Spring Clean Challenge 2022 – Project: Ghostmaker

It was bugging me that I could not remember where my classic Gaunt’s Ghost’s minis ere, so had a dig around at the weekend and found them in one of my old army cases. Still a shame they never expanded on these at the time…

So not sure what happened to the last post but the Projects system didn’t seem to like my pictures. Let’s give that another go shall we?

It’s been a minute but finally made a start on building some Tanith. First up I built Victoria Miniatures Svargan Sniper and Commissar Anikka Sage as Sniper Nessa Boreah and Commissar Luna Fazekiel respectively – Luna was a straight build whilst for Nessa I added a First & Only cloak pin and Tanith Straight Silverfrom Vic Minis range of 3d printed extra bitz.

And then I started in on a 10 man squad of Ghosts. There was a fair bit of cleanup required, but pleasantly it was all in spots that had no detail. I’ve opted with this first effort to mix up the standard Ranger torsos with Fatigue, Arcadian Guard and Victorian Guard legs, then built the Sergeant to completion using the Border Rangers Sgt arms, another sheathed Tanith Warknife, and a head that I think came from Anvil Industry. Did have to do a bit of trimming of both the neck and the socket on the torso to get a good fit, but works well enough.

Oh, and fun fact I learnt today on the Victoria Miniatures Facebook fan page, I had just assumed that being resin their range needed cleaning like any other resin to remove release agent residues, but turns out they don’t use them, so in theory you should be able to start building straight away. Will have to order something from them soon to test that out….

Just wanted to put these thoughts down whilst they are fresh – I got to the end of the most recent Audible release for Gaunt’s Ghosts in my library (Sabbat Martyr) and rather than jumping straight over to Salvations reach (the vagaries of publishing meant that Black Library did the three most recent books before going back to do the series from the beginning) started in on the omnibus edition of The Lost arc in the Kindle app on my iPad. In the last few days I’ve gotten through Traitor General and His Last Command, just starting The Amour of Contempt last night, so should get to Only In Death by the weekend, and I’ve gotta say this is easily the hardest arc to get through. Don’t get me wrong, there is also probably some of the strongest writing of Abnett’s career amongst these 4 books, but man they are so, so dark.

It has been good though as I’m getting a feel for the individual Ghosts I want to try and do specific conversions for. In no particular order:

• Tona Criid
• Angus Brostin
• Nessa Boreah
• Mach Bonin
• Wes Maggs
• Ayatanni Zweil
• Anna Curth
• Seema & Arilla
• Bask Baskavyl
• Ban Daur
• Zhukhova
• Major Pasha
• Choria
• Ree Parday
• Commissars Hark, Ludd, Faikuzil & Blemmer
• Lyse
• Shoggy Domor
• And many, many more

Now here’s my big question though, and I’m hoping some of the community can help: Do I do try and represent a specific moment in time for the Tanith First? Or do I instead make the infantry somewhat generic and look to represent the notables of the First & Only from throughout it’s existence? Now admittedly this last is kindof already the direction things are going, given the plastic Gaunt’s Ghost box represents a very specific period from the earliest days of the regiment. Thoughts would be appreciated.

(top tip – Amazon have all 4 GG omnibuses for £2.99 a pop, plus a load of other Black Library books at daft prices)

I figured this might prove handy as well; a selection of the artwork that has been put out over the years of the Tanith First and Only that I’m using as inspiration for this project.

Here’s the thing. I love Gaunt’s Ghosts. Have done ever since that first short story from issue 4 of Inferno!. I make a point of re-reading the series every other year or so, and am currently listening to the Audible versions as they come out (although the wait is becoming agonizing for each one). One thing I have always had on my hobby bucket list though is to build & paint a Tanith 1st Imperial Guard army, using whatever suitable minis & proxies I can.

So I have all these prior versions of Gaunt & co, and indeed brought a second set of the more recent plastic set to use as parts & conversion fodder, but it’s not really enough to build an army from (before even getting into how hard it is to acquire the metal Tanith troopers nowadays), and over the years have looked up alternatives.
One of the inspirations for this project is the great Dave Taylor. His initial version using Jungle Fighters and other metal IG minis from the period is a brilliant attempt for the time, and his subsequent commission work  (as documented in the frankly superb Armies, Legions & Hordes – a book I’ll be referencing frequently during this project) looks great, but I didn’t fancy using plastic Cadians as he has, or at least not the the same extent.

So my first port of call was Victoria Miniatures, and the Border Rangers kit, but I also ordered their male & female Arcadian and Victorian trooper kits, a number of characters, and a bunch of camo-cloaks, to add variety and represent the subtly different battledress of the Tanith, Verghast and Belladon elements of the regiment, as shown in Anna Lakisova’s excellent illustrations from the Sabbat Worlds Crusade book.

A month or so ago I finally got a round to cleaning all of the resin parts I’d amassed for this endeavour, even going to the extent of clipping everything off of their sprues and organizing them using divider trays for the Really Useful box I’ve been using for storing everything.

Now, this is a major project and honestly I do not expect to have it complete by the end of the Spring Clean Challenge. For one thing I am still waiting on parts that a friend is 3D printing for me but is having issues with their printer. Instead I have a more modest end goal: To paint up the plastic Gaunt’s Ghosts kit, and to build & paint one squad of Ghosts from the Vic Minis parts. 16 models. No problem right? ……..