Banebalde progess update

I had planned to spend the weekend painting up the Baneblade and getting it ready for action, but the weather has put a stop to that. The air is so hot and humid, that there is more paint stuck in the brush than I get on the tank. Also when I get the paint on to the tank it dries so quick that it is hard to get every stroke distributed evenly.

Still, it seems that the paint dries ok, so I don't have to redo what I have done so far.

I have painted the rotating heavy bolter tower on the front of the tank, painted the front and top of the tank, and the main turret except for the main cannon.

I hope to get some more painting done when the sun goes down and the temperature drop a little.

It won't be finished tonight as I originally had planned, but hopefully within a few days it will be done.

Painting the Baneblade

I have given the painting of the Baneblade a lot of thought.
Earlier I have mentioned that I plan to paint the main body of the tank dark gray (Adeptus Battle Gray) and all towers and the underside black (Chaos Black). I have re-thought this after assembling the tank.
The entire tank, turrets and all, will be dark gray, then a lot of the details that stick out from the tank will be painted black. Typical things that will be black is the viewports and tracks protection.
All Aquila symbols will be painted Chainmail or Mithril silver to make it stand out from the dark gray. I know that this is painted white on a lot of miniatures, but I don't like using white paint more than I have to as I feel I don't get it to cover as much as I would like without using several layers of paint. This in turn makes the details more shady, and if there is something I would like to stand out instead of being shaded it is the details.
The tank commander and the gunner will have black or Sky blue uniforms. I will have to give that a little more thought before I decide. I have decided that my air cavalry units will have the blue uniforms, and doing the same for the tank crew would help making the impression of a coherent force more obvious.
Still I have a feeling that the commander of Baneblade 01 would look dashing in a black uniform coat, but on the other hand it might make him look a little too much like a Commisar, and that is not something I would like either as I don't want to explain the difference to everyone seeing my complete army on the battlefield.

For Baneblade 02 I will use the minis that comes with the tank to operate it from the turret. BaneBlade 01 will have the before mentioned metal commander and a gunner from the boxed set (perhaps with a headswap). The Shadowsword that will accompany the Baneblades will either have a commander from the box or a commander I bought off Ebay a while back.

I plan on starting the painting this afternoon, and hope to have it done by the end of the weekend. Pictures of the Baneblade will follow when the paint is completely dry.

Super heavy almost ready...

My Baneblade is now almost completely assembled. The tank is finished and looking mighty big and impressive standing on top of its box. The one thing (or rather two) that is missing before I paint it up is the commander and gunner, and their hatches in the tower.

I didn't manage to get all the turrets movable as described in the instructions. I know I had some glue residue that keeps the heavy bolter turrets from rotating, but this doesn't really bother me as I expect them to behave like the similar turrets on the Leman Russ. There the paint was scraped off when the turrets were swung, so I ended up gluing them shut on that mini. Still the heavy bolters move up and down as they should.

I would have liked to have the lascannon towers moving, but they are assembled with a bolt pinning through the turret and it should be glued with a tiny drop of glue at the bottom. I would have liked the hole to be deeper so that the bolt reached farther away from the tower. This would have made it a lot easier to glue the bolt shut without getting glue to smear out under the turrets. Still, I positioned them in a way that makes the tank look very threatening.

The cannon on the main body is fully movable, and also the main cannon in the tower have the elevation it is supposed to have. The small heavy bolter turret at the front is assembled and has full rotation. This turret is made just like the main turret, and this would actualy be the best solution for the side turrets as well if Games Workshop was to change something in the design on their super heavies in the future. I think this is more important than making drive sprockets that attaches to both sides of the side walls as other people have commented on in forums and blogs about 40K.

All in all I am very happy with the way GW has made the set, and it will be very nice to use it both for Apocalypse and display purposes.

more super heavy updates

Just thought I should add a little more info about the super heavy project. 

