The Defiler, Pt V

Today we put it all together and finish this template.

Man, this is the longest it’s taken me to build any of the projects I’ve tackled here. I hope somebody appreciates this...

Before I dive into new stuff, I want to take one tiny step backwards, though. I was looking at the armor plates for the legs and realized I could add two more points along the trim near the center of the plate. They’re the same right-angle triangles I used on the ends, cut from a 1/8” strip, except I glued them on the hypotenuse rather than the side. It’s a tiny, tiny bit more detail, but all these tiny bits are easy and they add up real fast.

The claws attach pretty easy. If you look close, the back edge is a bit long and that gives you a solid point to connect each section to the arm. I also put a drop or two of glue inside each piece so it would run down and add to the join once the claw was in place. Put the two big claws flush with the sides of the arm and there should be a tiny bit of a gap left to fit the thumb in place.

I want to point out I was careful placing the claws because I had specific things I wanted each one to do. The Nurgle Defiler was going to be resting on its knuckles, so those claws had to be double-checked in place against the model. The Khorne one was going to have one arm aggressively raised, so I wanted to make those claws look a bit more dynamic. If you’ve got a better idea how you want the model to look in the end, it’ll help a lot when doing all the extra work you need to do with a template like this, where so much of it needs to be posed.

Helpful Hint-- Whatever way you end up posing the claws, try to have the thumb make contact with at least one of them. Use a drop of glue on that contact point. It’s a very small, subtle thing, but it will make this whole section so much stronger to have multiple connections. And you want it to be solid because you’re going to smack it against a Carnifex or some Storm Shields at least once or twice a month if you’ve got a good gaming group.

The claws are a little bit on the small side, once you get to see the whole thing assembled. If you have paper to spare, it might be worth printing them just 10% larger or so. They should still fit with no problem.

Anyway, I let the claws sit to dry for a little bit and looked at the chassis again. After building the Plague Tower back in the spring, I knew that blank space can look especially deadly on a paperhammer model. So I decided to put some bits on the front and back of the chassis.

The back is easy. I just cut a few thin strips and glued them down to look like they were part of a superstructure. You can do some nice layering stuff in here, too.

The front was a bit more work. I decided I wanted to build a cow catcher, a bit like the regular GW model has, or like the one on the Plague Tower. I cut a piece of card 3/8” wide and 1” long and glued it under the front edge of the chassis so there was a 1/8” edge sticking out. Then I cut out a few 1/2” triangles, exactly like the ones I used on the battle cannon. I glued these in the front to make a cow-catcher/ ram.

With that done, I cut out the sockets for the front arms. These go on the diagonal sides of the chassis, on either side of the cow-catcher I just scratch built. Give them time to dry before you put the arms on, especially if one of the arms on your Defiler is going to be raised.

While the sockets were drying I cut out the armor plates and put on detail the same way I did on the leg plates. I used 1/8” strips on the long edges, then added some right triangles cut from the same strips to create the Chaos look. It took a bit more time, because these forearm pieces are loaded with angles, but I think they came out pretty nice. It’s not perfect trim but it implies the trim, if that makes sense. And it’ll look good once it’s painted.

There’s also the issue of the spiky bits. Defilers have blade-spikes all over their legs and arms, and they are included on the template. However, I don’t think single-thickness card is going to be all that durable. It’s definitely going to be a pain to glue on-edge. So, I decided to combine the blades.

I took the eight blades for the C and bottom of the D armor, then doubled them up so they’d be twice as thick. I added one of the upper D blades to each, too, giving me something very similar to the feet-talons, but with a flat back. This gave me four solid blades per model which I attached to the C armor plates.

Helpful Hint - On the Nurgle model, I put “corrosion” holes on the C plates, placed so there was only room for one blade on each piece. I used the spare blades on the lower D armor to spread them out a bit and help make up for this Defiler’s static pose.

