Tuesday 13 January 2009

Imperial Guard Banner (Poles)

This post is about banners and poles for the Imperial Guard - as the title suggests. However it is not about designing banners like the post on the From the Warp blog - my drawing skills really really really leave something to be desired.

It is in fact about me creating a suitable looking banner pole to be carried by a future model. Now I haven't yet decided on how I want the model to pose, but as I'm thinking about putting a banner in each command squad I will be using different stances. Currently I've only tested my created banner pole on a model standing kind of to attention.

To create my banner pole I have used a banner from a current Space Marine Tactical Squad kit (I think), an arm holding a halberd from a Soldiers of the Empire WFB kit and also a pistol arm from the Imperial Guard Cadian Troops sprue.

Basically I started off by removing the pistol and hand from the Cadian arm. This was done simply by using a modelling knife to carefully cut the hand and pistol away.

Next up I removed the arm from the halberd so I was just left with the two hands on the pole. I then cut off the top hand as close to the hand as possible so as to get the most length from what will become the banner pole. This was all done using some very careful cutting and trimming with a modelling knife again.

I then cut the bottom square section from the Space Marine banner and made a small indentation in the bottom of the cast banner pole. Before gluing the pole to the banner, I had a dry run to see how it would look - and to see if I had wasted my time. Fortunately I hadn't and so I applied a little bit of GW plastic glue and left the piece to dry standing vertically - I used a block of blu tack to hold the banner pole upright. And the finished piece looks like this:


There is an Imperial Eagle symbol on the top of the banner but this is shoved into the horrible looking bit of blu tack. And thats how I made the first of probably 5 banner poles. Thanks for looking.

4 comments:

CrusherJoe said...

Yup, very nice bit of conversion work right there!

Space Hulk Enthusiast said...

It can be hard when making banner poles like this with their different number of weak points (joints).

How do you go about shoring them up and making them a little more sturdy so they stand up to regular game play?
I'd like to use the plastic ones but I worry they'll break to easily.

I've almost always redone my banner poles with aluminum tubing for the added strength unless it was something small like the Marine Sgt banner poles that mount on top of marine backpacks.

Cadian 127th said...

Thanks for the comment CrusherJoe.

As for keeping them a bit sturdier Ron, I'm goin to see how this hybrid works out. I may try pinning the two pieces together or trying to find some thicker poles.

The aluminium tubing sounds like a good idea. But how easy is it to work with?

Thanks again guys.

Colonel Krieg said...

Hello, I have made my own standard bearer a few years ago already with a copper rod and the top of a SM back-pack banner.

you can have a look at it here : http://lh6.ggpht.com/_R4kKFZ2Ir4M/SGOLRK1yL_I/AAAAAAAAACk/9UxhWhODYB8/s800/etendard.jpg

It is based on one of the Cadian sergent (the one with the bolt pistol) and a Necromunda sprue lasgun.

Hope it'll help :)

Cheers

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