There’s a lot more track bits than this…One side complete, I then had to do it all again.
The tracks were dealt with one side at a time. Each piece was cut, cleaned up and then mounted onto bits of sprue using superglue. They could then be undercoated with white spray and painted. When complete they were snapped off the sprue and then the unpainted bit painted by hand quickly. This all worked well enough, I could easily paint all the nooks and crannies on the tracks and then glue them into place with superglue (as plastic liquid poly need the paint cleaned away).
One important thing that did happen here was that I removed the Spotlight and Smoke Launcher that I had attached to the hull. I hadn’t left enough room for the tracks to fit on, they were far too close and it looked “wrong”. So I cut off the attachments and painted over where they had been.
With the hull completed it was on to painting it. I knew that I would undercoat with a Death Guard Green rattle can but would then use my airbrush to apply a shade of Agrax Earthshade. I’d done this before with a Plagueburst Crawler and like the smoother appearance that it gave, applying the shade with a brush tends to be very streaky given the large flat areas.
Green undercoat.Base colours all done.Shaded with an airbrush.
The undercoat went on perfectly fine, there was some manual touching up to do around the door which I closed when I sprayed the vehicle. Then I painted all of the metallic parts, which was no small operation. Finally it was on the part I was worried about, the airbrushing…
In short the airbrushing didn’t go well. I have one bottle of the old Agrax Earthshade left, but the last few times I’ve used it it seems to dry glossy. So I switched to using the new formulation, which does handle differently. I might also have a dirty airbrush, I’ve now taken it to bits and given it a good clean. The result was that the shade went on “dotty”, if you look very closely it’s not a smooth shade of colour.
I know that I’l be applying mud and rust to the hull, and that’ll help cover this up. But, in all honesty, I did feel a bit disenchanted at this point. That might play a factor in why this tank took me about four months to complete.
I do have a plan to conquer my fear of the airbrush. As well as giving the brush a good clean I’ve a piece of MDF scenery that I’m going to practice my airbrushing on. I can’t really mess that up, can I? Anyway, next will be the tracks and detailing for the hull.
It’s all about that Spartan! This is a 1,000 point game, so taking up about half of those points with a great big tank might seem daft. But, this is Spartan! I wanted to fill the Spartan with something that a cheaper Land Raider couldn’t carry, so that became two squads of melee Plague Marines and a Biologus Putrifier to buff them. That didn’t leave me with a lot of points. The plan would be to send the Spartan forwards with the Plague Marines, so I’d need something to hold my deployment zone. That became one Plagueburst Crawler, some Poxwalkers to wrap it for protection against melee units and a Malignant Plaguecaster to do some damage and protection with Miasma of Pestilence.
Let’s go!
The Game
Setup
Death Guard DeploymentCustodes Deployment
We rolled the Cleanse the Land mission from the Arks of Omen mission pack. This gives us victory points for holding objectives but also taking new objectives and/or killing enemy units that were near an objective. There are also “sticky” objectives, this lets you continue to hold them after you move off of them.
I take the following objectives.
Behind Enemy Lines: My Spartan is going to be racing my Plagues Marines towards the enemy, I hope to get some into their deployment zone.
Spread the Sickeness: Seems to be reliable.
Assassination: The enemy only has two characters including a war lord, so this is capped out at 7 points, but this seems the best remaining choice against the Custodes.
Both of us try to deploy behind line of sight blocking walls, but the Spartan is too big for such things and so just goes as far forwards as it can.
I decided that I would paint the Spartan in the follow sub assemblies.
Hull
Magnetised Top Hatches
Side Guns
Tracks
Front Hull Guns
The almost completed hull.
The first step was to take the hull as far as I could, this was mostly easy enough. You construct it around the “pod” of the front compartment. Putting the hull together underneath the tank was the exception, the flat plate comes as two parts and it was a bit fiddly to get into place, and I’m not sure it’s totally straight. However this is underneath, so I won’t ever have to look at it, and it didn’t seem to get in the way of getting the top right. The hull was taken a bit further than the photo shows, I also fitted the hull turret.
I did think about magnetising the front hull guns, but I could think of a way to get them done and to be solid enough, so I decided that whatever I did would be just glued into place.
The first magnet on a flat hatch.Ta da.The other hatches were cut and filled with milliput so as to make them flat bottomed as well.
Then it was on to the top hatch. I magnetised a few options for this, none of the weapons are legal for 9th Edition 40k, but it was a fun thing to do regardless. I inserted a few pieces of sprue into the hull under the hatch hole, this would have been much easier to do when it was being assembled, live and learn. I the filled the rear part of the hatch hole with milliput, this is because some of the weapon hatches have an inset piece that protrudes into the hull. To get the fit right I first glued a magnet onto hatch with a flat bottom, the one for the rocket launcher. Then I used this to make sure that the milliput in the hull wouldn’t block the hatch and that the magnet just touched it. With the milliput dry I then drilled into the blob of milliput in the hull and inset another magnet. The other hatches that weren’t flat were then filled with milliput and the magnet in the hull used to position their magnets onto them.
One of the sponsonsCompleted top hatch, only the empty one is 9th Edition legal 🙂
The sponson guns were assembled and then, along with the hatchs, painted. Nothing much to say here other than I did the same for the lens on top of the gun ask I did for the light in the front compartment, and I think it looks pretty nice.
Colours Used
Rusty metal – Base of Leadbelcher, wash of Agrax Earthshade, dry brush with Necron Compound, apply Typhus Corrosion and then drybrush with Ryza Rust.
Lenses and light – Base of Moot Green, wash of Biel-Tan Green and then dot highlights of Moot Green mixed with White.
Green – Base of Death Guard Green, wash of Agrax Earthshade and then a highlight with Nurgling Green.
Plague Gardening 