I can be rather impatient sometimes, which might sound weird considering I spend several hours per grunt slowly adding layer upon layer of modeling putty on models that would be perfectly serviceable as they come out of the factory, but when it comes to waiting several months (or even years) for models to be officially released, my patience runs out pretty fast. We (as in Khador players) have yet to see a release date for the Grolar from the second-to-last Warmachine expansion, PP has an alarming backlog of jack kits and other models from the last three Wm/H anthologies to produce and we’re less than a month away from the next Hordes book, so I am guessing we won’t be getting most of the jacks from Reckoning before summer 2016… Since I prefer the weight of metal jacks on the table and still have a couple of un-assembled classic Berserkers hoarded away in my bits boxes, I decided (like several other Khador players) to convert my own Rager, rather than waiting for the plastic model release sometime in the unforeseeable future. For this project I used the concept art of the Rager’s entry in Reckoning as my main guideline (since it is the only image we have so far of the un-released new jack); there we can see the Rager has as expected the exact same body as the older Berserker (even the same annoying running pose), with a smaller gladius, a different head and a shield-cannon, reminiscent of MoW Shocktroopers. The most prominent feature (most recognizable at a glance) seems to be the large shield on the model, so I decided to invest the most effort in making my own shield as ‘faithful’ to the concept art as I could, while I took a bit of ‘artistic licence’ for the other bits…

Head and body:

Let us start with the head; in the picture above you can see the steps I took: first I sculpted the face plate (under the ‘eye slit’), imitating the design shown in the concept art (the number and disposition of holes and the emboldened edge of the mask), then I added the upper half of the head, but since it still looked too low I added another layer of green stuff to it to round it out. With the added layers of putty the head ended up being 20% bigger than the original, but since the ‘zerker’s fists are so massive, my head does not feel quite as out of scale (if you did the same on a Retribution jack, it would look wrong, since their hands are much smaller and a larger head in comparison would be much more jarring). Next I reposed the lower body, so that instead of running, it looked like it was leaning on a rock with its right foot. For that you don’t need to cut any legs, just glue on the base something the model can stand on and pin the lower body to the base trough the left foot into the ankle (since that foot comes separate from the rest). Now, if we just attached the upper body to the legs in this position, our model would be tilted backward looking up, like if it was roaring to the sky, which would work well for a Berserker or Mad dog, but feels ‘inappropriate’ for a Shield guard jack, so I bent the peg that joins the crotch to the jacks torso and extended the pistons and supports on the lower back of the model, to level the angle of the head/neck parallel to the ground looking forward.

Fell Gladius:

Now since I am making the gladius from scratch, it was a given that it would get my usual ‘Orgoth treatment’: As we have done quite a few times already in the past articles, we start by cutting the outline of our blade out of 1 mm thick plasticard, sculpt the soul storm pattern into the middle of the sword, let it harden completely and then add the blade’s edge around it. After we have done that on both sides, we have to cut some more 1 mm thick plasticard in the shape of the sword’s guard (I chose a ‘block-y’ shape instead of the more rounded design from the original concept, partly inspired by Guts’ Dragons slayer sword from the manga/anime Berserk), added a thin layer of green stuff over it with a few rivets and a big ‘screw bolt’ in the center. When the green for my Doom gladius was finished, I made a silicone mold of it and re-cast in resin, so that if I needed another Rager in the future, it’s armaments would be consistent with this one.

Shield-cannon:

As I hinted at the beginning, this shield is the main feature on the Rager, and since it required the most ‘steps’ to sculpt, it also took me the longest to finish: As usual let start slow and simple: first I cut the outline of my shield out of 1.5 mm thick plasticard, taking extra care to make it as symmetrical as possible. Next I flattened some circles of green stuff around a 6 mm diameter plastic cylinder, using some plastic tubes of various sized to press in the edges of the circles and keep them all nicely centered (if you try to just do it ‘free hand style’ you will likely make the circles uneven and oval, which might annoy you afterwards, if you have OCD like me…). These concentric circular levels work as a frame you later fill with more putty to shape the sloped conical shapes of the cannon barrel and the cooling grill around it. With the cannon done, I moved to the bold rims on the edges of my shield. Again, to keep it all consistent, I started by cutting some 3 mm wide strips of 0.5 mm thick plasticard to define the dimensions of the rims and then patiently flattened some more green stuff on top of them to add ‘texture’ like small dents and nicks. These rims stuck out from the shield surface by 1.5-2 mm, since I planned to add another layer of putty to the flat area of the shield, in order to give it more of a curved shape (from a cross-section point of view) and add texture like the rim. With the ‘main body’ of the shield-cannon done, I glued it to a larger square of plasticard (this will later be the bottom of the box for the silicone mold of the piece) and added to its bottom some triangles of 0.5 mm thick plasticard, that defined the frame for the spikes under the shield. I filled these frames with green stuff, removed any excess putty that got squeezed out of the plastic frames while pressing it down and used some silicone tipped sculpting tools to smooth out the surfaces neatly. At the same time I made the Khador symbol by first cutting a small ‘hollow’ triangle in thin plasticard and then adding the rectangles on the points with green stuff. Finished the piece off by adding a few rivets to the rim and made another mold for resin casting.

