Brute Squad

 'Our big guns never tire,' as the Tyrant of Badab reputedly said. Personally, like any sci-fi wargames fan, I never tire of big guns.

Yes, it's Devastator Squad week here at Kraken Towers. I live underneath an artillery fort (well, next to it, rather than in the cramped and twisting munitions storage tunnels that riddle the hill it stands on, because that would be too awesome), and I tried to take some inspiration from the cannons that decorate the hill outside Skansen Kronan.

Sorry, not inspiring enough. Because let's be honest, it's just a big black lump of metal. What's sci-fi and intimidating about tha...

Waaait a minute, that's better,

Now let's get painting.

Yeah, there's a tank as well. Not a transport, you don't put Devastators in transports. You sit them on something with long sight lines and let rip as much as possible. Just like this Vindicator tank does.

It's an old kit, a set of lead bolt-ons for the original plastic Rhino. 

Nice stuff as well, adding a ton of armour and details that the eponymous APC badly needed.

Alas, neither the original paint job nor my greenstuff and glue fix-up did it a lot of favours. The Dark Angels paint it used to have was slapped on very heavily. The tower gunner and the tool panel on the side were particularly badly hit. 

If you can't see the greenstuff that keeps the heavy chunks of lead on the flimsy plastic, that's all to the good. It was totally necessary to keep them from tearing off. I've left it as black as possible, and it's pretty much invisible in these photos. 

Good tank, though. Solid and brutal looking, so I gave it teeth with a bit of weathering on the lower jaw. 'Dozer blades wouldn't be the best place for mural painting, I reckon.

So the Devastators - there are two five-man teams, both given very little in the way of squad markings so they can be swapped into any Tactical squad as a heavy gunner.

Each have a sergeant, with the traditional bolt pistol and chainsword kit.

Always feels like a bit of a babysitting job, that, giving their leader CC weapons when everyone else is supposed to be lobbing long ranged death about. I bet they have a lot of issues with suppressed rage. Or, you know, not-very-repressed-at-all rage.

Multimeltas now come with an iPad built in, so you can check your email while you burn tanks.

The attempt at an exhaust flare on the launcher is a fail. It's a grass tuft repainted, so it looks like he's using his recoilless rifle to grow plants in. 

Las-cannon - still the 41st Millenium's best can opener.

Plasma Cannons use SCART leads. Who knew?

Bolt Thrower as they looked inside the band's heads.

So here's the AT squad...

...and the AP squad.

And here's the guy who keeps it all in working order. 

This week's character is a Techmarine. There's no official Techie in the Crypt Angels box, so this is cobbled together from various Sternguard Veteran and plastic character options. He could also play a Captain of some description, so he gets a resin base to stand tall on. 

Cog-skull logo for one side, with the Crypt Angel jaw lurking underneath

I couldn't think of anything else for the other shoulder, so he's got a spanner for now. I can always go back and do something more inspired later.

His Servoskull is red because I thought it might make a nice change. Or possibly because it's embarrassed over the blobby writing on the scroll, I'm not sure.

And that's still not all for this week! I was on a bit of a spree, sorry.

So here's another plastic/metal Rhino hybrid - the Predator tank!

Now look, I know the autocannon is upside down. It's not my fault.

Whoever originally assembled this did the turret with some industrial grade resin glue. I think I could probably have wrenched it free, but only with some risk of twisting or even snapping the barrel, and it just didn't seem worth it in the end. 

As it is, the sponsons got more of my greenstuff cement treatment, so I'm not really in a position to criticise the previous owner. At least the guns all swivel - the lascannons in their sockets, and the turret can be removed for travel. Or to mark damage. Or on sunny days, so the crew can kick back with a beer.

And that's still not all for this week! Spree, I told you.

Assault Terminators!

These are Space Wolf Termies, and although you could clip off all the runes, dog skulls, wolf pelts and teeth, it would be a crying shame to do so.

I've done my best to keep the nice detail visible but without making it too obvious. Tough job.

I mean, look at this guy! His lightning claws say 'Fenris' on them. You'd need a heart of stone to take away that kind of detail. I don't have a heart of stone. Not that I painted it in, mind, but there are limits.

I mean, I did try and come up with slightly alternative chapter logos to cover the premoulded stuff. So the Winged Mouth is going sideways, and the howling wolves have gingivitis. And these are now, I dunno, Crypt-related Dog Marines or something. Terminator versions of Greyfriars Bobby, that's what we'll say.

Although they're all basically Wolverine, so whatever. 

I'm Logan, and so's my wife.

Squad came out well, though, and they don't look massively Space Wolfy to the passing glance. Funny how much a colour change helps break the association, apart from anything else.

Here's all the marines for this week together.

But that's still not all! Because I did a bunch of bugbears as well. The chap with the log I did a few weeks back stuck in my mind a bit, I really enjoyed the model. And my Reaper box contained several more.

Bugbears! Attack!

Four of them were duplicates, though, which I was not up for. This is the basic pose with a swapped shield and a painted-on scar.

Each one got either a weapon or a shield swap from the bits box, or in some cases both.

Although I kept fairly closely to browns, blacks and flesh, I tried to keep the colours varied. This guy has his original shield, by the way.

It's not like you can't tell it's the same model four times, but at least they aren't clones.

There were three character Bugbears in the box too. I'd already done the guy with the massive spiked club, this one's a barbarian with a battleaxe. But as you can see, even these ones are basically tweaks on the same torso. 

They've made a good effort, with different amounts of armour, new heads and slightly different poses. But it's not hard to spot the similarities.

Until you get to this guy, at least, the obligatory runt in every litter. He's a good head shorter than the others, a rubber model from my copy of the DnD board game. I never played it, and the models are mostly lumpy rubbish, but handy for spare parts and stuff. Phlothos's mace head came from one of these guys, for example. 

Okay, now I'm done. More next weekend, although probably much less - the Bugbears were done on the side over the last three weeks, and I'm keen to press ahead with the Marine rank and file before paint fatigue overtakes me.