I found that to attach the C armor to the forearm, you’ll need to cut out a few cardboard spacers. With that extra score line to give it a diagonal corner, the plate isn’t wide enough I decided to take care of this before attaching the arms. You can freehand a rectangle to use as a spacer or use a couple of 1/4” discs. Whatever you decide to use, you want to make it two or three layers thick. Also, keep it near the center line of the armor plate--this is going to join on the spacer and at those thin diagonal edges. I cut two long strips, which gave the bonus of looking like pistons or struts when you saw then at the “elbow” or through the gaps in the Nurgle armor.

Now to attach the front arms. This is a bit trickier than the legs because there’s a lot of stuff in the way now (including... the legs). Try to pinch the tops and bottoms (the triangle piece for as long as you can, then lever in the side rectangles.

This is Important - Let these pieces dry for a long time, especially any that are raised. If you have any sort of angle or pressure on them there’s going to be torque on the glue and the pieces will just twist free as soon as you stop pinching the flaps of the socket. I used a bunch of stuff to keep the arms in position and the flaps in place on the wooden bead. Clothespins, books, and even a couple of the skull shot glasses I mentioned before (they’re just tall enough to sit under the Nurgle Defiler). I wedged and balanced them wherever they were needed and left them all overnight.

Last but not least, I glued the armor plates onto the arms. They went on pretty easy, and just like the leg plates, they give the model a good sense of bulk.

And that’s that. At this point we’ve built everything from lustandtorment’s original template, and it is a great template. While I made it look very long and drawn out--mostly because I was building two of them in between work assignments-- I bet one of these could be built over a long weekend without too much trouble. Four days, tops. Heck, you can cut 85% of it out with a good pair of scissors. I think this is a fantastic model, and someone would have to be a real hard-ass not to allow one of these on the battlefield.

I’ll also point out, for those who like the Blood God, that with what we’ve done so far it’d be very easy to build the Brass Scorpion of Khorne pictured in the first Apocalypse book. The one they built using parts from two Defilers. So there’s that and the Soulgrinder as bonus extras for this template as well.

Now, some bad news.

I’m afraid at this point I need to take some time off from the geeky blog. Y’see, I’ve got a book manuscript due at the first of the year, it’s only about 2/3 done, and I need to put some serious work into it. It’s the sequel to Ex-Heroes, which is listed there on the sidebar. Please feel free to check it out. Ex-Patriots is currently going to be released next summer, as I understand it. Assuming, of course, I get it done on time.

Also, as of late I feel like I’ve been rushing things to get them done to put up here, not building things for the sheer enjoyment of it--which is supposed to be a big part of the hobby, yes? So probably nothing else until close to Thanksgiving while I get caught up on the book and maybe work on one or two projects at a more relaxed rate. I’ll still check in regularly, though, if anyone has any comments, questions, or requests.

Plus, I’ve been thinking about the Defilers a bit more and I’m not quite done. If you check back over the next few weeks I should have some instructions and examples of how to make weapons options (and a few very last details) for both versions of the Defiler. Or for whichever version you decided to make.

And when I come back around Thanksgiving... I’m thinking about tanks. Big tanks.

The Defiler, Pt IV

I think building two of these things is taking four or five times longer than it would to build one of them...

Anyway... here’s some more details for the lower section. At the bottom of the template you’ll see sixteen 1/2” circles with some vaguely chaos-ey images on them. These are detail pieces for the joints on each leg and the front arms. Cut them out and glue one to each side. I’ll be honest--I searched local craft and hobby stores for a 1/2” hole punch but couldn’t find anything. It’s apparently a no-man’s land size between 1/4” and 5/8”. Ah, well...

You can cut out most of them with a good pair of scissors. Take your time and use a hobby knife to trim off any sharp edges or points--you want these as close to perfect as possible. When you’re done you may want to press them between the pages of a book to get rid of any curls or bends the scissors may have put in them.

Once those circles were in place, I used discs from a standard 1/4” hole punch to add more detail to the leg joints. On the Khorne model I went one further with a 1/8” disc on top of that. On the Nurgle one I drove myself slightly mad by putting a trio of rivets from the 1/16” punch in the middle of each 1/4” disc. A dozen or so tiny Nurgle icons, all over the model. If you add on the extra-extra bits first (start small and work down, in other words), it might save a few shreds of your sanity. And your eyesight.

