Valkyries and Vendettas, part 2

I haven't done anything about the cockpit yet, though I have scoured Ebay and the bitz sellers for the parts so I can get started. Here are the in-progress pictures of my colour scheme so far...

The stripes are going to be on the upper surface only; mostly because the weapons were glued in place before I got the model, and it'll be a real pain to paint round them. The next two will be striped upstairs and down.

Of course, once you put flyers up there, you need to be able to bring them down. Hydras aren't wonderful (they can't take on ground targets with any degree of accuracy any longer) but they still look good. Here's the basic colour scheme for the first of my pair. The cannons have been attached with magnets, so they can elevate (or more likely, be removed as I get shot up during the game)

Hydra substitute

Okay, this is the Ramshackle Games Quad Gun perched on top of a modified 1/48 scale KV chassis. It's a bit out of line because it's just stuck together with blu-tac, but the question is - do I need to lengthen the barrels, or is it obvious what this is?

Tank hunting

I've been quiet on the blogging front over the last week or two - family holiday in the Wye Valley, so I was a bit busy in the canoe and on the bike - but I have managed to get some colour onto this Forgeworld tank hunter I picked up on Ebay a while back.

A very simple colour scheme; heavy green drybrush, tracks in drab drybrushed gunmetal, pick out the details. I will be using it in the Imperial Guard army I'm finally getting on with as either an enclosed Basilisk or (since the long barrel is magnetised) as an enclosed Colossus. There are 'proper' rules for it in the Imperial Armour books, but it's good to have a codex alternative...

Painting update - IG heavies

A heavy painting session last night (thanks to my wife for putting up with it!) has given me a new turret for the Ragnarok and four autocannon teams for Echo company, yellow platoon.

One Blight Wheel war-bot in each squad as the heavy weapon team - mounted on 60mm bases, though they only really need 40mm bases for the size of the robot.

Another turret - KV2, styrene barrel made from three diameters of tube.

Two Ragnaroks and the robots...

The transport pool

I have managed to get the transport pool for my Space Wolves assembled and primed. Unlikely to have them painted before the game on Monday, but at least they're started...

Three rhinos painted. Four razorbacks primed - one assault cannon, one lascannon, two las/plas. And the slight lingering smell of cheese and spam...

Rhino rebuild

Back in December (in this post) I started to do some work on an abused Rhino I picked up cheaply on Ebay. Well, it's now pretty much finished, and I'm happy with the way it's looking.

Grey parts are from the spares box, white are plastic card, tan bits are from the original Rhino kit. I'm particularly pleased that the old hatch fitted the new hull as a bolter turret. I just need to think about how to add the hinges to the side doors and I'm about there.

In other news - my Bolter and Chainsword painting challenge is finished - grey hunters, rhino and dreadnought...

Less is more

More exactly, less glue is more options.

In the Razorback kit, you get the whole of the Rhino kit, plus the additional sprue with all the Razorback parts, at exactly the same price. You don't even need magnets to make this work; the hatch is a slot-fit and you have two versions (with and without a storm bolter fitting), and the top doors can drop-swap for the turret mount. Anyway, it all works very well, and my new Grey Hunter pack now have a ride... just needs a coat of gloss varnish and a coat of Devlan Mud so shade it all down.

Hammers Slammers in 15mm

There's been a bit of a run on Hammers Slammers in 15mm at the Warlords, and I have finally decided what to do with my little tank sculpts. They will be an Apex Dragoons force, though since Jim already has one under the brush, I will change the name and colour scheme and keep the same organisation chart.

So here are the first half of the Strike Detachment; five Slingshot MICVs with gatling railgun and missile support. I need to cast another four hulls, then I can do a pair of Slingshot hypersonic missile calliopes, a Trojan ATGW missile carrier and the Trojan command vehicle.

The hulls are my sculpt, the turrets are from Old Crow. I will be sculpting some stowage for them once I have all nine ready to go.

So that's two different scales and two different armies in the last two days.Not that I have a short attention span or anything...

Alas, poor Rhino

How many ways can you mis-construct a Rhino? I think the guy who made this considered the instructions to be a threat to his creativity...

I guess I can't complain too much because I picked this one up on Ebay for a few quid, but the list includes doors and hatches fitted inside out, sprue left attached to parts so the hull roof didn't fit, tracks put on wrongly, and one track unit fitted at about 10° to the hull. I thought about turning it into a terrain piece, but eventually decided to try to rescue it.

Given the amount of chopping I had to do (including a quarter of the hull floor to bring the sides back square), I decided I might as well go a step further and convert it to a Mk I Rhino, complete with round side doors and a flat front with twin panels. So here is the 'after bringing back to square but before changing the doors' picture - more to follow over the next couple of days.

And a little later in the day... 

