I got back into the painting side of the hobby last summer and registered on Warseer with the intention of blogging about my exploits in an attempt to keep me painting. As it turns out I never got around to doing that, but miracle of miracles I have been painting consistently ever since. Not every day, certainly, but bar the odd period of busyness not a week has gone by that hasn’t seen paint put to miniature. :) 8 months on, I have just completed my SECOND model. Oh dear! :(
Now, there are a number of extenuating circumstances for this sloth-like pace, but I just thought I’d get a disclaimer in right at the beginning that my username is unfortunately rather apt. Whilst I really enjoy painting it takes me an improbable amount of time to make any sort of visible progress. So please bear in mind that the space between updates may be rather long. It probably won’t be because I’ve given up, hopefully it won’t be because I’ve died, it’ll likely just be that my paintbrush seems to operate in a different time stream to the rest of the world. :|
Anyway, Onwards. . . .
The basic idea behind these guys is that Praxia, although now thoroughly modernised, has retained a feudal structure to it’s society. The ruling class counts martial ability to be of prime importance, and as the basis for their right to rule. Owning a “mount” is essential to ones claim to nobility, and a families stature is determined by the size and strength of the forces it and it’s vassals can contribute to the guard. War, they believe, is the province of the aristocracy, and as no man of noble birth would be seen WALKING into battle the guard regiments raised from the planet are entirely armoured. The infantry levies the Barons raise from their serfs are used purely for planetary defence duties.
For the colour scheme I’d always viewed the baneblade and it’s variants with all those turrets and rivets as being more like battleships than battle tanks, so I hatched upon the idea of trying to paint them in dazzle camouflage and naming them all after WWI Royal Navy vessels.
So, Sea-Knights basically. Except not at sea. :P
In terms of organisation, each Duchy of Praxia is required to raise a regiment/brigade/division for the imperial guard, depending on it’s size and resources. The barons raise what forces they can from amongst their own households and vassals. These are then divided into regiments based on their class, but within those regiments units are grouped into companies under their own lords. For example, the 5th Company of the 33rd Cavalry is made up of vassals of the powerful Veraan family, one of the 4 Grand-Families of the Hive-Keep Vigil, and comprises some 47 vehicles. The less powerful Baron Groling’s 9th Company consists of only 7 tanks. This ad hoc approach to organisation is less than ideal, but no Praxian worth his salt would suffer anyone other than their own lord to be placed over their knights retainer. Each vehicle displays it’s knights own coat of arms as well as that of the regiment’s CO, and each Duchy has a camouflage livery that is unique to it’s units.
[Basically this is all an excuse for me to paint lots of tanks (eventually), and gives me a get out clause when I get bored so I can go, “bah! What do you mean the standard size for a Leman Russ company is 10 vehicles? Baron La-dee-da spent all his families fortune on the universe’s biggest epaulets so he had to let all but 3 of his retainers go!”]
The 317th are those regiments raised by Duke Karal Orlon, the Jackal of Respite, a middling-sized Duchy but one with a reputation for producing some of the finest tank aces in the Imperial Guard.
317th Armoured Brigade:
8th Heavy Cavalry Regiment (Super-Heavy)
33rd Cavalry Regiment (Battle Tanks)
15th Outriders (Sentinels)
My eventual aim is to amass a company from each of these three regiments. With the proviso that there is no pre-determined size for these companies I can just add what I want to them as and when I feel like it.
Before I [finally!] post some pictures, I thought I’d go back to those aforementioned extenuating circumstances. This involved a hell of a lot of firsts for me. I probably ended up spending about 4 times longer than necessary figuring things out, redoing and abandoning various ideas. In no particular order these were:
First camouflaged vehicle (3-tone markings = PITA)
First use of an airbrush (Spraying = fun. Constant cleaning = irritating)
First use of masking (Bleeding = bad)
First proper weathering (Sponges = awesome)
First use of oil paints (Mig Thinner = smelly)
First use of pigments (Mig pigments = messy)
First attempt at designing and printing my own decals (DIY = more trouble than it’s worth (I wasted about a month waiting for these to work out. When I eventually came up with designs that I liked and worked well on a small scale, I discovered that the paper I’d got was too thick to distress like I wanted. Gave up in a huff after that and used GW ones instead :sadface: ))
Anyway, for those of you still here, here she is . . .
The Renown, 3rd vehicle, 2nd company, 8th Heavy Cavalry. Knight-Lieutenant Aldred Skane commanding.
Hardly anything turned out quite how I’d planned, and a couple of things I’m not completely happy with, but overall I really like the end result. More importantly, I know how I did it all (mostly)! Hopefully subsequent s will take a lot less time to complete, and I’ll be able to keep this thread updated semi regularly with my progress.
Next up I’m simultaneously working on the command Hellhammer for the second company and the Regimental Commisar's Baneblade. I’m a bit of the way into them as I assembled (largely. All 3 were eBay purchases, and Renown was already built and undercoated) and base coated all three together back in October, but I’ll delay posting any pictures of them for few days so that I’ve got a bit of a buffer zone for my tortuous painting pace. :P
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Like 4x4's, tanks should look like they've been careering around off-road exploding stuff, not picking the kids up from school! * 
Originally Posted by Shadowheart
) of the colours you used? Especially the one with the slightly torquoise-tone. 
