Praetorian Command Chimera

The Command Chimera is almost finished. Needs a bit more weathering, a few details and the end of the barrell painting. I'm also working on a design for the company insignia which will go on a banner. Getting there though..

Praetorian Cavalry - Band of Brothers

Howdy. I've joined up to the Band of Brothers over on the Ammo Bunker, which if you've not heard of is sort of a competitive group build type thing. You choose an army within some set limits, and commit to paint 250pts of models each month. The idea is by summer you have a fully painted army. So me and my Praetorians are going to do it!

This first month I'm painting the wheeled command chimera, an infantry squad and my rough riders.

I've painted up the first rough rider as a test, here's where we are so far.

Still a bit of work to do on it, but I'm really happy with the way it's going. Five more of these guys to do then!

Praetorian - Truck

Just to really confuse matters, my Praetorian Guard are going to have an auxillary squad consisting of Cadians. But no ordinary Cadians, these are 'proper' Cadian Shock Troops from back in the day. I thought their retro styling and shorter stature fitted better with the Praets than my KIV plastic Cadian army.

As such I wanted to get these guys a chimera that didn't look like it belonged to the Praetorian motor pool. I doubt they'd hand out shiny APCs to drafted squads when some of their own guys are still slogging it out on foot.

Like pretty much every IG modeller who has seen Dave Taylor's blog, I fell in love with his trucks and wanted my own. Happening to have an ork trukk laying around in its box meant the whole thing was fated to be! I didn't use the templates from Dave's site, not a big fan of building things to plan (as you may have guessed ;) ), so I'm winging it by eye. I want it to look similar, but I wanted the flexibility to make my own changes. Something that's easily overlooked if you're cutting out pieces and assembling as instructed.

Here's where we are so far, the ork chassis is stripped and assembled, the bed is started.

Loads to do obviously, but it's a start!

Knight Paladin

Here's a blast from the past. I spent a while looking through some titan threads over on warseer and got a hankering for completing my knight paladin.

He's not done yet, but he's getting there. The head is now detailed, though needs a bit more. The battle cannon needs some more detailing, it'll get a large shield too. The close combat arm is done, though the shoulder pad will get the same decorations as the left one.

The back needs more work, the lego parts need covering up, the engine cover will be detailed then I just have the problem of the thighs to sort. But it's definitely moved forward a lot. Oh and for scale it uses the Valkyrie base, and fits rather conveniently actually.

Actually looking forward to painting this one. Strange huh?

Praetorian Griffon

I started the basilisk a good few months ago, but never really settled on the weapon itself. Finally decided to combine the chassis with a forgeworld thudd gun I bought from Warhammer World on my trip there last year.

The combination is designed to represent a griffon mortar, I think the visual works quite well, nice balance. The armour plate just happened to fit the gap nicely too. I've been working on a loader for this, but I'll probably paint it up as it stands and add him later.

Noticed after taking the photo one of the handles from the drivers hatch has gone awol, will replace that before priming.

Planning a medusa on the same template, using a rather cool plumbing joint I picked up at B&Q.

Praetorian Sentinel

I spent a long time trying to come up with a suitable sentinel for the Praetorians. I didn't want the old egg on legs type walker and didn't think the new sentinels really fit that well.

Eventually I decided to have a go at a Universal Carrier type vehicle. Some very small, (sub-tankette size) tracked vehicle with a two man crew.

Initially I was going to use tank crew mounted through hatches, but decided whilst that would work for the driver it'd look odd for the gunner. So I've dropped the platform height in the back and I'll have the gunner standing inside the armoured compartment.

Main structure is built, I need to put the compartment in place, then I have two side panels to bring the back up to the width of the front. It'll make more sense once that step's complete. Quite excited about this one.

Oh and that guy is the army commander, though he needs a spot of work. Since getting the pith helmets sculpted by Col Gravis, I've been going through tweaking the heads of existing characters. We'll see where it goes.

Praetorian Flame Tank

Ok didn't make it back for the other posts last night, spent two hours debugging the blog layout after posting those photos. Bah.

Anyway, new day new update. And we'll start with a scratchbuild I've had in mind since I started my Praetorians. The Hellhound.

Once I got the urban war chemical plant set from ebay I always had the tank selected, but wasn't sure about the turret. As the praetorian afv's evolved I decided I didn't want a turret. The chimeras have pintle-mounted turret weapons and only the command squad vehicle has a turret. So I went for a hull mounted flame cannon thing.

To differentiate from the normal heavy flamers I used a piece from the hellhound kit, then bulked out the bodywork and mounted it on an old tamiya oil drum.

I'm quite happy with the look of this, I spent a lot of time studying Hobart's funnies to try and get a feel for modifying stock chassis into weird and wonderful ways. Particularly happy with the tank at the back and the little bullet shield for the feeder hose. Seems jury rigged and suitably ad-hoc.

Tank just needs it's tracks, which are now assembled and at time of photo were drying, hence the balancing act in the final pic.

Spot of final detailing and it should be ready for priming.