Another completed tank! This time it's the magnetised Manticore/Deathstrike
Emperor's Fist Tank Company Cont. Part 2
First of all I apologise for the uninventive name for this post - quite frankly I've got so much to type that I couldn't be bothered with coming up with a better one. Plus it explains what I'm talking about nicely.I hope to show everyone what I've managed to get done since my last post, and I'm quite glad with the progress. So without further ado...
I'll start with a shot of all six tanks with their side sections glued on. These all went together without any trouble - other than the occasional elastic band based injury to my hands and fingers.
With the main bodies of the tanks done, I figured it was time to move on to the extra details such as exhaust, storage and hooks. So the above pictures show the rear storage bin in its component parts and then also once it had been glued into one piece. Also shown are the other details that only need gluing straight onto the tank - I especially hate the loops that fit to the front of the tank, but like the fiddly handles in the previous post, they didn't cause as much trouble as expected.
As you can see there were quite a few exhausts to be built. The picture with them all stuck in the blu tack shows my way of getting round keeping the pieces tight together having been glued and also to stop the overflow of glue on the joins sticking the exhausts to my cutting mat.
Once the glue had dried thoroughly, I scraped off any excess and set the pieces to one side. The pic above shows the finished exhausts. The other picture just shows the additional detail pieces that were glued to the front of the tanks.
The first photo here shows the additional pieces that were glued to the back of the tanks. I didn't bother putting the hook from the accesory sprue on as I think it makes the back of the tank a bit overcrowded. The second picture shows the exhausts and storage bin in place. I also remembered at this stage to glue a handle onto the engine cover. At this point I also went on to add the track guards to the tanks, which required some cutting to get the back pieces to fit how I wanted. I forgot to take any pictures of these so sorry about that.
Whilst routing around for all the turret hatch pieces I came across the Apocalypse upgrade sprues that came with the EFTC when I bought it. I was looking over the sprue and thought "Hmm, that Chaos attachment looks like it'll fit into the hatch piece". And with a little bit of filing it did fit. Of course the Chaos piece looks very... well Chaosy. Out came the modelling knife again and the spikes were removed from the top of the main piece and the smaller symbols were carefully cut from the melta/bolter combi weapon. I also ended up removing the ammo belt as it just didn't seem to fit with the Guard way of working. So after my little bit of being side tracked I had a different comms piece to fit to one tank.
Finally continuing on with getting the turret hatches done, I removed the relevant pieces from their sprues and cleaned them up. I then glued the handles onto the top hatches, but did not glue the hatch into the cupola as I don't know which tanks are going to have open hatches etc. Next I glued the cupola's into their space on the top of the turrets.
Now I have absolutely no idea what this piece is meant to be on the turret, maybe a viewing port, but none the less, it has to be addeed or the turret looks weak. So again the pieces were removed from the sprues, cleaned up and then glued together. I also removed the little cover pieces that go on the front of the turret.
Now I once again had a mad moment of actually doing things differently. So I took the modelling knife and file to one of the turrets and removed the front sight thing. I've always felt that with the new style cupola, this sight is kind of redundant. The more observant of you will see that this piece has been removed in one of the previous pictures - basically I forgot to take photos of when I actually do something. I like the way this turret has turned out, but I decided not to do this to any of the others, I may try and incorporate some battle damage or something so it doesn't look too out of place. The next picture is of the turret base and the gun shield thing for the battle cannon. I haven't glued the turret base on as I still want to be able to add gunners etc to the top hatch. Now the first shield that I glued on, I did without the battle cannon in it's slot on the turret. This was a bad idea. Once the glue had dried, I almost snapped the damn thing off trying to get the gun into the slot - oh well, live and learn. So for the next ones, I put the battle cannon in position and then glued the shield on.
On to the side sponsons. I didn't want to glue the bottom piece onto the housings as I wanted to be able to take it apart and add the actualy guns. I tried using blu tack but this was a massive FAIL! So I gave in and used just a small amount of glue. With a little gentle manipulation the piece will come away so I can get the guns in. I then added the smoke launchers to the top of the housings as I'd rather have all the options on the tank and then just not use them to save points instead of having to make up that the tank has smoke launchers when I want them - if that makes sense :S. Finally the sponson housings were glued onto the sides of the tanks using as little glue as possible. Again I wanted to be able to remove them to get the guns in. The front lascannon housings were not glued, these stayed in place all on their own :).
I don't know about everyone else, but I greatly dislike it when the model you are spraying gets stuck to the cardboard or surface you have placed it on. So using some spare sprue and blu tack I did something that I guess a lot of other people use. First of all I turned the tank upside down. I then added two small blobs of blu tack onto the base of the tank, on the track wheels. I'm spraying and painting the tracks separately.
Then I took a piece of well measured sprue and pressed it firmly into the blu tack. I repeated this for the other side of the tank and voila! The tank now sits of off the surface you are spraying on and the bit that does make contact is just a bit of crummy sprue.
The first pic above shows the tank sitting just above the table top. And the second pic shows why you should always have an ample supply of spray paint. I ran out after almost getting 3 tank body's done - crud!!! And that is where I have got to so far. Looks like I'll be investing in some more spray paint over the weekend.
And now for something completely different. Does anyone have any tips for a beginner using Green Stuff? I got some with my last order of stuff as I have a few ideas for things - mainly filling. So any help would be appreciated, tutorials etc would be well received.
Finally I'd like to thank Mitch @ Ottawa Gamer for the paint brush giveaway that he did. I was lucky enough to be chosen at random to receive the brushes. So thanks again Mitch.
I hope that those of you who manage to read through this post have found it helpful. Comments and suggestions are as always welcome. I am now off to actually finish painting the sponson weapons and to build a 1500pt list for the army painting competition GW are currently running. Thanks for reading.
