Tuesday 26 August 2008

Helblade Turret (Part 1)

As the first extra for the Mag Baneblade I'm building a turret with a Titan Class Inferno Gun for it, which I'm dubbing the Helblade.

I'm simply using a spare turret with some plasti-card, with the intention of adding some extra fuel tanks to the rear of the turret where the stowage would normally be.

The gun itself is made from two sizes of tubing and one H section.



The three main barrel sections were then connected by the H sections.



The completed section was mounted on a piece of plasti-card to connect to the turret (dry fitted here), the larger tubing pieces were slipped over the end of the barrels (again a dry fitting here) and the nozels of some Baeneblade Heavy Flamers fitted inside the inner barrels.




Now comes the dilema, do I leave the 'sleeves' as they are now, hole then, or connect them to one single sleeve as in the Forge World version (below) - which again could be holed.

What do you think?

Sunday 17 August 2008

Mag Baneblade (Part 2)

When I first set about building the Leviathan I really fell in love with the Baneblade kit, and I finally came round to getting one to build as a Baneblade. The thing is I don't see the Praetorian's as being big users of the Baneblade, instead trusting in Lighter Armoured Cavalry and older Heavy Tanks such as the Malcador, so I don't want to go to town on having several models. So I decided on using magnets to get flexibility to have the option to use several Baneblade Chasis varients without much investment - I'll probably do a second chasis in this fashion and will revamp my existing FW Mars Pattern Baneblade for a company of three such vehicles.



The first and most obvious thing to do was too allow the main weapon to be switched between Baneblade Cannon and Helblade Cannon, a very easy swap with a disc magnet inside the Manlet, and another inside the turret mounting for the manlet.



Of course this presents a problem of Sponsons, these I fitted with much smaller disc magnets inside the track assembly and within the sponson itself (though I've not got a complete set of Sponsons as an alternative/additional set yet), the armour plates were likewise fitted giving me flexibility to have no sponsons (for the extra armour), one pair of sponsons or two pairs of sponsons in either the fore or aft positions.

I did'nt want too stop there either though.



As I've got a spare upper hull section from the Leviathan I've made this swapable with an additional pair of large magnets, one fore, one aft mounted on cross beams (which also provide additional structural strength when the plate is not in place), I'll modify this hull section into a Shadowsword style hull (i.e. no hull weapons or turret, instead a mount for a single main fixed gun) which will also have swapable weapons allowing me to field a Shadowsword, Stormblade or Stormsword potentially. The rear engine block I've also left swapable with a single magnet on the aft cross beam, I did this when news of the Stormlord from Apocolyopse Reloaded first came about, which indicated a Chimera style layout for the Baneblade Chasis Transport variant - though this has since proven not to be quite accurate I've left it as an option with a view to attempting some sort of alternative layout on this idea in the future.

And with that it's job done for the time being, I'm gonna be tinkering with a spare turret on and off for an Imperial counterpart to the Chaos Plague Reaper (i.e. a turreted Inferno Cannon as mounted on Imperial Titans), I'll come back to painting in due course - other things are on top of the pile.

Sisters of Battle (Part 5)

I have not been idle, nope, another couple of Sisters Squads are just about done for now. The second Squad of Celestians with a Heavy Flamer and Flamer Combo and the Sepharim are now done bar their respective squad leaders, I'm gonna go back to work on the Malcador and Baneblade next, before getting the final squad of sisters painted up and then the Rhino's.


Thursday 7 August 2008

British Colonial Infantry - Ideal Plastic Praetorians?

I noticed this courtasy of Chicago Terrain Factory, and felt I had to post it because for those of you after Praetorians but not wanting to pay the high prices these may well be ideal - as long as you dont mind the lack of GW legality.

Anyway to cut to the chase take a look at the Wargames Factory HERE, looks really promissing, I think I'll order a box ($15 for 20) and see what their like me thinks!