Hey all. Some of you may remember that I had a Krieg thread waaaaay back. Well, with things being what they are, it was only a matter of time before I became distracted, and had to shelf the army for a bit. However, I´ve recently had my 40K gaming interest rekindled, and decided that I need a good looking army to do battle for me.

So out they come again, this time with a view towards being fun, but also at least slightly competitive.

I´m looking at several options for how to shape the army, but for now, I´m painting up what I have, and trying to get it to a "table top plus" standard.

I´ve looked at the paint scheme I used back then, and still really like it, but I´ll be doing way more mud, battle damage and general grittyness than before.

Well, I think that´s enough words for now, so on to some pictures!

I started by redoing the bases of my grenadiers, I´ll be using two squads of them as my core troops,with HF and two Meltas, and Chimera transport.


As you can see, some have had barbed wire added to their bases, this is a theme I intend to have running through the army, with sentinels stepping over defense works, and infantry also having some wire on their bases.

I had to rebase my Heavy Flamer teams, since they are no longer weapons teams, but single man weapons. I think it came out okay, but I did enjoy the bigger more scenic bases.


These have had no weathering yet, and all of them need highlights as well.

The sergeant of this squad got a power fist, this was partly to see if I could do this, and partly because I think they need some more mojo in close combat.



And no worries, I´ll be weathering the heck out of the PF, scratches and dents from combat.


To lead these fearless few, who better than a commissar lord? Well, at least until I get to the command squad, but for now, here he is, with some blending going on. Still trying to get a feel for blending...






I think I´m going to give him a layer of Badab Black, to tone the highlights down some...

Now as for transport, these guys needed some chimeras. I know that canonically these aren´t used much by the Krieg regiments, but I figure that an assault korps needs some speedy way of getting around. This one is actually a hellhound from 95´ that I was never happy with, so I stripped it, took the HH bits off and gave it some fresh chimera bits from the bits box. I think it cameout okay, there is some slight scarring around the lasgun hatches where the fuel tanks used to sit, but other than that it´s okay.


I´ve loaded the chimera up with a lot of extra gear, to show that these guys aren´t on a suicide mission, but on extended patrol. More about the fluff later.


The skull on the front was a spur of the moment thing, I tried to match the masks on the grenadiers in a stylised way.


The markings on the front portion of the hull are shorthand for the Korps, Company, Division and Unit. All vehicles in the army will have these.


And the rear of the vehicle, showing the unit marking again, useful for finding you units transport in the heat of battle...

That´s all for now, hope to have more for you soon.

Very good looking force you have there. Love the barbed wire and troopers.

awesome.

Thanks guys. The barbed wire is from Forgeworld. Great stuff to work with, but an absolute chore to paint. It eats brushes.

I´m still having doubts about the lenses on their masks. I sort of want to go with a dark red, similar to the viewports on the Chimera.

Also, I´ve got some objective markers done, one of these is a barricade with some barbed wire, the other is a listening post. I´ve done some basic weathering and such, quite happy with how it turned out.


I may redo the signpost here, it isn´t as realistic as I wanted.


The tank trap was made from some plasticard, cut to size. I´ll be using these elsewhere in the force as well, on the bases for my sentinels and such.


The listening post is made from a CoD bit, a set of antennae from the IG tank sprue, and a small radar from my bits box.


I did some oil streaks on this piece, I´ll be doing oil streaks on the vehicles as well.

After a conversation earlier today, I´ve finally admitted to my self that the shovel on the left side of the tank is too big.
It is from the tank accessory sprue, but it is way oversized.

So I´ll probably be making some adjustments there. We´ll see.

That´s all for now, more updates as I finish things.

Loving the weathering it really helps these guys to pop! cant wait to see them all together!

Great work, I really like the Chimera and have to commend your free hand painting on it. What green do you use for this force? It looks like Vellejo gunship green.

Is that giant floodlight from Forgeworld? Lovely work on that Chimera. Can't help but think that a tree observation post would be a great third objective. They were metal tree shaped structures used to hide men in while they were acting as forward observers. They're genuine theirs one in the Imperial War Museum in London!

Hey guys. Thanks again for the encouraging words.

@Napalm: The base green I´m using for my vehicles is actually an Army Green primer from "Army Painter". I´ve used this as a base from everything armored so far, tanks, APC´s and Walkers.

@Llamahead: Yup, the floodlight is a FW bit. Specifically, this: http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/chimsl.htm

I bought it about a year ago, never used it, and now it was crying out at me, wanting to be used.

Tree observation post, eh? Might be just the thing... Or something in that line of thought anyways..

In modeling news, I went back to the chimera, and removed the giant shovel from the side of it. I´ve replaced it with two fuel cans, with custom made (read: made from copper wire) can holders. I think it came out quite good, will try to get pictures tomorrow.

Looks really nice, the chimera looks good if a bit bright...maybe dull it down a bit?!? The heavy flamer could get broken quite easily if they are only connected by the pipe, you'll have to be careful with those two...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ink wash would do the trick...

Hey Imperial, thanks for the comments, good to know what others see, and get a second opinion.

The Chimera will hopefully end up being a little more dull. I just need to tear myself away form it, so the other four vehicles in this list, (another Chimera and three Sentinels), can be brought to the stage it´s at now.

And the heavy flamer guys are actually entirely separate, the pipe is connected to the rear guy, and sort of slides underneath the flamer.

I´ll be using inks to do some streaks on the tank, as well as experimenting with weathering powders. Should be good fun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hey guys, mini update for you. I got some pictures of the fuel cans on the Chimera.





I figure that these smaller cans are probably high octane fuel, used for the sentinel escorts, and the larger drums are for the Chimeras themselves.

Stunning amigo!
How did you do the weathering/mud on the tracks?
Waaaggghhhhh

love the fuel cans!!!! Awesome work!!

Nice work, love the weathering!!!

Thanks guys, I´m a lot happier with it now as well. It seems more..... Right.

@Viney: The mud is a four step process.

First I paint the entire track with Macharius Solar Orange.

Then it gets a heavy drybrush with Scorched brown, making sure I stay mostly within the tracks, but not critically so.

After this it´s regular old Boltgun metal. Light drybrush on the tracks.

And lastly, it gets some mudding. I use a light brown color for this, it´s close to bestial brown, but a little darker, I mix it up as I go along.
This is applied by airbrush on the bottom of the tank, and then sponged on with an old piece of Blister-Foam.

In other news, It´s snowing here today (still), so no spray painting for me. I´ll have to wait till tomorrow and do it at the FLGS.
So I´ll probably be working on a sentinel or two while I wait.

Great work here. Can grenadiers actually be troops? Or are you using grenadiers as veterans in regular IG list??

Thanks.

Well, originally these guys were like storm troopers for the DKOK, but the fluff in the FW Vraks books describe them as veterans, who are given better armor and weapons.

So I figured that since the veterans entry even has an upgrade called "Grenadiers" they would fit perfectly.

Now I´m not sure if the Carapace armor is even worth it, but it does fit the fluff...

4 + beats a 5+ any day

This, my good man, is truly great. Are the fuel can holders paperclips?

Carapace armour is definitely worth it, 4+ means that they won't die en mass to every bolter totting marine...

@Sonofruss, Imperial Monkey, Thanks for the heads up on the Carapace. Had my doubts, due to a guy at the FLGS rambling on about the wonders of flak armor...

@Cosmic Pixie: Thanks. The can holders are made from copper wire, 0.5mm I believe, that I cut and bent to shape. I have several sizes lying about the place, specifically for modeling purposes.

One of the sentinels is beginning to look nice now. It still needs some more weathering, but the ruggedness is starting to come forward. Will get pictures asap.

You sir have mad skills.

I really like the look and feel this group has.

Keep it up.

Hey all. Sunday update for you all.

I finished a sentinel tonight, It is the first of three for my 750 list. Once again I am going with painting insignia on, instead of using transfers.

I have done most of the weathering as well, and had some fun adding a HK missile and an aerial, this guy will be the squad leader.

The HK is removable, for when I don´t add it to the walker, or when it´s been fired during games.


For the front, I´ve only added the Korps marking, 143.


I did a lot of text on the machine, as well as warning labels, hazard stripes around the lower leg hatches, as well as the jets.


On this shot, the rear jets are clearly visible, with hazard stripes.


From the left, the rest of the unit markings are visible. Bravo Division, 7th Company, Sentinel 21. Also, the squadron marking, a red star.


And a closeup of the left and front of the walker. I added a small marker for vehicle kills. All of the sentinels will have these.


