Rescued marines

I'm back! - been to Vegas, which was excellent, then in hospital, somewhat less than excellent... I doubt you want to see my holiday snaps or my scars though, so here goes with some new minis. I've mentioned before that GW now rather helpfully do metal shoulder pads for the Eagle Warriors. While I'm off work recovering, I thought I'd hack up some old 2nd Ed (thanks Tim) marines and give them the Eagle Warriors treatment to swell the ranks a little. Here's an example with his shoulder cut out (with a combination of sawing where possible, then carving away with a craft knife):

Had to pull the backpack off to seat the new shoulder pad properly.

So after dismembering the poor dear, I then popped and small ball of green stuff into one of the EW shoulder pads, pushed it firmly into place, and trimmed off the residual green stuff with a wetted knife - smoothed it out as much as possible and painted up as usual:

...and here you can see the 'before and after' shot showing the new shoulder in place:

Note the improved basing with static grass - I think this will be my default plain base from now on.

Same treatment on a couple more:

And a sergeant to whip them into shape:

These minis aren't quite as good as the Black Reach ones (all the same pose for a start) but add new shoulders and a quick paint job, and we're well on the way to an extra Tac squad to add to the army, for not much cash as I had these lying around. More to follow here as I'm at home and bored stiff - great opportunity to get some steady painting done. Back in a day or two... (makes up for the recent lack of posting anyway!)