Reaper Bones Cthulu thingy.

Such an interesting model to put together.  After a few years of building AFVs, to suddenly be confronted by a plethora of writhing tentacles, it was a bit different, to say the least.

But nicely the reaper kits all seem to be constructed so that each part has a differently shaped lug to go into a specific socket.  You can jam or wedge tentacles into the wrong hole if you want, I suppose.

It does need and will, before painting, get LGS around the gaps.  If you click on the pics (stealing Inso's phrase) you can see that a lot of the surface detail is eyes.  Nice.  I've just seen Lord Halfpenny's plague toads, so that looks like it could be a way to go for the painting.  PVP's advice for animals is to always use real world examples, but erm, this doesn't really look like a cow.  Or Crocodile or anything else for that matter. 

With the tank for scale.  It's certainly big enough.

ASL STuG Zug finished

Someone (Rory ?) asked to see all three of them together when they were finished, so here they are.

The business end.

The port flanks.  Lookin' purposeful. 

Lots of photos of STuGs from the war have them loaded down with various stowage items, notably boxes of ammunition which obviously is there to replenish the ready rounds inside the vehicle.

So all of my ASL vehicles mount a spare/external fuel drum, so these are no exception.

And there's a decent mix of other stuff on there as well.  The wartime photos often show that the crews applied inches (maybe as much as a foot in some cases) of concrete to the front superstructure as extra armour.  It likely functioned more as moral booster than real armour against serious AT weapons but would have been functional ablatis against lighter weaponry.

Well I haven't done that; but it should be easy enough to model if you wanted to.  These mastercrafted models have the mantlet recessed into the superstructure, unlike the wartime STuG, so that would have to be taken into account, but it's still possible.

Flanking the BoS. And a last picture with that Mars Alpha LRMBT again.  Clearly showing the low silhouette which should hopefully make it easier for these to find cover.  If I build some....

Mortian "King Russ" MBT

If you're a long term reader of this blog, then you're probably aware of the Mortian MBT, which was made by a German craftsman (Heavy Support) some years ago.  He was a model maker and indeed, I believe had made vehicle kits for GW

He stopped doing them a few years ago, but I'm aware that I wasn't the person emailing him and asking for more (seriously, if you want something you've seen, ask - generally the guys casting these types of things up in their garages are hobbyists as well - if you ask nicely and make it worth knocking a batch up the results can reaffirm one's faith in the world)

So though the miracle money pit that is kickstarter, these and a tank destroyer variant were made available as a one off run, in quantity.   Having learned that sometimes you have to get these things whilst they're available, I put my order in. 

I have put four of these together already and only have another two to go.

It's a nice kit to put together.  The resin is altogether more brittle than FW material but the detail is super and the sculpt certainly looks the part as far as I'm concerned.

It's a decent size and so might count-as a not twin linked macharius.  But equally, could just be a LRMBT with an ensuite bathroom.

Here are all four, providing security for the Brick of Scrutiny. 

And here it is with a Mars Alpha LRMBT for scale.   Same height.

A bit wider

The angle which actually shows just how big it actually is.

And the rear view.  S'all for now, more later.

Wither the Eldar ? 500 words.

Naylor - by Pirate Viking Painting

Six figures moved slowly but noiselessly trough the ruins of the city.  It had been comprehensively bombed for four years before being shelled for a month before the failed infantry assault.  Parvell district had been silent for a long time.  This night, this dark night, under heavy clouds, a small commando team  had snuck through the ruins, carefully tracing the line of retreat of the survivors of what had been the worst combat disaster in the war.

Naylor used the molecular coring machine to extract the impact sites from the bricks.  His satchel now held a dozen or so cores taken from the east side of the city.   He chinned his microphone and voxed the Interrogator.

“That’s another sample.”

“Good.  That should be enough, you’d better get back in in case they’re still there.”

“Oh, I can feel we’re being watched.”  Naylor slipped the borrowed corer into it’s bag and reflexively reached for his machine pistols.  And then stopped.  Some sudden sub conscious thing urged him to stop.  He did, he froze, with his empty, soft gloved hands held away from his body in plain sight.

The Kasarkin escort were good, he liked that.  They’d seen him and also frozen.  The five of them were arrayed around him in a defensive posture.  They were quiet and covered their arcs and had taken all their ques from him as they had moved into the city.

 

His eyes scanned around, and then he saw it, a faint pattern of three bars forming a triangle on the outside knee of one of the Kasarkin.   Holding one hand up to the squad leader, he moved, as nonchalantly as he could, moving up from a combat orientated half crouch to his usual height.