Helpful Hint - If you’ve got (or can get) the bits, you could also use round Fantasy shields for these joint-details. There are the older, generic ones that were used by Skaven, Goblins, and Dwarves which are perfect. Skeleton shields would be cool for a Khorne Defiler--bone-rimmed circles with a skull motif in the center.

Don’t forget you need to use superglue when you attach plastic to paper.

Next, cut out the talons. Again, because lustandtorment made such a great template, you can actually do all of this with a good pair of scissors. I cut out all the talons for one model in about an hour. Glue them together as the template shows. Take your time and make sure everything lines up

Helpful Hint - These talons are going to end up supporting the whole model, so you want them to be solid. Use your finger to paint the tips in glue. You want it to soak into the card and harden.

Mark the point where the legs make contact with the tabletop and draw a line straight up. This is your guide to placing the talons. Once you’ve done that, flip the chassis on its back so the legs are up in the air. Attach the talons, double-checking to make sure they’re straight and placed correctly. You don’t want to go through all this and have one talon going off crooked. I also added a little detail piece made with the hole punches. Put one on each side of the “ankle.”

This is Important - Unless you cut out extras all on your own, the big circles from the template do not go on the ends of the legs or the arms (the ankles and wrists). There aren’t enough of them. That’s why I threw together these using the hole punches.

Once all that’s placed, leave the chassis on its back to dry.

For the record, yes, this is also where I realized I’d posed the legs really high on both of these models. They're going to loom over the battlefield.

I also used this time to make the D armor plates for the legs. You can print out an extra template and put “Chaos trim” on these plates the same way I did it with the Hellblade. I decided to try something different and just used a couple long, thin strips of card about 1/8” wide (depending on your taste, you can go anywhere between 1/8” and 1/4”). I cut these to fit on the plates before gluing them in place. I also cut small triangles off these strips and fit them on the trim to give it those spiky edges.

On the Nurgle model, you can leave big gaps in the trim and it’ll just look battered and old. I also used my different-sized hole punches to put a few overlapping holes in these plates. Then I made them a bit more uneven with my hobby knife. When I paint the model, I’ll make these look rusted and corroded.

The front arms go together just like the legs, but here they connect A to B to C. Use those flaps again, too. The curved ends of B should butt up against the tabs in A and C. This means you can glue the arms in two different directions (along the plane of the joint and the plane of the tab) so these pieces will dry rock solid. Add the wooden beads at the end of each arm. You can also put on more of the circle-pieces for detail like I did up above.

Those arms are going to take a bit of careful placement. I decided I wanted one arm raised high on the Khorne Defiler to add to its aggressive pose. Like the GW model, though, I’d still need to put one arm down in the front for balance. On the Nurgle model, I decided to put both arms low, keeping with the squatting, solid posture I’d been shooting for. I might even give it kind of a Biovore pose, as if it’s resting on its knuckles. But this meant I had to wait for all the talons to dry so I could figure the right positions for the claws.

So, next up, all this stuff gets put together.

The Defiler, Pt III

It look like the hit counter passed 10,000 over the weekend. Wow.

Okay, continuing on...

Cut out the leg sockets. They’re the vaguely star-shaped pieces on page four of the template. Glue four of these in place on the back section of the chassis, a little bit in from either end. They should be tall, not wide. The extra two are for the front arms, which we’ll get to in a while.

Start with the front legs. Put white glue on the inside of the socket, then pinch the four “arms” of the socket closed around the wooden bead. You’re probably going to have to hold them for a minute or three, and there will be some readjustment needed as you go. I held them for about five just to be safe. If you plan carefully, you can get both front legs in place and hold them both at the same time.

This Is Important -- Make sure the legs will sit flat once the model is in its standing pose. The more of an angle they’re at, the harder it will be to get the feet/ talons to line up when we get to them.

I did two legs on one Defiler, then moved to the other one and did two on that model. If you’re only working on one, you should probably give it about ten minutes for the glue to firm up before moving on. Once I had all four legs on and they were relatively solid, I flipped it over and put a few drops of glue in key points to make it even stronger. I gave this whole assembly about an hour to dry and it ended up good and rigid. Strong enough that I knew a leg wasn’t going to randomly drop off during a game.

