My track record for getting things done in the hobby field has been utterly abysmal this year. I set out the other day to rectify this by ambitiously jumping straight into not one, not two, but three Rhino APC's for my Dark Angels army.
Regular readers will know even though I roleplay in the 40k universe, have multiple armies for 40k, and read 40k books I don't actually play a whole lot of the game 40k itself. I'll play 5150 or something using 40k models, but the 40k rules and I don't get together too often. So why bother with Rhinos? I still love my Dark Angels, and they deserve some decent transports. Heck, I was even thinking adding another tactical squad while I'm at it!
I lined up the parts and decided to build them assembly line style, and to the chagrin of some of you out there, I decided to do quick builds and have zero opening hatches, zero magnetized doo-dads, and no lowering ramps or what-not. As you can see I did have the respective tactical squad sergeants meet me to go over the construction process.
So far they were approving of what I was doing...
More inspection, this time in the hulls...
This is what I started with, a big ole pile o' sprues. I didn't have the instructions, I didn't even have the boxes to use as visual reference, and the last time I built a Rhino they came three to a box! Thanks to the STC from the title however I figured and fumbled my way through the process rather quickly though. As we speak all three are outside drying after their first coat of primer. I foresee a lot of dry-brushing in my future!
Yeah! Great to see. I wouldn't worry too much about opening doors and such. I magnetized mine so they can be the variants, but I only built one where everything opened - after that I just glued all the doors shut!
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side - at least by my (shamelessly stolen) mini painting points reckoning - by the time you are done you will jump from 1 to 31! ;)
Tristan, these are definitely no-frills Rhinos. I'm close to being done already actually, plus I used some 20 year old Dark Angels decals, so they look pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteI don't use a painting points total, I was figuring one tank was worth five figs?
Batch building Rhino's- it's all good, till you get to the tracks. Then they suck your tired, tired souls into their AV 11 hulls :)
ReplyDeleteAirbrush? Doing Rhinos this way sounds fun and pretty quick. Except I am a sucker and always do the interior too... sigh.
ReplyDeleteMik,
ReplyDeleteI gave up on interiors and opening hatches as well. I play 40K often and in reality the hatches get used so rarely so I quit doing them. I still do my Land Raider doors and interiors but I usually am only painting 1-2 of them compared to 6 Rhinos.
@Meatball: My Land Raider's the other thing, since it came first (and was also pretty minimalistic) I'm trying to match the Rhinos to it in terms of style or what-not. The Rhino (and LRaider, etc.) are a modeler's dream when it comes to interiors, but not for me!
ReplyDelete@HuronBH: Well the bodies are all painted by now and I just undercoated them black and used a big, fat brush to drybrush the heck out of them.
@Tenzing: Ahh, you know this road well I see. Like I said, the paint's pretty much done but those pesky tracks are still unpainted and on the sprue. Maybe I'll make these hover Rhinos?
Many (many) years ago, I had to paint the first Leman Russ for the shop I ran. I solved the track problem by glueing the whole thing together, tracks and all before the black spray undercoat. They got drybrushed metal etc along with the wheel gubbins and it was surprisingly easy to paint them this way. My old 3 to a box rhino had plain black tracks.. You never saw them anyway!
ReplyDeleteWhile I am not a fan of Games Workshop vehicles, due to multiple problems with quality, when compared to vehicles produced by scale modeling companies, I must say the Rhino is not that bad. Apart from the tracks, but then again, I've seen worse. Try making a Jagdtiger, you will groan in frustration at least once.
ReplyDelete