Ragnarok Revisited

A while back, I built a Ragnarok style Leman Russ.  I followed the time honored tradition of starting with a Chimera hull, double-tracking it and adding a big square KV-2 style turret.  I used a few side armor plates from the Baneblade as turret sides etc.  It looked OK but fell a bit short of my expectations in terms of appearance.

I subsequently rebuilt the hull but left the turret largely the same, only adding some green-stuff 'welds'.  Now the riveted Baneblade plates just looked out of place with the welds.  This time I cut out the riveted plates, replaced them with plain plasticard and re-did the 'welds'.  Much better.

I replaced all of the surface details on the top of the turret and added 2 Baneblade Periscopes.  Also, at this time, I rebuilt the Mantlet, to give the tank a beefier feeling.

Since I planned to use this tank primarily as a Demolisher/Executioner, I wanted to give the sides a more heavily armored look than just Chimera sides, I decided to add armored skirts, using Dave Taylor's excellent Vostroyan style Ragnaroks for inspiration.  The skirts are two layers of plasticard plus some plasticard 'C'-channel as framing.

Finally some details -- the steps on the side are made from C-channel cut to about the same length as the steps on the door of a Rhino.  The 'Iron V' insignia for Vostroya are castings as I outlined in a previous post.

I primed the model black, then used a brush to get any spots that the spray-can missed, then I did a high-angle, light over-spray to pre-highlight.  The main color is base-coated with bestial brown followed by successive dry-brushes of Graveyard Earth, and successively lighter colored dry-brushes up to Kommando Khaki.  I then washed with Devlin Mud, and finished with a final dry-brush of 50/50 Khaki and Skull White.

The gold bits were base-coated with Tin-Bitz, followed by Shining Gold and Burnished Gold, then washed with a mix of Dark Angels Green and Hawk Turquoise, and a final highligh of Burnished Gold.

 The tracks were painted using the 'Jeff Rust' method over at Pirate Viking Painting.  The lenses were painted following the formulae in "How to Paint Citadel Tanks'.  Here's the finished product:

Winning a Painting Contest, In Spite of Myself

My FLGS held a painting competition this past Saturday.  In preparation, I've spent the last two or three weeks lovingly re-converting (more on that in another post) and painting my Ragnarok pattern Leman Russ.  Finished painting it yesterday morning.


 Packed it up in a nice padded box and drove off to my FLGS.  Get to my FLGS and realize... I forgot to bring the silly box.  Well, my FLGS is about 45 minutes from home and I was playing in a small tournament at the store so driving home to get the thing wasn't really an option; great.

more after the break

3D Vehicle Icons

I really grew accustomed to 3D vehicle icons when I did the Ecclesiarch and Fortress of Arrogance conversions.  I decided to dress up my Vostroyan vehicles with 3D icons modeled after the 'V' icon on the Baneblade transfer sheet.  It's a pretty neat looking emblem with the possibility for some nice texture.

I started by applying one of the large insignia from the Baneblade sheet  to a sheet of plasticard -- this will serve as the template for the shape.  I actually want a slightly smaller version but I'm using the large transfer to get the angles right.  I then cut out a piece of clear plastic from a blister pack (Yarrick, in this case) and taped that over the transfer to use as a substrate for the emblem.

To create the heavy 'I-beam' effect of the left side of the 'V', I went with a piece of 0.060" C-Channel, the rest of the emblem is simply 1-mm rod.  I laid down the left leg on top of  the corresponding piece of the transfer.    The rest of the icon was cut from the 1-mm rod and glued down over the transfer.   The last step was to add the skull between the two legs of the 'V'; easily accomplished using the 'Winged Skull' icon from the vehicle accessory sprue.

With the master completed, I heated up some water to soften a piece of insta-mold to create the mold to cast green-stuff versions of the emblem.  Here's the first cast:

Not too shabby, though I might see what I can do about improving the depth of the eyes on the skull. I'll update on the next attempt.   I also need to see where I can obtain Blue Stuff like Ron at From the Warp uses.  I'm curious to compare that to Insta-Mold.

