Tanklets

A while ago i had the opportunity to see the system commanders full army, laid out in its sprawling awesomeness. All the great GW models were present, but there were also a couple of custom built jobs that really stood out and provided some personal character. Before running into his heavily converted chaos years ago I had never really considered the possibility of scratch building, and so it is to him that credit must go for my own evolution in the hobby. Now I don't claim to possess the skills or creative vision that gave birth that his monstrosity of a Khorne dreadnought, but I have slowly been working on my scratch building skills. I have always found Orks to be the easiest to scratch build, as most imperial stuff requires a high degree of precision, and the patience required to pull it off is not something I have traditionally had. Regardless I decided to try my hand at building and casting a vehicle type chassis for my Guard (yes, I am old, grumpy and indignant at the ridiculous new name).

The results here are probably 90% done. It has been a slow and painful process, especially because I do not have all the best tools or materials. Still, I'm relatively happy. The final product will need some more surface detailing, and probably some other finishing touches. With a vacuum chamber I could do away with the bubbles, but green stuff will probably serve to fill the big holes. The final model is all scratch built except the original GW stuff in grey. The weapon mount is designed to use the heavy weapons from the russ sprue, and so I have access to everything but auto cannons and missile launchers. Im sure I will be able to figure out a solution if i need these. The base is the (50mm?) one used for heavy weapons teams, and so no one should have any issue with it in competitive or friendly play. I also think i will use this to double as servitors for the guard tech priest, or possibly an inquisitional war band if I go that route.

All in all I'm hoping that it will give the army some originality, and save me money and time building and painting heavy weapon teams while fitting the mechanized theme I have going.

Comments and crits welcome. I can still alter and improve this first run. Also, I'm trying a new image hosting method. Im hoping it will let me directly insert photos without issues.  







Lastly, sorry for the poor image quality. As this stuff comes to completion hopefully i will be able to get some better pics.

I still suck at pictures. Here are some more that are less washed out at least.

Now those are some damn fine mini-tanks!

Thanks brotha! Looking forewords to seeing some of what your doing with the AoS stuff.

I agree with Paz. Those are pretty awesome!