Wednesday 22 May 2024

Project Chem-Dogs: Part 7

Following on from a long-awaited delivery, this week has seen me having three things on the go.
1) Finishing the Catachans/Cadians I'd built with grenade launchers by mistake.
2) Building two flamer guys to correct the above, alongside a second Platoon Command Squad I’d been wanting to do, for batch-painting purposes.
3) A tank, which will be our focus today.



Now, if you're doing Imperial Guard, you're doing tanks. With enthusiasm. Its just a given. Its like being a fire fighter, and wanting ride on the fire engine. This is not a judgement, just an observation. So I knew that I was gonna need a few, but i was mindful of cost, and not being sure if which ones I wanted. What I ended up doing was to order two of Ramshackle Games' tank range, in the knowledge that it would be about a month before I got them, there would most of the possible gun options in the box, and I could make final decisions later on. Then a balance update happened which changed the math on the assorted Leman Russ units. Ultimately, I decided on two of your bog standard Battle Tanks, although only one would be complete in time for the Tuesday cut-off.




As models go, the "Battlecat", is fairly typical of Ramshackle Games' output, offering an inexpensive proxy for the vast majority of Leman Russ variants. I had actually considered magnetising those weapons, until sanity reasserted itself. This is a low budget resin model, and attempting such a thing proved impractical with the tools I had. Also, while a model of this size is more resistant to shattering than some resin pieces Ive worked on, its not exactly in the Goldilocks Zone for the material either. Its big, heavy and will need a lot more finishing than your average plastic kit. And possibly the hot glue gun. On the plus side, I received more sponson weapons than I was likely to use for the foreseeable future, and I could easily make completely new additional turrets in lieu of magnetisation. I used the spraycan method here, priming it first, masking off the tracks, before spraying most of it green. Weathering was much the same as the Sentinel, although I ended up going a bit further than I had originally intended on that. I found a few mistakes/oversights late it the process, and concealed with with rust and muck. The crew-woman was prepared separately, and is a Cannon Fodder head atop an Iron Brothers body. The hull lascannon and its mount is out of the bitzbox, with a green stuff tarp. The HK missile another resin bit, I think from those Orky robots I did a while back. I’m not entirely happy with the “T42” number I freehanded, and subsequent feedback has confirmed that, so I’ll probably repaint it. I loathe transfers, so I’ll try stencils first.



I also managed to fit in my first two games if 10th edition this week, at a mere 500 points a side. My opponent was a gracious fellow whom was similarly rusty, whom promptly, as the Americans would say, handed me my ass. I made the mistake of approaching things like an Ork in my first game, but as my foe actually was Orks, that ended poorly. We had time for a second game, which was a lot closer due to my brain turning on, even if I conceded by the end. My foe deserved those two victories, nice guy, and you know, Megamind meme, learning from your mistakes. In the second game, I had a better handle on my synergys, and perhaps my load-out was not ideal for use against the new Green Tide. Initial thoughts? Mortars good, but Sentinel guidance is mandatory. Infantry blobs can grind down ork units, but you need to add force multipliers. The autocannons where a bit underwhelming here, heavy bolters would have been a better call. Orders good, detachment rule has its moments, but is limiting. Here's a couple of pictures from the day.

 






Up next: probably finishing the infantry I mentioned in 2), the other tank, with an eye towards a 750/1000 point list


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