With lockdown easing further here in the UK, I had the chance to visit a friend who is a big 40k fan as well.
His armies have featured on this blog in the first Apocalypse game, the chaos forces on the board.
He owns various armies other than his chaos forces.
One of the oldest is his Battle Sisters force, and he had built up a guard army to go alongside.
With the newest Battle Sisters update at the beginning of the year, he has started a new force of them, and I offered to paint up a tank for him to match some which I had done in the past as he liked the scheme.
"I'll just start with this shitty Russ which we traded years ago to remember the scheme, before I commit to a good tank" I said.
The Russ in question was a wreck from eBay and I forget why we had traded, but it was about 10 years ago when we traded anyway.
Here is what it looked like to begin with:
Most of the side panels had been drilled into for bullet damage, there were glue marks all over it, so it was more then just a paint job it seemed.
I grabbed a Russ accessory sprue and set to work.
Each of the sponsors had side damage, so I started by cutting up the remaining track guards to add some armour to the damaged area's:
Chopping and filing down later I had this in place:
I also added a piece from a Valkyrie cockpit (I think) as a sort of air-exchanger/heat dissipating device, useful if he decides to upgrade the turret to the Plasma Cannon toting version.
Some tools were added onto of the sponsor to distract from the damage I couldn't cover there.
On to the other side, again a piece of track guard to cover the sponsor, I also added a slung tow cable to the side.
Probably not in the correct position, but it looks good.
The rear and engine decking also saw some attention:
One thing he hadn't done with any of his tanks was to make them look lived in.
Every armoured vehicle I have ever seen has had equipment, backpacks, netting, etc slung on the sides of it as the crew literally live in the vehicle.
So a piece of plasticard was used to make the basket wall and then a tool crate, Jerry can and backpacks were glued in where they fell.
An Imperial Aquilla was glued underneath eth engine deck and finally to cover some caked on paint and glue I couldn't remove, I wrapped some wire mesh around the exhausts.
At this time, I realised that the heavy bolters on the sponsons were gooped up with paint, so the decision was made to replace them as well.
I started off with some spare heavy bolters from a Valkyrie kit and chopped one down:
The stock piece is at the top, modified at the bottom.
On e I'd gotten three of them ready, I chopped away the offending guns on the tank, including the lascannon on the front, and added a few pieces of plasticard to cover te holes.
The bolters were then glued straight on, leaving the hull like this:
Attention now turned to the turret, where a heavy stubber was added, and an Aquilla added to the rear as the modelled one was obliterated and had to be scraped off:
I also chopped up one of the winged skull icons to add some detailing, as well as another piece of track guard to cover some drilled bullet holes:
I figured that added some much needed detail, and can be easily replicated over the other tanks in his force.
After a quick blast of black primer, the finished conversion looks like this:
Painting will start soon, but first I need to recharge...
*Drawn artwork from Bolter to Koroko
Until next time...
- Lewis
