Epic artillery

[Will Vale]

Hi folks,

 

I managed to get the missing missiles primed and painted at the weekend so was able to finish off these artillery pieces today. They're "Epic Scale" (6mm-ish) white metal kits from Games Workshop in the '90s, from sealed blisters I picked up on our local auction site. A bit of a learning curve to clean up and assemble the metals, but with a thin coat of etch primer and two of Tamiya lacquer primer I haven't had any problems with paint adhesion.

 

 

They're airbrushed with Tamiya lacquers and then everything else is brush painted with acrylics including the weathering. I guess I did use a bit of graphite powder as well.

 

The siege mortars are Colossus Bombards (I think) and the rocket artillery are Manticores.

 

 

I replaced the metal rockets (which were OK) with some brand new plastic Manticore rockets from the Aeronautica Imperialis ground targets sprue. They fit the rails nicely and I can find something else for the static launchers when I get to building them. I lettered one of the nosecones T.F.U.2 in honour of one of the best episodes of Spaced  The mortars are out of the box.




I think they came out quite well and I've got my eyes open for e.g. Leman Russ tanks or similar. I have an older Hellbore tunnelling machine, which I've started to clean up and then I realised it was lead and I should be a bit more careful about how and where I did that... It's not as sharp as the tanks but it's very cool and I will get to it in due course, probably with a few extra details.

NB: For sizing, they're on 40mm bases, from memory the Chimera chassis are about an inch long but the dozer blades and other bits overhang to the point where they really didn't fit on a 32mm base.

 

Cheers and thanks for looking!

 

Will

 

 

[Andy Moore]

Fantastic work Will. I'm surprised just how much detail they managed to pack into these little sculpts, like the teeny tiny shovel on the track sponson.

 

Andy

[Hunter Rose]

They look superb Will, the missiles look fab, glad you didn't have to muck about with a drill!

[badger]

Great job!! I have loads of these to do at some point as well and had contemplated mounting them on figure bases.

Having seen how good yours look I'll definitely be doing that.

Good luck with the hellbore - I stalled on one about 10 years ago and it is still mocking me from the shelf of shame.

[Will Vale]

On 9/14/2020 at 1:15 PM, Andy Moore said:

I'm surprised just how much detail they managed to pack into these little sculpts, like the teeny tiny shovel on the track sponson.

There's a hand axe and pickaxe too, and something that I couldn't identify. With little straps! I was surprised too tbh. They lack squareness, but there's so much detail that it's hard to see just how bendy or offset some of the casting is.
 

On 9/14/2020 at 2:42 PM, Hunter Rose said:

glad you didn't have to muck about with a drill!

Me too! Imagine trying to make eight the same  The plastic ones are nice and hopefully less likely to snap their glue bonds as they're lighter.

 

5 hours ago, badger said:

Good luck with the hellbore - I stalled on one about 10 years ago and it is still mocking me from the shelf of shame.

It's quite agricultural in its gaps, isn't it? And it needs quite a lot of infilling around the plastic chassis, plus new bearings for the lifty bit. I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually. I was very excited to see that the inlay card in the box is the one I remembered from my childhood Epic purchases in '89 or thereabouts.

I suspect it would look a lot better with smaller crawler-crane style track units, but I'm not sure what would work as a donor.

 

Will

[Si2]

I really love the Epic scale stuff, I have a shoebox full still unpainted.. You have done a superb job with these.

[Will Vale]

Thanks, hope you get some paint on yours before too long. They're a lot of fun and less difficult than I was expecting.

 

W