Vindicator of Khorne (Part 3)

Slowly but surely, the Vindicator of Khorne grows nearer to completion! After the last game I played my Vindicator took on a wee bit of transport damage, and since I have been focusing mostly on Khorne anyway, it only made sense to conclude this project. And just in case you haven't seen this thing from the start, check out how this project started. And here as well.

First off I had to tighten up the Blood Red painting, and then highlight the edges using Ruby Red.

After that I had to get the bronze areas completed. Also the hydraulics were finished by using Mitheral Silver.

I wanted this thing to look old, so rusting up the ventilation system seemed like a logical thing to do.

I added a Khorne decal to the front panel, which then used thinned paints to color over the transparent part of the film. This was my first time using decal solutions (more on that stuff in a future post).

I added an older style decal to the rear door.

Additional highlights now in the form of Mitheral Silver for the rivets, bullet holes, and other miscellaneous scratches and scrapes.

The last thing to do is the gunner and his gun. Slowly continuing to make progress on him, though I am kinda stuck on how exactly I want to paint the combi-bolter. I should have that figured out soon.

And skulls. There are a lot of bits with skulls on them that are also being worked on as well. I mean. it IS a Khorne tank, it's GOT to have skulls, right?!

And I need to add a few Dark Angel helms as well, right Bob?... :)

Vindicator of Khorne (Part 2)

Work continues, albeit slowly, on this Vindicator of Khorne. Continuing where I left off in part 1, I decided to go with the taller option for the crewman that will man the twin-linked weapon on the top. I added some more bits to the tank as well in order show allegiance to Khorne and Chaos.

Now with spikes!

I primed the model with Testers spray enamel flat metallic brown and flat black. This creates a great undercoat for the Scab Red to build on as well as any Rust effects I might try to come up with. This worked very well on the World Eater Land Raider i did back in the Spring.

"What's a Rusty Venture?"

Somehow I neglected to snap a photo of the scab red coat, I guess the blood-lust overcame me and I went straight to applying the Blood Red.

The Blood Red has been added.

 The Blood Red is thinned down at this point, and once I paint the other features I will go back and add solid color on the edges to build a highlight effect.

And slowly I paint away at this thing when time allows...

Vindicator of Khorne (part 1)

Hello again,  In my last two posts I showed you the tank I was stripping the paint off of. You can see those details here in I'm a stripper part one and part-2. This post-thread continues to show the fate of the primary model of those posts, a late '90s era Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition Space Marine Vindicator.

After over a week of bathing in Superclean, the tank was all but separated, mostly due to being joined primarily with super glue. The yellow/orange color that was underneath the black paint job has been really resistant to the superclean, but most of it has come off. What is left can be easily painted over and no one will be the wiser (unless they follow this blog I guess).

 After cleaning off the super clean chemical, I got down to scrapping off the more stubborn paint and glue chunks. Particularly the glue chunks which you can see dotting the paper towel that these parts are resting on in the pic below.

Scrapped down to the bones! 

Here is a close up shot that I took right after I put the first track assembly back on. As I noted at the end of the last post, this reminds me of a photo you might see in an old talk/army surplus or other such industrial machinery graveyard. Just add weeds and graffiti!

I took this next pic to illustrate the correct way to assemble the original Rhino chassis. When the sides of the hull are put on you want to make sure the center joins touch and that both ends are left with a sort of 'bumper' that sticks out, otherwise you'll end up with gaps in the top and bottom of the model.

The propa way.

With both track assembles added back on, we have a tank looking more like a Rhino again!

Now to add the metal bitz:

This was kind of fun to put together, but man does it make this model heavy!

A reassembled Vindicator.

 This model was missing some parts when I got it, the back door and bottom hatch mostly. Luckily after 25 years of collecting these models, one tends to collect a few bitz for just such a situation:

Release the bitz!

 Now, and here's where I hope for some input: how do you like the gunner:

Do you like the gunner low?

Or do you like him high? 

I'm eager to know.

Oh, and yes, if the title wasn't a give away, this is going to be completely turned into a Vindicator for my World Eaters Chaos Space Marines! Blood for the blood god khorne! Because the idea of a support vehicle for a bunch of chain axe wielding loons seems amusing to me.

Until next time...

Distracted by Rhinos...pt2

What better thing to do on a 4th of July than parade your armies about? Well since I had no plans at all on the 4th, and it was for the most part a rainy day, I stayed in to paint models. Instead of finishing that regiment of Fantasy Orcs, I found myself painting tanks. Again, I was distracted-by-rhinos!