The pilot. His shoulder marking matches the walker. 143.


The pilot´s safety harness also have the hazard striping. For expedient exit of the vehicle.

I´m back at work tomorrow, so updates will have to slow down for a few days, but I should be able to finish the next sentinel this week.

After that I´ll only have another Chimera and the last sentinel to do for the competition. Seems doable.

I think it would look better if the numbers and the hazard stripes are neater.

Mmh, this is one of my troubles at the moment...

I´ll probably go back and tidy them all up when I´ve gotten them to this stage. At the moment I´m mainly trying to get everything ready for a doubles tournament in two weeks time...

But thanks for the honesty, I need to know what improvements can be made.

"Also, the squadron marking, a red star. " Kommunists!

I really like the lamps on it.....How much of it's kit parts and how much extras?

Hey guys. Well, the weather is still bad here, so no spray painting today either... :S

@Rose Mountainz: Heheh, I figured someone would remark on that Th estar is actually ancient in terms of IG vehicel markings. I´ll be using it on my walkers, first squadron gets red, second gets blue, third gets...

@Llamahead: Actually, most of it is kit parts. I´ve added the autocannon from an IG HW team, the antenna from a marine Scout Biker, and the Hunter Killer Missile.


Ah well, I upped my game a bit on the sentinel, adding more weathering, tidying up the letters, and I even added a windscreen and stuff to the roll bars!

I´m fairly excited about this, since it is the first time I´ve done something like this.

I´m starting to see that to really weather the heck out of my vehicles, I´ll need to invest in some powders and stuff. So that´s on my to buy list.

I wrote up some minor fluff for my sentinels too, seeing as there is none for Krieg Sentinels.

"The Krieg regiments have long been a staple of siege warfare to the Imperial Guard. In this role they excel, their grim determination and high morale being paramount in the drawn out trench conflicts they enter into.
However, there are several other ways the Death Korps can serve the Emperor, amongst them such tasks as extended range hunting patrols, an area they took to with great determination on Armageddon. On this planet of ash wastes and toxic storms, most regiments had difficulty outside the hive cities.
The Death Korps however, found a planet that was not unlike their home planet, and their skills and equipment were perfectly suited to the environment.

Due to their ability to function well outside the protective plascrete shelters, the Krieg were perfect for patrolling the wastes. For these units, speed and mobility was paramount, so heavy armor was out of the question. Instead, a doctrine was adopted, of using roving Sentinel squadrons to flush out the enemy, supported by heavy infantry mounted in Chimera APC´s.
The Sentinels required for this came from Urdesh, and were more heavily armored than most other marks, while still retaining the trademark speed and long range of standard Sentinels. Even so, they had to be modified extensively, the Enginseers added additional air filtration units, long range radio equipment, and several electronics upgrades.

For the extent of the campaign, several "Hunting packs" went into the deserts surrounding the hives, resowing minefields, adding to defenses in the wilderness, and seeking out targets of opportunity. With the airpower almost grounded for large parts of the campaign, this became a favored tactic of the defenders, and the hunters were justly feared by the orks."

Fluffwise, that´s it for now, but here are some pictures of the updated sentinel. I think I want all of them to look pretty much like this, though the next two will have smaller antenna, this guy being the squadron leader.


The windscreen isn´t that visible here, but the weathering and letters have gotten a boost.


Here, the windscreen is more visible. I´ll be adding more dust and grittyness to it.

I am considering cutting the barrel of the autocannon down, and replacing it with a scratch built one, that looks more like the ones usually seen on Krieg heavy weapon teams. Not sure though...

Tomorrow, I´ll see if I can get some weathering powders, and test them out. And tomorrow night is gaming night at the FLGS, so I´ll get to test the list against some opponents. Should be fun.

I´ll keep you posted.

I like the subtle conversions you've donie on the chimera and sentinel, its the extra details that make the minis IMHO.

Loving the paint-job, looks real gritty!

btw can you reveal to us the source of your bloody-huge searchlights, got an idea for an urban riot-control nurgle marines army that these could look very nice in.

Hey Leigen_Zero, thanks a lot. I´ve been looking through loads of scale modeling stuff, as well as some very nice Ma.K. stuff, which is very very inspiring.

As for the searchlight, it´s a Forgeworld bit. It should be under Imperial Armor -> Imperial Guard -> Vehicle upgrades, or some such.

It looks really sweet, I like how you have personalised the sentinel, looks more interesting than mine

I personally like the GW kits though...

Oh, the GW kits are nice, but I felt I needed something a bit more interesting, and so far this is loads of fun.

I´ve started making the canopies for the next two sentinels, they will both be armed with lascannons, and have gotten the HK missile upgrade too.

Hey all, just a quick note for you before bed. Got some gaming done tonight, 2x750 points per side, great fun.

I played with a Nurgle Marine player, against IG and Blood Angels. The game was very close fought, and tense.

The game ended with a draw objectives-wise, but we had a narrow win on points. Loads of laughs.

And modeling wise, I´m considering a few options now. I may need to switch out the Sentinels for a Manticore, but we´ll see.
I got the last of the spraypainting done today, so now all that´s left on my vehicles is hours and hours (and hours) of painting.

Yep. Good day.

Nice work. I love the floodlight on the Chimera. The skull on the front looks a little sad (as in happy, not as in non well done...), though. If you touch it up with a little more white under the eye-sockets, so that the bottom of the eye socket angles down towards the middle, it will give it a slightly angrier aspect, which would seem more fitting.

The infantry would look a lot better without the mould-lines, but I love the colour scheme. Nice and gritty, whilst not looking all washed out.

The HK on the Sentinel looks a little tacked-on. Mounted out to the side like that, it's going to catch on foliage and whatnot as the Sentinel moves, and the driver's got to be a little nervous every time he looks to the right and sees the warhead... I would either mount it down on the side of the hull on the left, or put it into a firing tube like the Marine version. A simple piece of plastic tubing would do the job.

The windscreen is a nice touch. Good job on getting it in there without fogging it up with glue fumes

I have a question. The masks, they are skulls and I have seen these before. Do they come as an option from FW? Becuase when I looked at the pictures of DKoK, I didn't see those masks except on the centaur I think.

Mewiththeface wrote:I have a question. The masks, they are skulls and I have seen these before. Do they come as an option from FW? Becuase when I looked at the pictures of DKoK, I didn't see those masks except on the centaur I think.

The ones with skulls on their gas masks are DKOK Grenadiers while the standard infantry do not have the skull motif (nor the carapace or hellguns)

hope that helps

Good call on the HK´s Insaniak. I´ve been debating on what do do about them, and I think the tube will probably be the way to go. Will do some tests tomorrow.

Ugh, the mould lines. They are sooo difficult to get off these guys, and with some of them, it seems as if the halves of the mould have been misaligned, they were half a mm or more off. Will see if it can be helped some more.

I need to get back to the freehand on the Chimera, will attempt the whitening on the skull when I do so, but first the second chimera needs to get painted to this stage.

The windscreens actually weren´t that hard. Very fiddly of course, but I used white glue to fix it first, and then used GS to hold it down afterwards. Still need to do two more of those, lots of work left.

@Mewiththeface: As Vlad says, the Grenadiers have the facemasks, other Krieg do not.

After tonights fight, I have found out of the following:

1. Carapace armor rocks!
2. Meltaguns kill everything.
3. Nobody worries about sentinels, which means they can nip around the back of the board uncontested, wiping several units out without being challenged.
4. I really should remember the invuln save on my Commissar Lord...

The sentinel is awesome, love all the little details like the windshield.

I love that drop sentinel, you probably sold me 3 of them, grrr.

I told you about the carapace armour and sentinels rock...people are more wary of armoured sentinels tho...

Heheh, thanks person_person, it´s a lot of fun to figure out what to add, and where to stop adding.

Will probably be adding smoke launchers as well, something scratch built I think.

@poipo32: I would say I´m sorry, but I´m sure you´ll be happier when you get them, they look so much sleeker and functional than the regular ones.

@Imperial Monkey: That you did, and right you were! People were actually coming to look from nearby tables, to see what all the shouting was about, when my guys took a death company charge, and gave as good as they got! (3 lost on each side), all due to carapace armour.

As I´ve experienced, the people that go to the FLGS treat all sentinels alike. Armoured or not. I guess it´s a lack of experience with them so far, but I´ll be sure to correct that!

In P&M news, I´ve started laying on the first round of shaing and highlights, for my second Chimera. It´s still looking very plain, but it´ll get there.