While that lower section was drying, I went to work on the torso.

Actually, before I do that, I want to point out something that may please some of you. The majority of this template focuses on the bottom half of the Defiler and lustandtorment did a fantastic job with that. Something occurred to me the other day, though. What else can you do with the bottom half of a Defiler? To be more specific, what else could you do with the bottom half of a Defiler and the spare torso, head, and arms that come with the new Daemon Prince model?

Food for thought, eh?

So, for the battle cannons, I decided to use the same simple design I used to make an engine for the Hellblade a few weeks back. Cut a piece of card 2 1/4” wide by 3/4” long. You want to do a series of scores on it 1/4” apart, parallel to the short side, so when it’s done your piece of card has nine sections measuring 1/4” wide by 3/4” long. That last section’s going to be a tab, so it’s probably better if you cut the corners down. Roll this piece, glue it on the tab, and clamp it so you’ve got an octagonal cylinder 3/4”long. With me so far?

Next, cut three 1/4” strips that are three or four inches long. Wrap them tight around your hobby knife, a round pencil, or something like that so they get a good curve to them. Now wrap them around your cylinder and cut where appropriate. Glue one strip around the base of each cannon. For reference, the seam should be on the underside of your barrel, if your cannon looks better from one angle than another.

If you feel really daring, cut one strip to fit just inside the muzzle, too. That’ll give the sense of a thick, heavy barrel and help add to the illusion that it’s rounded, not octagonal. If you decide to do this, make sure the seam where the strip comes together is towards the top of the barrel. No one’s going to get a good look at the inside-top of a Defiler cannon.

From here on, I’m going to something slightly different with the cannon for each model. You can pretend these are optional bitz. Feel free to do whichever appeals to you on your own Defiler.

On the Nurgle model I glued the last strip around the barrel’s muzzle. Again try to make these outside-the-barrel seams on these strips line up, because you can hide them all on the underside of the cannon. This should give you a squat, very basic barrel, and it’ll look great once you add a few rivets with the 1/16” hole punch.

For the Khorne Defiler, I cut out eight triangles as shown. Score them down the middle and fold. Glue each of these little “spikes” on the business end of the cannon (creased edge up), butted up against the strip at the base. Make sure you set them on the octagonal edges, not on the flat surface. This will help hide the angular nature of the barrel. The triangle-spikes should end up with just a little bit hanging out over the muzzle, and result in a much more spiky-looking cannon.

Helpful Hint-- If you need to cut out a bunch of triangles for spikes (for Chaos or Orks or whatever) try this. For the ones above, mark out a strip 1/2” wide, then break it down into 1/2” x 1/4” rectangles. Sketch alternate diagonals into the rectangles (left-to-right, right-to-left, left-to-right, and so on). Now you’ve got a row of triangles going both ways, top and bottom. Nothing gets wasted and each cut is effectively cutting a side on two different triangles. Make sense?

There’s your battle cannon. Two versions of it, in fact.

As a final touch, cut a strip of card about 1” long by 1/8” wide. Score it to fit so it folds nicely into a “bracket” for the butt-end of the battle cannon. Now there’s something more substantial for the glue to grab when I attach the cannon to the gun shield.

Speaking of which... when you glue these two pieces together, make sure the cannon is lined up with the bottom edge of the gun shield. It will leave a bit hanging out over the top that you’ll need to fill in later on. I played with placement on this for a while and finally decided the easiest way to mount the cannon was just to make it flush with the front face of the shield. Putting it on top, on the angled section, just mkes it look too high up. If you’re more daring than me (and I’m sure some of you must be) you can try to notch the butt-end of the cannon so it can sit right on the angle of the torso.

That’s all for this time.

Oh, new anthology of the month is Robots Beyond, also from Permuted Press. Check it out.

The Defiler, Pt II

I’m getting buried in work stuff which is delaying the far-more-important work on this project. I’ve decided to break up building the Defilers into a few smaller, somewhat more frequent posts rather than wait until I’ve got the material for a full-sized one... which could take weeks.

