HeavyTankBuilder

The final part of my GK/UM allied attachment is finished.  Now to get on with the GK Librarians.  The Grav Cents have come out pretty well.  The OSL and colour blends are pretty good. The transfers are not quite as smooth as I would have liked; my fault for missing a step (GW varnish on the Humbrol Acrylic Gloss Spray where the transfer sits).  The over all unit looks great together - the bald headed guy looks better than I thought.  Initially I wasnt convinced by the sculpts. 4 Cents is a lot of work.  The bodies and shoulder pads could be built and painted all assembled up.  The pipes, weapons, amps, heads, pistons, rear plate, side metal work and arms all had to be done separately to access all the nooks and crannies.  The OSL looks great but comes at the risk of ruining everything you have done to get to that point!

Here is my latest offering now I am back into some kind of routine again.  This has served as a good warm up project, having kept it slightly simpler this time around by not doing a full interior.  There is a limit to how much effort I can repeatedly put into 35pt models!

AOP all done and dusted, 3 rd place over all in my local store.  Disappointed? Yes.  My entry focused on models, display board second.  I went about this wrong from all the entries I have seen online.  The models of course need to be good (1 st and 2 nd had great models) but the display board carries far more weight with the general public.  Lesson for next time! The board was fun to make and I don’t regret putting more time and effort into the models, as that’s the core of what I produce and enjoy anyway.  AOP is a great competition for a whole host of reasons; it forced me to finish stuff that perhaps would have dragged on otherwise, I saw some great stuff produced by other people and came away with a whole host of other ideas for the future.  This article runs through what I produced and how I went about it.

Finally finished the Falchion and another model in line with the core theme of the blog.  I picked this up back in March at the Forge World open day, with a view to have it finished before wider release... anyway...  it's done now.  The techniques involved are covered in the Glaive tutorial.  This time around I have tried to apply some of the pointers and tips passed on from Matt Murphy-Kane and Mark Bedford from not only Warhmmer Fest, but the FW open day to.

Just a few snaps of what I am working on ready for Saturday and AOP.  Getting there...but not much time left and it still feels as though there is a lot to do!

Warhammer Fest was good.  Forge World (FW) owned the show.  Games Workshop (GW) suffered in comparison because they cannot discuss upcoming releases and run a different business model to FW.  We had a good day because we planned early in the queue, saw 4 Forge World Pods back to back and we got seminar tickets early in the day for the Forge World discussion.

Here are some shots of everything I have finished since Apr 2013.   1000pts would have come up sooner but things inevitably caught my eye (the Glaive, the Scorpion, the Falchion and Terminators – most of which still unfinished!! Terrible ><).  

More progress shots really.  Pleased with the stencils and the marginally darker blue this time around.  Will keep post short to keep the work on the models going.  Any questions on any of my stuff do not hesitate to ask.  Thanks for the interest; just over 6000 hits - nice!  HTB.

Work progresses slowly on the tank.  I hope to have more parts done up the stage of oil wash needing to be applied in time for when the main body needs that as well.  The stencil has come out really well on the side of the tank.  I plan to keep using the XIII stencil to bring some uniformity to the large tanks, but differ how I apply the grey secondary colour.

Day 1 and 2 WIP photos.  All the sanding, cutting, smoothing and washing of the component parts has been completed.  My weathering has begun – the tracks have been given a light coating of sandy paste.  

A brilliant day at Forge World Open Day 2014.  Lots of new stuff to see and managed to speak to all the major designers including an in depth chat with Mark Bedford and Phil Stutcinskas (big fan of his new Falchion Super Heavy tank).  The Glaive was well received in the painting competition however it did not win – a fantastic Apothecary Marine in the larger scale took the painting competition, and rightly so – it was awesome.  Was great seeing my tank in the cabinet and seeing peoples interest in it and answering questions on it. So the new stuff…

So I was really happy to see one of my tanks up on the Forge World Facebook page model of the day,having been encouraged to get it on there to see what the community thinks.  It seems to have gone down really well!  I will certainly try to get to the Open Day now so others can see it up close.  Now to get the next project finished!