Old Stuff Day, 2012

Yay old stuff day!  Though as infrequently as I post it may be redundant! OK here's a repost of one of my most popular -- Great Coat Guard, combined into one easy post.

I picked up a box of the Wargames Factory Shock Troops to build

some great coated Guardsmen to use as regular troops alongside of my Vostroyan Veterans.   I built and painted up two models as a test and I think they work.  The WGF bodies combined with GW arms and the Pig Iron Winter Militia heads make for some nice unique looking models.





My first platoon of greatcoats are ready to be primed; well at least the troops are.  This platoon will be lead by Al-Rahem or at least my great-coated interpretation.  Al or Alexei Romanov as I'm calling him is still a WIP.  First up is the platoon command squad with 3 meltas.

Next we have the balance of the first squad that goes with the prototypes that appear on the top of the page

And finally the second squad.

I decided to portray these guys as a rather motley hive-militia auxiliary to the First Born Veterans  hence they get an eclectic mix of lasguns scrounged from the battlefield including Catachan and Steel Legion las-carbines.  If I build another squad, I'll throw in a few lasguns from the Necromunda weapons sprue.

 

Forgeworld -- 40K Expansion (via Warseer)

It looks like Forgeworld has a new rule set for a 40K expansion in the works; Zone Mortalis;  for fighting in enclosed spaces.  Here are the links:

Warseer Thread
PDF
Forgeworld

It includes some of the rules for Boarding Actions from IA-9 which are very cool and adds a few new wrinkles for fighting in Underhive areas, caves such as Cave-ins, Tremors and Quakes.   Also added are rules for Reaction Fire -- reactive fire to assaults -- very cool stuff.  Also they've added some elements of Space Hulk such as blips which should make life even more interesting... Now if only I had a good piece of terrain....

Space Hulk Diorama

My FLGS is having a 40K diorama contest for the 25th Anniversary of 40K.  I decided to build on the success of my earlier Space Hulk terrain project and build a Space Hulk Diorama.  The rules for the competition state that the diorama must fit on a movement tray  -- 20cm x 20cm, have 5-10 models, and have a 40K theme.  I decided that my scene would be 5 terminators preparing to open a bulkhead door with a couple of gene-stealers lurking on the other side of the door, using the figures from the Space Hulk set.
 
I built the terrain piece first, cutting a 20cm long piece of vinyl gutter.   I then cut a slot for the bulkhead and cut the floor and bulkhead pieces to match.  The doorways are made from gutter down-spout bits cut short with a band-saw.   I added some pipes to set the scene  and add texture in the foreground and along rear wall.  Then I primed the whole thing first with Krylon Fusion Black, then Krylon Ruddy Brown spray primers. I did some preliminary weathering with gray and flat black sprays.

 

 

I then picked out the models to use for the terminators and the gene-stealers:  For the terminators, I wanted the heavy-flamer guy ready to cleanse whatever's behind the door, the thunder-hammer sergeant, the guy pointing will be activating the door (replacing the lightning claw guy in this picture), the Auspex guy, and another generic power-fist/storm bolter guy.

For the gene stealers, I knew I wanted the one popping out of the floor, and two others that look like they're climbing the walls.  I plan to paint the figures using the steps outlined by Ron at From the Warp.  Stay tuned...

Kill Team Terrain/Space Hulk

A couple of years ago, the gaming club I was in did 3 linked tables for games day.  A BFG table, a 40k table, and a Space Hulk table, the hulk represented the interior of the space station:

The hulk affected the other tables as follows:  if you controlled one control room you could shoot into the BFG game, the other control room allowed you to do orbital bombardments.   I built the hallways of the station from pieces of vinyl gutters -- an idea I stole from an edition of Black Gobbo (remember Black Gobbbo? Why, GW did you discontinue that?)  My improvement was to take the terrain vertical.  Bridges connected the sections and provided the means to travel between levels.