Over the last few weeks I’ve been chipping away at a pair of Leman Russ Executioner tanks to join the epic scale Dracosan and Malcador that I shared back in November as well as a display base for the whole lot to perch on. With the Executioners completed to the same stage as the larger tanks, now seemed like a good time to share a bit more about the project and where I think the ultimate destination of this particular wee journey into epic scale lies.
Like their 28mm scale counterparts, the epic scale Leman Russ are only about two thirds the size of Malcador-chassis tanks, so I rather naively thought they might be a bit quicker to paint, especially as I knew how I'd be painting up the areas like the tracks, hulls and gold trim. As it turned out though. the sheer amount of detail that's been packed onto these tiny tanks (much of which is unique to the Russ chassis) meant they actually ended up taking a quite a bit longer as I had to puzzle out the elements not shared with the Dracosan and Malcador Annihilator.
Before I got to all that though, I needed to lay down the main colours. Having refined this process with the heavier tanks, it was simply a case of working through the following steps in sequence:
a) Basecoat the whole vehicle Mechanicus Standard Grey, drybrush it Stormvermin Fur, then again with Dawnstone.
b) Paint in the identification stripes - Averland Sunset for the yellow and Macragge Blue for the... er... blue. On something bigger, masking would have made this easier, but for epic scale stuff, eyeballs and freehanding seemed less hassle and I think it worked ok.
c) Everything then got a light drybrush of Administratum Grey, before I highlighted all the edges I wanted to pick out, as well as all the rivets with Administratum Grey. This might seem like double the effort, and in a way it was, but I find the crisp edge highlights make these teeny miniatures 'pop' just that little bit more.
d) With all of that done, the whole tank is given an all over wash with thinned down Rhinox Hide, making sure it doesn't pool anywhere. Then the recesses are shaded with more Rhinox Hide and then finally shaded with Doombull Brown.
I know that's a lot of steps, and I conceded previously that I am almost certainly putting in what could well be "too much" effort into such small models, but I really feel that the final results speak for themselves in that regard.
With the main colours of the armour laid down and shaded and already knowing how I'd paint things like the tracks, hull-mounted weapons, gold trim, air filtration systems and exhaust stacks because they would be the same as the Malcador and Dracosan, I set about looking for inspiration for how I might paint the plasma cannon that gives this pattern of Leman Russ its' name. As before, I started out looking at the colour plates in The Horus Heresy Volume IV: Conquest, but sadly they weren't very much help this time around because the images of the Leman Russ they contain are both armed with battlecannon.
My next step was to turn to some of the old Imperial Armour books, specifically parts one and two of The Siege of Vraks because the Leman Russ was ubiquitous on the battlefields of Vraks that it features prominently within the pages of these books. These books were originally published as a trilogy though part three is sadly absent from my collection and given the rather crazy prices that copies seem to sell for these days, it will likely remain so. Unfortunately, as good as the Imperial Armour books remain as sources of information, they aided little in my current line of research because the only image I could find within them that featured a Leman Russ Executioner was in black and white.
With the resources in my physical possession exhausted, I finally turned to the internet. I knew that there was the boxart of the epic scale Leman Russ Demolisher/Executioner kit itself that I could draw upon, but I wanted to see what else I could find. Initial searches proved to be of little help however, because all that was turning up were tanks sporting either the resin Ryza-pattern turret from Forge World that came out in the mid 2000's (establishing the Executioner as a Leman Russ variant) or the later, bulkier and more angular variants from Games Workshop kits that became available from 2009 onwards which both differ in design from the one that the 'Solar' pattern tanks are equipped with.
After much fruitless searching, I eventually remembered that Warhammer Community had run several articles previewing the new 28mm scale Solar Auxilia kits last year and eventually I located the one featuring the Solar Auxilia Leman Russ Assault Tank which contained a nice closeup photo of the Executioner cannon that for some reason is completely absent from the product page on the Warhammer webstore. Between the closeup in the WarComm article and the box art for the epic kit I was able to work out what I wanted to do, and how best to go about doing it - settling on bright red coolant hoses, a burnished brass muzzle and bright blue plasma coils for the Executioner cannons and gunmetal for the emergency coolant tank that's mounted on the roof of the turret.
