Boring

Yeah, a pun like that in the title augurs ill for the rest of the article. But you can dig it, so let's not make a mountain out of a mole drill. Instead, let's kitbash one!


Termite Assault Drills - basically a very tasty transport option for any chaos or imperial army. Tough, hard hitting in shooting or combat and can deep strike. Exactly what I was after for my Alpha Legion, a nice safe way of getting the Noise Marines into assault range. Brilliant model too!

Look at it - a hundred pounds of cute fat grinding equipment.

Alas, it's a brilliant model from Forge World, and thus waaaaay out of my price range. Not to be put off, I decided to make my own.

The starting point was a set of galvanic servohaulers from Conquest. Cheap and lovely, I'd been coveting them as scenery for a while. In the event, though, I didn't build the lovely crane, and I've only done one of the actual tractors.

Long, tall sAwlly here isn't quite as much of a looker. But it's mine.

Next, I got the drill section of a Tectonic Fragdrill on eBay. Once that was build, I cobbled it together with the frame of the crane as well as some of the pincer bits. The inspiration here is classic Thunderbirds, but let's be honest, my version would never work! I've modelled it to imply that the claws at the back would lift the drill into place, then it would self-launch and somehow use its caterpillar tracks to push it through whatever hole it made.

So I ran out of caterpillar tracks, really it should have three instead of two. And something that heavy would just fall flat on its side or get jammed in the transport frame. But let's not split hairs! It's the grimdark future, so plasma levitation/nanites/enough promethium would solve all these physics. Besides, it's clearly just going to get towed about behind the tractor, so that's fine.

Speaking of which, here's the tractor. Pretty vanilla build in the end, just a smaller hook.

The serial number is a serial number from the bottom of an old transfer sheet. Waste not, want not.

Of course, what goes down must come up.

Stylus can be blamed for this, as is so often true in 40K. He suggested modelling one to show it emerging, and once I'd heard that idea I couldn't un-imagine it. Which of course meant getting another Fragdrill, this time the full set. The rest of the gantries will get glued into my Dark Uprising scenery, once I get to it.

The body of the drill was glued together, then cut in half with a band saw, courtesy of the long-suffering Mrs Kraken's workplace. I'm sure she explained it away as a good use of resources in a time of crisis. One diagonal cut across the barrel, then the back section is also being filed away for later use in the Underhive. And yes, that was a pun.

Here's the back bit - it's exactly the right height to match a Necromunda bulkhead section.

I made a base out of card and spackle, sculpted about with a spatula and decorated with cork and pebbles to give a rough tunnel entrance look. There was a stray bit of Warshrine kit left over that got enlisted. Nice to see that again after so long! Then I glue gunned the front section of the drill into it.

 
It's been given equipment modules along the front, made from the track sections from a Taurox. One of these, I chopped up further to have it open, then set the weird additional drill arm from the Fragdrill into it and stuck a multi-melta on the end (from the Land Speeder kit). The Termite has a wealth of gun options, which I guess will pop out from the other boxes in due course, but it's got a nasty melta cutter thingy as stock, so I went with that as the most obvious gun.

Painting this lot, I decided to try out a weather technique I hadn't used before. Hairspray! So they got base coloured in silver and heavily washed with browns and blacks to give a rusty undercoat. This got varnished, then when that was dry, hairsprayed. Which made it smell lovely, took me right back to the early 90s and my teenage quiff. God, I was a fire hazard back then.

Once that's dry, a second spray over the top. Mechanicus Gray for the drills, Mephiston Red for the carriage and tractor. Then, using a damp toothbrush, toothpicks and rough sponge, I scraped away the outer layer. The water on these reactivates the hairspray, so you reveal the dirty metal layer underneath.

Not bad for a first try - I scraped a bit too hard in places and got back down to the plastic. It worked best on the tractor, really, but it was fun at least! I'm better with sponge weathering, but this is quicker as you don't need to layer paint everything properly first. I'll definitely try it again.

Here they are finished! The plain grey looked a bit too drab, so I did a bit of hazard striping to liven it up.

Here's the entrance hatch at the back. Just where it's completely useless as an entrance hatch.

And here's the emerging drill, finished in similar style. There was, however, something I couldn't un-see once I'd thought it. I've managed to pose that gun arm as though it's a nineties rapper going to pop a cap in your ass. 

"Brraaaappp!"

Painting Guide:

• Undercoat - Montana Metallic silver spray, washed with thinned down black paint, then dusted with Oxide Red pigment powder before a heavy spray of varnish.
• Grays - Mechanicus Gray, Uniform Gray and Ash Gray layers
• Drillbits - Dark Stone, Dark Tone, Platemail drybrush, Typhus Corrosion in the deeper bits, Dry Rust wash (an army painter effects paint, basically rust-coloured Nihilakh Oxide, which I now love)
• Yellows - Averland Sunset, Seraphim Sepia, Bad Moon and Demon Yellow layers
• Blues - Deep Blue base, Teclis Blue and Crystal Blue layers
• Reds - Mephiston Red, Evil Suns Scarlet and Wild Rider Red layers
• Bronze - Tin Bitz, Nihilakh Oxide, Weapon Bronze
• Metal - Shining Silver on exposed undercoat bits, plenty of Dry Rust wash
• Mud - A combination of sand or Armageddon Dune technical paint, redone with Rhinox Hide or Dryad Bark and then drybrushed with Monster Brown

Biggest conversion project since the Warshrine, I think! Maybe not as extravagant as that was, but I'm well pleased all the same. Using it as a proxy Termite is a little cheesy, but the effort put in probably helps justify it. For home games only, all the same! Good for Chaos or Imperials, and of course it doubles as scenery, so it's bound to see plenty of use.

Right! Back to the zombies.