Also, I´ve found a way of adding a heavy stubber, that fits with my Krieg guys.
I had a look at the one that comes with the kit, and it is just huge compared to the DKOK guys, so I scratch built one out of aluminum tubing and a bit of GS.

Will probably go back and do this to the other one as well.

As for the remaining sentinels, they´ve gotten the mesh on top of the rollcage, but I haven´t gotten to the windshield yet.

Pictures tonight, if light and camera wills it.

Hey all, didn´t get to posting the pictures last night, but here you go!

The Chimera is now ready to go into the blending stage, where I do lenses, power packs and such. Will also add blackening around the engine exhausts.

Then it´ll be time for numbers, tags and such, which I´ll hopefully get to tomorrow.

After that it´s on to mudding, scratching and the second level of weathering and highlights.

My plan is to have it done to the same level as the other one by monday, and then focus on the Sentinels for a day or two.

Pictures!


I added a upper hatch support ring to the turret. This was mostly just a test to see if I could, and it worked out good I think.


The left side of this one has steps leading to the upper hull.


On the right side, more equipment for my engineering guys, a row of pick axes and such.


And finally, a look at the Heavy Stubber. All GS and aluminum pipe.

That´s all for now, more pictures as I have progress.

Love it. Top notch work. Subscribed!

Wow looks great, I like all the little stuff you put into them

The heavy stubber looks great, But why not just cut and stick a normal heavy stubber to it?? :/

I love your work; you make everything look so real.

Awesomesauce.

Stubber's genius!

Thanks a lot guys. It´s good to hear that I´m on the right track.

@Imperial Monkey: Thanks. The reason for not using one of the HS´s from the box, is that they look really big when put next to a krieg model..
Plus, Forge World has designed a different look for their stubbers, which I decided to go with here, but I didn´t want to put more on top of the turret, thinking that it would get too crowded.

I got a lot of details done last night, will try to get this beastie done by the end of today, and upload pictures for you guys tonight.

Hey guys, been a while since I posted last, but I have been really busy with work and such... :S

I finished the second Chimera, got markings, GS work and weathering on the sentinels, and got the last objective marker done as well.
In the middle of all this, I also (Finally) managed to figure out what was needed to finish the Knight Walker that I made about a year or two ago..

So I got him finished last tuesday, brought him to the shop, and the manager immediately said "Yoinks" and added him to their display cabinet...

Oh, I won Tuesdays game as well. So that was a good day all in all.

Today is tournament day, shooting for at least 2 out of three points for painting, and would like to finish in the top five. We´ll see.

I´ll bring a camera with me, so pictures will be forthcoming.

Oh, and for those who wonder what the knight looked like before:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-3468-193_My%2040k%20Knight%20%28wip%20Blog%29%20-%20Updated%20July%2016th%2C%20Paint%20Scheme%20Poll..html

I think it looks way better with the changes I made recently, but you´ll be able to see for yourselves soon enough.

Looking forward to MOOOaaaarRRRR!

lol

Fantastic work , love those DKOK grenadiers the skull helmets look sick. Ive got one of those FW spotlights on a chimera as well and it always draws attention when I play with it. Can't wait to see more of your sentinals the detailing on the one you've shown is awesome.

Great stuff I really like the Coaxial Heavy Stubber. I may have to nick that idea....

Hey guys.. Just came back from the tourney. I won´t be doing the picture update tonight, seeing as I am totally wasted right now.

I did, however, manage to get a 2nd place in the tourney, and highest paint score, so yay me!

Three great games were played, I got some nice in-game shots as well, so I´ll put together a triple battle rep and upload it for you guys at some point tomorrow.

PS. The Knight Walker that I left for the store exhibit apparently got knocked by a young employee over during the week and suffered light damage. Yargh! But it´s all better now.

Congratiolations on the 2nd place

Okay then. Here you go guys, a tale of my gaming adventures last saturday. Battle reports and pics of some interesting moments.

To start you off, in the end I decided to go with my Chimera mounted veterans, kitted out with meltagunss, power weapon/powerfist for the sarges, and a Commissar lord to back them up. To support me, I used three armored sentinels, with 2xLas and an Autocannon, and three HK missiles.

My army performed well, getting a decisive draw in the first match, which would have been a win, had we gotten one more turn.

Game One

The Mission was an objectives match, three objectives on the center line, spaced out 18 inches. We got first turn, and deployed aggressively, aiming to do some massive shooting in the first turn or two.

The game started off well, I was teamed up with an Eldar player, who had brought three Scatterlaser Warwalkers, a squad of Dire Avengers and a group of Guardians with Warlock and Farseer support. So both of our armies were very shooty, his geared for horde slaying and mine for tank hunting. Excellent.
Facing us were two Chaos lists, one Khorne army with Chaos Marines, Berzerkers, Three terminators and a lash Sorceror, and a Khorne daemon army with Bloodthirster, two units of Bloodletters and a Soulgrinder.

The Chaos Marine player had his ´zerkers in a rhino, and placed this as far forward as possible, to get to combat as soon as possible. He hid his chaos marine squad in a building a bit into his own deployment zone, and put the lash sorceror with the ´zerkers. The Terminators were held in reserve. The daemon player had nothing to deploy, so this would limit our number of targets somewhat.


In our first turn, we moved a bit out of our deployment zone, in an effort to get firing angles on the Chaos Marines. Shooting went well, with my sentinels unleashing a storm of Las, HK and Autocannon fire on the rhino, causing it to explode, and taking one berzerker with it. First blood IG! The Eldar then proceeded to open up on the berzerkers with everything they had, cutting another three down. Good turn.

In their turn one, the Daemonic guy got his better force in, the Bloodthirster starting in his own table half, and the soul grinder right behind our main force, partly concealed in a ruin. Yikes. The bloodthirster ran towards our lines, but not that well. The Berzerkers and Chaos Marines started slogging towards our lines, and also ran. The Soulgrinder proceeded to shoot at one of my Chimeras, and Shook it. Not so worried, but he needed to be dealt with fast.

Turn two began with the eldar sweeping further onto the table. The Dire avengers disembarked from their transport, ready to blast their hated Chaos foes. The sentinels also advanced towards the marines, and the Farseer cast Doom on the ´zerkers, who suddenly looked very worried.
My Chimera which had been shaken backed towards the hungry looking soulgrinder, and unloaded the veterans, who proceeded to shoot melta death at it, managing to immobilise it. Threat diminished. Everything that had an angle to shoot them, shot at the Berzerkers, the warwalkers, two wave Serpents, Bladestorm from the Avengers and a Chimera proved to be just the job for melting them to oblivion. Threat neutralized. My Sentinels took some shots at the remaining Chaos Marine squad, and cut down two. Not too bad for turn two.

During the chaos turn, the Bloodthirster got closer to our lines, but not dangerously close yet. The Daemon host was boosted by the arrival of a unit of bloodletters, who were right next to our main units, about an inch from the Dire Avengers. The terminators weren´t ready yet apparently, but the Chaos marines advanced on our lines, getting ready for combat.
Two Meltas were fired at the warwalkers, but managed to get only a glancing hit, which would prevent one walker from firing next turn. The Soulgrinder had better luck, managing to stun a chimera and kill four guardsmen, and when they failed the subsequent leadership test, they ran off the table. Not so good.


In our third turn, we decided to opt for security, and pulled away from the hideous amount of close combat heading our way. The Dire avengers were whisked well out of range by their star engined Waveserpent, and the guardians withdrew at a slower pace, to get some shots at the Bloodthirster, who needed to be dealt with. For this reason, he was also Doomed by the Farseer.


Our various walkers moved decisively into the open terrain on our left flank, getting ready to trounce the remaining chaos marines. My mobile Chimera also backed away, but the stricken one could only sit there as it´s doom approached.
In our shooting phase, we started off well, with my Chimera managing to score two wounds on the Bloodthirster, with nothing but Multilaser and Heavy Stubber fire. The Eldar also concentrated fire on him, and scored another wound, meaning his fate was hanging by a thread. Meanwhile, the walkers who could, proceeded to shoot at the Chaos Marines, whittling them down to a single model, with a meltagun.


The third Chaos turn yielded more reserves for them, the Terminators finally deciding to show up right behind where all the vehicles were now parked. Their shooting, however, proved less fearful than anticipated, and they harmed nothing. Similar luck afflicted the remaining Chaos marine, he did nothing to the warwalkers. The Bloodletters descended on my stricken Chimera in a frenzy, and the Bloodthirster finally got into combat, charging a waveserpent. The Chimera came apart in a fiery explosion, killing three bloodletters, and even scoring a wound on the Bloodthirster, which he narrowly saved. Lots of laughs over that one. Good chimera.
The Bloodthirster also killed his target, of course this left him next some rather irate guardians, and a Farseer.. Charging into close combat, the last Chaos Marine was destroyed.

