Mechanicum Thanatar Siege Automata.

 

With the recent releases of the Adeptus Mechanicum for Horus Heresy and Legions Imperialis, I decided to finish off a model which has been languishing on the rear of my desk for far too long.

This is a Forge World resin Thanatar, the one which has just recently been replaced by the new plastic kit.

As mentioned I'd previously work on this and then stopped, this was how it looked earlier this evening.

Mostly finished, notable points are the highlighting on the yellow and black areas, and final assembly before drybrushing the base.

After those bits were done, I quite like the glowing blue of the plasma mortar.

The model was missing something, so I decided to try a technique I'd seen on YouTube about chipping the armour panels using a bit of sponge and some tweezers.

I cut off about a half-inch square from the farm and bundled it up in the tweezers end, before pulling out the Leadbelcher.

It gives a very subtle armour chipping effects, but one which I feel pulls the model all together and looks a bit more "lived in" so to speak.

The flash has wash out the plasma coils, but they are painted with the turquoise contrast.

The hazard striping are a suggestion from Fraser after talking about what the model needed, we're both fans of the 2nd/3rd edition look of the universe, where hazard striping was everywhere, even on boltguns!

Some of the turquoise has bled back into this photo, and you can see the drybrush I used to represent kicked up dust from the urban ruins*.

Speaking of the urban ruins, the tank trap pieces on the base are Forge World resin gates, suitable cut, posed and damaged to look like concrete tank traps on the base of the model.

Out from Dommwas the catalyst for this idea.

With that out of the way, and in Martian red, I looked at other colour schemes and found this example.

That looks so good in the black with the rust gathered in all the recesses. If I could go back in time and start again with this model. I probably think I would follow this guy painting my own as it looks really really nice.

Duncan has one which he wasn't happy with how he'd started to paint it...hmmm...

Until next time, have nice day...

*Fraser initially wanted all his armies to match basing wise, so an urban, destroyed city was chosen. But that