Imperial Guard command chimera's (for my praetorians)

New stuff!

So sadly I can't take credit for the construction of these. I bought these lovely kitbashed chimeras off ebay. If you wanted to make some yourself it appears fairly easy. They have predator turrets with the autocannons removed to be replaced with multilazers, plasticard trackguards with rivets I believe made from cut off styrene tubing given their slightly varying length. The piece the turret rests on has been pulled back and sits on a piece of plasticard that covers the space in the middle of the tank left when the rear troop carrying part of the tank has been cut back.

I am going to use them for my CCS (centre model with the larger yellow block of the squad marking) and two PCS's (which I have yet to paint!) in games in my friends up and coming no astartes campaign (which I admit feels a bit odd as Spacemarines have just got their re-release but whatever :P its to give us time to actually build the armies!)

I sprayed the base colours on these using army painter skeleton bone and leather brown. I hard line highlighted them with ushabti bone and tallarn sands respectively (old paints bleached bone and graveyard earth). I then weathered them up using both rhinox hide (op. scorched brown) feathering with leadbelcher (op. boltgun metal) feathered over the top off the edges to represent fairly fresh deep scratches into the metal on the edges of doors, armour plates and any other areas that looked like they had a big plain bit of one colour and could do with being broken up a bit. I also used my smiles technique with the same colours I had used to hard line and filled them in with rhinox hide to represent older paint chips that have had time to tarnish. (See my Vendetta post for step by step for these techniques.) I finished off details such as metal reas with leadbelcher and an agrax earthshade wash, gems on the edges of the hatches flat bits and the turret cannon targeter bit in from abaddon black into increasingly light shades of blue through to white. I finished off with some red and yellow squad marks to add a bit of colour and then weathered these up (if your doing them, put the colour in before you weather to stop wasting time by repainting bits you've spent more time on!).

I like how they have come out, I hope you like them! Any thoughts?

Vendetta Update

A friend of mine commented about a year ago that my vendetta looked technically well painted but was missing something to break up the grey. He suggested hazard stripes around the engine vents. Low and behold I gave it a try and think it looks much improved. I might add some engine exhaust burn marks like he recommended after seeing it this time, maybe next year eh?

I actually have some new imperial guard stuff done to upload as well, shocking! My friends and I are going to do a non-astartes campaign to mix up our predominantly Marine based games so there should be more praetorian chaps being painted up soon although probably just infantry vet and standard platoons squads for now along with some chimera transports and forgeworld armagedon pattern medusas I recently picked up that are currently drying (after the old mold release agent scrub and hot water reshaping) in pieces on my kitchen table. I have done quite alot more blood angels and some Deathwing in the last year I haven't updated so I need to snap pics of those and get them uploaded.

Sorry for a year-ish of nothing, between studying, moving out and most of my armies being round a friends for easy access gaming I've rather dropped the ball on the blog and will try and rectify this over time. I will also share some lists at somepoint as it would be great to have some feedback on what other people have tried and had success with in the new edition as the new tau and eldar that I have played vs. are pretty immense and pose some significant challenges to my predominantly mech BA and Imperial Guard armies. I'm loving the new edition so far and have pretty much stopped playing fantasy simply because I'd rather play 40k at the moment! (Also I'm quite good at 40K and suck something awful at fantasy since its big rules rehaul!)

Thanks for those who are still following!