In particular, I just wanted to get this rhino painted. It has been kicking around with just a shadow grey base coat for almost a decade now, and I was tired of seeing it in this state. BTW, this is one that my previous local game store gave me, it was left behind after a weekend of gaming and unclaimed after a few weeks so he gave it to me. It was torn up bad and missing pieces, so I added an assortment of tank accessories from some Tamiya kits and other bits to sort of make up for it.

Drawing on the claws in pencil.

Drawing the claws onto the roof hatch, added door handles after this.

I have gotten fairly good at hand drawing and painting these 'claw' iconography onto Space Wolf tanks. It is still a pain the but doing them on Space Marine shoulder pads though.

Adding the scab red basecoat.

Adding the Firey Orange base-coat for the yellow

Yeah, yeah, I hear you: "But Neverness, don't you hate Blood Claws?" Well, not the concept, just their current state. And this tank was always theirs. So I stuck with plan.

Adding the mid-coat.

Adding the Space Wolf Grey coat.

 It wasn't long after this that I had the realization that I would never but Blood Claws into this tank. It only makes sense to put them, in a maxed out squad, into a Land Crusader.

All well...LOL

I also deepened the low-lights on my Leman Russ Exterminator (that'll get it's own post eventually) and my whirlwind, which has earned it's additional paint job with it's recent battlefield performance. I not only darkened it's tone, but finished the hull all the way up to the white highlight. I just need to apply a few more touch-ups and it is done. Also I am stuck on where to place the Storm Bolter add on? This original model really didn't provide a spot for it. Thinking on it, it is the reason we stuck the stormbolter on the dover-blade on this Dark Angel whirlwind.  I rarely take any upgrades to my whirlwinds, as they really only have one role, so I might just leave it off.

Looking at it reduced, I think I need to darken it a bit more...

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SITE UPDATE:
I have added a new page called Other Armies to summarize and provide links to my armies that aren't Space Wolves or Orks. Check it out on the top bar on this blog. I have pics there that do not appear anywhere else on this blog. It is a never-ending work in progress which I intend to continuously update.

 I hope you enjoy!

Distracted by Rhinos...pt1

The 3 rhinos, in the state that they have been in for close to 10 years...

As I played through the last few games, I grew more and more dissatisfied that the vehicles that I tend to use the most were only half painted (and barely even to that level). Worse, they were this weird fusion between the old style (see the Space Wolf Gallery: Vindicator) and the current (in the same gallery, see the Land Speeder Typhoon). The current being of a darker tone over all with more Shadow Gray, as opposed to the older style which had Space Wolf Gray as the dominate tone. Oddly, these 3 old (this frame remained in production longer then ANY 40K models! I challenge you to find another!) Rogue Trader era models were in my collection in a weird transitional state where one was highlighted up to Space Wolves Gray, one in the middle tone, and one half-assed base-coated.

In recent games I have been only using the two with the most color, and I decided that I just needed to finish them. In October I took a small vacation and during that time while working on the Bastion (another blog entry coming soon) I decided to throw some paint on these things with the delusion that this would be fast (ha!).

The 1st thing to do a was tone down the over-bearing highlights, so I went in and did that with a watered down Shadow Gray using pure paint for the darkest areas.

This particular one I really deepened it quite a bit.....

 

One I was satisfied with this recovery of the deeper tone, I proceeded to tighten up the the middle color (a sort of ...Masta Cheef don't start...Baby Blue-ish color) and the Space Wolf Gray highlight. As well as the free-hand forms of the Grey Hunter pack icons.

 You might spot in my battle-reports that I don't glue down the rear hatch or the smaller pair of hatches that the bolters rest on. This is so I can remove them during game play, as well as swivel them when the tanks become imoblized. I am contemplating magnetizing them...

It's a bit subtle, but here is the transitional state of the storm bolter hatches. And the hunter-killer (guaranteed to miss!) missiles as well...
 Well, over this past weekend I picked these rhinos back up and damn near finished them!

 They are not done yet, but i  am very pleased with their progress up to the this point!

All I have left to do is to paint the lights, finish the metallic areas, and apply decals.

 Also, during the aforementioned vacation, I decided to spend some time (and money) organizing my bitz bins to a more user friendly state. I think it has done wonders for my whole modeling area and saves me time from having to look for weird and wonky bitz.

Another update coming soon!