So I have this 2nd edition battle coming up in December with my buddy Tom. We've recently had a scrap with Orks and Eldar and we decided we should do it again before Xmas.
This time around however, I'm leaving the Orks at home and I'm giving my Dark Angels, Imperial Guard and Squats an outing.
We're aiming for 2000 points, which should give us a decent enough sized force each.
One of things I realized quite quickly with the last battle, was that with large concentrations of infantry, its easy to end up not getting around the table fast enough. I also didn't have enough firepower to take down his Avatar!
Tom will be fielding Eldar again and he's added some major firepower too. Not that he'll tell me what it is!
With this in mind, I've decided to grab my old Landraider and get it cleaned up and repainted for this. Hopefully it'll give me some transport and firepower!
I used to be a big Ultramarine fan once and this thing was painted bright blue! Then there was the occasion it got another coat of green, so that my Imperial Guard could use it. So it was definitely paint heavy.
I considered using dettol to get this stripped, but for something this big, the thought of all that scrubbing put me off. So instead I used Paintblitzer. You might not have heard of this, but it’s a fantastic paint stripper, formulated just for minis and it does the job really quickly! Plus you don’t have any of that scrubbing and goop like you do with Dettol.
So into a nice bath of Paintblitzer this went, where I occasionally basted it, like some prize joint of meat.
I then grabbed the bitzbox and added a heavy flamer to the heavy bolter pinion, as the original was long lost.
A coat of Leadbelcher and it was ready for painting!
I ended up painting this with some traditional acrylic paint I had left over from a craft project with the kids. I then dry brushed and started thinking about how to make it look a little battle damaged and worn.
Turns out, traditional acrylic on top of Leadbelcher comes away with a little scratching. So I set to work with a rough sponge and soon it had some serious wear and tear...
...Which I hated.
So I painted back over that and have since decided to go the more traditional Leadbelcher and soft sponge route. Although as of yet I’m still not happy. On my third attempt and it’s still not what I want. Aargh! This is hard!!
With this annoying me, I decided to switch to some banners for the tank instead. I enjoy making some bespoke stuff for my vehicles and this project was no different.
Im working on the old Dark Angel colour scheme and I therefore needed the old markings and banners. To do this I found a good image in the original Rogue Trader and I used this as a basis for making an updated version.
I also made some pennants to give it some jazzy extras. Once I’m totally happy with these, I’ll pop them up as a file on the blog, so that people can grab if they’re doing their own oldschool Dark Angels.
I printed these out and attached them. I also carefully printed out two more which I then cut out as decals for the doors. I’ll sponge some black over these to have some paint chips eventually.
I also gave the whole thing a wash of Nuln oil. Next up In part 2. I’ll sort that weathering and add some dirt etc to the bottom hull and tracks. Then some highlights and finally some extra smaller decals for detail.