hydra and leman russ pt 3: Rust and Details

I have been slowly tackling the rust on the tanks. You can see my orange wash around the hatches and edges of the turret. I have not moved on to powders yet because of the mess. I just can't bring myself to start that stage until everything else is done. There is a special equation that goes along with forge world weathering powders.

White Crate and Barrel Couch + Forge world weathering powders = impossible to placate wife!

My wife suggested that I go play a game of 40k this weekend in order to relax from a stressful week at work. I suppose an army list is in order. Shall I take out my deathwing, or show up with a lot of tanks. Both armies are easy to transport. Anyone game at the springfield va store?

Hydra and Leman Russ Pt2

I have blocked in most of the color, and dry brushed the hulls of the tanks. I deviated from my normal pure dehneb stone dry brush and mixed in yellow for the yellow parts, and then green for the green parts. The slight tinting of the paint really helps the models stand out. I wish I had done this for all of the tanks. These still fit in, but have a little more pizzaz. I still have all of the layering to do on the red, and canvas portions, as well exhausts, but at least there is not primer left on the models.

I am really happy with the plasma turret, and it was surprisingly easy to do.

1. watered down sky blue over all of the coils
2. blue wash heavy on the edges
3. 75/25 sky blue/ white on the edges
4. 50/50 sky blue/white within the previous layer

I don't know if I want to do the other details first, or go back and add the rust. Regardless, rust for me is done differently depending on where it goes. For rivets and around hatches, I use a very thinned mix of blazing orange (we are talking 10/1 sorts of ratios here). The tracks are treated differently, and have forge world weathering powder applied. There is a lot of work to do, but at least they are fieldable if I every get around to gaming with them. (I have only used my guard once!)

So after all of these tanks, I wonder if I can still paint a mini.

Hydra Pt1

The Valdor tank hunter's tracks bewilder me, so I decided to give the Hydra a shot. It turns out the hydra does not fit together very well, so there is a full 1/2 inch gap on the bottom of the tank. It took me over an hour to come up with a compromise that made it kind of fit together. the top hatch simply is not wide enough, and appears to be too long as well. The one thing that did work out is the magnetizing of the autocannons. I might build a missile rig so I can field a manticore using the same chassis.

So my basic tank recipe for is:

• foundation ilyaden yellow
• foundation gretchin green
• dev mud bath (this is where I am right now)
• deheneb stone dry-brush

Should the Valdor follow the same recipe? Is the fact that it is supposed to be a dark age relic enough to give me reason to paint it light blue and grey. I am undecided about this. My force has all kinds of troops, but the tanks have so far been consistent.

Valdor Tank Hunter WIP 1

While away on travel I received an order from forge world containing my first all resin kit. I've purchased upgrades before, so I knew I was getting into something difficult with this one. The valdor is supposed to be a venerated dark age of technology vehicle according to the books, and has a nice retro-ww1 tank meets 1950s robot future thing going on. My order contained a hydra-flak tank as well, but it just does not have the same visual interest as the valdor to me.

So, after trimming away flash and resin spurs I've just started bending the resin back into shape. The process is simple

1. look at instructions so you know what a piece is supposed to look like
2. get two pots of water, one steaming hot, and one with ice water
3. dip the resin you want to reshape into the hot water
4. bend back into shape
5. dip the re-formed resin into the ice water to set the shape.
6. have wife walk into the kitchen and laugh at the gun barrel shape

So I have a whole lot of parts to slightly bend into shape. I think the tank is going to take far less time to paint than the preparation!

DA versus Gorgeous Eldar

These photos are in the reverse order, so this is the state f things at the end of the game. Two land speeders and an attack bike were just itching to unleash revenge on the stranded fire dragon squad, but the game ended on turn 5. The eldar won this time.

Fire dragons show ups to try and kill the loan terminator to take the kill point lead. They do so, but my land speeders take out their transport and leave them stranded. There is not much I can to do get to them though, so no kill points for me.

This is by far my favorite paint job on a vehicle. It is just masterful.

The DA wheel around to try and get in range.
A lucky shot damaged and eldar transport.
Rob moved all of his forces just out of range, leaving the lone terminator with nothing to do but run and hide.
Say hello to Mr. Multi-Melta.


DA Turn: The tanks drive on, and the terminators enter the game using the teleport homer from the RW land speeder. The bikes died under a torrent of gun fire. So too will the terminators.

