No Dougal,

These ones are very small. Those ones are far away.

Actually, Fr Ted aside, this picture makes the patio look reallllly big.

Chimera MK whatever

This is my first go at the new Chimera kit. Again, no track guards. Why on earth did they include a bull dozer blade instead of a set of track guards ? I want track guards on every one I build and a 'dozer blade on combat engineer specific models (ie about 1 in 30). Am I really alone in this ?



Nice to see that despite the plethora of new options, the flash suppresor for the multi laser is still enormously oversized. And the HB option has only one HB; unless it's being built for fluftastic reasons, it's possibly completely redundant.

Having said all of that, excepting the skull and banner on the side, I like the kit and it goes together easily enough. Of course, the old kit went together as easily anyway. And the back door opened.

Star Wars !

I thought that the Brigade HQ could do with a ride. It's actually only chimera sized; it's just a bit taller. With some comms kit stuff stuck to the back it should be OK. And I'm going to try for a Vostroyan colour scheme, using the big 'V skull' transfers from the baneblade sheet.



I was looking for the Revel kit as described here: http://devos4.blogspot.com/2010/04/star-wars-counts-as-superheavy.html But of course, with no new (or re-release) star wars filums out for a few years now, the kit is OOP. The Revel kit is bigger and will make a lovely troop transport.



You might not be able to make them out, but the SW blasters have been replaced by IG autocannons.

ASL reinforcements

These will be 421, 422 and 423.



They are the 'new' LR kit, modified and with bits from my garage to resemble the existing panzers of 4 Sqn, which are the 'old' (Pheaton pattern ?)kit.



Hopefully when they are sprayed up, the differences will diminish yet further. It's not that I don't like the new kit (It's allowed me to create an anhilator, just to please Admiral Drax), but I wanted a degree of uniformity across the unit.



When they are done, I'll stick up some comparison shots, hopefully the differences will hardly show. Fingers crossed.

Sticking my head above the parapet

The idea of putting out a Codex in WD has a certain appeal. However it has its drawbacks as well. I bought the WD with the first part of the SoB Codex in it. It is not as robust as a proper codex and will not last as long, even if I resist the urge to rip the pages out. Also it appears to only be six or eight pages (can't be bothered to get up and look, sorry) which means that the whole thing will be less than twenty pages (?) So it would seem unreasonable to expect the sophisication one would ususally associate with a 40K codex.

I never wanted a SoB army. They always seemed a little to up their own arses for me. I imagined Eisenhorn or Ravenor type bands, supported by ISTs. Perhaps even Jaq Draco, although I may be going back a bit too far...

Anyway, the point was that, equipped with the Witch Hunter codex, you could build a proper Ordo Hereticus warband or an army of power armoured breasts. Now, I havn't seen the second part of the WD codex, but it does look awfully slanted towards SoB, rather than being something that could elegantly allow one to field a Hereticus warband without any of Sisters of Perpetual PMT. Ho hum.

Yes I am just shooting my mouth off prematurely, but this is the interweb, after all.

Angry Birds, indeed.

New style LRMBT vorpanzer

This is one of the new style LRMBT turrets along side one of the old ones. Both have plasticard vorpanzer. To try for homogenity across the fleet, the template for the angled sections either side of the gun is the same one I used for the old type. Which is in itself based on the profile of that part of the turret.



Hopefully with the existing turret, you get an idea of how it'll turn out. And also how different it might be. The new turret has a much more 'modern' look, IMHO. In shilouette it resembles a Merkava turret. Well, a little bit anyway.



There's three of these to do, to add another troop to the panzer squadron; I might alternate them with the Thunderers. But the thing is to try to make them look "the same but different". So each subsequent model is based on the one before but without cutting out dozens of sets of templates; for one thing, for instance, having built one Thunderer, the next one will be quicker and better built.



There. Makes a change from riots.

Thunderer WIP

Vindicator bits in a LRMBT hull. No doubt someone has done it before, but that's ok, its not like any of GWs IP is actually original in itself is it ?



There were a few fit issues and some bits and peices could have been done better. For instance where the shell winch sits on its arm, the plasticard plate obviously looks like it should be braced or supported. But I'll do this one and her sisters up to a point before going mad on detail that I might not be able to reproduce.



I'm a bit stuck with the cupola. It will have to be an iggy one for continuity's sake, but it'll need cutting down to a level to allow it to sit on the vindicator hull top. Also for the next ones I intend to cut out the louvred plate to allow the extractor fans to be recessed lower in the hull.




This should show the butchered iggy dozer blade now relegated to being the mount for the siege shield. I don't know about fitting seige shields to the next two, but more about this below.

Why Thunderers ?

Generally speaking, the turrets on LRMBT are too small for their armourments. For scale and layout, they resemble early WW2 russian tank turrets. In the 1980s, GW obviously decided that if they put a proper scale gun in their LRMBT, then it would constantly be getting broken, which resulted in the 'normal' battle cannon having the dimensions of a howitzer or petard.

Which means that the LR Demolisher is just ridiculous. If you have the chance, hold the shell from a vinicator up against a demolisher turret. See ? I know that it's all made up and therefore doesn't matter, but still.

So the only sensible configuration for a Demolisher is for the demolisher cannon to be hull mounted. A turret mounted laser cannon, whose ammunition supply amounts to a HV cable, is a far more sensible proposition.

But FW have published rules for the Fundara and this little project will leave me with a couple of spare LRMBT turrets for the next project, so the thing you see above is what I'm working on.

The others may get a mine plow and a ditching beam/fascine; all good engineering things for combat engineer assets.