After 2 weeks of 4-6hrs a day working on it the job is done.  I am really pleased with the results despite initial frictions with the model and paint application.  It has come out lighter and more worn than my other tanks, fitting in with it being an older, rarer war machine.  I am very keen what people think about the finished model and where I can look to improve on upcoming projects, namely more infantry elite units, a Storm Raven and a Fire Raptor. 

Making steady progress with the tank.  Main body colours are now complete and have spent several hours getting to grips with the smaller parts to allow Satin Varnish to harden up.  Hope you like the progress so far.

And this then would be the second project.   I have planned out my first 1500pts and would like to hit that before branching off and adding to the Army…that said I couldn’t resist leaving this lying around any longer and got cracking. The first stage saw me make sure I had all the bits and that there were no poorly formed parts, or anything broken.   Then came the tedious but essential job of stripping the parts from the casting blocks, sanding them all down, finishing with a wash in hot soapy water to remove any excess release agent from the construction process back in the factory.   The water must not be too hot or you will deform the parts – if you can put your hands in the water comfortably then the temperature is not too hot for the resin.  

So 2 quick updates as I have broken my golden rule and started 2 projects rather than see one through start to finish!  These Thunder Hammer Storm Shield Terminators have been sat around for ages so broke them out and added some Forge World details to make them stand out. 

This is my completed Rhino/Razorback with magnetized hatch for my first tactical squad.  I know they are not particularly popular vehicles but I am looking to build up a company this year and want a good few Rhino/Razorbacks/Drop pods to cover the fluff side of things.  I am very pleased with the final outcome and will talk through what's changed and come on since Part 2 posted a month or so ago.

Ultramarines Forge World Rhino/Razorback WIP Part 2 So a bit of a delay in getting this up, but her comes part 2 – exterior and turrets done, and now getting ready to oil/pin wash then onto weathering.   The VMA blues are great for Ultramarines and make it really easy to shadow/highlight the various parts.   (VMA Steel Blue, French Blue and Light Sea blue – VMA thinner 50:50 with Light Sea blue all at 20psi through the AB). The Ultramarines U was made using the tutorial provided by Buypainted.   A good compass and cutting tool were essential in getting an even shaped U – it took a few tries, but worth getting right.   Lining it up on the part isn’t as easy as it looks – again take time to get it right otherwise you will be repainting the blue…(only once for myself….)

Ultramarines Forge World Rhino/Razorback WIP With the first of my 10 man tactical squads for my 1000pts Ultramarines Army complete, it took little convincing to revert back to armour, looking to build a battle field taxi for them.   I will do a separate post on the second squad having used the first squad to refine the way I plan to paint all the infantry for this force. I am trying to build a 35k Ultramarine force – I really like the new CSM releases (the Sternguard and Hunter/Stalker) and want to be able to include the Forge World Heresy designs as well.   The new tactical marines are great but I don’t want to go down the road of full Heresy or full 40k… anyway.   In short I want to mix the elements of GW I like with the FW stuff.   The best way I can make this work in my opinion is experimenting with paint schemes.   I really like the grey Razorback that pops up in the old codex and on the back of the Razorback box.   I don...

Forge World Scorpion Type II – Saim-Hann With my first project under my belt, I dug out a Forge World kit that had been left under the bed for a good number of years.  I could not ge the smooth finish I wanted so parked the model to one side, but never came back to it.  All the practicing of pre-shading, zen highlighting and shading using the Falcon kits drove me to dig it out and get it done.  This will be more step by step but do ask questions below if you want something made clearer.  Again, Buypainted! gave a vast amount of guidance and inspiration - credit where credit is due! 1.                The main hull was constructed, wing-lets, tail section etc.  The turret was also built however don’t do what I did initially and leave the pulsars sperate.  The crew and smaller weapons were mounted on old sprues to...