Tablewar Display Trays

Fitting and assembling a squad display / storage board from Tablewar... since I now have a couple of units gathering dust on the shelf, it makes sense to finish up a couple of trays and tuck the marines safely into the display case on my floor. 

Showcase: Librarian Ambriel

By no means perfect, my first try out of the Macromats backgrounds/stand for taking some richer DSLR photos was to grab the completed librarian and hit some poses... 

Rhino squad WIP - #4: airbrush base coats

Finally adding some pics of the WIP Rhino exteriors. These copped their undercoats back in November but haven't been touched for a while... 

Showcase: Retro Marines & Macromats test run

Two bits that came together in a post today - I recently picked up one of the excellent Macromat background sets from Tablewar and got a chance to test it out with an SLR camera rather than my standard mobile phone approach. 

As one of the mats (there are 3 included in the kit) is a gradation from white to blue... it also seemed fitting that the first test subject as a 'showcase' would be my old tactical squad from ~1993 that I found in the cupboard over Christmas. 

Rhino squad WIP - #3: interior weathering and assembly

Rhinos are starting to come together. Interior weathering has been finished up and the hulls have been glued together just about ready for priming and base coating. 

Going through the assembly process definitely highlighted some wasted effort - there are a few interior surfaces that you really, really can't see unless you put a miniature camera inside the tank. Good lessons for any future construction :-)

Rhino squad WIP - #2: interior painting

It turns out there are an awful lot of parts to a rhino if you intend on painting them thoroughly and including an interior. It took the best part of an afternoon to paint the interiors of the group - although to be fair, that was for 3 tanks, including some extra wash drying time for the large amount of agrax that went on the floors. It was the first time I have painted a rhino of any form, and in hindsight I can see a couple of shortcuts and things I wasted time on that just plain won't be visible.

The end result for the control stations is probably a good image to lead the post with...

Rhino squad WIP - #1: shopping list & magnet ideas

I've never really been a tank person in gaming - even on the PC, out of ~500 hours logged in Battlefield 2, less than 5 of those would have been in tanks. My Eldar army begrudgingly had a single falcon in the late 90s; partly as they were a rather annoying thing to paint (at least without an airbrush back then - some cool/quick effects are possible now) and partly as I always preferred extra ground pounders or at least a wraithguard/dreadnought addition before vehicles. 

Net result, since 1993 I haven't bought or assembled anything using the iconic rhino hull - no predator, no razorback, not even a rhino itself. My brother had a rogue-trader era marine predator (the one with the square, metal-part gunner turret and the old school round hatches on the sides), which was almost unrecognisable as a marine vehicle after it had been modified with bits to fit a chaos army. 

So think of me as a 40k tank virgin with this post.