Before I did anything else, I sat down and divvied up the components. As I mentioned before, I’m building two Defilers at a time here. The cleanest parts went to the Khorne one. Anything with rough edges or “shaggy” surfaces where the template came off went into the pile for the Death Guard model. If it ends up looking rusty or tweaked... all the better.

Back to building.

The waist piece is a bit thin and flimsy, so I decided to do two things to it. First was a bit of detail. Cut a long strip about 1/8” wide. Now cut that up into 3/8” lengths and glue them around the waist at regular intervals. This gave the visible part a bit of heft, too. Second thing was to build a small box. It’s 3/8” tall by 1/2” square, so it should fit completely inside the ring of the waist.

This is Important -- This little box needs to be flush with the top of the ring. If it’s a bit low, cut out another 1/2” square of card and see if that raises it up enough. Check first, then glue it on top of the box. There’s enough variation in card models that some people may not need it. Don’t worry about looks--this is all going to be hidden inside the waist-- but this needs to be flush to give you solid contact with the torso.

So you should have the waist on the chassis at this point, with the box inside the waist. I’d hold off attaching the torso yet. It’ll be a lot easier to work with if it stays separate for now.

Before you start to assemble the legs, it’ll help to figure out what kind of pose you want your Defiler to end up in. I’ve got two, but they’re going to be a bit different. The Khorne one will be a super-dreadnaught geared up to charge into close combat and lay waste to everything it can. The Death Guard one is essentially going to be a firebase, something that just hunkers down and starts shooting big guns. As such, I want to pose their legs to reflect these roles on the battlefield. The two front legs of the Khorne Defiler (or middle legs, depending on your point of view) are going to be higher so it ends up in a more aggressive, rearing-up pose. The Death Guard one will be squatting, all equal, all low.

So, as you begin to assemble these legs, remember those all-important tabs from the A section? This is where they pay off. Slide the D section into A. If you’ve done this right, the curved end of D should butt up against that tab. This means you can glue the legs in two different directions (along the plane of the joint and the plane of the tab) so this piece will be rock solid once it dries.

I assembled four legs for each Defiler. Once they were glued I covered them with wax paper, and set a mid-sized book on them to hold the joints flat. I left these to dry for about half an hour and went on to other things.

A bit of honesty as we move on to the next step. Remember before when I said all the time-intensive stuff was done? I lied.

The Defiler’s front claws are tough. I tried cutting them out with tabs on them and it just became a mess of 1/16” cuts in thirty different directions. I’m actually tempted to say don’t do them the way I did, even though they did turn out very nice and solid in the end. You could possibly save a lot of time and headaches just cutting the claws out of the template as-is and adding scraps of card as tabs where you need them. It might be a bit less structural, but I’m not even sure of that. I tried it on the “thumb” claws and it seemed to work, but they are a much simpler shape. I may experiment with this and get back to you.

While the claws dried I went back to work on the legs. As it says on the template, you’ll need to buy some wooden beads for the ball-and-socket joint on the legs. I went to my local craft/ hobby store and picked up two bags of 5/8” (15.9mm) wooden beads for $1.19 each (that’s $1.19 per bag, not per bead). The suggestion is for 1/2” beads, but in my opinion that makes the joint harder to assemble because of how deep into the leg the beads sink. Go a tiny bit bigger and make life easier on yourself.

Put a few drops of glue in the end of each leg and then push the bead into place. You’ll need to hold it for a few minutes, and it’s best to turn it around a few times so the glue hits as many points as possible. Watch out for leaks around the corners.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to get another quick update posted this weekend.

The Defiler

The Defiler is such a cool model. The first 100% Chaos-only tank. As such, it struck me as odd that there were so few templates floating around for it. I dug around and finally found a nice one at the BWC Archive 2, and the same one has since shown up at Paperhammer 40K, too. It was created by someone using the title lustandtorment (hey, I didn’t pick the name), and if any of you know who that is, please drop a note in the comments section so I can give credit where credit is due.

