Praetorian Leman Russ Finished!

Pursuing once more with the one at a time approach I have finished the Leman Russ!

I got some more spray paint today so I can start work on painting the tank crews for the medusa and salamander, also I got the Empire engineer with a mechanical horse so I can start work on Mogul Kamir's (I'll think of a suitably Praetorian name soon...) horse!

Highland Guard Chimera Finished!

I had been steadily progressing across all the tanks over the past couple of days, but tonight got a little frustrated with how long it was taking so decided just to get one finished.

The Highland Guard's chimera was the lucky one and now it is finished!

Here it is with the solitary finished guardsman from the unit (really must get painting the rest of them...). The markings on the chimera are different from 1st platoons, they had a leaping Lion whereas here we have REX IV LEG and small lion head motif with a sword behind it.

Once again different insignia (bar the universal praetorian) as over the red and blue colours I have a small IV top right hand corner and a large male lion head in the cente. Im pretty please with how it tuned out though I think I made his muzzle a bit to long which gives him a certain wolfishness. The lion himself was relatively easy compared to some of the smaller detail work.

Thursday this week I have a 1850pts game scheduled against Necrons! Having never played them before it should be very interesting. I haven't got a great deal of flexibility in my army list as I will pretty much take what is painted (the Highland vets being the unpainted exception), hopefuly I can have the HQ chimera, Medusa, and two Leman Russ fully ready for then.

Only possible addition is an Inquisition sanctioned Valkyrie...
It is the old forgeworld model from about 8/9 years ago and was painstaking painted black and red and covered in Inquisition motifs. It has never seen the battlefield (and will need some kind of flying stand added to it, but as its the forgeworld valkyrie there is no x to insert it) and while not strictly Praetorian the Inquisition may be interested in the sudden awakening of some evil tin cans...

Any tips on fighting the necrons would be greatly appreciated!

Praetorian tank crew and objective markers

Hello everyone, I hope you have all had a good weekend. I've managed to get down to some good hobbying today and have made some good progress with a great many projects currently ongoing.

Heres a look at the mess I've made in the kitchen...

One of the most interesting project at the moment is the Salamander. I have finished converting the tank crew (and crew for my Medusa), they now all have goggles on their helmets and various gaps from converting have been filled. Here they are.

Medusa gunner

 Medusa loader

 Salamander comms operator

 Salamader officer

I'm pretty happy with the goggles, the medusa crew were the last two I did so I think they look a bit better. I'll have to wait and see how they look painted.

Another project I've been working on is a couple more objective markers. A ammo cache and a fallen standard, of course with the obligatory pith helmet.

While I had all my modelling tools out I also had a crack at converting another Praetorian Officer, this time with a Power fist and cane, he will be the officer of 2nd platoon (which consists of a lot of undercoated and needing to be stripped guardsmen...).

There has also been a fait amount of painting going on this weekend, all of which has been working towards updating several tanks; Leman Russ, Leman Russ Executioner, Medusa, Highland Vets. Chimera, Command HQ Chimera.

Heres a picture of the HQ Chimera and Medusa. I have finished the weathering on the tracks of all of the tanks and basecoated the various parts which will have free hand designs and markings put on them. There is a lot to do but it will be worth it in the end...

Quite a big update there, rather a lot of plates spinning at once. I have also just ordered a mechanical horse...

Another Salamander post!

Sorry to post again so quickly but I have really enjoyed workign on the salamander and it is almost ready for painting!
I have just about finished the two crew (a little more green stuffing to do, I need to practice how to sculpt goggles on their helmets, I'm thinking kinda Rommel style) and the Salamander is pretty much done.

A few details here and there; a wreath and purity seals on the front shield. A small pennant on the antenna and half a Land Raider Crusader frag launcher which give is representing something (not sure what but I liked it. Maybe extra armour or another part of the comms relay)

The crew are a autocannon loader with head cut off and reattached pointing towards the screen, the autcannon magazine was removed and the arm moved to be pointing towards the console and a pointing hand from the heavy weapon sprue attached.

The other crew member is the missile launcher gunner, who has an arm swap and a hand swap with a las pistol and binoclars. Also as this unit is going to be giving orders we need at least some kind of senior trooper on the Salamander so he has an aquilla on his helmet and the braids sculpted like the sergeant models.

I am quickly becoming quite excited about this project! I now have some good ideas for the Medusa crew. Now on to sculpting goggles!

WIP Praetorian Salamander and Commandos

Happy weekend everyone! Been a long week for me so no time for modelling or painting. However last weekend I took a few photos of few things I have been working on so I would have something to post!
So here we have a Salamander Command Tank.

It will only feature in larger games or games in which I have lots of infantry as it enables you to issue a few more orders. I need to do some converting for the crew but as yet dont really have many ideas, the only thing that came to mind was sculpting some driving goggles on whatever models are used. The tank (which has been lurking in the bitz box for the past 10 years) originally had a flamer which has since been replaced with a converted heavy weapon team heavy bolter, the ammo feed has been changed to feed into the tank.

The other WIP is the commando storm troopers.

