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Hi all,


Someone on here asked me ages ago if I was going to try doing some 40K armour, and I'm finally catching up with that idea. Except that these tanks (OK, artillery pieces) are Epic Scale. That means '90s white metal castings in something like 1/220 - 1/250 scale.

So with a nod to Tiny Toon Adventures ("We're tiny, we're tanky, we're cast a little manky..,") here are some Epic 40K artillery pieces I picked up (in sealed blisters!) on our local eBay-clone:

 

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Straight from the '90s, they are. But cleaned up with a file and scouring pad and assembled with superglue, they look quite good if you don't look too closely - lots of detail but they are rather bent and distorted in places. One of mine had really nicely cast tracks, and all the others had a bit of flash and distortion through the track blocks which was a bit of a shame.

They're based on the Imperial Guard Chimera APC chassis, as in 40K there are loads of things which use that particular base. I've actually built one (the Hydra) but never painted or photographed it, I'll fix that so you can see how the scaling down has been handled. It's quite close in scale to the plastic Adeptus Titanicus kits, maybe 5% too small? Surprisingly it looks like they'll need 40mm bases just like the plastic knights.

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With a coat of etch primer, some more clean up and then two coats of Tamiya red lacquer primer they ended up like this:

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The ones with rocket racks are Manticores, and the others are Bombards. There are metal rockets supplied for the Manticores but they're a bit clunky and I wonder if I I can find some plastic aircraft missiles to use instead? They might also be less prone to falling off!

Since then I've given them a thin coat of decanted Desert Sand, shaded with Alclad Sepia and highlighted with Deck Tan and a mix of that and white. I washed everything with a 2:1 mix of Contrast medium and Skeleton Horde to get some richness back as the highlights were quite pale.

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I'm currently painting details and adding more contrast, of which more soon. I also need to scrounge up some 40mm bases as I think metal models particularly need to be based to reduce scuffing.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

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14 hours ago, Niall said:

I though Epic was 6mm, so 1/300th scale.

Good point, old Epic was, and these are old-ish Epic ('90s not '80s) and I think maybe a bit bigger? New Adeptus was quoted as being 8mm but I think that's a mistake and it's closer to 6mm.

I'll do some scalings and report back :)

In modelling news, I blocked in the tracks with a coat of Snakebite Leather and then a thin wash of Skrag Brown, and added highlight to all the raised surfaces using Flayed One Flesh and Wraithbone. I also picked out some of the stowage in different colours.

 

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Then it was fiddly bits time, painting panels with Contrast medium and wicking small quantities of Snakebite Leather into the shadows to define them better.

 

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So far I've done one Manticore like that, I need to repeat 3 ish times and then clean up a bit. Oh, and I added some pure white ink edge highlights to sharpen things up a bit.

I'll probably re-apply some of the highlights and mid-tones if there are obvious hard edges, but mostly I think it looks good. Chipping will hide a lot of sins too!

Cheers,

 

Will

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So a basic Imperial Knight is ~170mm tall in 40K, and an AT knight (same type) is 43mm, giving a 4:1 scaling, which is what I've seen talked about. A Munitorum Container is 120mm long, and an AT container is 30mm, so that's consistent for those models at least.

A 40K Chimera track unit is 115mm long, and the Epic 40K metal Chimera track unit is 25mm long, so that's 4.6:1, i.e. these '90s metals are underscale by 15% to Adeptus Titanicus, which is a bit more than I thought. The vehicle designs are a bit different too so it's not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison.

None of this has much bearing on real life scales as they're not super well-defined and the figures tend to be bigger than the vehicles. But for the sake of argument, If a Cadian guardsman is 33mm tall, it would put 40K at ~1:60, so AT would be ~1:240 and Epic 40K about 1:275.

I think I'm going to claim 1:240 going forward :) I liked the idea that it's actually 1:220 as that's quite close to true 8mm scale and also in scale with Z gauge trains so you could have an Imperial railway :) But it's not that accurate a claim!

 

Will

 

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21 hours ago, Niall said:

I'm no fan of GW and I did not realise they redid the Epic scale in the 90's.

It turns out there have been four versions of Epic? There was the original Adeptus Titanicus fairly quickly followed by Space Marine in the late '80s. Then a re-release of that in the early '90s with a lot of unit cards. Then Epic 40K in the late '90s which flopped and went away fairly quickly, and finally Epic Armageddon which was done by Specialist Games so I'd guess early noughties? I think the Epic 40K models are probably the nicest but I have a soft spot for the old Epic stuff as well.

And then there's the new Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis. The models for those are so good and it *seems* to be selling - at least the Titans are - so I'm really hoping that we get plastic tanks eventually.
 

17 hours ago, Hunter Rose said:

Theses little guys look great Will. I love the green stowage, a nice little detail that really pops!

Thanks, I was trying to find something on them to paint red as well but haven't taken the plunge yet. I like red :) Maybe one of the boxes?