I was a bit torn about which army to make a Defiler for, though. I’d toyed with the idea of doing an all-paper Iron Warriors army, but that’s still a ways in the future. The Worldeaters could be good. I already made them that nice Mk. I Land Raider after all. But I also thought paperhammer could loan itself well to Nurgle, as it did with the Plague Tower.

In the end, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I decided to build two. One for Khorne, one for Nurgle. That’d let me show off weapons options here on the blog, too.

Helpful Hint -- If you decide to download this one over at Paperhammer 40K, you may have a moment of panic. The PDF opens with some very scrawled assembly instructions at the start that made me groan, too. Don’t worry. Skim past them, the template itself is fine.

One thing to note is that there aren’t any tabs on this one, and there will be a lot of overlapping if you’re not careful. However lustandtorment has made a pretty solid template without overcomplicating it, so it won’t take much work to place a few good gluing points here and there.

The first thing I cut out and assembled was the chassis. It looks a bit complex but fits together very nice. I glued it front to back first, let that dry, and then slid in one side. While that was drying, I cut a long strip of card about 1/4” wide and made some of those consummate V’s I’ve mentioned before. This made the chassis very solid and weight-supporting. Then the other side got glued and pushed into place. The chassis is a bit odd-shaped, so you’ll want to hold it until it dries, just so nothing slides out of position. That left the two flaps at the front, but they closed up with no problem.

So, with the chassis done for each Defiler, I decided to move on to the legs. They’re labeled (by letter) on the template, but I’d suggest actually marking the letter right on each individual piece. There’s a lot of sections here (more so since I’m building two of them), and there’s a few tricks and tweaks I’ve found for each one. I’ll go through them one at a time and explain. I’d label each of these a Helpful Hint but that would just get annoying fast, so hopefully it caught your attention just then.

First up is A. This is going to be the shoulder/ hip piece on all six limbs. Now, there’s debatable flaw in this part of the template. You’ll notice at the top of the A pieces there’s a square panel to fold over and give you a solid end. Thing is... you don’t want a solid end here. This hip/shoulder piece is eventually going to get attached to a wooden ball, so you want a space for the ball to fit into. When you assemble this section, fold the square panel down flat inside the arm. When you clamp your tab, you’ll end up holding it flat as a side-effect. Make sure you don’t confuse this square panel with the small flap on the other end--that one’s important

The B section is the middle of the front arms. It’s very important that you put tabs on the two long ends. These are going to bend around the curve and they’re going to need a tab so they’ve got something to grab with. Bend those end sections gently around your hobby knife before you start scoring and folding. Again, be gentle--you want the card to bend, not fold. Don’t worry if it’s not 100 flush with the curves once it's assembled. When the model’s done, these ends are going to be hidden inside the other sections.

Section C has a problem, but it’s an easy one to fix. This is the last section of the forward arms, where the big front claws attach. Problem is, unlike B or D, it doesn’t have an end piece to attach those claws to. It’s easy to make one, though. Just cut a strip of card 2 1/2” long and a hair under 1/2” wide (go for something like 7/16” if you need an exact measurement). Bend it gently around your hobby knife at the center. Once it’s got a curve to it, glue the sides and slide it into the end of C that does not have a little flap on it (like with A, the little flap is important). Try to make it line up with the curves on either side. If you have to, you can use a pencil to push it out slightly from the other end. Like on B, don’t worry if it’s not 100 flush with the curves--the claws will hide most of it once they’re attached.

Last but not least is D. These are going to be the Defiler’s four back legs. They go together almost exactly like the B sections.

Helpful Hint -- If you’re having a lot of trouble with getting the pieces to curve on B and D, you could just cut that whole section off and use the method I did to create the curve for section C.

Next is the torso, which is a bit trickier, but not much. On the template, you’ll see two large circles on either side of the torso. These are the “shoulders” that the weapons and close combat arms mount on. For now, ignore those circles and just cut along the straight lines (straight through the circles). Just like the chassis, I glued this section front-to-back first. In a rare move, I also decided to glue this tab on the outside of the body. It made things line up better, and it also gave a tiny bit of texture to this pretty blank section.