So this is pretty much various VL bits (chem tanks, arms and weapons, heads), pith helmets and some pouches/bottles from empress miniatures and cadian bits. The work that needs doing is green stuff epaulettes (without them they will be to different from the rest of the army), facial hair (these are Praetorians after all!) and aquilla on hats or uniforms (so they really look like IG and not like historical miniatures).
Now I originally wanted these to be storm troopers but I'm starting to think differently. I look at their armour and the 4+ seems hard to justify, furthermore the weapons look far more like sniper rifles than hot shot short range las rifles (also I want to butcher some DKOK grenadiers for my storm troopers now). As such I'm thinking maybe these guys would make good ratlings (I've never been a fan of the space hobbits...), or if I get another 5 done a Vet squad with the camo cloaks and snare mines option.
Either way I'm thinking maybe a slightly different paint scheme. I'd like your thoughts on what you think they should be and how to proceed with them!

Finally the tickets for GW Badab War Campaign (26th - 27th May 2012) at warhammer world go on sale 1st Feb. I'm thinking of going. I've never been to one of these campaign weekends before, what are peoples experiences of them? Any good? Any other Praetorian players thinking of going and fancy teaming up in the doubles match?

OOP Grey Knights

Another non-praetorian post, unfortunately I've not had much time for painting or modelling in the past few days so I'm putting up some photos of old models.

Today some OOP Grey Knights, I can't remember exactly what edition these are from but they are from the early 90s if memory serves. I painted them about 8/9 years agos as a Golden Demon entry, they got through the first round but no further.

Enjoy!

Black Dragon Space Marines Army

I've been looking through a few cases of some other armies that I have (like the Praetorians were, these have been tucked away in the loft for the past 7 or 8 years!) and unearthed my Black Dragon Space Marine army!

It was painted with city fight in mind and was based on elements of the Black Dragon 10th Company. Being the 10th company it was a scout based army with a few other elements thrown in for good measure.

Lets start with the HQ

Not generally speaking part of the army I usually played with but was great fun to paint and convert.

The next guy is the Captain of the 10th and the Master of Recruits.

There are two 6 man scout squads and a unit of scout bikers.

There is also a six man tactical squad which are meant to represent scouts newly promoted to wear power armout, but nonetheless still camouflaged rather than the black of the rest of the chapter.

To give the army a bit of bite in combat there is a five man squad of Dragon Claw assault marines with the ubiquitous blades emerging from their forearms.

Lastly heavy support comes in the form of a Vindicator and Predator annihilator.

I don't have a copy of the new marine codex so I'm not really sure how many points it amounts to but I imagine around 1000pts.

Photos of 1750pts battle vs Eldar

This evening down at Poole GW I had the great fortitude to stumble upon not only a beautifully painted army to play against but a great opponent!

1750pts was decided upon, which included everything in my case and a few special characters thrown in to make up the points.

I was pleased to see that it wasn't only my deployment zone that resembled a parking lot. My army had 5 Chimera, 1 Medusa, 1 Hellhound, 1 Leman Russ, 1 LR Punisher. His army included 3 wave serpents,  2 falcons, 1 warp hunter and 2 hornets. Tanks galore.

The mission was objectives with one in each of our deployment zones. His army was led by none other than Eldrad Ulthuan himself, while my army featuring both marbo and bastone was of course commanded by the newly painted Colonel Winterborne.

The first 2 turns of shooting saw my massed guns achieve next to nothing, what with the Farseers witch craft, holo fields and cover the big guns managed to kill nothing at all. The only highlight was 2nd squads autcannon which destroyed the warp hunter first turn, then shot down a wave serpent in the next!!! Give that man a promotion. The Veterans led by Bastone were all killed in the second turn by Eldrad and his seer council, their flamer like weapons leaving solely Bastone to face off against them in combat where he succumbed to the eldar attacks.

The following turns saw shot after shot bounce of Eldrad and and his seer council while he unleashed doom and eldritch storm on various units and tanks before smashing the punisher to pieces in combat. Eventually it was left to Colonel Winterborne to engage the Farseer at put the alien to the sword...

In the resulting combat the combined attacks (almost 30 in total...) managed to cause only one unsaved wound. Oh dear. But as luck would have it Eldrad proceeded to fail his leadership test, flee and get caught by the pursuing Command HQ!

With much of the of the fighting centred around the objective in my deployment zone 1st squad and the hellhound had been flanking the Eldar position but soon encountered far superior foes in the form of a number of falcons and wave serpents. 1st squads Chimera was badly damaged and they were forced to footslog it towards the objective.

With their armoured support all but destroyed 1st squad were then engaged by Dire Avengers (rather ineffective Avengers killing only 2 guardsmen!) who tied them up in combat for the remainder of the game.

The game continued a full 7 turns and was hanging in the balance as it approached its conclusion. The remaining guardsman of 2nd squad held my objective while the eldar had a dire avenger lurking in the ruins surrounding their objective. My objective was however contested by an enemt wave serpent that refused to die, krak grenade after krak grenade pumnmeled the tank (there were several penetrating hits!!!) which resulted in it being stunned many times.

With him contesting my objective my only chance lay with what I can only describe as the most disappointing tank of the day. The Medusa. It had fired every turn of the game, scattering away from its intended target without fail almost everytime. The only chance I had was firing a bunker buster shell at the enemy tank on their objective and try to kill the Dire Avenger as well. As luck would have it the shell hit, penetrated the tank, failed cover save and... imobilized it. Meaning that the skimmer that hadn't moved all game couldn't move. Utter failure, and the dire avenger survived.

Unfortunately for me the game ended 1-0 to the Eldar, but it went down to the wire and was great fun to play!  The plaudits must go to my opponent who played a great game and had a fantastic army!

Here are a few close up photos of a few skimmers and Eldrad.