I have removed and replaced the upper doors with a plain version, similar to that on the first Rhino kit, complete with handles from plastic rod. I am considering whether to build a 'climbing frame' in the style of the original.

I have also made blanking plates for the hull sides; they're just propped in place at the moment. I visited WHSmiths for a pair of compasses this afternoon, so I can cut round doors as well. I am considering whether it's worth making just one plate with doors and hinges, and then casting several from resin. If anyone is interested, let me know and we could share costs.

What happens when you cross...

...a Basilisk with a Leman Russ?

This is the first of my two artillery pieces; I have combined the hull from the Basilisk with the track units from the Leman Russ. I was looking for something a little different, and with Bits and Kits selling the tracks for £2.50 each, this was fairly cheap. I will find a use for the Basilisk track units somewhere, I'm sure.

Quick and easy, and it looks a bit heavier than the standard Basilisk without being so different as to confuse my opponent.

8068

Back to the 15s

As I said a couple of posts ago, I have an awful lot of spare wheels for my 15mm APCs. Well, here is the initial work on the hull; created from a cut-down Rhino, with the detail all removed and sanded back to a block of resin. Everything has been added with plastic rod, tube and sheets except the stowage boxes, which are the originals, removed with a razor saw and turned sideways. I still need to make a turret and a hatch for the top of the hull so that it can be an APC or an IFV.

I would say there's another evening's work in making the master with some greenstuff to fill gaps, then I can have a go at making an RTV mould and doing some resin casting - not something I have ever tried before, so wish me luck!

Update:


Here are some comparison pictures between Brigade Model's 6mm version of the Wildebeest and my 15mm version. The hatch is made from plastic card and tube and a KV2 return roller for the hatch doors themselves; the wheels just press-fitted onto the axle stubs. Though I say it myself, it's looking pretty good. Next I have to make the alternative turret...

Ragnarok Demolisher

Well, I didn't get anything done over Easter, but here's the third tank. This time it's another KV2, this time with the spare barrel from the Leman Russ Demolisher. Looking at the pictures, I seem to have swapped the hull and turret with the first one (and it's also ended up at the back of all the photos), but it doesn't really matter. I tried for some battle damage, and removed the engine cover and one road wheel of the new hull (which seem to be not unusual on the real thing, judging by some wartime photos.) The engine was a resin piece from Ramshackle Games fitted into a plastic card box and glued to the underside of the hull. I now have another couple of KV2, for a total of five (three of them still in boxes).

I took another couple of photos along with the Leman Russ; you can see my terrain as well, including a half-finished building to the left of the last picture. This was a Pegasus kit again, to which I have added plastic card floors; it still needs to be fully painted, but I thought it would look okay in a couple of 'action photos'.

Bleak mid-winter

I got some paint onto the tanks last night. I have been thinking about a winter theme for the new army; I tried it out last night, and I am not happy. I initially painted the Russ green, then masked off the tracks with tape. I masked some areas with toothpaste, then sprayed white. A quick wash down to remove the toothpaste and... well. It looked a bit untidy, and there wasn't enough green showing, so I tried to tidy up with a sponge and green paint to emphasise the edges and other areas where you'd get wear.

You can see the results from the attached pictures, but basically, it's not great. I should have left it in the original green finish (like the KV2 / Ragnarok)... I will have to strip and repaint.

However, on the plus side, the Ragnarok looks great and I'll get on and make another two of them over Easter (real life permitting...)

Tanks on the cheap

I'm starting to put together an Imperial Guard army for 40k, which can be quite expensive with the amount of armour you need to field. Enter the Ragnarok. The Ragnarok is a Leman Russ substitute fielded by the Death Korps of Krieg, loaded up with a battlecannon and a pair of heavy stubbers. Well, my version has the battlecannon, but the twin heavy stubbers are replaced with a heavy bolter - in other words, it's a direct Leman Russ substitute.

The basis of the Ragnarok is a 1/48 scale KV-2 produced by HobbyBoss. All that you need to do is to replace the gun with a plastic tube equivalent, replace the hull machine gun with a heavy bolter, and 40k-ify the top of the turret with a new hatch and smoke launchers. I'm sure most players have the majority of the necessary parts anyway.

As a comparison, the hull of the Ragnarok and the Leman Russ above are the same width (excluding sponsons), the same height to within 2mm, and the Ragnarok is about 20mm longer. And the best part is, I can get three Ragnaroks for the price of a single Leman Russ. I think I will have six of the Ragnaroks (I have three kits so far), armed as Battle Tanks and Demolishers, and a couple of Leman Russ as the more unusual variants - an Executioner, a Vanquisher, and an Exterminator ,the last of these to be painted in black as a commissar's vehicle - a full heavy bolter loadout should remind the troops not to retreat!

All I need to do is to work out how to add sponsons to the KV-2 kit...