Praetorians for 40k Escalation League

The Lads at GameOnGw have started a Warhammer 40k Escalation League and I am debating about joining. If I play I will probably be playing Imperial guard and fielding my Praetorians. The league will help motivate me to get some painted and play some games before a new edition of 40k comes out. I have been collecting Praetorians for years but have yet to fully paint a single model. The best i have is a base coat on my Praetorian Lancer rough riders and some sentinels but they are far from painted. The added bonus is I will get them painted up to use in Victorian Science Fiction wargaming as The Queens Electric Rifles.

To Field the army I want, I will have to do a series of conversions. Some I have already done when I was redoing the army a year or two ago.

Here is my master Vox model. It is a regular trooper with a catachan voxcaster on his back with a bit added on from the bits box.

This is a better look at the simple conversion. I plan to use the Buglers as regular voxcasters.

This is a Junior officer with a power weapon and stormbolter. It is one of my favorite conversions that was nullified by the new codex. He and the others I converted to have stormbolters will end up with a weapon swap to at least a boltpistol, plasma pistol or maybe a bolter.

I received several standard bearers in a trade with broken banner poles. Most of them I converted into lancers but a couple I gave a laspistol so I could use them as sergeants. I plan to cut the banner pole from another one, add a laspistol and some belt packs to make them medics.

One failing of the Praetorian range was no Plasmagun model. I have several of the other three special weapons but wanted some plasma guns. I followed a tutorial from a forum and converted a couple plasmagunners from regular lasgunners and plasma pistols. I might have to convert up a few more depending on my army list.

I will probably add a few powerfists into the army and will have to convert them. I am not sure which models to base the conversions on but will probably need two or three. I am also debating adding some autocannons, with the carriages modeled with seven spoked wheels like Col. Gravis has on his.

Vehicle wise I have a good selection already with most of them painted. I am thinking about buying two of the new hellhound models to make into banewolves. I have a couple griffons from back in the day. I bought them on clearance to use for chimeras but never did. They might get their chance to see the table.

Still planning

Praetorian Lancers

Another In progress unit. My converted Praetorian Lancers I field as Rough Riders. The basic conversion is a Praetorian standard bearer torso greenstuffed to a heavy weapon gunners legs. I also used one sergent torso to be the vet sergeant and a bugler torso. I added the bugler for style but added a lascannon tip from the old obliterator weapon tip sprue to his jetbike to proxy as special weapon. I planned to field them last weekend at the GameOnGw Gamesday at the Cage in High point NC but diddn't get the chance to break out the guard.

I have fielded them a few times and they have either done well or just been gunned down. Either way they did it in style.

Next Project: Praetorians

Here are some starting pictures of my Praetorian Imperial Guard. After I took the pictures I took all the painted ones and put them into the simple green to strip the paint off so I can prime them to match the others. Some numbers for the force is 12 Praetorian Sentinels, 9 lascannon crews, 9 mortar crews, 6 missile launcher teams, 7 carriage mounted heavybolter conversions, 7 roughrider jetbike conversions, piles of everything else.

I am thinking about fielding infantry platoons with three squads, a heavy weapon platoon, a bunch of sentinels, the rough riders, maybe some Ratlings and/or Ogryns and maybe a couple of vehicles. I haven't crunched the numbers and it is only a starting idea.