Turn four was looking good so far, as long as we could concentrate fire on our primary targets we should be fine. The Dire Avengers and their transport made a move for the central objective, putting them in firing distance of the bloodletters, and out of sight of the Soulgrinder. All our walkers converged on the Chaos Terminators, and lined up for shooting.
In our shooting phase, the Guardians melted the Bloodthirster, the Dire Avengers used bladestorm on the Bloodletters, destroying them, and everything else fired at the terminators. Three Meltas, two Lascannon, 18 scatter laser shots, Multilaser and Heavy Stubber fire, managed to kill..... One. Man, they are tough.

The Terminators had obviously had enough, charging my Chimera to stop it from taking another objective. They succesfully immobilized it, but could not destroy it. Meanwhile, the last unit of Bloodletters arrived, and decided to hide in a ruin to make a dash for an objective in the last turn.

In our fifth, and possibly last turn, we had a few decisions to make. Firstly, we needed to stop the Chaos minions from reaching their objective, if possible. Secondly, we needed to move on the third objective ourselves, which would be difficult. In the end, we used the remaining wave serpent to turbo boost out into the path of the bloodletters, stopping their advance to the objective.
My veterans then dismounted, running straight past the terminators, and towards the remaining objective. The Farseer cast Doom on the Terminators, and eveything that could, once again shot at them. This time they went down, suffering well over twenty wounds between them. All that was needed now, was a 4+ run move, with my veterans. I rolled a two, ending that hope.

The Chaos players´ fifth turn saw them move into combat against the wave serpent, succesfully lapping around it, and although they could not kill it, this got them close enough to take the objective.

The roll for turn six came up as a one, ending the game as an exceptionally violent draw. But an exciting game certainly, and though the chaos players were slaughtered, they kept their eye on the objectives, and managed to snatch the draw. Good game.

Game Two

In my second game, I ended up drawing the Chaos Marine player I had beaten in game one, as my ally. We would be up against Space Wolves and Slaanesh Noise Marines. Brutal. The mission had five objectives, one in each quarter and one on the middle of the board.

This game was extremely bloody, with almost my entire army being wiped out by turn three, and the Noise Marine army totally gone by turn four. It eventually turned into a win for us, when the three Terminators successfully (and against all odds) won against the wolves in close combat. The subsequent failed leadership test meant that they ran too far for them to hold an objective, and since we held two, we won.

No pictures from this game at all, since I was busy gnashing my teeth and getting beaten hideously by Wolves.

Game Three

The third game was a "free for all" with a single objective marker in the middle of the board. Everyone would be fighting everyone, and I would be playing against three Chaos armies. Additional rules were, that anyone who annihilated another army´s last model would score a point. Triple yikes.


We each set up in a corner of the board, and some tentative alliances were made, diagonally, meaning that each of us would potentially be facing two enemies.


I managed to shield myself from fire for the first two turns, while at the same time allowing me to fire at a single Chaos army. My shooting was a bit ineffective, but two of the other three armies were beginning to feel the pain. One player´s Nurgle Daemon Prince took out almost the entire army of another player, losing three wounds in the process. Only to be soundly beaten by a Sorcerer and his retinue. They were then soundly beaten by a group of noise marines the next turn.


By turn three, I had lost a single Chimera and two veterans, while two of the others were close to death.
At this point, my small force moved out of cover, and my sentinels destroyed the last surviving Chimera of one player, while the veterans took out a Rhino belonging to another player.

My veterans started footslogging towards the objective, seeing an opportunity. Lots of Chaos marines, from all three armies, had been fighting over it, and two of them still had models close to it. I took a little fire, but at this point, all the other armies were getting short on shooty units, and when I engaged a unit of obliterators, the only shooting unit of the player to my left, this took him out of the running for the objective.

Turn five, potentially the last turn, had the marines still going at it in the centre of the board, but my Veterans sprinted out there, and got within reach. The player to my left had one last turn, and lost his remaining plague marines, meaning that me and the remaining chaos marines might get a point each.

Sadly, we went for one more turn.


My brave veterans were duly lashed.


And then blasted by a Doomsiren, which ended their claim to fame. The only thing I could do, was charge my sentinels in, hope they held, and try to kill the last Obliterator. Combat saw my Sentinels hold their own, the Obliterator went down, scoring me another point, and I contested the middle, stopping chaos from claiming victory.

This game ended up being incredibly hard fought, with two armies destroyed, the remaining two much smaller, and everyone fighting everyone. It was also a lot of fun.

Painting

The painting scores were announced, and the fact that I maxed out there, took me to 11 points total, out of a possible 15 points. The guy who took first, had 14, quite impressive, and there was a three way tie for third, at seven points. I´m very happy with how the army performed, next up will be the addition of my large walker, a trio of hydra walkers, and some Ogryn stand ins, just to see if they´re worth it.

All in all, I was very happy with the day, I had three good games, twoof them very close affairs, and almost no rules lawyering or disagreements. Excellent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hey, two updates in a day, this has to be some kind of record for me!

This one is going to be about heavy walkers. I still haven´t brought my Missile Knight back from the FLGS, but I´ve gotten quite far on the next guy, an uparmored, stretched sentinel with Quad autocannon.









I haven´t found out what to call them yet, but will be making two or three, depending on available time and patience. This guy still needs loads of detailing, but the basic shapes are here, and so far I like it. He needs different feet, the ammo feeds need to be made, lots of cabling and detail work on the cannons, and then it´s on to the small stuff, like ladder, baggage and such.

All C&C welcomed.

I really am impressed by that Heavy Sentinel Concept it does look big enough to handle those guns and the stretching is obvious. I may steal that idea at some point. If your interested in scratchbuilding walkers I'd suggest you have a look at these http://www.toposolitario.es/workshop/index.html. I haven't made one but they look great to me!

Thanks Llamahead, Steal away.

Those walkers look nice as well, papercraft isn´t my strong side but maybe I´ll give it a go.

That heavy sentinel echoe's german enginering of the world wars which i think suits this army perfectly.

what rules are you using for it by the way?

The cadian 45th

Thanks 45th, I´ve taken inspiration from multiple sources, WW2 vehicles and in particular the work of Agis Neugebauer. has been very inspiring.

Also, there is some battletech, and other sources in there.

I´ll probably be putting it on a 80mm round base, and playing it as a Hydra. I may have to up the base to 100mm, don´t want to make it too hard a target either...

WAA WAA WEE WEOW

Mechwarrior for the win. Your knight was pretty mech-warrior inspired as well, IIRC. He looks very nice, a rifleman sentinel! I especially like the layered armour on the legs, was that easy to do or a real pain?

Yeah, the Knight had elements from MW as well. The layered armour wasn´t that hard really, I used 0.8mm Plasticard and it took about an hour to do all four armour plates.

Tonight I´ve been working a bit more on the pilot, the collar is taking shape, and the helmet is getting there as well. No piccies, sorry.

If I´m not wasted when I get home from work tomorrow, I´ll get some pics up then. I took some pictures of my Knight at the store, but the camera isn´t cooperating at all... :S

After looking it over a couple times, I think you need to add armor to the pipes sticking out either side of the cabin. They just look undetailed and unnatural. Judging by the rest of the model I think you can handle it.

Hey Qualude, I will be adding detailing to the piping holding the cannons, not sure if it will be armor, but some detailing definitely.

I´ve been working some more on the Hydra Knight, remaking the detailing on the Autocannon sides, and working some more on the pilot. I´m considering calling this type of walker a "Squire", since he´s smaller than my knight. Do people think that would be confusing?


Also, I finally managed to get the pictures of my Knight Manticore off of the camera. They aren´t the best, but this way you can see where he´s at now.


The base is a CD that I did some basing work on, including a fence that he´s trampling across as i it were nothing!




I really like this new head. I still have a LOT of painting to do, but there you go, this is where he´s at now.

Tomorrow I should hopefully have time to work some more on my pilot, and maybe even finish the Autocannons and ammo feeds on the Hydra Bot.

Looks awesome, but it just doesn't seem like AV12 would do that beast justice, it looks huge, intimidating and worthy of AV14

That thing is monsterous!

@Illumini: Thanks. I wish there was an AV14 Missile launching Warmachine in the IG codex... :S
For now, it´ll have special stats when we play Apocalypse games, but in regular games, he´ll have to be a Manticore..