Shield arm:

Now my main problem with the shield-cannon was figuring out what the back of the shield would look like and how the jack was supposed to hold it, because from the concept art it looked like it might be an integrated gun-arm like a Destroyer’s bombard, that just had a shield around the barrel of the cannon; I chose to go with a shock-trooper-like shield design, where the regular jack arm is fastened to it on the forearm: I first cut off the axe held in the left fist and chopped up the fore arm, since I needed to rotate the fist slightly and wanted to better secure the shield to the arm. I pinned a cylindrical piece of plastic to the left elbow (that same brass rod sticks out of the front to later pin the fist on it), covered that with green stuff to give it a smoother look and then pinned that to my custom resin shield. I should point out that the shield I made previously is completely flat on its back side, so in this case I made a resin copy because, while the resin is hardening, you have a timing window when the resin is still malleable to a degree and if you take it out of the mold a bit early, you can curve it over the side of a bottle or spray can to give it the desired curvature of most shields (it is not that noticeable in these pictures, but will be a bit more evident in the pics of the finished model). As you can see in the pictures I then proceeded to slowly add simple geometrical bodies around the ‘grip of the shield’ to build up the cannon’s backside and flesh it out with minor details like rivets and such. One thing I learned in my years of sculpting experimentation, is that even the most complex looking models of guns, robots and vehicles are made up of fairly simple geometrical shapes layered on top of each other and so I always start with simple shapes and keep adding layers and small details until I am happy with the look overall (however try not to over-saturate your composition like some GW models with 15 marks of Khorne crammed on an infantry grunt…).

Painting:

With the shield completed I could finally dry-fit-pin the arms on the body and see how it looked all together (I did not yet glue them on at this stage, since that would make it very hard to paint properly): As usual I undercoated the model with the zenith gray-scale technique: first spray it all black, fill out any cracks the spray missed with a normal undercoating brush, then spray it with a mid tone gray from a 45 degree angle and finally spray it lightly with white from the top

In the three pictures below you can see the 3 major steps of my painting process applied to the body and arms of my Rager:

First I apply all my base colors, taking extra care to be ‘neat and tidy’ and correct any splatters of paint on nearby areas of a different color.

Next I seal the whole model with a spray satin varnish coat, apply some oil paint washes (I typically use Burnt umber for warm colors and Lamp black for cold colors), let them rest for 10-15 minutes (so that the paint thinner can evaporate for the most part and the paint set on the surface), use some Q-tips moist with mineral spirit to scrub off most of the oil paint from raised surfaces (reverse dry-brushing), use a dry medium brush with synthetic bristles to feather out the transition between shade and mid tones (keep in mind that natural bristles are damaged by the paint thinner and such brushes get ruined after a few uses), leave it to dry for a few hours (usually I leave it overnight) and finally re-seal the models with another coat of spray varnish.

Lastly I go back to acrylic paints and patiently add the final highlights to my dominant colors and metals (in this case the reds, green glow, bronze and steel), using a hybrid technique of ‘wet blending and feathering’ to keep my gradient between shade and high tone smooth.

Doom Rager:

With all the bits properly painted I sealed the model with a final protective dull coat of varnish, flocked the base with snow and glued the arms to the body, so here is my Doom Rager in all his full color glory: I must admit the gladius and shield-cannon might have come out a bit larger than intended (many therapists would undoubtedly have much to say about this tendency to enlarge weapons on my models…), but I am pretty happy with the overall look; if I did not give it an Orgoth styled gladius, I would have been tempted to post this up on the boards, claiming it was a sneak-peek at the Rager kit and observe people wrecking their heads trying to figure out weather it was true (small hope) or if I was trolling people:) Anyway, to finish off the article in style, here is also a group shot of the Rager with Butcher3 and my Khador objectives; consider this a regular status update on the slow growth of my Red army of Doom, that will be at the end of each article in this series (unless it eventually becomes too crowded and unwieldy).

As per usual, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions check out this article series’ thread in the MoM forums ( -Linky- ). Cheers!!!