Prime Battlewalker

I aten't dead! Yeah, it's almost been three months since the last post but I've been pretty damned busy lately. Some of it I can't even talk about yet! However I can talk about this model.

Thunderfire cannon and more

Here are the proper pictures of my Thunderfire cannon/Atlas Gun Carriage. I certainly find it pleasing, though to be fair, I'm quite obviously biased.

And now for something a bit different. As I am writing this, my Enforcer Space Marines army has existed as more than just a concept in my head for about one year and three months. I find it very fascinating to see how much my painting skills have changed in that short time.

The above two pictures show the point I am trying to make. Four assault cannons where I have attempted to paint the gun barrels with NMM, Non-Metallic Metal, techniques. The one to the left is the oldest one and one of my first attempts at NMM, while the one on the right is the most recent one, completed just a few of days ago. The difference is rather staggering. Not only has each attempt gotten darker and darker, the progression from dark to bright is better and the illusion of light reflection is far more pronounced.

While I'm certainly no NMM master, and will probably never be, it is satisfying to see that my time hasn't been a complete waste of time. Let that be a lesson to any painter out there that thinks you can't improve; Time and practice are your best friends no matter who you are!

Thunderfire Cannon part 3

To be brutally honest I will not be continuing the paint guide of the Thunderfire Cannon. Many of the pictures I took while working on it were not of very high quality and many subtle changes while painting were hard to see, if at all visible. Guess that is what happens when you have a brand new camera and decides to use your old one because of pure laziness. Go figure. Though I did get this decent picture of the final assembly so it will have to do until set up my photo equipment.

Instead of giving a detailed painting guide, how about some details on my armies? I've updated the army showcase page of my Wehrmacht Imperial Guard with some better pictures and added an entire new showcase page for my Enforcer Space Marines. So about it? Would you kindly check them out?

Thunderfire Cannon part 2

So it turns out that my airbrush was not broken. The morning after I thought I had broken it, the damned thing was working fine again. Either some part got out of alignment and my fiddling with it fixed the problem or the airbrush fairy visited me in my sleep. Either works fine.

As for the Thunderfire cannon, which I will call Atlas Gun Carriage in my home-brew army, the build has progressed well. The main structural parts was finished in my last update so details was next on the agenda. It always feels a bit redundant to paint parts that will see little of the sun's light, so naturally, building something that is out of main view feels even more awkward. And yet the underside of the gun is more elaborate and detailed than the top. Maybe I'm just strange that way?

Next I added protective armour to the sides of the gun and finally added 76 rivets (I counted them all!) to the whole construct, though I forgot to take a picture of that. The armourplates only adds to the size problem, but the rule of cool will hopefully override that.

And now for something completely new! How I paint vehicles and equipment for my Enforcer Space Marine army. Can't claim to be much of a paint and build blog if I only write about building stuff, now can I?

The three above pictures show the first and most basic steps. First I lightly spray the model with a regular aerosol spray. I'm not sure how necessary this truly is but I've read somewhere on the web that it does give better grip to the following layers of paint. And everything on the net is true, right?
Second layer is airbrushed Vallejo black primer. Finally the model is again airbrushed with a 20:1 mix of Vallejo Wolf Grey (GW name: Space Wolves grey/ Fenrisian grey) and Vallejo Cold Grey (GW name: Codex grey/Dawnstone). Next update will show the rest of the painting.

Thunderfire Cannon

Time for an update! After reading the rules for the Thunderfire Cannon in the new Space Marine codex, I just knew I had to get one. 100 points for a reliable artillery piece is a bargain, especially when you consider the cost of the crew. A lone techmarine with the same equipment as the Thunderfire Cannon crew is 75 points, meaning that you only pay 25 points for the actual gun!

As for the build itself, it started with some sketches. This is something I consider everyone should do before starting a major build. It gives you a better understanding of what you are trying to accomplish and you can try out several ideas and concepts without wasting any plastikard. For instance, almost nothing of what can be seen in the above picture made it on to the build and yet all it cost me was a piece of paper.

My personal take on the Thunderfire Cannon started out with a boxlike shape. I may have little talent for sculpting a human body and dynamic, flowing shapes like hair and clothes makes me cry myself to sleep, but give me straight lines, angles and something I can measure, and I can make almost anything. Hence a box, because it is always a good start.

Before I finished the first box I added another inverted box on the top. This adds some extra dimension to the cannon instead of just making it a flat, boring surface. The guns are simple rectangular tubing that has had a groove cut in the middle and yet they look fairly high-tech. Later I will add some round tubing into that groove, again adding depth and dimension.

For the base of the gun I'm using a Puppets War Gatling turret platform. I bought this at the same time as the weapons for my IronRaider. The gatling gun won't be used here, instead it will later become the main weapon on my Iron Raider Crusader variant.