I've got the shading and highlighting finished on the first Manticore - it doesn't take that long (hour and half?) but it's quite intense work so I'm waiting for a quiet moment to look at the others.

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I also worked up the cloth bits, softening the mid-tones where the contrast was a bit dark, and adding some highlights to the edges and bands.

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Will try and do at least one more tonight. I've also started looking for the box with the 1/72 missiles in it, in the hope that something in that will work. I really need eight the same though which might be a tall order.

Will

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1 hour ago, Will Vale said:

've also started looking for the box with the 1/72 missiles in it, in the hope that something in that will work. I really need eight the same though which might be a tall order.


Will

 

Don't know if you've already thought of this, but if you have no joy with your spares box I've been in the same position before and made my own. 

If you put some styrene rod in the end of a drill you can use it like a lathe and use a file to shape the end, although you do then have to add any other details yourself which probably would be fiddly at that scale! 

Just a thought 

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Did one of the bombards last night, I need to tone down some of the white edges but I think it's a decent start.

 

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On 9/2/2020 at 7:45 PM, Hunter Rose said:

Don't know if you've already thought of this, but if you have no joy with your spares box I've been in the same position before and made my own. 

I hadn't thought of that but I think I'm going to have a *really good look* before resorting to making eight things all the same! Two's about my limit :)

 

W

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Nice work Will. I'd have to buy time on the Hubble space telescope to be able to see them to paint.

 

1 hour ago, Will Vale said:

I hadn't thought of that but I think I'm going to have a *really good look* before resorting to making eight things all the same! Two's about my limit

Make one, get some blue stuff, make a mould. Five minute epoxy and done.

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On 9/3/2020 at 10:12 PM, Crayons said:

Make one, get some blue stuff, make a mould. Five minute epoxy and done.

Missiles are round and really want four tiny fins, so it'd be a two part mould and the resin would need to hold good detail - not my bag. A friend uses open resin moulds for detail parts a lot though, I can see the point of that. 

 

On 9/4/2020 at 9:23 PM, DalekCheese said:

Would you mind posting the full-size Hydra that you mentioned?

There's not really any point - it's just the parts assembled according to the instructions and primed. I'll photograph it when I start painting it though.

 

Will

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On 03/09/2020 at 22:12, Crayons said:

Nice work Will. I'd have to buy time on the Hubble space telescope to be able to see them to paint.

 

Will brings them to club night. Trust me, they are really really really small.....

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You're only saying that 'cos of all the ginormous cars and tanks Jo :)

 

I find an Optivisor with LP5 very helpful, I haven't been able to see to paint with the naked eye for many years.

 

Will

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Got the two Bombards up to the same stage, with some chipping and a bit of rust, plus I painted the shells with tiny wobbly aquilas.

 

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I tried not to go *too* mad with the chipping, 'cos they're pretty small and there's not a lot of room.

 

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I need to do the boring bits on the other Manticore and then work out how to finish the tracks. At the moment I think some stippled brown earth paint, a dark grey wash, and then some graphite after they've been varnished?

 

Will

 

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Caught them all up to the same place, and did the above plan for the tracks (earth tones, dark grey wash) although I think it may have ended up too dark?

 

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I found some promising missiles in a Meng F-102, which has an internal weapons bay so doesn't really need them. But I think their fins might be slightly too wide for the spacing of the rails and haven't checked yet. They look good though.

 

Will

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On 06/09/2020 at 04:05, Will Vale said:

There's not really any point - it's just the parts assembled according to the instructions and primed. I'll photograph it when I start painting it though.

Ah, I see.

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Thanks, I think you're probably right otherwise it's all rather brown. They definitely perked up with some graphite powder after I'd varnished the models:

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The bases are scraps of cork and texture paint with sand, grit and Woodland Scenics ground foam for the green stuff. I glued the tanks down with CA but they're also pinned through holes with the bits of paper clip they were standing on bent over to lock them down.

A few bits of detail painting and weathering to go, and I've found some missiles which work really well so I just need to paint those. (They're actually the Manticore battery missiles from Aeronautica, so quite authentic. I had exactly the right number, and I can replace them with something else when I make those launchers up as they're a bit more flexible in their layout.)

Cheers,

Will

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11 hours ago, DalekCheese said:

Love it. What’s your basing recipe?

Thanks, these ones were pretty simple:

 

* Tear up some scraps of cork and stick down with CA.
* Build up "ground" around cork with texture paint (I think I used the GW Armageddon dust one) leaving some gaps.
* Push some stones into the ground (e.g. Woodland Scenics Talus)
* Paint crackle paint into the gaps.
* Sprinkle with a very small amount of a fine sand/grit mix.

Then prime, paint with mainly Steel Legion Drab (edge colour) and Zandri Dust and lots of washes and dry-brushing. And finally attach some foliage (e.g. Woodland Scenics ground foam) with matt medium and seal with Dullcote when dry.

The ones I did for knights and the like are a bit more involved, with concrete and pipes, but there's no room on a tank base :)

 

Will

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