224 Baneblade 'Zarathustra' Almost Finished

Evening, All!

Just thought I'd share with you the current state of my last project for the summer holidays before I go back to work: finishing off my venerable Forgeworld Baneblade Zarathustra...and I'm very nearly there!

Massive thanks go to Jeff over at Pirate Viking Painting for emailing me some very useful tips yesterday - some of which I've put into practice here. Although hardly any of it shows in the photos, she actually has a surprising amount of subtle detailing with rust and weathering now, which I'm pretty happy with. Cheers, Jeff! Seriously - check out his link, above.

Here are the pics - and yes, I've added an anti-aircraft autocannon onto a pintle mount. Why not, eh?

You may note that two of her track links are green. Apparently, when I assembled her from the godawful FW instructions seven years ago I put the tracks too far round. In order to remedy this, I did my first (basic) bit of press-moulding, making a mold out of Fimo modelling clay (it bakes to harden) and finding a surprising success in the resulting greenstuff impression:

And yes, that is what you think it is in the background. It's psyker time!

Cheers,

- Drax

PS: I may re-do the first half of the name plate: my fault for writing backwards from the central 'H'!

223 Competition Results and Good News

Good news first:

My new club is having a mini tournament next Thursday - five games of 400pts: Combat Patrol, essentially, with some challenging embuggerments. Should be a good laugh and a good challenge!

And in other news, I've decided that the names of my most recent two Leman Russ Variants will be as follows:

Annihilator: Lux Exitus - Light of Destruction

and

Demolisher: Redemtus - Rescued.

My sincere thanks and muted congratulations to (both!) The Jim [no link?] and The Inner Geek for the first one, and to The Other Kevin for the latter. Cheers, guys! - If any of you three wish to claim the somewhat dubious prize, please just drop me an email or comment below. It'd be nice if someone does, but I do appreciate you guys are way better at painting than me!

Thanks so much for all the entries, everyone: there were twenty-six in total, with some great rationales and a few giggles, too. Cheers.

- Drax.

222 Classic Armoured Fist Platoon - Complete!

Well then, more progress for the ol' progress blog. At last, my Armoured Fist platoon (comprising my old metal Cadians):

Pics first, then notes [There are links to old posts on the component units too]. Please forgive lighting - there's been a notable absence of sunlight recently...
HQ Section [gren, gren, flamer; officer could also be Al'Rahem proxy]:

1 Section [plasma gun]:

2 Section [melta gun]:

3 Section [grenade launcher]:

Here's a selection of models I quite like (the grenade launchers are all converted):

And here are the squad ID flashes:

It's took a fair bit of patient collecting and a little converting to ensure they're armed the same as my normal infantry platoons, but it's a simple and cheap combonation of weapons, and I find it works well. That said, having assembled the troops for this platoon, I then decided that I liked the missile launcher models way too much, so I just had to put those in too...a little spuriously, I fear.

At least eight of these have been with me since I bought the Cadian Shock Troops boxed set, over a decade ago, and as is befitting this veteran status I figure they could also double as chimera-mounted hardened vets if needed. As it happens, I've a few spare plasma and melta guns!

- "But surely Drax isn't getting all competitive?!" I hear you cry.

No, but I'm working on an idea to offer my services as a sparring partner for anyone at the club who wants to practise before tournaments, and these are so often an integral part of the competitive IG build...well - we'll see.

So there you go. Another thing crossed off the ol' painting chart.

By the way, the informal contest for naming a brace of my tanks ends tomorrow. Probably midday-ish, BST.

Cheers,

- Drax.