A word of caution however. Normally I'm very happy with the items I buy from Puppets War. Not so this time. While the main body was fairly decent, the tracks were quite badly cast, more specifically the sides. I had already planned to remove some of the moulded details to add my own touch but in this case it became an absolute necessity. Gone is almost all the detail, replaced by fairly simple plastikard plates.

The parts intended to hold the gatling gun ended up holding my Thunderfire cannon instead. Another, smaller box, was created to fit in the vacuum left by the gatling gun and the main body of the thunderfire cannon was fitted on top of this. At this stage I realised that the finished model would probably be quite big, but since I have no official model to compare it to it will just have to do.

Building an Ironside Land Raider part 4

The beginning of the end of this build. I must admit that is was a real treat seeing the entire thing coming together as I had planned it.

 

I had to carve big holes in the sides of the hull to make the laser turrets fit. Around these holes I fitted some additional plastikard and I also finished the side hatch design.

 

Finally I added some detailing on the sloped middle part of the tank and to the side of the machine gun turret mounting plate. Also, rivets. Lots and lots of rivets. I could damn them all to Hades! Small and fiddly and doesn't always stick when and where you want them to. To even be able to handle them I had to cut them about twice as long as they were supposed to be, use some fine tweezers to pick them up, dip them in glue and put them in place. After that I had to wait a day for the glue to dry/harden properly, cut them in half with a fine sprue cutter and finally file them down to the proper size. A man could go crazy for less. And all this assume that the damned things didn't drop off later! As a sidenote, in the second picture above you can see the final power plant assembly.

The weapons were really the final pieces of the puzzle. They are all magnetized for easy changing and transporting. There are, after all, two more Land Raider versions I could build. The machine gun turret went on more or less without modification. The lascannons however did get some changes. I turned the barrels so they lined up properly with the rest of the vehicle, removed most of the top details and manufactured a gun shield for each to cover the area with no details. The shields are not featured here as I forgot to take a good picture of them. In any case, the vehicle now only really needed some paint. I might later show how I painted it and I will definitely take better pictures of it but for now I leave you with this to show the finished model.

Building an Ironside Land Raider part 3

And so the detailing began. Everything I did from this point forward was made in an effort to mimic an original, unmodified Ironside. Not strange considering I already had three others fully painted and I wanted this one to fit in without being bullied by its brothers and sisters.

First I fitted a leftover part from a previous Ironside on the rear superstructure. It is the only metal part on this tank and the reason I hadn't used it was because it was crooked from casting and I didn't quite like the way it looked. However, on this build it worked fine, especially after I fixed most of it's crookedness with Violence (tm)! Also called bending while grunting really loudly since the damned piece is quite thick. After some filing to make it flat on the underside, I glued it on place on top of another piece of plastikard for final placement. After that I filled the rest of the rear superstructure with assorted plastikard bits and started fleshing out the top of the crew compartment as well.

 

Sometimes when I build bigger things I spray some black paint on it while building. This gives the model better shadows and makes it a bit easier to see any imperfections, places that need more sanding and holes that needs filling. Another benefit is that it makes later additions easier to identify in a build guide like this. As you can see I added some more details on the crew compartment, made another, better hatch on the metal part and added some support pieces to the box around the rear superstructure.

 

I finished most of the rear next. First I constructed a simple hatch and then turned my attention to the power plant. At first I was tempted to use some parts from Blood & Skull Industry, but decided that that I was going to make the engine myself. I did however draw inspiration from Blood & Skulls tank engine so I will give them credit for it. The power plant is made up of two parts. The first is basically just a rectangular box with two tubes cut in half on top. The next is the engine cover and as you can see it has six openings in it to show the inside a bit. In a later picture you can see the final assembly. Oh, and the dark grey fan/vent on the right of the cover? That is a leftover piece from the underside of a foot of a Gundam robot. Never, ever throw away your bits, kids!

The front hatch was a bit of a conundrum. I knew earlier that I had made it too long but that was not a bad thing as I had not really decided on its design just yet. I spent some time looking at various sci-fi vehicles and real landing craft but in the end I decided to make it quite simple and yet fairly similar to an actual Land Raider. Looks chunky and rugged enough to take the running feet of a dozen half-ton super soldiers, doesn't it?

At this stage, the weapons had started to arrive. Even at the planning stage, I saw no real need to build the weapons myself as there are several companies that make good alternatives. For this build, I choose a pair of Laser Turrets and a Machine Gun Turret from Puppets War. One of the mounting plates (Which fits perfectly on a razorback BTW) I immediately cleaned up, put some plastikard around it and glued it in place. It is always fun when new toys arrive.