@person person: So that´s a good thing?

Brilliant work there, mate. I really like the pose, both the head and the weapon arms look like they're more "in action" than one usually sees on knight conversions.

As for the rules: This guy carries lots of serious ordnance. Why not just count it as a Leman Russ? Those are some burly missiles, they could easily stand in as a battlecannon shot. Sure, you'd get no indirect fire or anything, but that's not all that useful, and that chassis should be more than AV12 front.

And the uparmored Sentinel Hydra is great.

Splendid knight, it's come a long way from the last pic I saw of it. As for AV: BOLS have the paladin, lancer and errant with 12 front AV, only the castellan has more. of course, the castellan is equipped with the missiles... In friendly games, ask your opponent if you can use it as a knight castellan, armament is almost right.

Sell it to Forge World, they'll write you some rules.

Thanks Savnock, I tried to get him looking as if he´s advancing, not just static and dull. I´m glad that came across.

CommissarKhaine, thanks for the heads up on BOLS, I had forgotten their rules, and may end up using them if the FLGS is up for it.
If not, the Russ idea may be the way to go, I do like the idea of him sticking around a bit longer than round 2 or so of a game.

Heheh Qualude, that´s a pretty cool idea, might have to do that.

Oh yeah, also: Waiting for GS to dry is such a chore. I wish there was a spray on hardener for it... I´ve gotten to the detailing stage of my pilot guy, and just did another stage. Now to wait for 6-8 hours, sigh...

Oh well, might just do some painting while I wait.

That looks great man...I need to keep up my blog but with exams in 5-6 weeks time and other stuff i'm finding it hard to make time!

Plus my LGS won't sell me a chimera till the new one comes out :(

Weird, I've never seen a manticore before but it looks AWESOME! Good work.

That's incredible! Love it!

Maybe it's just me, but the Heavy Bolter kinda looks like a cigar jutting out of it's mouth, like it's enjoying a good smoke whilst on a killing spree. Badass.

Thanks for the words guys, it all helps with the motivation.

@Imperial Monkey, I feel your pain, they are out here as well, luckily I grabbed the last one they had for my Krieg veterans.

@aromasin: This walker is probably closer to a "Castellan" class, but I´ve been calling it a Manticore since that was what I figured on using it to represent. Recent comments, both here and at the FLGS have shown me that I may need to reconsider..

@Commander Endova: Hah, I never thought of that, but you´re right! That´s great.

For tonight´s upgrade, I´ve got the first WIP pictures of my Pilot for you guys. He still needs a little love, but he´s getting there.

And he´s been really fast too, less than a week since I took the bits out of the box, to this stage. I´ve been using FW´s Titan crew as a source of inspiration for him, but have changed a few things here and there.

The FW crew can be found here: http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/titancrew.htm



He´s got the distinctive collar for interacting with his machine, but in addition I´ve given him a life support unit, a bit like the astronauts carry before they board. This connects to the plugs in his back, and is set aside after entry in his vehicle.
On the collar is the classic eagle, I´ll be leaving off the cog symbol here, but have added it to his belt, as a buckle.

Oh, the head is not final yet. I may switch it out, but feel that I need something rugged and "hard"..


On his left arm is a house marker, the wheel for Taranis. I´ve also changed his sleeve somewhat, and removed the armored shoulder. He carries his life support unit in this hand, the cables from the unit to his collar are not done. They need fleshing out.


From the rear it is a bit more obvious that he has been lengthened, he has been given about 1.5mm length total, in his knees and waist. The collar is not quite done, the plugs of the cables need work, but other than that the back is pretty much done.


And the right arm. Here he wears a badge with the lightning symbol, the other half of the "Knights of Taranis" logo. Also, he is holding a pistol. I´m not entirely happy with it, I want it to be an auto, but have no easy access to such bits, and was hoping kitbashing would do it. So far it´s not good enough.

That´s where I´m at for now. I´ll be working on him till tuesday, when he´s going to the store to be shown off. I need to fix that pistol.

Awesome GS work , wish I could get that kind of detail, keep it up!

I think a magazine in front of the trigger well would nicely flesh out that pistol, other than that, great little conversion ya got goin on there.

I'm thinking hard bout a conversion of them titan crew into MoO, and MoF and possibly a bodyguard

nicely Done!

The Knight and pilot both look great.

I really like the pilot! making him taller is something that really lookes great! The mech-sentinals look awesome to!

The pilot's sick! Looks alot more 'truscale' thanks to that seamless GS lengthening. Looks like a cooler re-sculpt of the BfM starter set pilot

Thanks for all the kind words guys, really helps keep the motivation up.

Anyways, I just wanted to drop in and show you guys a few shots of progress on the Knight.


A full view of the walker as it stands now. As you can see, I´ve added some markings, but I´m far from done yet.


A closeup of the fott, showing rust damage, and some yellow markings.


Closeup of the leg, from the front.


The left arm, here you can see how the yellow striping has been worn away by repeated missile launches.


The banner on the carapace now reads "Foe Hammer", the name of the Walker.


And finally, the heraldry on the Knights left shoulder has been started. The text is "Mars", the home planet of the order, and "Taranis", the name of the house. I´ll rework the wheel and lightning on to the other shoulder, and remove them from his heraldry. Other details still to be added, and cleanup also coming.

So that´s it right now. I´m currently replacing all the plastic cabling with cables and hydraulic hoses made from bass strings, takes some time, but I think it´ll look good. After that is done, I´ll start on the weapon banners.

The text is great, well tbh its all great, thats brilliant. Especially the use of the sentinel as the cockpit, inspiring

Excellent ideas in this blog; consider it subscribed!

Brilliant! I have always had a special place in my heart for Krieg, and you pulled these guys off wonderfully. Consider me subscribed, sir.

Prax

Very nice! You've come a long way with this walker, and I love the execution. I wish I had the patience to spend this much time on a model...

Love your weathering on the walker, keep it coming mate

probably the coolest walker ive ever seen! Kepp up the good work!!

Frickin awesome!

That knight is awesome...

Hey Xan, nice looking stuff on the blog.

Have to say that knight manticore realy steals the show, great job! Hope to see it painted soon... and a whole squadron of them

Great work again! Clearly the attention to detail is greater and greater. Mold lines are bygone and everything is oozing narrative!

You should join our campaign!

I´d love to join you guys for the big campaign.

I`ve been reading throgh your stuff, and considering the tileset as a mapping option for the summer campaign.

Mold lines, my nemesis.... As far as the deeper narrative, I´m really trying to get into that this time over. So expect lot of hints from fluff, both official and fan based. Should be fun.

Oh boy! What a great looking Knight! I've really missed these guys and always wondered why GW haven't brought them on 40K tables (especially now that they're making their big kits like baneblade and stompa...). Great scratch-build.

Now you're giving me ideas...

Weeeerrll, it´s been more than two months since I did any purposeful posting here, so I think it´s time to remedy that!

I´ve been extremely busy as of late with exams and such, but they are done with now. So I have a few days (or possibly as much as two weeks), before the next time-stealing project occurs, to do some frantic modeling.

And since my Krieg boys have been lacking in the "Armored Fury" department, I decided to get started on a Leman Russ or two.

Also, I´ll be working on a battery of Heavy Mortars, and a Centaur Carrier for my command squad.

I figured that I´d tried something I saw in a wonderful blog by Bungaroo over at "That other place..." and apply Zimmerrit to my MBT´s. And since the Centaur is so small, I thought that it needed a little something extra as well. I´m doing the Zimmerrit with GS, and every last indentation is done by hand, so some irregularities are bound to occur, but so far I´m happy with it.

I´m also going to try my hand with some home made track guards and possibly some spaced armor, more on that later.


Here is a closeup of the Leman Russ, it is actually an ancient piece of kit, the first 40K tank I ever got, back in 94´ I believe. I´ve stripped most of the paint off, it had been repainted about 6-7 times and looked less than stellar when I started. As you can see, there´s still a little bit of spray primer left, the primer was incredibly hard to get rid off, it wasn´t GW stuff, but some hardcore automotive type thing...


The Russ, with Zimmerrit applied to the side. The bits on top of the Sponson will eventually be scopes. I took a close look at the tank and suddenly noticed that there is no way the gunner could know what he´s shooting at, since there are no scopes for the sponsons...


The beginning of the Zimmerrit on the front. I´ll be covering the front plate, but will leave the drivers viewpoint clear. It may however get some sort of improvement over the "hole in the hull" effect.


The Centaur, fully Zimmerrit´ed. As you can see, the Z has been applied to all vertical surfaces, but not to flat areas, since it wouldn´t help there.


