battlewagon

This part was less heartbreaking, and more difficult – how to fit the GW add-on kit deffrolla onto the Rhino. The deffrolla fits perfectly onto the stock cab of the battlewagon…no attachment points on the Rhino!

When I started out, I was fiddling around with placement, and I found a spot that looked like it was almost as if GW had intended on the deffrolla being attached to a Rhino in this way. The spots where I glued it – if the Rhino had been a quarter inch higher on the trukk bed, and the deffrolla been a quarter inch thinner, it would have been absolutely perfect.

As it was, I had to shim. Cut a door in half and stick it under the rolla attachment points. Cut up some sprue and glue it beside the attachment to add extra stability.

Added an Ork glyph or two to each side door, and voila! It’s done.

I will be adding on extra grots and orks and things later. I learned that lesson from the last trukk I assembled – don’t glue things inside until you have them painted, or they will look like ass!

Painting

I read this GW article on painting a battlewagon. Pretty good, with some good tips on rusting/corrosion. I have a different paint scheme in mind, but that article will be sitting in a Firefox tab for the next few weeks.

The Rhino will be my standard Regal Blue, with Space Marine Blue highlights. Not certain what other colours to use, but I think I’ll be using the technique mentioned in that article on some darker grays or reds.

With the last of my Fantasy tournaments for the summer over with, it’s time to change focus to my Orks again. I have some dethkoptas and a battlewagon to finish. I’m prioritizing the battlewagon for a couple reasons:

1. If it goes no further than it is right now, it isn’t playable. The dethkoptas are playable, and look mostly done.
2. For some reason I’ve constructed a barrier of fear around the dethkoptas. I really don’t want to paint them anymore.
3. Battlewagon == AWESOME.

With that decision made, we pick up the project where I last left it – mostly assembled.

The Dilemma

Most of my trukks are Space Marine Rhinos that have been caved in, sawed in half, guns glued on randomly, etc. It’s a lot of fun. However, for this model I won a Battlewagon model and so wanted to use it instead of the Land Raider that I would have used otherwise.

I started to assemble it a couple months ago. I was amazed at the quality of the construction. Everything fit together perfectly. The instructions were complete and useful. The model was beautiful. It was a work of a divine being, and not the Games Workshop that I’ve come to know and love.

Which left me with an issue – how can you cut/carve/slice/scratch the work of the divine?! I didn’t want to convert it. I wanted to put it together in its pristine beauty and leave it for all the world to admire.

But…that would go against my theme. I asked a bunch of my gaming friends what I should do, and none of them could truely understand the nature of my problem – they all said (paraphrasing) “carve it up!” They thought I was asking for conversion advice, and not looking for permission to leave it as it was “no, it’s ok Craig, you don’t have to follow your theme this time…my that’s a beautiful tank you have there.”

The Solution

Time. I left it for a month. It’s still a brilliant model, but I don’t feel so bad about slicing it up. woot! Lets get cutting!

The primary conversion on this thing was to take a hack saw and slice a Rhino into 2/3rds, then glue it where the cab of the Battlewagon usually sits. For this stage, everything else is stock Battlewagon.

The Next Steps

1. Figure out where to place a couple guns. The stock tank has gun turrets on top of the cab, but that won’t work out perfectly anymore.
2. Figure out how to attach the deffrolla. Yeah, this bad boy needs a rolling pin.
3. Decide what options I’m going to give it standard, and provide magnet attachment points for those. Think about future options and see if I can’t provide attachment points for those as well. This is hard, since it requires reading the future and I’m not so awesome at that.
4. Orkify the cab.
5. See if the Animosity Orks will fit in the trunk. gwahaha.