Tuesday 6 November 2012

Making A Squat Tank

One of my Epic 40K HOTT forces is the much-missed Squats. I had acquired various bits and pieces for this army from wargames shows and eBay, and can field a ranges of goodies. But I'd only managed to acquire one of the lovely, if impractical, Land-Trains. I wanted another large super-vehicle to go with it - they're classed as Behemoths in my HOTT games.

The advantage of Epic 40K HOTT is that I'm not tied to the GW fluff and don't really have to work out any detailed stats for any vehicle I use - a Behemoth is a Behemoth, regardless of how it's depicted. This gives me free rein to make stuff up.

So I did - a couple of years ago I scratchbuilt a giant Squat tank. And took photos. Here they are.

I used the transport vehicle from a plastic Vivid Imaginations Thunderbird vehicle - The Mole. The Mole itself got chopped up to make a Squat tunnelling vehicle, of course.

I added pieces of card and sprue, and other bits from toys. The turrets are from a Battlefleet Gothic spaceship.


I fancied giving the vehicle a great big gun, although the overall concept was of a giant assault troop-transport.


Having glued everything together, I undercoated it.


I then painted it in green, which is the base colour of all of my Squat stuff. I dry-brushed it in yellow-green to pick out the highlights.


Then it was just a matter of painting detail and trim. 


My Squats have blue and yellow as secondary colours on their vehicles and uniforms. In the background of this, and the previous, picture you can see the crew being painted.


Here's the finished vehicle, with the crew.


And with the base textured and painted. I use fine sand mixed with PVA glue for the ground, and small gravel for the rocks. the whole thing is painted grey, and given a dry-brush in lighter grey.


Here's the finished vehicle with a Land Raider and a Rhino so you can see how it looks in terms of size.


And here it is in action, fighting Tyranids from Hive Fleet Thatcher. This was an epic 96AP HOTT game we played a couple of years ago.


What I don't have yet is a name for the vehicle. I'm open to suggestions.

3 comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...