The other side of the Centaur. I´ve kitted it out with HF and Multilaser, since it is likely to count as a Chimera in normal games of 40K.

Other than this, my FW air filters and trench rails arrived a few days ago, and I´m having fun getting all of it onto the Russ. More on that later also. I think I´ll need to get trench rails for all my Russes, they look very nice.

What is zimmerit?

Zimmerit is this stuff the Germans invented in WW2 to plaster all over their tanks to stop magnetic mines from being too effective.

The wierdest thing is that magnetic mines were used almost exclusively by the Wermacht.

Xanthos - I believe Tamiya (or equivalent) actually make a model zimmerit paste that comes with a little tool to apply correctly. May want to check that out?

Great work so far - I love tanks.

I'm a guy who goes for a very realistic, utilitarian approach when modeling/painting my tanks...and I never thought to notice that thee sponson gunners have no visible way of sighting targets... Now I can't look at my Russ' (Russi?) the same way anymore lol

great looking Krieg. Impressive. Need to work on mine soon.. planned to but I'm bedridden :(

As Tek said, Zimmerrit was invented by the Germans in WW2. It was a ceramic´ish material which stopped magnetic mines from working, and the lines in it made sticky bombs fall off.

I checked the Tamiya stuff fout, it looks great (and easy) but I can´t get it here. :(

@CrashUSAR: Heheh, I was pretty surprised as well, as I said, I´ve had Russes since 94´ or there abouts, and only just noticed it.

@Regnak: Thanks. The more Krieg the merrier.


At some point this weekend, I hope to have time to look at my Heavy Mortar units. They need big round bases, with some fortifications or such, so a bit of modeling is in my future I think.

I love it. If I was a tank crew I would strap everything possible to the armour just for extra protection.

All my guard tanks have spare track sections bolted on and sandbags sitting around the hatches. You can't get enough protection! Especially not with all those meltas flying around!!

LionRoar models make a great tool for adding zimmerit to scale models.
http://www.dragonmodelsusa.com/dmlusa/prodd.asp?pid=LNRLT0016
Dragon Models distributes almost everywhere, so you may be able to get it through them. I'd suggest getting the applicators for 1/48th scale for 40k usage.

How are you adding the indentations to the greenstuff? It almost looks like you're using a fingernail.
You would be better off using the edge of a small peice of plasticard.

Ahh genius, guess your going for the realistic look then

Really cool so far, loving the attention to detail.

Thanks for the tip Nowlan, I´ll check them out.

As for how I´m doing the indentations, I´m using a modeling tool, the indentations do push onto each other, but the tool is quite flat...

I actually rather like that it´s similar but not identical to the WW2 method. Specially seeing as there were several different styles used, even back then.

Yeah, I´ll be going for realism with my tanks, as much as possible.
I´ll have to wait and see whether I can get into super realism territory with weathering powders, dirt and debris and such.

It would be fun, but it´s also VERY time consuming as far as I can see.

Yeah, the germans had different patterns for each type of tank, but there are different attachments for the tool for each.

Oooh, nice! The site only showed two different attachments, so I wasn´t sure.

Their system looks sensible as well, using a roller to apply the main pattern. I´d need to use a much softer product than GS though, I don´t think GS will hold indentations that shallow, it would probably just smush out of the way instead...

But you´ve definitely given me some food for thought.

In other news, I finished track guards for one side of the Russ last night, and will be working on the other side today. So the project moves forwards.

Looking great the Zimmerit really gives the tank an interesting texture may have to try that at some point.

Thanks Llamahead, I´m quite happy with how it turned out myself

Update Time!

Over the last week I have been working away at the Russ steadily, and I´m now at a point where I can see an end to it. I´ve completed the track guard main construction on both sides, still need rivets and details but so far so good. I´m quite happy with the look, tried to go for something similar to GW´s, but with a bit of streamlining.


As you can see here, its basically two layers of plasticard over 3mm angle plastic. Most of the irregularities in the basic design go away once detail work is added.


And here is the look after struts have been added, this is the stage I´m at currently, no rivets yet... Also, the viewports for the sponson gunner has had more work done.


Here are the trench rails, fixed onto the back of the tank. They needed an extra bit to be able to attach to the tank, so I constructed a plasticard add on. It also needs rivets


The air filters from FW really help the look of the tank, it looks much more "combat ready" now. The trouble is, that after seeing this, I think I´ll need to add them to all my Leman Russ tanks.


I switched the hull Lascannon for a Krieg one, for two reasons. Firstly to fit with the look, and secondly because the old school Russ LC looks horrible, way too clunky. It´s not entirely done yet, but looking better.


And finally, a look at the turret, with HS attached. This will be one of my Squadron command tanks, so It´s getting some nice aerials, and will receive some extra paintwork as well.

I´m still working away on those Heavy Mortars. I´ve gotten one of them quite close to finished, but I can´t find bases in appropriate sizes here, so I´ll need to do some more scratchbuilding for that. Argh..... Also, the first few colors have gone onto the Centaur, I´ll be aiming for a paintjob that matches my Chimeras, but without Camo since it´s a command vehicle and not a "extended duty" ride.

I can't wait to see it painted, I'm sure it will look awesome.

Hey all, a long overdue update is here.

This week, I´ve been busy on a project for m FLGS, which is now done and dusted. So to celebrate, I dragged all my various IG tanks for the Krieg force out, and lined them up for you guys to see.


And here they are! Of the Leman Russ tanks, only the Vanquisher and Demolisher have their finalized turrets. The others will be getting FW turrets with my next order from them, now that I´ve finally gotten to test that all the bits work for what I want to do.
The Chimera´s and Sentinels are actually finished, as the only vehicles of the army. The Centaur is getting painted at the moment.


As for the Centaur, I think the Zimmerrit is working out nicely. After seeing the third Vraks book I am torn about how to arm it. I need to figure out if it will get a Heavy Stubber and Meltagun, or if I should arm it with Chimera style weapons...


Here´s a closer look at the tracks, they´ve gotten the most work so far, and are looking nice and rusted. the next step for them is muddin´. This Centaur will function as the Company Liaison´s vehicle, and has the same Squadron markings as the Commanders Russ will have.


And here´s another tank that you may have seen before. I had to restart the Zimmerrit on it after trying a different method, and finding out I liked it better... It is closing on readiness to receive paint!


In this shot you can see how the new pattern looks. I actually used plasticard in a pin vice to create a new tool for the job. And it ended up working so well that I redid the rest of this tank in the same way.


And now for something completely different! This is the squadron commander for the first squadron of my tank company. I´ve adapted some extra armor plates from FW to fit on the sides, to give the tank a bit more detail than the "rank and file" tanks.

The tank has also received the same air filters as the Demolisher, but will not get trench rails, since it will not be on the front line as much as the demolisher.


The extra armor plates have some battle damage, and I´ll be picking out individual pieces here and there in another color to show that they´ve been replaced in the field.


And as a final image, here is blue squadron lined up, with squadron markings applied. Lots of work still to do on these..

I have started a search for old school Russ tanks, since I´m not a huge fan of the new side armor that GW has made. Had a bit of luck speaking with PrOtOCoN, who had one lying about that he has mailed to me. I´m looking forward to seeing what shape it is in, and deciding what changes and modifications to make to it. More on that when it arrives.

I´ve been adding copper wire antennas to all the tanks today, another piece of added realism, compared to the fat plastic antennae the tanks come with. I´ll also add flags to each tank as it gets squadron colors.

I am loving this, and that is an imaginative way of using the chimera spaced armour

Thanks, I originally bought it for a Chimera, but never liked the way it looked. But after searching my bits box for appropriate conversion bits to complete the Vanquisher, I decided to give it a shot.

I may use it for another tank or two, but I want to keep it a bit rare in the force.

At the moment I´m trying to decide on a tank for the unit´s Commissar. He´ll be driving a Russ, and I´ll use the Pask rules in normal 40K games.

So what do you guys think, he´ll be BS4, would the Exterminator be the best shot, 2 twinlinked AC? I kinda like the idea of the gatling Russ also, it has a certain Commissar vibe to it..
Or something else entirely?

Well exterminator has a good vibe to it, although i would love to see a punisher with knight comander pask at the helm, seriously though i might consider a nova eradicator, the bs might be useful

Very nice looking armour. That zimmerit gives your tanks completely new and great looking personal look.

@Young Logan: Nova Eradicator might be just the thing for him, to try something a bit rarer, also the no cover bit is nice.

But Exterminator..... It does have a ring to it. Plus, the FW Exterminator turret looks ace!

