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.

Praetorian Chimera

Right then, back to it. I've done a fair bit of work on my praetorian armoured vehicles. First up is the Company Command Squads personal Chimera.

I started this probably at the end of last year, but only recently took it up again. It's a very simple conversion from the original chimeras, using a predator turret and a set of wheels from Tablescape (50p a pop, a bargain in my view). I'm quite happy with the result, looks suitably fieldworthy if that makes sense.

I'll be back with more updates after Big Bang Theory ;)

Rise up (and blog off)

Greetings once again. The site has been somewhat abandoned for the majority of 2010, which is a shame. Basically I got sidetracked by Stadtheim for a few months, then some kind soul showed be Oblivion, which led to Fallout 3 and suddenly it's christmas. How'd that happen?

Good news is the 40k production line is fully functional once more, and I'm hoping to document some of the projects.

I've decided to give up on the site as a standalone item, it's just too much messing about to get things working like I want. So I'm going to leave the projects there for now as an archive, but then run everything else through the blog, http://kataan.blogspot.com. The two are linked, in that the site scrapes the blog anyway, but I'm going to add in a few little features to the blog that won't get pulled through.

Eventually I plan to put an archive of projects somewhere in the blog, then pull the site and put up a redirect. For now, view it however you choose :)

Still working on the design, comments page seems a little screwy, but other than that I think it looks ok.

I'll be back with the first proper update later. I have several praetorian tanks to show off, including would you believe, completed builds I had previously started. I know, me completing something. Scary.

What have I been doing?

Hallo. Not posting in here as much as I should.

Ok so the Knight Titan has ground to a halt unfortunately. Usually happens, he's more or less at the detailing stage. I'll get back to it anon, but don't hold your breath. I think this site should be seen more as a home for ideas rather than the place you come to see finished products! Still, serves as a record to my ADD-like approach to hobbying.

Anyway I have been doing other things. I've painted a squad of IG for the Kataan IV army. I'll get these photographed and posted probably tonight. I don't do a lot of painting so this is a good thing. Better still it's firmed up the colour scheme with new paints, some of the gw ones I was using have been discontinued. I've found replacements in vallejo and am happy.

Also bought some new brushes. Spent a while looking at various ones without much understanding really. I went for the army painter ones in the end. They offer useful descriptions of what the size could be used for, and the handles are more chunky (a toblerone style grip) which are good for my ageing hands ;)

Yesterday I undercoated the command squad and the veteran squad for my guard, so painting has begun on them too.

Also (wow busy busy), I've started my storm troopers. I originally bought some RT guard to use as storm troopers, but I'm not happy with the size differential. I think they'll go back on ebay at some point. So mine are normal cadians with pig iron heads and some gubbinz. Will post pics.

Bought one of the new hellhounds too. I'm combining this with the parts I had laying around from a predator to make one of my rhimera jobbies. The other half of this (chimera tracks, rhino chassis) will form the base of my second artillery piece. I was going for a griffon, but got a bit diverted by the idea of a manticore. mmm rockets. The griffon I have the pieces for us going to use a FW thudd gun.

Damn I need to sort out the photos for all these guys. Perhaps that's a job for tonight, document my IG properly?

One last thing, great new source for wheels. Over on Ammo Bunker Digits drew attention to some he'd seen. They're a little taller than ork wheels, a little thinner, and basically perfect for IG. I'm going to make a six wheeled variant of my Chard pattern chimera. In fact I've already started. Details on buying are in the linked thread. 50p each,I bought twenty and am very happy with both the sculpt and the casting. Chris from Tablescape is looking into variants too for differing sizes. I'll keep you posted.

Oh yeah and I also bought a 1/48bradley kit dirt cheap for the road wheels. These mean I can finish the chard pattern hellhound I started months ago.

It's all go!

The Power of Fairies!

Random postage. So I've tried most different things for stripping paint from models, although never been able to get hold of Simple Green and refuse to pay the stupid postage costs they were asking last time I checked.

Anyway finally tried out Fairy Power Spray. And it works! I'm flummoxed. I put three metal minis in to soak last night. Two were ebay purchases with undisclosed amounts of paint, the third was my old space wolf captain I've had... oooh about 18 years. He's been many things in his time and has a lot of knackered paint on. Had several goes at stripping him but never really succeeded.

About 16 hours in the power spray and the paint was literally falling off. I scrubbed down the two new ebay ones and I'm happy with them. Wolfie has had a scrub and is back in to soak for a while longer. I've also added a load of other guys in.

I'll get some pics when they're all out. I may even do a proper test showing before and after pics. But yeah, well worth a go. And pretty cheap stuff too. Excellent.