WH40K: Puppetswar Big Gun

Big Momma gun add-on kit from Puppetswar.eu

Another conversion/add on for a Warhammer 40,000 vehicle model, this time from Puppetswar. They are another Polish creator of resin miniatures and accessories. These Poles certainly know how to make a nice wargaming product!

All aboard the Warbus!

I really like their Ork style Warbus, but I plumped for the Big Momma cannon, because I had a spare Rhino in the stash, and the Mekboss in me likes really big guns.

The main piece is a single mould of the big gun and front/top armour, which can be glued straight on to the top of the Rhino kit. (You need both sides, all the floor pieces, the top piece, the rear hatch and the tracks from the original kit. You will also need a hatch, the headlights and any accessory pieces such as badges that you want to add.)

There is also a rear piece with fans moulded on it - this goes directly over the rear door of the Rhino. There is a dozer blade (very large), an ammunition crane, and four ammunition pieces.

In the pictures you can see some brass bits and bobs which I added, partly to hide some gaps, and partly just for decoration. I also used brass tube to extend the crane. I just wanted to strengthen the crane pieces and decided to make it taller.

I realised that, unlike the Vindicator, which this resembles (but much bigger gun - some sort of envy, perhaps?) there is no driver hatch or vision slits. So I added a couple of pieces from the bits box to represent sensors for the driver, who presumably is watching a screen to steer this thing. I also put a spare eagle on top of the gun, for martial decoration.

That dozer blade is huge.

Puppetswar sells it and a similar piece separately as the 'War Plows'. It it would be a wonderful cow catcher for the armoured train I am going to build (one day).

WH40K: Maxmini Siege Guns - mostly painted

Here are the Siege Guns with most of the painting done.

I usually paint track pieces separately. I put them on double sided tape on a bit of board. I spray with Citadel Black and then Tamiya or Mr Colour Gunmetal. 

The vehicles are undercoated in Citadel Black, then Tamiya Light Sand. The tracks get glued on, then I go over them with paint markers for weathering. Silver paint marker for wear and tear, and various mud and dust colours for dirt. It's not precise, and it won't win any modelling prizes, but it's good enough for the table top. 

When I was building these kits, I accidentally dropped one of the guns, breaking the resin in a couple of places. Luckily I found a couple of the small fragments and glued them back on. Superglue (cyanoacrylate) adheres to resin very quickly, which is tricky if you are trying to adjust the placement of pieces on a model, but it is a very strong bond. Once painted, the join is hardly visible. I couldn't be bothered repairing the handle on the breech, because I expected it would just break off again during game play. 

WH40K: Maxmini Siege Guns

Maxmini are a Polish company making good quality resin figures, weapons and parts for conversions, for fantasy and science fiction wargames. Coincidentally, some of their parts fit neatly to Games Workshop's line of Warhammer 40,000 toy soldiers and models.

Their Siege Guns really caught my eye. They would be lovely substitutes for Medusa self propelled guns, but with your opponent's permission they could also be substituted for Colossus or Bombard mortars.

Picture of assembled Siege Gun with sandbag scenery, from the Maxmini website.

There is a nice review of the gun, showing the components, at the Bell Of Lost Souls website.

The guns and other bits are nicely moulded. There was a little flash, but hardly any airbubbles. When mine were delivered, they were missing the little wheeled ammunition loaders, but the guys at Maxmini were very apologetic and immediately sent replacements. Thanks guys, great work!

The guns are about the size of the GW Basilisk pieces, with much shorter barrels.

The models come with sandbag emplacements (three pieces of resin) which have been temporarily placed in the Terrain bits box. I assembled the guns and superglued them into the Chimera chassis, with a few extra bits such as ammo boxes, backpacks and communicator parts from the bits box.

This is what they look like attached to GW Chimera models:

(Apologies for the mobile phone photos; the next ones will be better. Promise!)

WH40K - Bombard Battery from Forgeworld

I have ordered three (!) of the Imperial Guard Bombard vehicle kits from Forgeworld, because I want to make a siege artillery battery. They aren't cheap. (In fact they are outrageously expensive) but I have been thinking about them for quite a while and have decided to bite the bullet.

I have also ordered the Trojan support variant of the Chimera, and the Space Marine 'Air Defence Command Platform'. I plan to mount the dish piece on the hull of the Trojan, to make it into a Command Post vehicle.

In the new Imperial Guard codex, the same gun as the Bombard can be seen on the Colossus vehicle - which uses the Chimera chassis instead of the Leman Russ. Apparently the stats are the same (or similar), and this suggests that the Colossus could eventually become available as a plastic kit - a variant of the Chimera. However, I have finally decided that I won't wait that long. Also, I prefer the 'weight' of the Leman Russ chassis - it looks more suitable as an artillery carrier for a gun that big.

The Trojan suits my idea of a command car - the boxy hull is a bit higher than standard, something like the real life M577 variant of the M113 APC.

In the codex, up to three Colossus, Griffon, Basilisk or Medusa vehicles can be taken as an Ordnance Battery, in any combination. This encourages the modelmaker/collector to have a diverse collection, but I like the idea of a battery of the same types. In game, I think I could use the Bombards as proxies for the Colossus. The Trojan would have no particular game value, except possibly as a proxy for a command Chimera, or a Salamander.

As their main armaments are the big guns, which have a minimum range, as well as a maximum, they are actually vulnerable to close assaults. I think this weakness makes a more interesting game - they become as much an objective as they are a weapon.