@Xenon: Thanks. I think the Z. gives them a bit more background. It sort of looks like they are actual tanks, now that different patterns actually have a bit different hulls.

My plan is for all the close assault tanks to have Z. and trench rails, while the command tanks will have plating. "Grunt" tanks will have bare hulls.

The Centaurs will also have Zimmerit, though some may also get extra armor applied. We´ll see.

Oh, and I may add some camo netting to them, but I need to find some proper looking type of netting first.

I did some testing last night, with Vallejo´s washes, specifically the Sepia Shade. It goes on beautifully, more like a filter than an actual wash, and gives a very nice worn effect to the tanks.
I believe I´ll be needing a few bottles of it for these guys.


On a completely different note, I also spoke to Forgeworld yesterday, and asked them about the missing tanks on their website.
It turns out that they´re retooling their moulds at the moment, to fit the new russ chassis.
Since they are doing this in steps, some of the stuff will be taken down over the summer, and put up again two-three weeks later.
Apparently they already did the Krieg turrets, and are now doing the hulls. So I must wait.....

Yeah go with the twin autocannons, the only reason i suggested otherwise is that everybody does that

Go with the gatling turret! I built one this weekend out of 3mm rod and and 10mm pipe and it fits perfect into the base of the normal battle cannon mount.
You've got to love throwing down 20 dice at a time

Xanthos wrote:Oooh, nice! The site only showed two different attachments, so I wasn´t sure.

Their system looks sensible as well, using a roller to apply the main pattern. I´d need to use a much softer product than GS though, I don´t think GS will hold indentations that shallow, it would probably just smush out of the way instead...

But you´ve definitely given me some food for thought.

I've read quite a few guides for doing zimmerit on scale armor, and a lot of them have reccomended using Squadron Modeling Putty (Green, not white).

@Young_Logan: True, many people seem to end up using the Autocannon thing, I myself really like the name, and I´ll by modifying the shooty bits a lot, so at least it will look slightly different than the rest.

@BLACKHAND: The gatling turret is so cool, but I just saw that another Krieg modeller has done it very well already, so I need to find my own way with this.. The 20dice thing is hilarious, even if range is sometimes an issue. Have you got images of the tank on Dakka?

@Nowlan: Thanks for the tip! I looked at them, and they seem to be faster drying than I´d like... Have you worked with them yourself? Hmm.... I really want to test some new materials here, I´ll see if I end up taking the plunge.


Anyways, with that it´s on to a little update:

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend in Iceland some days ago, and he informed me that he had gotten a lot of IG stuff on the cheap, from a guy who used to play traitor guard. He had no use for many of the things, and kindly offered to send me a Leman Russ that was part of the trade. And on thursday, I found this on my doorstep:


An exciting package, with foreign writing on the top! Interesting...

The box contained the aforementioned tank, which was almost mint condition. However all the eagle bits had been filed off, and there was some interesting positioning of certain things.






As you can see from these images, the paintjob is not bad as such, but it is very basic. The good news is that the tank wasn´t primed, so the paint should come off with no problems.

And therefore, it goes in the gunk!



It´ll need to sit for a few days, but should come out nice and clean (hopefully).

In other news, I got some more detail work done on my Vanquisher. It is beginning to take shape, many of the more important markings are on, I am sticking with my "no transfers" policy, so everything is freehand.


Here she is, from the front. I still need to clean up the markings, and add the tank´s name along the hull side, and on the turret.


The company number. 4th Tank company.


And the Regimental marking. Krieg 143rd. It needs some major cleanup, but the position and shape of the text I´m pretty happy with.


The side armor has had some work done as well. I´ve picked out a few squares of the aromr with a lighter color, to show replaced armor panels that have not been painted in yet.


And finally, a shot of the rear of the tank, showing the beginning rust and dust work.

I posted a pic of the punisher cannon up tonight for you to check out.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/116606-scratchbuilt%20punisher.html

let me know what you think, its removable and I can remount the original cannon if needed, plus it was originally almost an inch longer but friend convinced me to shorten it

Oh and your armour skirts on the russ have convinced me to give it a try.
I just got three horibbly painted russes to strip and repaint as well, but the sides on a couple are too messed up to recover so armour skirts are just the thing!


Oh , and the Vanquisher rocks BTW!

Thanks man, that cannon looks really cool. I think your friend was right in shortening it some, since it has a comparatively short range, and needs to reflect it a bit.

As it looks in that pic, it is very menacing, and very gatling´y.

The skirts on this tank partially came about due to that same problem. The side armor on the Russ looked a bit dodgy, so I wanted to cover that up, and I think the look really works for the tank, and changes the silhouette quite a bit.

Thanks for the praise on the Vanquisher, it is sort of the benchmark for how I want my armour units to look, so it needs to be quite crisp when it´s done.

I´m thinking about adding skirts to a Russ with sponsons at some point, to see if I can make that work, given the shapes that the FW armor comes in. It may require even more creative cutting than this version did.

I think armor skirts would work as long as they don't interfere with the sponsons but I like the German anti mag armor it just takes longer.

I'm a little confused by your comment about side armor on the new Russ. Is it possible for you to point out the differences? the only thing I've noticed is the turret.

I believe that if you look, the ceramic armour has a different pattern on it - the indents are straighter where as before they were slighly curved.

I would also like to say this blog is quite interesting - there are a couple of ideas that I am going to steal (and there's nothing you can do to stop me! Bwahaha!)

@Sonofruss: Yup, the sponsons are my big concern as well, I want it all to look as if it would work if used.
I really like the antimag effect myself, but want to try some variation, to break up the monotomy of using 11 Russ tanks in some of my lists...

@ChaoticMind: Sure thing, there are several differences in the design.
The main thing for me, is that the doors on the side are no longer separate things. Which I would be okay with, but they totally changed the look, they have them inset into the side of the tank and that I don´t like...

Added to that, the three indentations on the lower part are less defined on the new tank, and less defined.

Also, the bit at the front of the side armour, pointing toward the tracks (looks like a compression coil or possibly a hydraulics bit) is shallower on the new design, and the design has changed a bit, looking a bit more awkward..

Lastly, the coil bit at the front of the tank is shallower on the new model, this annoys me since it wasn´t aproblem before, so why should it be now?

I will say, however, that I do like parts of the new design, like the exhausts are better and more detailed and the plug in weapons are super. But I think the hull detail level is lower, which is disappointing as heck.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
SilverMK2: By all means, steal away, that´s part of the idea anyways, inspiration going back and forth.

However, if you do end up with some cool stuff, please show us also, so we can steal.... I mean, creatively use parts of it, where they match what we need...

For the skirts you can pick up some plasticard that is formed with squares of a smiliar size on one size.

I'm thinking of going that route, cutting inch wide blocks of it out and mounting it on another smooth peice that is shaped to cver the side of the russ perfeclty.

I have seen someone scratchbuild skirts for a chimera squadron in the same way to avoid having the same battle damage on all his tanks and it look pretty nice.

Thanks, I've only dealt with the previous version and have only seen pictures of of the new version.

Yeah, I may as well use plasticard for the skirts from here on, and do battle damage as I go.
I´ll probably keep the shapes though, I kind of like that it is not perfectly shaped.

I was considering just varying the pieces between tanks, and whatever way I end up using, I´ll reserve it for a few tanks, three at most.

@ChaoticMind: No problem at all, I didn´t spot the differences until I assembled the new ones myself. The new turrets are nice though, more detail and slightly larger. But as I mentioned, many parts have gotten less detail which I find odd given that the moulding techniques have improved.

I´ve gotten the bottom half of the Traitor Russ cleansed, the upper half is getting soaked at the moment. The paint came off beautifully, so in a day or two I should have pictures of the hull without paint.
At that point I´ll have to see which way I end up going with it.

What are you using to strip the paint, lately I havn't been having luck with simple green, the guys I'm buying the models off seem like using housepaint to prime their models

Hey Xanthos, nice models! And your title caught my attention

It's not by any chance a reference to Xan Kreigor is it? Or is it just the abbreviation of your name along with the Kreig Corps... lol

@Blackhand: Housepaint? Ouch....

I´m using crystal soap, not sure if that´s an international name, but it´s gel soap, made for cleaning wooden floors. It strips paint like a beastie, two-three days and it´ll go to grey plastic.
Oh, and it´s pretty good to the environ as well, I´m led to believe.

@Dessloch: Thanks a lot, glad you like what I´m doing.
I´ve been using the name Xanthos as well as Xan, all over the place for quite a few years.
And yes, Xan Kriegor is indeed one of the sources. Another is the old Necromunda game, which had a character by that name.

