New Paint, New Tank

First off, look over there on the right. That is a list of Blood Pact links; blogs, photo galleries and anything else I can find. I'd like to gather as many online Blood Pact Links as possible so if you find one or have one, let me know and I'll put it up.

School has been kicking my butt this last week, but I managed to assembly line a few pacters from squad 2 and work out a new paint style. I received some feedback saying the red was too dark, so here's a picture of a brighter style on the far right, old style on the left (everyone else.) Oh, and the newly darkened rocks from the last poll. If you like the new style or old style, go ahead and vote on it. New style is two layers of watered down red and a red GW wash over a black undercoat. Old style is a mud brown basecoat with red worked up on the highlights.


And now, ladies and gentlemen, Pick a Damn Army proudly presents the Mort style tank I ordered one month and one day ago (surprise!):




Those are all the track links. I'm not looking forward to putting them all on.



All the gun barrels are for heavy stubbers, like the Macharius has. I'm glad I won't be using them since they were all snapped off their sprue.


Lower hull standing on its side, sides laid out and turret resting on the main hull.


Broken in shipping: a section that will house the road wheels has partially split.


This is what it should look like.


All the fiddly bits. I was very happy to see all the barrels are straight.


The muzzle break is an add on to the regular barrel. I'm impressed with how deep it is and how thin the sides are.


Towards the end of the unpacking I realized several "bits" weren't supposed to be free floating. This bit is supposed to attach just to the right from where it rests, on the outside of the hull to hold a road wheel.


This bit is supposed to be attached like the one in the background.


One flamer lost its igniter and the two curved pieces on the left look official, but I don't know where they belong.


The hatches are a bit smaller than the GW style, as you can see here the GW hatch doesn't fit.


Neither does the tank commander.


If I clip away ring of resin around the bottom of the Forgeworld renegade tank commander, it looks like it will fit.


Ork Trukk for scale. The fiancee loves her orks even though she doesn't play. I really wanted to fix it for her while she was building last night but I didn't. She powered through her frustration (she hasn't built any other models) and it looks great.



The tank is drying off after a scrubbing with a tooth brush and some dish detergent. If shool lets me up for air, I'm really looking forward to building it. My Blood Pact have an AT83 Brigand!

Squad 2 Built

I know you're all here for the pictures so I'll start with that:

Two line troopers.


Two more.


The corporal and sergeant. The corporal has an empire flagellant head with a greenstuff grotesk and strap, the tommy gun is from MaxMini. (I told you I couldn't wait to use it!) The sergeant is the first MaxMini head of that style to keep its spikes. I think it fits his axe-murderer look, but I'm still not certain I will leave them. The sergeant's arms are from an empire flagellant and the axe head is from a chaos marauder. Note the khorne symbol on the chest since he is without shoulderpads.


Plasma gunner and trooper. The plasmagun is from a chaos raptor and is smaller and thinner than most marine sized weapons, perfect for a mere mortal. (Thanks Trent!) I used the flamer to give it a strap, and the left arm from the cadian heavy weapons team, the one that ends up near the face to make it look like he's yelling.


I chopped the connector off a flamer tank bit and used it to attach a plasticard tube to the flamer hose. The plasticard is simply a tube with plasticard glued to either end and several small plasticard strips glued on horizontally for detail.


Stubby autocannon. I didn't like the pose of the old assistant gunner, so he was busted back to private. The new assistant gunner has a full drum made from gluing two of the heavy weapons extra half-drums together and greenstuffing the gap. He also has a las-carbine. Rolled up greenstuff on the base will be painted as spent shells. The barely visible stub-revolver on the rock next to the gunner is from necromunda.


Here were the votes from my earlier poll:

The rocks on the Blood Pact bases, are they too bright?

