#I was walking through the wire one day,#sang the Commissar merrily. His men all loved him for his whimsical sense of humour: a rare commodity in the grim darkness of the darkly grim future. Hm, I read the other day that there's a story combining Bertie Wooster with Cthulhu. Perhaps worthwhile mixing up with 40K as well. Perhaps. That reminds me: I got into a bit of a silly argument online the other day. "As opposed to those sensible arguments online which result in an exchange of valuable information, Pete?" Point taken! This one was about My Little Pony. It's time one accepts the fora one hangs about on are a bit weird when people start advising you to watch My Little Pony. The silly argument was because I have no intention of watching it, and see no reason to. This was taken rather irascibly by its adherents, who accused me of disparaging it by declaring I had no reason to watch it. People do get some funny ideas sometimes. In a spirit of inquiry, a mate watched it to see whether the claims that it had writing, plots, yadayada that appeal to adults as well as little girls had merit. His report: no. I think he used more colourful language. I understand the show has plenty of rainbows, so colourful language is somehow apt.
"Pete, your digression has nothing to do with 40K. Get back to what you've been up to." Oh, right, yes. I've attached plastic mesh to the staves, giving the impression of more barbed wire, as seen in the picture above (and some more below). Handy stuff that plastic mesh. You just need to cut it in such a way that it looks like it does in these pics, and it has a rather wiry look to it, viz.
I spent a few productive hours watching a spot of Firefly and finishing off the Sallies. As I've said before, the tracks will be coated with sand and filler later on, so don't think too much of their appearance. I grabbed a load of staples to provide the handles you can see everywhere. I snapped a drill, which was annoying. Happily, I have a few more of the tiny wee ones. Anyway, two hulls and all the turrets are drying outside, and the other three have had my last something or other wrapped round the hull weapons to provide dust covers. Anyway, behold. I hope to get them undercoated tomorrow and the main colours on them. I'm toying with Army Painter green, which is a good military colour. But I don't have a lot of it. I have plenty of a weird-looking "Jade" green, but that's because it doesn't look great on vehicles! You can see it on some scenery pieces back in the archives. I shall decide tomorrow. Rest assured I have already drawn up plans for the next motor pool. Farewell, you lovely people!
All the Sallies have had their fighting compartments extended to admit the turrets. As you can see from the wonky turrets above, I have not yet drilled holes for them. Behold the perils of changing your mind halfway through a project, kids! ;-)
I don't have any wheels left after all my building of tanks, so I came up with a new wheeze. Unlike the GW models, my tracks don't flow round the hull, so I can't completely follow the wise example of a master modeller some of you may know of: Tinners is his online handle. He had the idea of just covering the tracks with mud, thus obviating the need for detailing. Good thinking! So I followed that as far as I could go, then needed curves at the corners as the track vanishes beneath the track guards. So I got some plasticard tube and cut myself some pieces from it, then wrapped 0.25mm thickness plasticard round them while watching Erasure videos on Youtube.
Ah, nostalgia! Then I glue the resultant pieces to the plasticard I have laid along the bottom of the track guards. Oh, and speaking of track guards, they're just 0.25mm plasticard, too. They'll be trimmed later to curve round the front. The exhausts, eagle-eyed watchers will have perceived, are from Baneblade kits. I prefer something chunkier for superheavies, but these things are - as someone pointed out - eminently satisfactory (can something be eminently satisfactory? Incredibly passable, ecstatically okay, mind-blowingly fine, mm, no.) for smaller vehicles.
Then I slide a ribbon of the 0.25mm thickness plasticard through the gap and link up the front and back "wheels". It would have been easier to do this if I'd not glued the track guards in place, but I'm a haphazard type!
I got as far as doing this to the above vehicle last night, and then retired to bed to have a good old sleep with Predator on in the background. Very relaxing film, that. "Gert to thee chopppah!" and similar Rainer Wolfcastle lines. :-D Anyway, I'm off to post another of those Ebay doodahs, payment having come in while I slept. Yesterday the Griffon went off to America, and Vraks 2 to Germany. Today Vraks 1 goes to Italy, and at some point (Monday, I expect) Imperial Armour: Apocalypse will head down to London. Fare you well, erstwhile possessions. You have served me well. Do your duty by your new masters as well! A last shot of the five Sallies now, and fare you well, gentle readers!
The Sallies are coming along nicely. I've been penned inside by the weather today, so I've got a lot done. I picked out those 45-degree angle pieces, coated the hulls with plasticard, slapped some top hatches on the vehicles . . . and then decided I didn't want to mess about hand-crafting autocannon to be crew-served from the back. So instead I thought "Turrets!" Then I realised that the hatches I'd so carelessly placed restricted where I could place the turrets unacceptably. So I boxed in a further section over the left track guards, and stuck on a couple of turrets I had sitting around, viz:
I need to do a little more work to these so that the turrets sit nicely, and I have another three vehicles (including that at the top of this page), which need extensions to their fighting compartments. There's plenty of detailing needs doing, but these vehicles are coming along pretty swiftly, I think you'll agree. So I shall get back to doing that. Until next time, be well! :-)
