Blood Angels Army Project (pic carpet bombing)

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Love the idea of an Assault Cannon bayonet! xD

I haven't any magnetising experience unfortunately...

[Brakkart]

I'm actually doubting whether I should magnetize the weapon arms or not. Any extra weapons from FW do not come with the large shoulder pads and the small shoulder-joint-elbow seems too small and fragile to accept any magnets large enough to hold the weight.
Anyone any experience in magnetizing contemptor weapon arms?

TDA might not, but I do! I have a regular Contemptor and have magnetised both arms on it, the trick is to put the magnets in the elbow not the shoulder as you are right the extra weapon arms do not come with the big shoulder piece. I put my magnets into the bottom of the bit that slots into the shoulder pad (the L-shaped sorta piece). I found that the circular bit at the bottom of that was plenty thick enough to take an embedded magnet and so is the opposite piece on the weapon arm itself.

My Contemptor has a power fist and khere's cannon currently, and I've almost finished twin plasma cannons for it. I have a second khere's cannon awaiting assembly too.

Granted my assault cannon doesn't have a bayonet and a dead Eldar on the end of it (Love the decoration!), but the two magnets have a pretty strong grip and I don't think that it would be a problem. Just be sure you have the same polarity facing down in each of the shoulder pieces, and the opposite facing up in each weapon arm and you will have a strong connection that can be freely swapped about, and leaves the dread open to adding other arms in future.

[Meph]

Progress so far, I've decided to glue the weapons. Magnetizing will be better suited for a less posed model. That, and I was unwilling to search & wait for the suitable magnets. But I'm pretty sure I'll but more contemptors, and those will be magnetized fo' so'!
The arms themselves are just temporarily attached. I'll paint them separately. The 'fist' is not attached to the arm either, but the eldar is firm within its grasp. ^^

[SotonShades]

The right leg looks a bit odd. Not quite a punt/kick, not quite a stamping motion. Could just be that it looks a little out of place with the motion of the torso twisting into a back handed grab with a forward stab. Then again, it could just be me or the angles the photos were taken from. I would have thought it would work a little better if the contemptor was stamping the xenos flat into the floor, making the thrust of the epic bayonet look more powerful.

Just my two pence (it would also make the pose of your dread far too similar to the pose of mine :P)

[Brakkart]

Yeah stomp those Eldar! Loving the mini diorama you've done there Meph. I absolutely love the Contemptor model, even if sticking the legs together is a pain. I have two of them now and honestly I cannot see me getting a regular GW Dread at all. I sold the one that came with my Black Reach box to my housemate as he's gonna hack it up for scenery for the base of his Tau Riptide. I'm tempted to try and convert my next one into an Ironclad Dreadnought.

I know GW don't grab FW models anymore but I wish they would make an exception for these, cos they would be awesome in plastic.

[Meph]

Oh wow, long time no update... Sorry for that guys. ^^

Progress!

the pipeline for the following months, quick photos.



I decided to ditch the stock Spartan tracks as have no love whatsoever for those 'old' style Land Raider tracks, they never made sense to me. So after searching around on the net a bit I decided to go for 1/35 scale tracks from a Merkava II, which had the right width. I decided to with tracks from the modeling company fruilmodel, which seem to be very good as they can easily be found in many model webshops, and ebay .

For those of you who might be interested in something like this; older tanks like a T-55, and the larger WW2 tanks would suit a Rhino nicely, as the more modern MBT's like Merkava 2 and above, Abrams, T-90, Leopard 2 suit the width of a Land Raider.

A T-55's tracks in 1/35 are 15mm wide, which was too small for the Spartan. And I found that modern MBT's tracks are 61-65 cm, so I guestimated that they would be around the desired 20mm for the Land Raider/Spartan. Luckily, that was the case.

So I ordered two sets, 800 grams of Merkava II tracks, from Djermany. Arrived in two days. Together with the huge weight of the resin brick which is the Spartan, this is going to be a mighty model indeed, capable of crushing any styrofam hill on the table. But luckily it turns out I actually need just one set. Guess I have spares for another tank. ^^



One track completed, 42 centimeters worth of little links put together one by one. It took me 3-4 hours I think. I made them over a few sessions and kinda zoned out each time as those links and holes are rather tiny. :S But after a while I got the hand of it; clip off 5-10 pieces of wire with a few mm to spare, chain up tracks using flat nosed pliers because sometimes you need to apply gentle pressure to pierce through a little membrane of metal in the 'hinges', and repeat until you run out of wire. Then cut some more wire.

But the result is sure worth it, looks a million times better than the stock tracks. Even though they do have a lot of leeway between the running wheels, they do stay on track quite nicely when going round. Depending on how it goes during the painting progress, I might even leave them loose. The little kid in me grins at the sight of moving tank tracks.
But with weathering powders 'n all... ah well, we'll see.



Now the second one...

[Dave Fothergill]

Meph how did you attach the backpack wings to these marines backpacks? As I'm doing a BA army and wanted to shamelessly steal your idea

[Meph]

Well, basically just some light trimming so they fit snugly in the grooves on the backpack, and the glue them into place. The fit, and the stickiness of the glue hold 'm in place nicely.

[Dave Fothergill]

I thought that would be the case just wanted to check

[Meph]

Wehey, progress!

Base coat
Wash
4 Drybrush highlights
Varnish
Glaze
Highlight touch-up
Varnish
Removed masking tape.

Now they're ready to have the metalics and details blacked out.








That spartan does look better with realistic tracks, doesn't it?