Start your engines!
As this week is vehicle and tank week on the blog, we delved into our inbox to see what vehicular treasures we could find. Here are a few of our favourites including a lucky blue Battlewagon, a heavily armed Leman Russ Punisher and a very large Tau Super-heavy tank. First up though is this Salamander Land Raider Crusader, which was converted by Chris Vinton and painted by Larry Snodgrass.
Chris has put a huge amount of effort into converting this model to be a centrepiece for their Salamander's collection. The armour panels at the front of the Land Raider have been covered with hand-sculpted images of blacksmiths working in the fires of Nocturne, the Salamander's home world. The flanks of the tank and the cowlings of the heavy bolters are covered in drake scales and even the hurricane bolters have been converted to have reptilian mouths. To complement a superb model, Larry has painted it up beautifully and achieved a very realistic look on the flames and the lighting effect on the smiths working in them.
Kevin Haney sent us this Ork Battlewagon that has been painted a very striking blue - the lucky colour of the Deathskull Clan. It has also been upgraded with a large spiky deffrolla to purée enemy warriors. The armour panels were painted with Caledor Sky and then dabbed with Leadbelcher to make it look as though some of the paint has been scraped away during battle. He also applied a wash of Agrax Earthshade to the rivets and bolts to give the vehicle an oily feel - very appropriate for the less than tidy Orks that ride into battle in it.
Mike Major painted the Leman Russ Punisher 'Horribilus' for his Imperial Guard collection. Considering the number of bullets the Punisher can churn out every turn, we thought the name was very fitting. The tank has been given a yellow and black camo scheme, which was applied using an airbrush. Mike then added the squadron marking afterwards along with other little details such as the kill markings on the heavy bolter and transfers representing campaign markings and army badges on the hull.
And to round off the post, we've got one very large Tau tank constructed by Andrew Perkins. The kit is based on four Hammerhead Gunships, which have been extensively chopped up so that they fit together. The two at the front were merged along the stabilisers and the engines were left off so that they could join at the rear. Andrew then took another two Hammerheads and built them into the back of the ones in front. In all fairness my words do a terrible injustice to Andrew's hard work because he must have hacked, cut and glued like a hobby machine to construct this massive tank. Apparently there was a lot of plasticard used to fill in all the gaps around the back and sides.
If you've got models that you think are worthy to show on the blog then feel free to send them to us. All you need to do is click on the red button that has 'send us your photos' written on it on the right-hand side of this page. Don't forget to write a bit of information about your models too, such as how you painted and converted them or how you use them in your games.
