Warhammer 40,000 Project (Back) Log

January 23rd, 2009

Season: Warhammer 40,000

Army: Alpha Legion (1000)

Unit: Vindicator Spite

Alright, it’s time to roll out some guns!! I need some vengeance with my Alpha Legion, and I’ve decided that the best way to get that is with a Demolisher Cannon. So, this is the first of my Vindicators to roll off the pirated Imperial Armor ship – the much feared Annihilator, also known as Siege Gun 1!

Each Siege Gun will be the focal point of a detachment within the army, usually consisting of the Siege Gun itself and a 10-man Chaos Space Marine squad, such as Commander Shadax’s Legionnaires from my last blog, and a support unit such as Chosen or a Sorcerer.

Did someone just say something about Alpha Legion can’t have Vindicators?!?! I never heard such a thing… Anyways, this is actually a Space Marine Vindicator, which I got from my FLGS because he didn’t have Chaos Vindicators. In fact, I got two Space Marine Vindicators, with only a single Chaos upgrade sprue and some assorted other bits the shopkeep was able to scrounge for my project. The Umbral Stalkers (my Alpha Legion detachment) simply stole these Vindicators, because they were available and they knew how to use them. Voila! Instant Fluff.

It’s been a long time since I put a tank kit together and it really shows…I think it could have gone together better, but I didn’t spend a lot of time on it and was half watching a movie. Dreamcatcher…I had never seen it before, and that guy from Band of Brothers was in it…and that guy from Deadwood…and that guy – but I digress from the point. My last tank was a Land Raider back in ’04, so it’s been quite some time…nearly five years…since I painted a tank.

I decided to paint the vehicle in three parts: The tank, the siege ram and the cupola, with a cool marine stickin’ his head out lookin’ about. On the metal I will emphasize the Tin Bitz coloring in the scheme, and try to bring out the green on the armor plates without making it look too splotchy.

I diddled around and didn’t get much done this week, but its working. I’m going to speed it up next week, and should have this tank done in time for the next blog. It took hours to get the Nauseating Blue on evenly, and then highlighting and fixing the most glaring of my mistakes took even longer.

Siege Gun 1, Callsign Spite. Yeah, baby…this here lil’ ol’ tankerism is gonna rack up the kills come D-Day, I guarantee. Recently we played a small campaign against a friend’s DIY Space Marines (“The Infinity Watch”), and although my enemies didn’t have much in the way of armor I bemoaned my Legion, dispossessed as they were of their Infiltrate ability. How I yearned for my siege guns…

Anyway, this’ll fix all of that. It took quite some time to do the shading, all blues, greens and black. I played with it for a long time to get something like what I was seeing in my head, and I’m actually quite pleased with how it turned out. The construction was kinda botched and it’s readily apparent, but I’m not going to point it out for you! Ha!

Behold, the pristine Spite in all his shiny glory. I have a thing for tanks that are spankin’ new. The Necron and Tau trophies on the top racks are painted how I’d like to eventually paint armies for those races. I have it planned for like 4 years from now, so if I’m still alive maybe we’ll see that on my blog here eventually.