This is a bit of a meandering intro, but if you've been following the blog for a while, you're probably used to those by now. If this is your first time visiting Tangential Contrivances, bear with me, we'll get there in the end.
While scrolling on BlueSky recently, I came across a question from another user about whether the sculpted sigils that come with the 28mm scale Solar Auxilia tanks have different meanings - one set has up-swept wings, while the other has horizontal ones. It's been a while since I read any Age of Darkness background, but my immediate answer was that perhaps one variant was adopted by traitor cohorts of the Auxilia and while the loyalists retained the other? Or, perhaps one symbol is that worn by cohorts raised within the Sol system to the Solar template, while the other is for cohorts raised at later dates from other star systems to the Solar template? Of course, being future history in a tabletop wargame, there isn't really a 'right' answer, but I grabbed my copy of The Horus Heresy volume VI: Conquest off the shelf and had a good look through the Solar Auxilia section, then had a leaf through the Imperial Militia and Warp Cults section of volume V: Tempest to see what they might say on the matter.
It turns out that the colour plates of Conquest show the two symbols used interchangeably across Solar Auxilia war machines and infantry, so in the end, it seemed that they're cosmetic variations of the specific badge allocated to cohorts of Solar Auxilia by the Divisio Militaris of the early Imperium. The question had been answered, but a splinter of an idea had lodged itself in my mind in doing so...
You see, I've had a bit of a thing for the Solar Auxilia since the original sculpts from Edgar Skomoroski were released by Forge World back in 2014. I've had a couple of stabs at collecting them too, but 'horde' armies and I don't really get on, and the Solar Auxilia have always been more about quantity of troops and each time, I psyched myself out and sold or returned the minis before focusing on other things. Before the resin minis were discontinued, I did paint a paint a handful of them up for a War of the False Primarch project, and I think I kitbashed and painted a Legate Commander too. When Legions Imperialis was released at the tail end of 2023, I briefly entertained the idea that 'epic' miniatures might be the key to collecting an Auxilia army, but even at a smaller scale, the horde aspect remained sufficiently off putting to deter me from taking the plunge.
Being curious about the models though, I have picked up and built a few things from the Legions Imperialis range. Most of them have been Astartes vehicles as they were so readily available following the launch of the game, but I couldn't resist nabbing a Dracosan Armoured Transport when they came out as it's one of my favourite miniatures in the Solar Auxilia range. The splinter of an idea percolated more deeply into my mind, triggering a train of thought which went something like this: Solar Auxilia vehicles are primarily grey in colour and you knocked out that Space Wolf pretty quickly and that was primarily grey too. Maybe you could paint that Dracosan you bought in the same way?
I'm meant to be painting Elven warriors I protested somewhat weakly, because before I knew it I was digging out the miniature, and shaking up a can of primer...
While the primer was drying, I set about planning how I was going to paint the Dracosan and my first step in doing so was to turn back to my copy of Conquest to reread the background of the Solar Auxilia and peruse the colour plates containing pictures of Solar Auxilia vehicles. The following text from page 88 was incredibly helpful not only as I started planning things out, but also throughout the rest of the painting process as well:
"'Solar' pattern Auxilia vehicles tend to be liveried in a utilitarian white-grey service colour, accented with bands of colour configured to match those of the particular cohort within which they are serving and fittings and details of semi-precious metals like copper, bronze and brass. It is a point of pride, that even when the rest of the vehicle accumulates dirt and wear, Solar Auxilia crews tend to keep these fittings clean and polished and it is common for them to spend long hours between their other duties fastidiously inspecting and maintaining their metallic mounts, a practice derived from the pre- and post-battle protocols of the Saturnyne Ordo which was the very basis upon which the 'Solar' pattern Auxilia were founded."
The 'utilitarian white-grey' service colour I had covered as I'd be using the same recipe as I did for the Lone Wolf. Fittings and details in a semi-precious metal was easy enough too - a nice gold would do the trick there I thought, but what about the bands of colour? Which cohort of Auxilia would my Dracosan hail from? The 1522nd 'Lord Marshal's Own' were tempting, as were the 1st-10th 'Saturnyne Rams', but I've always been quite fond of the blue and yellow livery of the Manachean 'Bulls' so in the end, I plumped for that.
In terms of when best to add in the colour bands while painting, I figured I would get the grey to the point just prior to applying the shading, paint and highlight the blue and yellow bands and then shade everything together so I'd get a consistent finish. Because the Dracosan is so small, I opted for a broad stripe of each colour at the front of each of the track horns so that it would stand out better. This would also give me a good location for identification numerals if I chose to add them as well.