With the Executioner Cannons painted, I turned my attention to other areas of the tanks. The gold trim was painted in exactly the same way as the Dracosan and Malcador, or at least I thought it was. I checked my painting notes after I'd finished it, and discovered that I'd used Seraphim Sepia to shade all the gold rather than Reikland Flesh. It didn't really seem like there was a sufficiently noticeable difference in the finishes to warrant repainting and ultimately, it's the kind of happy accident helps to add a bit of variation and individuality to the tanks. This is reinforced by the placement of gold areas on the Russes being slightly different - they may have rolled off the same fabrication lines, but they've still been individually finished.
One of the wee details I'm rather pleased with is actually mostly hidden from view. Either side of the engine access panel/radiator grille are a couple of objects that could just be 'gubbinz' to make the rear deck seem less plain, but I thought I could push this intention a little further. Real world armoured vehicles are often equipped with rear running lights, to enable coordinated and cohesive manoeuvres so I couldn't see any reason why those of future history shouldn't be as well, so I set about painting them up in a similar fashion to the vision blocks on the cupolas, but with red instead of blue glass.
Once I'd started working on the Executioners, I began to think about creating a base to display my tiny tanks on, even contemplating a Civitas Imperialis city tile for a short time, before ultimately concluding that these were far too large for the scale of display I was working on. It occurred to me that a Legions Imperialis 120mm oval base might do the job though, and as they're only a few quid, I thought I'd just grab one and give it a try - "nothing ventured" as they say.
Having primed the base black and armed myself with some sponges and masking tape, I got stuck in to applying some colour. I started out by masking the areas surrounding the two 'pavement' areas before sponging on Zandri Dust, then Ushabti Bone and finally Screaming Skull, making sure each layer allowed some of the previous one to show through. To finish, I applied some highlights to all of the sharp edges of the tiles and kerbs using White Scar.
With the pavements done, I masked them off and moved on to the road sections. I wanted them to look like some kind of far future equivalent to tarmac, so over the black undercoat, I sponged on Incubi Darkness, then Dark Reaper and Thunderhawk Blue. I concentrated the lighter colours towards the edges of the road sections, but made sure some patches of them went into the centres. To finish, I picked out all of the edges, including the cracks in the road surfaces with Pallid Wych Flesh.
Once the tarmac was completed, I carefully masked off the areas for the yellow lines and then roughly sponged them in with Averland Sunset.
Now I had all of the basics in place, it was time to get started on dirtying everything down, beginning by applying a glaze of thinned Rhinox Hide over the entire base, I then painted some thinned Doombull Brown into all of the gaps and cracks in all the surfaces.
From this point forward, nothing was applied with much precision, because I basically grabbed my pots of Athonian Camoshade and Vallejo European Dust and kept adding glazes and patches of colour across everything until I was happy that everything looked dirty enough to suggest that this was a major thoroughfare in a war-torn Imperial city.
So, now I have a quartet of tiny tanks painted up, along with a base to display them on... what's next? Well I've been thinking that I'll enter them into Armies on Parade at my local Warhammer store in the 'diorama' category (assuming that category is present for 2026) but there's a couple of things I want to do before I call everything finished. Firstly, I plan to pop some decals onto the tanks, some Manachean Bulls markings are a given, provided I can get them to actually fit - I'm a little concerned that the designs on the Legions Imperialis sheets might be too big, but I'll see if I can make something work. I also want to add identifying numerals to each of the tanks, which means having a good rummage through my decal drawer.
Finally, I might also ask one of my pals if he can print me a nameplate that I can paint up for the display, which means I need to start thinking about which Solar Auxilia cohort my Manachean tanks hail from so I'll be sure to share another update once I've got these finishing touches in place.
For now though, as always, thanks for reading and happy hobbying.
Comments
Post a Comment