Battle at the River Simba

After a few weeks of modelling articles I decided it was time to take my troops to battle once again for a bit of second edition goodness.

My beautiful girlfriend the formidable Inquisitor Athena was my opponent this time around. She would command a force of Crimson Fists (the inquisitor would  herself be controlling things from orbit and wouldn't be on the battlefield) whilst I would head a force of Rogue Trader era Salamanders.

The battlefield would be made of tradition retro war games scenery supplements with a 'Pegasus Models River' with a rather nifty bridge that was actually bought from the fish tank section of my local pet shop!

The battling forces would be identical each consisting of one Captain with a Bolter and Power Axe; two five man tactical squads with bolters; one five man assault squad with bolt pistols and one five man terminator squad with storm bolters (I still like to keep things simple weapon-wise while we get used to the rules.

Rogue Trader Predator....Complete!!!!!!!!

Well following on from yesterday's post I decided to crack on with the predators flags/ banners so that it was ready to roll across the fields of the forty-first millennium (but the 1989 version of the far future!)

First things first I decided that as my rhinos had square banners I would differentiate the predator by giving it triangular ones. With this in mind I then plotted the outline on graph paper (this is a god send for accuracy, especially with double sided banners).

I then blocked in the main colour which would be yellow...

Once this was done I just added some simple symbols freehand (no transfers in 1987) in black and highlighted the edges with a lighter yellow....

Rogue Trader Predator!

So after I finished the Land Speeder a couple of weeks ago I decided to crack on with my Rogue Trader Predator Tank that is destined to join my Salamanders Army.

This morning I finished off the lights/lamps, tracks and guns....

I decided to go for a gold finish on the weapons barrels to provide a good spot colour and a fairly calm yellow for the lamps; toned down with a brown wash. 

Rogue Trader Land Speeder and other creatures.....

Frustratingly I have managed to come down with a horrid cold over the weekend which has hindered my hobby time as I have been sneezing and sitting in bed drinking tea whilst full of self pity. As such I haven't made as much progress on my tanks as I would like; I suspect Nurgle may have become concerned about my armour and send a nurgling to infect me. As such all I've achieved on the larger models is the initial green coats and the subsequent blacking out of key areas:

I was going to paint these vehicles with my last remaining pot of the now OOP Dark Angels Green in order to allow them to fit in with the rest of my rogue trader Salamanders; however I became worried that I could potentially run out of this precious resource half way through the initial basecoat and so settled on using the current Caliban Green instead. 

This course of action also gave me the opportunity to test out the new spray can version of this paint... Which actually proved refreshingly easy to use. I gave the predator and land raider a spray of this and then touched them up with normal Caliban Green on a large drybrush. I then drybrushed them with Waaagh Flesh before a final edge highlight of Goblin Green. The blacking out was done with Abbadon Black.... I'm already happy with how they're shaping up.

Despite not feeling up to doing too much I decided to focus on the old Land Speeder when I did feel up to it; and so cracked on with this whilst listening to my newly downloaded 'LEGION' audio book....

I actually ended up finishing this model in those few hours where I was sniffling into a hankie, so at least I achieved something over the weekend!

Markings wise I painted the odd bit of armour red to link the crew in with modern techmarines; but I also copied the hand-print symbol out of the 1989 Space Marine painting guide as this was the old symbol for techmarines! This appears on both the crews shoulder pads.

I even managed to dig out one of the old school hexagonal flying bases to mount this lovely old model on. I am really, really pleased with this Land Speeder and I'm looking forward to fielding it in a game ASAP... So here is a final group shot of it leading a force of Space Marines and Imperial Army soldiers on the planet of IKEASHELF.....

Tank Progress......

Well the land raider and the predator have been sprayed black and await their first coat of green paint. So this is how they look now.

Additionally I had a few more rogue trader marine models lying around who desperately needed painting and so I undercoated these bad boys at the same time. In addition to the tanks we now have an original land speeder; a techmarine (for tank repairing) and a librarian...

I shall update you as work progresses: