About six months back I found some model tanks on sale at hobby lobby. At the time there was not an official Battlewagon model. I was in the money - I thought. A few weeks after picking those up the official Battlewagon model came out. Great. Now I had a pair of tanks that I really wasn't going to use for anything.
Well, fast forward a few months and I come up with a devious plan. I have a Stompa that I have been working on and I have tons of left over bits. I start thinking and I figure I could model up one of those tanks as a Battlewagon and have about 50% GW bits on it - that way it is 'legal.'
The first thing I did is figure out if it was going to be the right size.
Well, it wasn't. The tank was going to be freaking huge if I used it as-is. Nob problem, I got my krew of Meks and Burnas on the job and they tore it down to size for me. One interesting not - the green plastic this tank was made out of was crazy hard. The Worlds Sharpest Hobby Knife was even having trouble with it.
Once it was cut down to size I assembled the tank and then went crazy with the Bitz box. I added stuff from the Stompa, a Chaos Defiler, Chaos Vehicle Sprue, Imex Chemical Plant, Ogre Command Sprue, Ramshackle Games Resin Bitz, Chunks of Sprue, and Plasticard.
I wanted a boarding plank so I used the ladder from the back of the Stompa. The Chaos Defiler arms are for holding the Deff Rolla.
Here it is complete except for the Deff Rolla.
All I needed to do on the modeling side of things was to add a Deff Rolla. I thought about using the upgrade sprue but instead decided to build my own.
This was the most intimidating and yet easiest part of this whole model. For the actual Rolla I used 2 one inch PVC pipe connectors. I glued them together and then glued down squares of plasticard over it. I added some rivets, a bit of spikes from the Stompa, and it was good to go.
I was worried about getting the plasticard to stick to the PVC but a bit of superglue and pressure and it was holding like crazy. Once the glue was dried I added some rivets and then took the Dremel tool to it and added gobs of scratches.
I am planning on getting the new upgrade sprue for my existing Battlewagon but making the Deffrolla really wasn't that bad. The hardest part about it was finding some arms. I was lucky and had some spare Defiler bits laying around. If I didn't have those I think I would have used some Imex Chemical Plant pipe or maybe even some plastic tubing.
After everything was built and put together - a little bit of black primer, some Foundation Orange through my airbrush, and bam! - instant basecoat!
She's looking a bit rough all one solid color, but it gets better!
And here she is all painted up. I hit the big areas with a solid color and then airbrushed on some Devlan Mud and she is good to go. I am thinking about maybe gluing down some real metal strips and then magnetizing my weapons so I will have options. Should be easy to do. I'm not too worried about this model starting off as a World War II tank, I think at this point it will fit in with the Warhammer 40k theme just fine.
