In the pile of unbuilt models, I've had a Baneblade kit sat staring accusingly at me for a while. I have a plan for this kit though and bought the sponson sprue from GW as I wanted to make this a proper heavy hitting Hellhammer with 2 sponsons on each side.

Having built the main body of the tank, I blu tac'd the sponsons together to see how the tank would look, and it looks pretty good. My plan is to have one set facing forward and one facing backwards as shown above. Good plan I thought, but this still leaves an area that cannot be covered by the twin linked weapons. So the next idea was to turn this Hellhammer in to a hybrid Hellhammer/Stormhammer.

So I wanted to create a massive weapons bank that looks like my crappy picture above. This would be 3 top mounted turret lascannons and 3 sponson mounted twin linked heavy bolters or heavy flamers (9 weapons per side!). This seems to be a bit of overkill in my opinion and that central lascannon turret would be more of a hindrance than help.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I entered this tank into a painting competition at my local GW. I didn't win, but it did give me a boost to get it finished. The competition theme was based on Private Baldrick's poem "The German Guns" (I recommend youtubing it). This meant that I had to somehow tie it into my tank. So I decided to name the tank "Revenge", and then daub "Baldrick's" above the name plates, to suggest the crew had come up with the nickname.

I figured I'd start off with all the pieces laid out all nice and neat for you.

Just a couple of close up shots showing the name plates. I used ForgeWorld weathering powders to do the rust effects. I did apply them a bit heavy in some areas but I don't think it makes much difference.

Here's a close up of the track details. The road wheels were painted using the method described in Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume 1.

I used several bands of washes to try and get a heat discolouration look on the heavy flamers. The paint chipping on the transfer was achieved by dabbing on some of the original camo colour using a sponge. I think this transfer came out the best compared to some of the others.

Moving on to the whole tank, I'm going to start with the Stormlord as this is what I entered into the competition. I won't go into too much detail as it will soon become repetitive, so just sit back and have fun looking through the pictures.

Stormlord Front view

Stormlord left side view

Stormlord rear view

Stormlord top view

Stormlord decking detail

 

Stormlord heavy stubber gunners in position

 And here are the gunners propped up for a better view

I thought I'd better take a few detail shots of one of the gunners. They were painted using some of the new GW paints. The green was my usual scheme of Goblin Green, highlighted with Camo Green and then washed with Devlan Mud. Normally I'd paint the clothing with Snakebite Leather and then wash it with Devlan Mud, but I thought I'd see how the new paints work out. I started with a basecoat of XV-88, and then washed it with Devlan Mud (not got the new wash yet). Then I highlighted using Balor Brown, which is meant to be the replacement for Snakebite Leather. I was then going to add an additional highlight of Zamesi Desert but didn't think the model needed it.

From using the new paints I don't think that Balor Brown is a direct replacement for Snakebite Leather. This may be because I normally use it as the base and then wash it, so I'll have to try that way at some point with Balor Brown.

 Shadowsword front view


Shadowsword left side view


 Shadowsword top view and a detail shot of the barrel muzzle
 

Following on from the Shadowsword is the stubby barrelled Banehammer

  Banehammer front view


Banehammer left side view


Banehammer top view



And finally we have the Stormsword

Stormsword front view


Stormsword left side view


Stormsword top view

There are two more variants, but I couldn't get the muzzle off the Shadowsword barrel and didn't want to pull too hard as some of the weathering powders were still lose.

Thanks for looking through these pics, I hope that this project has been helpful and that it's encouraged you to try using magnets. Thanks again.