I must admit though, that I didn´t name the thread intentionally to mimick the full name, it just kind of happened that way.

My painting and modeling time is severely limited at the moment, having become a father last friday... So the house is full of family, my daughter takes up alot of my waking hours and my mother in law is staying for a week more. (Which is fine as we actually get along.. Take that, stereotypist!)

Still, I am hopeful that I´ll be able to update through the summer, and keep the project going.

Congrats on the baby!


...and on the mother in law

Xanthos wrote: (Which is fine as we actually get along.. Take that, stereotypist!)

Actually this stereotype is usually true only for one person in the couple, I get along with my GF's mother very well but my mother is despicable so she is the "mother in law" stereotype.
Ask yourself the question, does your wife (girlfriend?) like your mother?

Back to the minis, you always make awesome stuff, it's people like you who make me buy plasticard!

Xanthos wrote:
@Nowlan: Thanks for the tip! I looked at them, and they seem to be faster drying than I´d like... Have you worked with them yourself? Hmm.... I really want to test some new materials here, I´ll see if I end up taking the plunge.

Keeping it wet while you're working with it helps slow down the curing time. But you'll have to work in small sections at a time, maybe like 0.5" x 0.5" to start out with. Once you're used to doing it i'm sure you can do it in larger sections, especially if you get the lionroar tool for it.


Also, have you given any thought to adding reactive armor to one of your tanks?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armor

Reactive armor will probably be a nono for these, it doesn´t fit well enough with the vision I have of them as inspired by WW1 and 2.
ERA is a bit too hightech for these guys. Yes I know they have Lascannons and Plasma technology, but that´s the charm. Hightech and lowtech, mixed together to reflect off eachother.

lookin good! (I always wondered about how effective the FW LRBTs are over the standard GW ones) one question tho: why so green?
like I always thought the DKoK were more about black and city camo like the german forces (alla saving private ryan) and the Cadians were the military style camo...
Other than that looks amazing...wish I could paint clothes like that, mine always come out as streaky messes

Thanks.

I really like FW´s turrets, they´re larger by quite a bit, which to me looks better, can´t see how the tank commander would sit in the normal turrets without getting pulped the first time it fires..

True, the typical view of the Krieg is as visions in grey, compared to the more modern looking cadians.

But I felt that I wanted to place them in the same universe somehow, so I have tried to avoid getting too stereotyped with these guys, thusly there will be no references at all to actual period armies.

The green for the armor units was firstly to break up the mass of gray that I was painting, but also I wanted to steer away from the cityfighting theme, and more towards a battlefield force.
The way I see it, these guys have their primary mission in siege warfare, but the tanks are used in assaults on trench lines, so they might not be gray on gray.

Having said that, FW´s books have about twenty different color schemes for the Krieg tanks, and that´s just for the Vraks campaign.

The cloth is actually (relatively) fast. I basecoat them in a meium grey, do a basic shading and highlight, and wwash over that with badab black. After that, I sometimes do a last highlight, but for the rank and file that´s what they get.

The Commissar however, I had fun with. So he got wet blending, a ton of different layers and gloss effects here and there.

Wow, long post.

Hey Xanthos, I had a go at making some skirts for my LRs and posted a tutorial for making them here on Dakka.
I hope you don't mind but I pointed to this blog as my inspiration

Very nicely done BLACKHAND, those skirts certainly work.

And crediting me as inspiration too, you´re too kind sir.

Loving the tank Xanthos, any pictures of the LR after it came out of the gunk?

Well as luck would have it, Young_Logan, I was just putting together an update post.

The reclaimed hull rolled out of the scrubbing chamber, slowly emerging into the dim light of the repair shop. As the steam rose off her sides, bare plasteel was visible, for the first time in many years, no doubt. It had been discovered on routine patrol in the outer Van Meersland wastes, and the Enginseers had accepted the vehicle into their care. An effort would be made to re-sanctify the proud old machine, to make it useful for the Emperor´s armies once more.

It had been dumped in cleansing oils and unguents for many days now, to fully remove the taint of heretical markings. And only now could a true assessment be made, regarding the tanks structural integrity. Preliminary reports spoke of poor alignment in the port side sponsons, gimbals would need to be exchanged, and the Machine Spirit was in need of much cleansing. But Enginseer Daahl had spoken. The machine would fight again!

Right, so I´ve finally gotten to a point where I´m happy with the paint stripping of this tank.


This image is from a few days ago, as you can see, most of the paint had come off nicely, but still she went back for a final dip.


And here is the current state of it. As you can see, there´s still a green tinge to parts of the tank, this is mostly where the paint has met glue, and there are a few places where the assembly of the tank has been less than perfect.


This is the worst of those. The left side sponson is basically at an angle, which bothers me a lot. What´s worse is, that it has been glued on with a huge amount of excess glue, and is therefore very unlikely to come back off.. But I´ll find a way to fix it.


Some of the spots where the green still lingers, are also in places where the plastic seems to have gotten a green tinge to it. I have no idea what this paint was, but I´m thinking it can´t have been healthy for the guy who painted it.... Oh, and also, both side doors came off while the tank was in the gunk, apparently there was next to no glue on them.


Here´s the rear of the tank. I´ve started removing things from the back, and will go with similar box type extensions as my other tanks have received. Luckily, these parts have very little glue on them, and are coming off nicely.


Here she is, with FW turret and all. The Commissar commander will be my Pask for normal games, and will be a Commissar Tank upgrade for friendly games. I have decided that all my turrets from here on in, will have magnetized guns, so I can switch more freely between types of Russ.


I made an Exterminator turret last night, from two spare Autocannons, and the base of an annihilator gun. The GS work is a little rough right now, but it´ll be sanded down and plasticarded properly, no worries.


I also added filters and such, funny what a big difference they make to the look of the tank. Still missing is the large air intake, but I need to finish with the rear of the tank for that.


Last night I started looking into the rebuilding of the tank, and one of the first things to go was the hull Lascannon. I wanted to go with maximum Dakka for this one, so dual Autocannons and 3 Heavy Bolters fit the bill. It will get a Heavy Stubber as well. I´m still debating whether or not I want to chop off the current Sponson HB´s and replace them with fresh ones, since the eagles have been defaced on these....

Next up will be finishing the negine bits on this tank, completing the Zimmerrit on my Demolisher, and probably changing the sponson guns on this tank. I´ve decided to focus on building till I head back home for the summer, at which point I´ll bring whatever is ready to paint, and paint that through the summer. So far it looks like that will be a Centaur, and two Russ´s.

Hmmm I remember my brother selling a toxic green demolisher at some point a few years back . . .

Xanthos, if you need a set of sponsons and heavy Bolters I can get you some. I don't arm my demolishers with sponsons and have extras. PM me if you need 'em!

@Irdiumstern: I´m not sure if this is the same one.... I got it from Iceland, but I would not be surprised if it had travelled a bit, it sure is beat up!

@SlaveToDorkness: Thanks a lot, I do have spares for one left, but if I end up needing more, I´ll be sure to drop you a PM.

It´s crazy warm here by the way... Above 30deg Celsius today, and not a breeze. So I´ve spent large amounts of the day sprawled over the couch, drinking loads of water and generally looking forward to the coolness of night.

its been a bit like that here in the uk. little amounts of sun where i am and stooooopidly high humidty levels. now i have too days off and a fan in room, its back to painting solidly.

anyway back to your DKOK, as a long time stalker and first time poster, i must say. i have enjoyed watching your army come together. inspiring me to head to forge world more.
awesome and inspiring work.

I like the exterminator turret , it came out really class.

Well done on the recovery of the Russ, that floor cleaner does a very nice job

@Howla:We can´t even have fans here, my daughter is a week old, and apparently kids of that age don´t take draft well...
Anyways, thanks for your kind words. Welcome to Dakka, be sure to post your stuff when the time comes.

@BLACKHAND: Thanks, I´m happy with how it turned out, I did a little cleaning up of the GS tonight, so it´s getting closer to Primer time.

The floor cleaner is very nice for this, and also cleans floors admirably.

Plus, it´s about 10Kr (1.3Euro) a jar, and I´ve yet to get all the way through my first one. Oh, and it´s not poison to the nature...

Tbh i quite like it as it, its just looks right

Thanks, It was a relatively easy conversion, the AC´s came from FW´s Superheavy Krieg upgrade set.
There´s one in each set, and a Tank Commander which I needed anyway...

very cool and very good, cant wait to see moree!