Hobby Projects

On Tuesday this week I went to Maine to make some adjustments in our storage unit. We don’t get over there very often because it is about 98 miles one way. We have pulled out a lot of the stuff that was in there, and I took out everything related to my little WH40k addiction hobby.

Once I had all of those boxes and bins out of the storage unit and crammed into the car there was a ton of empty space in the storage unit…hmmm. I asked and, yes indeed, there was a smaller (read: Less Expensive) unit available. Perfect. Everything is now moved into the smaller unit and we are saving nearly 50% on our storage. Shoulda done that a long time ago.

Anyhoo, on Thursday – the beginning of the heat wave – I worked all morning and then when it was too hot to run the computers I got to work painting the Tau and Kroot figs that I started in 2003. Yes, they have been in a box for 9 years. Just a handful, a starter set if you will, 9 fire warriors, 5 stealth battle suits, 4 Pathfinders and 17 Kroot “carnivores” (they should really be called necrovores…). And a Devilfish troop carrier:

The color scheme is going to be mostly white with some red highlighting and some blue – following the scheme of the Crisis Battle suits. One of these is the leader, the other his body guard…

I chose to start with the tiny little Tau force because that one can get completed most quickly and then I can move on to the Kreig Legion. I bought the boxed army a million years ago, Steel Legion or Death Korps or something like that. Anyway, it is out of production now, and I can’t even find a picture.

I have 60 plus soldiers in that box to paint, two full platoons and some special weapon squads, plus two Chimeras and two Sentinels (all four models still boxed and in the shrink-wrap!!). There is also a Basilisk that I started to build at some point, and I have the turret and tread-assemblies for a Leman Russ Vanquisher that will have to be custom-built to complete. I decided that if I am going to custom-build the hull of the Leman Russ then I may as well go all-in and scratch-build a Baneblade too.

This is the cover of the turn-of-the-century (har, yes, copyright 2000 printed right inside!) Imperial Armor rulebook showing the “official” Forge World Baneblade model.

This tank here, that I originally built in 1993 or ’94, is going to become the base platform for my scratch-build:

It was too hot to do anything else last night so I started drawing up plans for the conversion.

Yes, I will be making more detailed sketches and plans and will share them here if you want to see them. You can follow the progress of this project by clicking on the Baneblade tag link.

Now that I have all of my tanks and other armor out of storage and available for playing, I can take my time and get these soldiers painted correctly and then start on the vehicles. Most of the Tallarn figs were painted by my friend Tim, again, back in the late ’90s, so it will be a challenge to get all of my vehicles looking like they belong in the  same army:

All of the photos are going to be archived at the flickr set Baneblade Project. We play 40k on Saturdays at the Fortress Monastery in Laconia, join us.