He sort of half sauntered out of cover, six steps that he hoped didn’t look too hesitant.  If he was right, no sweat, if he was wrong, they were likely all dead anyway.  When he was close enough, he stretched out an arm until he could just make out the faint triangle on the palm of his left hand.  The lights went out.  Naylor looked up to where he thought the lurking presence might be.  But even with his augmentation he’d never see anything out there, he knew that from bitter experience.

The hand held up to the Squad Leader changed to a single finger making a small circle in the air and Naylor reached for the comfort of his machine pistols.  The Kasarkin were already on the move, pepper potting back towards the Imperial lines, trusting that he would be the sixth member of their team in their tactical movement back towards comparative safety. 

As he did, he chinned the mic again.  “It was definitely them, looking around here, they’re the only reason that those Llar got out of the trap.”  He took an age, perhaps as long as three or four seconds, to gaze back at where the Eldar might have been.   But it was time to be somewhere else. 

Actual tracking of the project.

It's towards the end of Q1/2018 so lets see what progress has been made:  I've deleted the lines where things were already declared 'done' at the end of 2017.


Mad max post apoc scavvies
Post apoc war rig 
DKK Engr, golliaths, Hades Drill               Engrs Done, rest is WIP. 
2 DKK Engr Chimera
DKK Gren                                               Built
DKK re-arms                                           Un-built, need arms.
DKK Hvy Wpns                                        Need to be un-built
Jornathi grunts                                       Built
Meridian Infantry Coy
Delaques                                                WIP
3 BP BFGs
BP BFG Crews
BP Bradley                                             Opened the box
Blood pacters                                         WIP
Last thunderer
Assorted civvies & pilgrims              WIP
7 BP Half tracks
4 Esienkarn APCs
2 Lynx HQ vehicles
1 Chimera HQ vehicle
Ad mech bodies 
6 SAM launchers                                     3 Done
2nd regt rebuilds
2 Chaos spawn (bones cthuloids)             1 built, 1 painted
4 Star Wars Vendettas
ARC 170 fighter bomber
2 Thunderhinds
=I= Gun Cutter (Millennium Falcon)          Needs more work
TGG Nuns with guns                                 Contracted out
And an entire Space Wolf army.

And some added things:

3 ASL STuGs                                          Done
DKK LRMBT                                           Done
6 Mortian 'King Russ' MBT                       2 Built
Gregor Eisenhorn

Actual Thunderers

So these are the last of the 'moments of weakness' acquisitions from the DKK facebook page.  The vendor was floggin' 'em cheap as he was pretty sure that they were knock offs.

Now I've held forth before on why we have a moral duty to buy original products from their title holders; the corollary being that to keep buying knock offs will put the actual creators of our hobby stuff out of business.  And that if that were the case, we the tax payers would end up supporting those creators and their dependants etc.

Plus illegally copying other peoples work/products is reprehensible in it's own right and therefore using these dirty things is really on a bar with pirate DVDs or other knock off goods.

So what makes these knock off's ? some of the panels are thin, the interior of the castings is not clean like a FW casting, it's blobby like a six year old's craft project.  And whilst they came with track sides, FW ones come with a complete LRMBT kit including accessory sprue.  And these don't even have hatches on the cupolas.

I had to fashion the bottom from plasticard, along with the front glacis plate.  There were a lot of gaps to fill and an area across the front which I tidied up with a section of plasticard 'u' section.  Three spare parts from the chimera kit lend a more heavily riveted look to the front glacis.

So what's to be done ?  I'm undecided at the moment - I was going to turn them over to FW, but then I built them.  The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, that well known Combat Engineer unit, could do with them.  Ho Hum.  When I surrendered the knock off DKK Death Rider Commissar to FW, I was able to give them the name of the e-Bay vendor.  So they had a chance to follow the trail back to the counterfitter.

The guy in the FB group gave them up because he wasn't too pleased with them.  He doesn't deserve an unsolicited interruption and the trail back to the actual counterfitter is likely tortuous and/or broken anyway. Awkward...

Wip STuG Zug

That unpainted line on the tarp roll needs addressing.  And the ammo boxes need some ammo box transfers, fortunately I have some, I just have to find them.

Dust is ok, but still loose and needs sealing in.  The panther markings are good, before the numbers are applied.  Heck, even the red is the same (those panthers are from the old Bretonnian transfer sheets).  But the white outline makes the numbers pop, which is a shame, as the panthers then look a bit meh.

Pencil over the tracks is in order, as is some work on the straps.

And those jerrycans.  They need to be a colour.  Either green or a deep orangey yellow.

And that searchlight lens, it needs to match the rest of the ASL stuff.

But on the whole, I like the low, mean, look.

More ammo boxes needing labels. And that GW stowage needs colouring in properly.

On the whole, these are almost there as well.