Warp Lightning Cannon

Cannon Engineer

 What's this? Two posts in one week? Yeah, well the cannon was a great model to put together and paint. It went together extremely easy with a few options and some colorful crew too. I had to paint it in four sets. The first set being the crew as you can see here with the Engineer. The other sets were the base, very simple nothing much as the vehicle pretty much covers all of it. You can see the base, prepainted below the three crewmen. The other two pieces were the cannon itself and the vehicle frame.

The Crew

The reason for the crewman to be painted separately is obvious. It would be almost impossible to paint them when glued onto the frame. The other two were done apart to paint them easier although I primed them black. I painted the cannon a boltgun metal for a base while the frame was done with a 1-1 mix of Calthan brown and Astronomicon Grey.

Cannon, left side

Cannon, right side

Afterwards I used boltgun for most of the metal on the vehicle with some chainmail in other parts. If you see a lighter silver then that would be the chainmail paint. On the cannon you will see some bronze-like parts, the ones on each side of the warpstone. Those were based boltgun as I mentioned before, but then I used a couple layers of Gryphonne Sepia wash. I let the first layer dry before the second. I spent several minutes rotating the cannon by hand to get an even coat. I did use a gold on the symbols along the side of the barrel

Cannon, rear

The frame, after painting all the metal, was given a good wash of Devlan Mud. Some did puddle around the spikes. Again I tried to rotate the vehicle so the wash didn't pool, especially on the wheels. After it had dried, I used the sepia wash on select beams and planks in order to get some variation. I then gave the all the wood a light drybrush of Codex grey to bring out the wood. I also lightly drybrushed the metal with chainmail. When I finally decided to stop with the painting, I glued the crew and cannon on. Remember that with the plastic cement, it will not work on painted surfaces. You have to scrape the paint off in order for it work. In my case, I used superglue! It also doesn't work as well, but it is strong enough for what I needed it to do. I also added grass to the base before gluing the cannon onto it.

The cannon needed to be pinned for it to attach to the base. The pins are in the bottom of the large wheels. The pins are in the shape of an 'L'. The vertical part goes up through the base into holes I placed there, with the horizontal part of the pin glued underneath the base. I hope you can picture that. If I didn't do that, the cannon would fall off of the base through regular usage.

The last picture I have here shows the crew placement. Not following the instructions, I purposely placed the cannon facing to the back. So actually I have it point to the rear. I just liked it better that way. On second thought I should have re-arranged the crew. Putting the Engineer in the front, the driver behind and to the side of him, with the rat with the wrench on the back platform. Oh well, at least you can see Engineers scope. I used blue as it stands out. It is the only blue in my entire army. It came out pretty good, using Mordian Blue, Midnight Blue, Lightning Blue, and white, mixing appropriately.

Next up will be more Grey Knights, then I have the Vermin Lord and more skaven in line behind them.

Thanks!