Thursday, May 26, 2011

Steel Legion Tank Prep - Heroes of Armageddon


The Heroes of Armageddon Project continues to gather momentum, like some massive juggernaut-type beast, preparing itself to roll right over any who dare to get in its way.

Foolish hyperbole or prophetic rambling? I'm guessing more of the former.

Anyway, this Saturday I'm getting together with a few friends to paint the vast bulk of the tanks for the Steel Legion army. As the vehicles are the key feature of the mechanized infantry force, I felt it was important to keep things as close as possible when it came to the bulk of the rolling steel.

Below you'll be able to see 12 of the 13 vehicles we'll be painting this weekend. One of the things that helped me realize I was doing the right thing when I volunteered to lead the Steel Legion Build Team was finding a box of nine painted Chimeras in a closet, and recognizing that they hadn't been out of that box in the nine years I've lived here in the US. Eleven years ago, I painted them up as Jantine Patricians (an elite mech inf regiment from the Gaunt's Ghosts series), and they had been allied with Tanith and Vitrian Dragoons against the Shriven in a massive OZ Games Day battle.


I dusted the models off, snapped off a few offending accoutrements, and then started adding more stowage, some of it from GW, some of it from Secret Weapon Miniatures. Above are the APCs of the 1st Platoon. That's right, the platoon will be one squad larger than the original list.


Here are the APCs of 2nd Platoon. The additional Chimera will be used for the army's Stormtroopers (aka Yarrick's Commissariat Bodyguard).


These two Leman Russ MBTs were assemble for the project by a friend of mine Josh Roberts. Josh is an excellent hobbyist and great dad : ) Thanks Josh.


This Vanquisher and Executioner were assembled by another friend, Bob Weiss. Bob is a veteran hobbyist from waaaay back who just loves his tanks. In fact, he might be the guy who has assembled more of them than I have. It took a little while for Bob to crowbar my old FW Vanquisher barrel into a regular LR turret, but the end result is seamless. Thanks Bob!




I mentioned earlier adding stowage to a bunch of the vehicles. Some of the fun bits were using the "panniers" etched brass sheet from Secret Weapon Miniatures, along with the large and small backpacks from them too. Thanks for the hook-up Justin.

Anyway, the are even more prizes being given away this week. Click on the button in the top right corner of this blog and contribute as much as you can to the cause, that gets you in the draw for the weekly prizes! Then head on over to the Heroes Of Armageddon blog to see what's up for grabs this Sunday : )

Cheers
Dave

7 comments:

  1. Hey Dave, I looked for an email but couldn't find it - just wanted to say great work, and I hope you don't mind me using your "Charity Efforts" image on my blog for a charity roundup section. I've linked your pic back here.
    http://www.wargamingtradecraft.com/#charity

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  2. ah man, not the jantine!
    i think 1 of the very first WDs i bought had a double page spread of them, with a lil ref to the novel 'first and only' in there.

    so what you going to do with that command chimera you converted up? was from a landraider chasis yeah?

    even remember the commander converted from 1 of the old tank commanders, and whole army was stormtroopers in transports with tanks yeah?

    shame your re-modeling it all, was a classic force.

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  3. Why are the vehicles purple? Aren't you doing steel legion?

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  4. Hi guys

    Thanks for your comments : )

    @Dave G - amusingly enough, my contact email is in my profile (just to the right of your comment. Not a problem borrowing the logo, I'm certainly not precious about the things we can do to help people.
    @Mephistopheles - Man, when I want to write my memoirs I think I'll need you as a ghost writer ; ) Yeah, the Jantines had spent too long doing nothing, so needed to be feed back into the wargaming world. The Command Chimera for those guys was built using a chimera body, with reversed Leman Russ tracks.
    @DimmyK - They were purple because I'm re-furbishing an old army (the Jantine Patricians). They are now all the classic Steel Legion scheme. See my next post. : )

    Cheers
    Dave

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  5. I dont know THAT much about you and 40k, i just know what i like and store it for later use :)
    I was considering doin a project of the Royal Volpone 50th Bluebloods way back in the day, had a pet hate for the patricians once started reading the books.
    Funny enough was your patricians that got me on the path of readin the GG series.
    But if you do need that ghost writer gimmi some word ahead, except for 2 issues, i got all from current back to issue #246 of the Aussie WD so can forward pics on if you dont got them :P

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  6. lol, ok, yeah, I see it now..

    Thanks.

    BTW, I wrote up some javascript that cuts out most spam bots - I haven't had any issues using it. Just incase you want to make it more public.
    http://www.wargamingtradecraft.com/2011/02/displaying-your-email-safely.html

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  7. which white dwarf did they appear in? was thinking of starting an IG army based on the jantine and was looking for inspiration. :-D

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