Turn 1: The eldar fly onto the board and disembark


Turn 1: The lone transport luring the DA to their deaths.
After months of scheduling, three of us met up and finally had our first battle. My opponent, Rob, played Rob's unbelievably beautiful Eldar army. In hind sight, I really should have setup my tripods and and lighting sources to get better photos. I wanted to play the game and found the photography interfering. I think this comes from not knowing the rules very well, so I was focussed on trying to learn the game rather than focusing on the photos. We played an 1850 annihilation game and I gave up turn one. This was my first kill points game, and it I lost by one point. My troops never even got out of their transports! The eldar jumped on the board turn one, annihilated my bike squad, and then jumped back in their transports and flew away, taking pot shots at me for the rest of the game. I tried to make a wall of troops to slowly box them in, but I could not maneuver fast enough. The size of the table did work to the eldar advantage, but realistically Rob is an excellent player, so he would have schooled me no matter what! I am not sure what tactics I should have used. I definitely needed more long range firepower.

The photos are in reverse chronological order. This way you get to see the smoking husk of a fire prism and a troop transport first!

The Dark Angels Go To War

I finally added drivers to the land speeders in preparation for my first large game of 40k. I've done some painting clean up work, but am ready to see these guys on the field. As I have mentioned before, I don't really play the game that often, but I like to use the rules to organize my painting projects. These guys are slated to part of a narrative campaign, including some unbelievably well painted eldar, a traitorous imperial planetary governor and all of the regulars that accompany the slide of an imperial world into the worship of chaos. Today was are just learning the rules, so it will be a straight forward 1850 pt game.

My army has all three varieties of Dark Angels. I've got some green wing vets in a rhino, two squads of terminators led by Master Belial, and a full raven wing squad let by Master Sammael on his land speeder. So now comes the question of how I play these guys. The ravenwing squad can outflank, and scout. One squad of terminators can hitch a rid in the land raider, and I can keep one in reserve for deep striking.

In terms of tactics, my plan so far, unless someone posts some better strategies, is to move the rhino and land raider forward as fast as possible using the rhino's smoke grenades first turn. The rhino should be able to provide a cover save to the land raider which can then use its smoke the next turn to return the favor. I can sandwich Sammael in between, so I can concentrate my firepower on whatever the terminators and vets are driving towards. To ensure the enemy gets where I need them to be, I plan to spit my bikes into 3 units, accompanied by the support speeder. There are two meltas, so I should be able get in melta range turn one. The sergeant has a power sword, so I can use him to tarpit any unit I need to slow down. I think of the bikes as my cowboys herding the cattle to slaughter. The fulcrum of the operation will be the one deep striking terminator squad. Since they will be the least maneuverable, I need to get the bikes in position to drop these guys behind my forward advancing troops. Between them and the bikes I have a hammer and an anvil. I am not bothering to bring a psyker, for no other reason than I don't really think they belong in a DA force. That might prove to be my undoing as Eldar are the kings of weird mental attacks. With this many moving parts I am sure things will go wildly wrong during battle!

DA Vets With Chirugeon Backpacks Pt2

I've done some more work on my vets as you can see. I am not thrilled with the painting on these guys, but that probably has to do with me having such a hard time painting the robes. The backpacks I chose are available from GW still. I noticed that the chirugeon backpacks looked just like the heresy era DA symbol and had to have them. There is a down side though, they are metal and as you might be able to tell from the photos, they keep popping off while I am working on them, leading to all kinds of chipped paint. I've got 5 more of these things, and I really wish I had put them on my AoBR marines to give them some more character as well.

DA Veterans with Heresy Era Backpacks

I tried a bunch on new techniques on these guys, and the jury is still out. I started with a white primer and then washed the armor black. The goal was to then use the gradations in color to let the airbrush naturally shade the miniature. I did not want the green all over the robes, so I carefully wrapped the DA up in little tape coats before spraying. In the first WIP shot you can see the nice shading the airbrush was giving the minis. I went overboard and put too much green on rather than stop while I was ahead. Now I have to go back and black wash the crevices, and then re-highlight with scorpion green. I have quite a ways to go with these guys, but I could not resist putting a photo up. I love this pre-heresy dark angels backpacks. They came with the chaos needle harness thing for chaos apothecaries.