problem... I needed transports for the special units...

[inso]

With the units being a little varied, I had to find vehicles that would suit them so I went searching and found this for the K9 unit:



This one for the drone unit:



This one for the Medical unit:



But I struggled to find one for the special command unit so theirs is still WIP:



When it is complete, it will be the final model in the army; which now has:

1 Specialist command squad
1 Infantry command squad
6 Infantry squads
4 close combat squads
1 Medic squad
1 K9 Squad
1 Drone squad
3 Clanker units
11 Mechs
11 APCs
4 miscellaneous vehicles

Once the last vehicle is finished there will be a full army pic.

But here is one to keep you company until it arrives:

[Harkon Greywolf]

This is all so good!

[Manus]

I can only agree with the greyest of wolves

[paladin7221]

Damn, this IS an impressive collection now!
For some reason I'd never seen the medic teams before now, but they're brilliant!

[sw1]

I loved watching this organically grow over time. The way you expanded the army was very inspiring, if one product range didn't have the right models you just dived into the fantastic variety of models available and converted away.

Top Job!!!

[inso]

Thanks

If I hadn't got so many of these, I would add some engineers and some transports for downed mechs... but I have to draw a line under it somewhere !

It has been a proper 'journey' with almost every miniature/vehicle having some form of conversion (the only exceptions are the airborne drones and the K9 miniatures). I am still trying to work out what is going on with the final vehicle so progress has slowed a bit but it is just a case of waiting for the right idea to surface and I'll leap on it again .

I will post a list of manufacturers/links (where possible) to show the range of things in the army at some point... that and an army shot of course (although I'll have to clear the table for that!).

The plans for this army are as follows:

1. Finish the last vehicle.
2. repaint all of the vehicle number plates and replace the poorly painted numbers with decals.
3. Varnish the mechs, the vehicles, the clankers and the special command unit.
4. Have a major photo session to have pix of each individual unit with transport and support, the clankers all together, support units all together and a final bunch of big army pix.
5. Take a deep breath and work out how I am going to store everything (Kaiser Rushforth will be doing well out of me ).

[ZOG!]

Lovely work mate.
The attention to detail and how you have thought out each unit is seriously cool.
Each unit/ model has its place.

Top job.

[Harkon Greywolf]

What he said!

[inso]

Cheers

This weekend, I have removed all the poorly painted numbers from the numberplates on the vehicles and tidied them up ready for decals. I will sort the decals out once the Command vehicle is finished, then I can do them all at once (it isn't a job I enjoy).

I'm still no further forward on the command vehicle though... maybe soon

[hubbe86]

Awesome really great seeing so many at the same time!