Yes, tone down the blue.	2
Yes, change the color to match the mud.	1
No, it's fine as is.	3
Lightly drybrush some white on the rocks and they'll look fine.	2

It looks like a pretty even spread. I'll try out a few things, perhaps washing the rocks in devlan mud and then bringing the highlights back up.

Minor progress on the Stalk Tank since I've run out of plasticard tubing! I did pick up a razor saw and mitre box and it's helped immensely. For less than the price of a GW razor saw I picked up an Excel brand razor saw with removable blade and an aluminum mitre box for making straight cuts.

Next up: Painting squad 2, Loxatl, Stalk Tank

Stalk Tank in progress

Here is the beast. I went to Michael's arts and crafts and found a wooden egg of the correct size. Unfortunately it came in two pieces so I pinned them together with the help of my dremel and brownstuffed the gap, sanding it down with my dremel as well. The white plasticard visible in the picture is the start of my first engineering attempt: plasticard legs like a preying mantis. Wish me luck!



Here are the next two Pacters; a grunt with gas mask and an axe wielding maniac for a sergeant. The Sgt's arms are from the fantasy flagellants, while the axe head is from a fantasy marauder. This conversion was inspired by CMDante's log on DakkaDakka.


A short pattern autocannon, which I had planned before seeing Dave Taylor's blood pact, but hadn't considered reversing the muzzle break. Thanks for the idea Dave.

Shipment arrived, plans made.

I've been thinking about the blue rocks on the bast of the Pacters and could use some imput. A poll is up on the right, so please vote!

After 30 days in transit, my next installation of the Pact have arrived. Now I ordered 30 heads and 40 backpacks and this is what came in the mail.


What I received:
44 backpacks, but only 2 sets of extra pouches. There should have been 4, one set of pouches with each backpack set:


33 heads: 5 of each sculpt, plus 3 extra of the head without a mask.


2 of their lasgun style weapons (which I didn't order. Thanks MaxMini!):


I'm disappointed in the missing pouches, and there are many more mould lines on these heads than on the first batch, but happy with the overall product. Now that I think about it, I can't wait to make a Pacter with the free tommygun!


Q: What do a defiler arm and an easter egg have in common?
A: Stalk-Tank!
The concept in profile:


This is the rough plan for my stalk tanks.
1: The ball joint will end up as the stalk-tank's head, greenstuff moulds will be made of land-raider headlamps and used as the stab-light/eyes.
2: Legs will be constructed and attached to the middle joint, probably where the hanging hoses are currently.
3: The easter egg will either be replaced with an angular plasticard version or I will find plastic eggs (rather than the chocolate above) to act as the basis for conversion. It will be about a half inch off the base.
4: Read over the books again for a solid description of a Stalk-tank so I have a good image in my head and so I can remember if the pilot's bubble was rounded or angular.

In other news, I found a site that posted a review of my love-tank.
Here's an interesting picture from their review:



Using the grid to measure, it looks like it would be the same width as a Leman Russ with sponsons, and about a las-cannon longer.

RPG Team

First full 10 man squad finished!

RPG


Assistant's icon still wet with Devlan Mud.


Operator and assistant.


I'm pretty happy with these two. The assistant was an experiment in several ways; his lasgun is shortened and he's holding it by a vertical fore-grip, his right arm is a mortar-loader's arm with brass rod and greenstuff to create a RPG shell, and his pack is made of the internal tube in a ballpoint pen and greenstuff. The base is a mini diorama with a couple sandbags, a shovel, an imperial lasgun and canteen in the muck. I'm trying to give the impression that the Pact has advanced through imperial lines.

I found two old old pots of GW flesh wash from the 80's! It has a high pigment content and tends to turn things a yellow brown, perfect for yellowing metals and teeth. I wish I could get a close up of the assistant's teeth; they're nasty.

Looking at Trent's Blog, the idea of "True Scale" chaos marines resurfaced for me. I'm thinking three hulking chaos marines using the Grey Knight terminator rules would be a nice boost in the hand to hand department.