This is Important - When you add tabs to this piece, make sure that you score the front-to-back tab so it bends the other way. The Defiler’s back dips in right at the join. You don’t want to have to wrestle with this or re-cut it.

Once the front-to-back join was dry, I folded in the side tabs and slid each side into place. Because of all the angles, you may need to hold this for a few beats to make sure everything stays tight. If you end up with faint gaps or something that went in too far, don’t worry. The shoulders will help hide a lot of that.

Using one of new dollar coins (which I think are the same size as a Euro, but I’m not 100% on that...), trace and cut out three card circles for each shoulder. They should be just over an inch (about 1 1/16” if you want specifics again). You can glue these together so each shoulders is three circles thick, but do not attach them yet.

At this point the only thing left is the waist. It’s just a simple rectangle of cardboard on the templates. Put a tab at one end, then gently wrap the whole thing around your hobby knife to give it a good curve from end to end. Once you’ve got that, glue it and clamp it. I’ll be doing a lot more with the waist joint next time around.

At this point, believe it or not, all of the time-intensive stuff is done except for the claws. Next time I’ll build those, make some weapons, and start assembling.

The Mk.1 Land Raider -- Part Three

To conclude the saga of the Paperhammer Land Raider... at least until I decide to make another one.

The main body of this beast was assembled. The next big detail was the treads themselves. This model has a great set of tread templates that work just like the GW models. Rather than a hundred little links, Part 3 of 6 just has a few long sections cleverly crafted to look like links once they're assembled on the model.

Helpful Hint-- Sort of like I talked about with the wheels early on in this project, you can breathe easy cutting out the treads. That complex, angled notch that needs to be cut a few dozen times? The inner half of that notch is going to be hidden by the "link" that goes on top of this tread section, so don't drive yourself mad trying to cut out that shape. Just do two straight cuts with scissors past the end and it will look exactly the same once the link is in place.

Also, trim the wide point at the ends ever-so-slightly flat. It'll make putting the links on much easier where the treads "bend."

I'm really pleased with how the treads look on this model, but I just think they might be a bit more imposing if they were thicker. Figure on this scale, they're about two or three inches thick. If I ever make another one of these, I'll probably make the treads from doubled-up card to give them a little more heft.

The lascannons glued on to the 25mm "mounts" with no problem. I also added on several of the hanging chains from the Chaos Vehicle sprue, because I've made chains a theme in my World Eaters army (based off the idea that Kharn's arms are wrapped in chains). I debated adding a few racks of spikes, but ended up deciding against it. No matter where I put them, they just seemed a little over-the-top (for my personal taste). Besides, the tank has numerous chains, the plates on the lascannons, about a dozen skulls, three gigantic Khorne symbols, and it's going to be painted with blood. If someone still can't figure out its allegiance with all that, well... as my friend Marc says, the Skull Throne isn't going to build itself.

You may also notice a lot of black paint on the model at this point. Austin Powers would call this the "warm liquid goo phase." Y'know how the GW guys constantly warn you to paint over foam before you spray paint it? Well, I had a similar concern. Card is just layered paper, and everywhere there's an edge all those layers are exposed. Moisture gets in there, paper swells, and suddenly my Khornate Land Raider has been possessed by daemons of Nurgle. I had a plain old tube of acrylic paint, classic mars black, and I used this to seal all the edges as best I could before priming the whole thing.

I primed it in three very light, dusting coats out in the warm sun. Didn't want to rush it and soak anything. Did taking my time make the difference, or was it using the acrylic paint? We'll find out in a few months when that tube of mars black runs out. Until them, I'll keep doing it this way because the Land Raider came out perfect. Once it was a nice, uniform gray it became very difficult to tell this was a Paperhammer model. Really, this is a fantastic set of templates and the original designer did some amazing work.

I don't want to dwell on painting too much, mostly because it's not my strong suit and I'd prefer not to embarrass myself. In brief, I painted the whole thing with Red Gore to start, doing the treads and wheels with Chaos Black. My World Eaters have a red and black color scheme, and I wanted this to match as much as possible. I used Tin Bitz on a bunch of details, as well. Some of these, like gun barrels, will end up closer to gold, while the more mechanical parts will stay dark and brassy. There will be much more later as I obsess over details, but this gives you a solid example of how a Paperhammer model can end up looking on the tabletop.