Both the Baneblades will be assembled with both a commander and gunner visible in the turret. I don't know what I will do with the Shadowsword yet, as I need to assemble some of it and get the feeling for it before I take that desition. But at the moment I'm leaning towards having some command figure looking out of the hatch of that as well. The Baneblade 01 will have a metal commander from a bit-set. You can see him on the left here. I needed an officer that did not look exactly like Knight Commander Pask, as he will be commanding one of my Leman Russ tanks. So the choice fell on the commander as he looks like a posterboy for an officer. Both dashing in his uniform and battle hardened enough. The Baneblade 02 will have the two original minis that comes with the tank. I will also assemble the standing commander, but he will most likely end up as a commander in some other part of the Imperial forces, as I don't need loose figures for the tanks. I also have some commanders in my bits box that will see action in one of many tanks in this army. When it comes to painting, I have decided on a basic groundwork of Chaos Black and Adeptus Battle Grey (dark grey color). The main armorplates will be painted in dark grey, and the underside of the tank and the towers will be painted black. I will also paint some details on the tank black. The main gun will be black or dark gray, and the smaller guns will be painted gun metal. I plan to paint a camouflage pattern of lighter gray on the tank, but have not yet decided how to paint this pattern, other than it will be painted on top of both background colors.

Not just heavy, but super heavy

Here is one more update before I turn in for the night.

Except for the before mentioned problems with the tracks (see the post from earlier today) the Baneblade has been a true pleasure to assemble. I have assembled plenty of tanks of this size before, as I also build and paint dioramas with 1:35 scale models. The difference is that they tend to have tracks that can actually turn if assembled right, and that the Baneblade is a little wider than these miniatures usually are.

As an experiment I decided to build this Baneblade without painting while assembling. This is how most people in the Warhammer hobby assemble their miniatures after all.

I have decided that I will go back to my old way of doing it, painting while assembling when this tank is done. The reason for this is that I see there are a few places where it might be difficult to get good access with the brush when painting. If I was using airbrushing I would have reached everything I guess, but I'm not there...

Because of this I have decided against using this Baneblade as the command tank it was meant to be. The other Baneblade that I have on my shelves will get the honor of being maked 01, while this nice tank will get the 02 markings. Then the Shadowsword will get the designation 03.

There might be other super heavies in the future, as there are several very nice versions to be built from the boxed sets that exist. But for now I only have the three tanks, and as far as I can understand they will be more than enough for regular games of Apocalypse and certainly for showing off in my glass cabinets. Along with enough Leman Russ tanks, Hellhound variants, Chimeras and the odd Manticore or Hydra this will be a mighty army. I will have to follow up with painting a lot of Imperial Guard infantry to go with such an army but I do like to paint and assemble so that should not be a problem.

The Baneblade 02 (it will get a "real" name before it is used for games and put in the glass cabinet) is only missing the main turret, and this will have to wait until I have painted up the commander and the gunner, although I am looking in to ways to work around that, to get the tank as finished as possible in a short timeframe. Still I will not take shortcuts that results in an ugly miniature, as the Baneblade certainly deserves to be assembled and painted to the best of the owners abilities.

Super Heavy rolling in...

My wife was going to compete in a food competition in Stavanger for amateur chefs this weekend, so my plan was to start Friday afternoon and keep working on it all through the weekend.

But then something happened...

At 15:26 a carbomb exploded in front of some of the government buildings in Oslo. This was Norways first taste of "international" terrorism. We had a war here from 1940-1945 but after that Norway has been a peaceful part of the world. And just a couple hours later, a desperado started shooting at a political youth camp and killed more than 80 people and wounded about 70. So Instead of building my super heavy I watched the news. Turns out a Norwegian man aged 32 is behind both attacks, and he got arrested Friday night.

Saturday I spent several hours helping my widowed uncle move out of his home and in to a smaller place.

But today I finally managed to start on my first super heavy.

Many people complain that the drive sprockets on the tank are very wobbly and because of this hard to fit nicely to the tank. I didn't find that to be a problem at all, but I had a little problem with one track on each side on the front.

Apart from that it seems like a nice enough assembly really. As usual the building instructions is rotten, but that is a known problem with all Games Workshop miniatures that demand assembly above gluing arms and heads to bodies. still, this is not the worst I have been working with.

The model itself is a real beauty.

More will follow when more work has been done.