PAINTING AND MODELLING: Heavy assault

I had a few hours to dedicate to my Blood Angels yesterday. I had already put together my scenic Terminator bases so I decided to stick the Assault on Black Reach Terminators on there.

The more observant of you will have noticed that there are six Terminators rather than five. The last guy on the right came free on the front of White Dwarf and I only remembered I had him when I was halfway through assembling the other models. Of course the Blood Angel codex only allows Terminator squad sizes of five models, unlike the Space Marine codex which allows the player to add extra models at 40 points a pop. Grrr!

I'll still paint him up as in future versions of the rules my BA may be allowed variable size squads again or I could swap him out for the assault cannon Terminator if I want.

Speaking of the assault cannon, this is a very straightforward weapon swap. I had originally tried to fit an old Baal Predator assault cannon on the model to make a meaty Assault cannon but I couldn't figure out a way to build a convincing harness around the arm. Instead I found a really old assault cannon arm and simply glued that on as it was. This bit is so I old I think it's actually lead - it certainly feels very soft and bends relatively easily. The gun itself is smaller than I would have liked but I was pleasantly surprised that the hand was the same size as the new Terminators. The arm itself sits further down the arm so I had to build it up a little to get it right. To help disguise the join, and to bulk the model up a little bit, I added a shield above the cannon.

I plan to paint these models next, right after my Assault squad.

I had hoped that it would only take about an hour or so to finish the Terminators but it took closer to three, so I had little time to devote to my Assault squad.

Still, as you can hopefully see in the photo, I have managed to finally get the last highlight onto the armour. The next step for these five models is to paint all the black details such as the jump pack harnesses and weapons.

Turn by turn action
I ported over a couple more Imperial Guard battle reports yesterday in between modelling projects. The first of these is a turn by turn report of a 2000 point game against Gary's Biel-Tan Eldar. Scope it out here.