Armoured Monsters

This current post will feature a lot of tanks. First up, would be the only unit with an armour value in my WIP Minotaurs list; the Land Raider Achilles. As per fluff, Minotaurs are rather well-equipped with Mark VIII Power Armours, along with multitude of Predators and Vindicators. However, ever since Forgeworld put up a Minotaur-aligned LR Achilles, I'd simply fell to the lure and must make one myself.

However, it doesn't take away from the fact that it's a Land Raider Chassis, with its usual predicaments during assembly.

 

You guessed it, gaps and warps. Each and every single Land Raider I've assembled (FYI, this is the fourth) had the same problem, but I didn't found any similar complain from the community. Just my dumb luck, perhaps. After leaving it overnight, I ended up with this.

Finally, it's starting to look good. There's some unsightly gaps at the front panel, near the tracks which I need to cover up with Green Stuff. All in all, it's a good kit to look at when it's assembled. I later discovered however, that Vern (another fellow hobbyist) received a miscast of the multi-melta sponsons where the sponson slot was on the supposed outer side of the gun. Dude, if you want it to be assembled as per picture, I'd suggest you to drill through the slot and patch it up a bit with Green Stuff/epoxy putty.

This is what I have at the moment, and I just realized that my patching up work on the front plate was not up to standard. I guess I have to either repatch and repaint, or utilize the imperfection for battle damage. The later sounds more logical, what say you all?

Up until this point, this is how I painted this beauty.

Primer: Black, with an overbrush of White.

Basecoat: Two layers of GW Desert Yellow.

Primary Colour: Two layers of GW Dwarf Bronze

Secondary Colour: A light overbrush of GW Burnished Gold.

After bringing the model under a brighter light, it appeared that I may need to do at least another layer of Dwarf Bronze and redo the Burnished Gold overbrush. That being said, I may need some expert opinions on what I should do next. The way I do the infantry was to liberally wash them with Thraka Green and then a light wash of Hawk Turqoise. The question would be, should I do the same for the Land Raider? After all, it's a far bigger model than the infantry models.

Let's move on to second segment of this post, more tanks. One of my resolutions was not to start any new army in 2012, and therefore I had to cheat a bit; this army was started on December 27th, 2011. I was not too fond of WW2 history (personally, what's done is done), and therefore I need some strong triggers to start an army of this genre. The first one, was the location of Legio Malaysia, our gaming club, which is at the nearest possible proximity of Battlefront Miniatures. Second, support from fellow hobbyist. After months (years, perhaps) hearing the awesomeness of the game, slowly the interest grow within me. For this, I had to give credits to Jeff, Azlan, Iskazri, Khairul & Arzmi. The third and final trigger, credit was all Khairul's. He lend me some FoW books to read and gave me two tanks to paint. There was reluctancy to paint them at first, but after reading the books, they've totally won me over. The two Panther A tanks were an awesome start to my army.

That was the exact condition of the Panther A tanks that I received. Thanks to this also, I managed to get a rough idea regarding the base colour. There's only a limited pallette of VGC paints in my possession, the equivalent for this colour would be Tamiya Dark Yellow and GW Desert Yellow. The lesson I've learnt here was; gotta be creative in searching for equivalent colours, doesn't necessarily have to stick to only one brand. The next thing I did was, checking out the LGS for their FoW stock the next day. Lady luck was upon me as they happened to have 'some' Panther A in stock, and Jin Aun was also trying to sell off his Tigers for cheap and concentrate on his Russian army. These was the loot for the day.

Exactly six days after that, my army is 99% painted and ready for war. The remaining 1% would be the placement of decals/logo on the tanks, will consult the guys this hobby night regarding the matter. Listed below are the steps I took to paint them.

1. Primer: Black, with an overbrush of White.

2. Two layers of GW Desert Yellow.

3. A medium overbrush of GW Terracota.
4. Lining with GW Catachan Green. (Redid with Tamiya Olive Green since Alvin pointed out the green was too thin, thanks Alvin!)
5. Sponging with GW Boltgun Metal for battle damage.
6. Wash with 1:2:1 GW Chestnut Ink:Gloss Varnish:Water
7. Sponging with VGC German Grey over the Boltgun Metal areas to accentuate the wear and tear (Thanks to Alvin & Jeff!)
8. Random sponging of GW Desert Yellow.
9. A random light overbrush lining of GW Terracota.
10. A layer of 3:1:2  GW Charadon Granite:VGC Opaque Bluegrey:Water for the treads.
11. Drybrush the treads with GW Graveyard Earth, then GW Desert Yellow.
12. Picking up the details with these colours; GW Adeptus Battlegrey, VGC Charred Brown, GW Codex Grey, and GW Rotting Flesh before giving them some washes of GW Ogryn Flesh and GW Badab Black.

After all the steps above were done, these are what I ended up with...

And that's it, these thirteen tanks sums up to approximately 2500pts. By the way, this is my first time taking pictures of FoW minis. Would they do just fine or do I need to put shots of individual tanks? I do realize that I'll need a better background lighting since they're at a much smaller scale than what I usually do. Tell me what you guys think of it. Was thinking of painting either an Aufsklarung platoon or a couple of Pumas next, but let's just settle with these guys for now.