With the largest areas of colour sorted, I began to think about how I wanted to tackle the details, of which there are many despite how small the Dracosan is. The weapons and metal banding would be clean, as per the paragraph quoted above, but other elements would be more worn to tie in with the grey of the hull. Since they'd be heating and cooling fairly constantly, I painted the exhausts to look corroded by basecoating them with Rhinox Hide, then painting thinned Skrag Brown into all of the recesses where rust has begun to form. I also blackened the tip of each exhaust to suggest carbon build-up from unburned fuel with a little Abaddon Black.
The tracks aren't all that visible on the Dracosan due to the track guards, but I thought I'd have a go at dirtying them up all the same. After doing a bit of research on Youtube as to how historical modellers are painting tank tracks these days, I started out by painting them Dryad Bark before thinning down some Mournfang Brown and Skrag Brown and washing both randomly over the tracks to give the impression that there are some rusted areas in the treads. Once the brown washes were dry, the tracks got a very light drybrush of Iron Warriors to suggest that the dirt, grime and rust has been knocked off the treads where they make contact with the ground. Then, to tie everything together I painted a glaze of Dryad Bark onto the tracks.
Like the Dracosan, it's a phenomenally detailed miniature, although given the Solar Auxilia's predilection for directed energy weapons, it's a shame there's no option to equip it with multi-lasers in the bow and/or sponson weapon mounts. In saying this though, I realise I'm drawing on background material which was published around a decade ago so this preference may well have changed with the publication of the newer versions of the Age of Darkeness. In a nod to this older fluff however, I built the Malcador as the 'annihilator' variant, with twin-linked Lascannons in the fixed traverse turret, complemented by a trio of heavy bolters for anti-personnel support.
With the bulk of figuring out how to paint everything taken care of by the time already spent on the Dracosan, the Malcador was quite a bit quicker to paint up. In that way that sometimes happens when you're using the same colour scheme on subsequent models, finishing up the lascannons of the Malcador prompted me to go back and make a slight refinement to the Dracosan. I'd painted the 'focusing rings' at the base of the lascannons on the Malcador copper to add a little more visual interest and I figured that the barrels of the Dracosan would almost certainly be drawn from the same stores, so they should probably match! The Malcador also offered the opportunity to vary the placement of gold bracing compared to the Dracosan, which plays to another piece of flavour text in Conquest that speaks to the quality of construction involved in the materiel supplied to the cohorts of the Solar Auxilia. Although these tanks are being fabricated enmasse by Forge Worlds across the Imperium, they are not artlessly stamped out like the vehicles of the Imperial Army.
Because the Malcador isn't equipped with track guards, the treads are more visible, so this gave a nice opportunity to conduct a more thorough test of the 'wear and tear' effect I wanted to create on them and I'm pretty pleased with how well it's worked (and that I didn't get Iron Warriors all over the rest of the tank while I was painting them. As an aside, it's always struck me as a bit strange that the Malcador doesn't have track guards, especially as the Infernus and Valdor variants of the tank do have them. Unlike other 'Solar' pattern vehicles, it also lacks the filtration systems commonly seen on the engine deck too. I think this is most likely down to the kit of the 41st millennium version of the Malcador which debuted in the Siege of Vraks Imperial Armour series being 'retrofitted' into the Age of Darkness by Forge World. With the kit being remastered in plastic specifically for the Age of Darkness though, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity for the additional equipment not to have been included in the 28mm kit nor carried through the process of miniaturising the design to epic scale.
I've enjoyed painting these tiny tanks so much, that I think I want to do a few more. It does occur to me that lavishing so much time and effort on epic scale miniatures might be a bit of a waste, but I think a big part of the enjoyment came from challenging myself to see what I could do despite them being as small as they are. A couple of things such as the exhausts and tracks were (calculated) gambles, but I think that overall, everything comes together well across the models and ties back nicely to the flavour text in Conquest that proved so helpful a guide all the way through painting both vehicles.
While I've finished painting these two, there are a couple of final details I want to add to them in the form of cohort markings - I've a big drawer of decals to look through so I've almost certainly got some numerals which will work somewhere as well as a set of Solar Auxila ones with Manachean Bulls symbols, it's more a case of working out which numerals to use and where to place everything so it looks good, so I'm sure I'll have more tiny tank goodness on the blog soon. Until then though, as always, thanks for reading and happy hobbying.
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