The Mk I Land Raider -- Part Two

So, last time I got the bulk of the model done. Now it's time to do all the detail work, which will probably take just as long. A bit longer, actually.

For starters, Part 5 of the templates has a nice design for an Imperial eagle to decorate the front assault hatch. Tons of detail, absolutely fantastic. Alas, I'd already decided that this "outdated" Land Raider would be going to Chaos, and I'd decided a little before this that it would end up in my World Eaters army, because Berserkers can always use something big and very anti-tank backing them up. So, that Imperial eagle was going to become a Khornate skull.

This took a bit of work. I had to play with the design to make it fit in the space (taking the slots into account) and still be recognizable. Once I had that, it was a bit of work to keep track of some parts, since this wouldn't be a single element. Once I had everything in place and glued, I set it between wax paper--checked again to make sure it was all in the right place--and set a few books on it.

I went through the same thing on the side hatches. The templates have half-eagles for them, I went with half-Khornate skulls. Which looked pretty good, all things considered.

Worth a note about the side assembly (Part 6 of 6), where the hatches and lascannon mounts are. You can glimpse them in some of the earlier photos because I was very stupid and tried assembling them too soon. Before you even think of putting the edges, make sure these are done. Cut out the frame for the door, glue the rectangular backing in place. Then put on the other details (like your half-skull hatches), and the edges, and those interior zigzags I mentioned last time for sturdiness.

Because only an idiot would do that all out of order. Yep. Only an idiot.

Moving on...

I built and glued on the front piece (seen on Part 4 of 6). I have no idea what it's supposed to be. The grill? Maybe part of the mechanism for the assault ramp? No idea. But it was in the reference pictures and now it's on the model.

There were two matching pieces that were supposed to go on either side of this mystery element, but they didn't fit that well. I think it was from a combination of two things. One is a two dimensional model being rendered on three dimensional cardboard. That tiny 1/32 of an inch starts to add up after numerous folds and layering, especially on this scale. The other is my own operator errors, so to speak. A score that's a miniscule amount off one way, a fold that goes too far the other. Combine these two issues and it's not surprising things don't line up sometimes, especially small, intricate things. In the end, I decided to skip the side elements and instead added two diagonal strips to imply the pistons/ struts on the actual model.

At this point I decided to glue the two tread assemblies to the main hull. I used pins and my sharpest knife to mark the position on the template directly onto the cardboard. Then I peeled off the template to make sure it was card grabbing card, not card grabbing paper loosely glued to card. Once again, my book collection helped with keeping things pressed together.

The top panel of the model probably caused me the most headaches and the most work. On the actual Mk. I Land Raider there's only one roof hatch, and there's... well, some kind of bolt weapon there on a pintle. The template for the top panel (on Part 5 of 6) page is marked for three hatches, like the Mk. II has. They're kind of crowded and all sit one on top of another. I knew I wanted an actual twin-linked heavy bolter up there. I also wanted one of the newer tank hatches so I could maybe have a Berserker howling out of the top.

I decided to use all three, but the "corner" one would just be a flat hatch from the classic Rhino that wouldn't move. The other front would be the heavy bolter, left free so it could swing. The rear would be the tank hatch, raised slightly with another layer of cardboard and also left free so I could trade it out with closed hatches, HK missiles, pintle mounted combi-bolters, or whichever.

Alas the cardboard was thinner than the edges of these bits, so I had to double up the cardboard and cut perfect circles through it and raise it even more while keeping it reinforced so it didn't sag in the middle. Nobody likes a saggy Land Raider. I worked on this piece for ages and it was one of the last things I glued in place.

The model comes with templates and instructions to make card weapons on Part 5. Thing is, like anyone who's been playing 40K for a while, I've got a pile of extra bitz and weapons. I also knew the weapons would be the thing that draws the eye immediately, so making them look top-notch would raise the whole model a bit. So I decided to go with "real" weapons rather than card ones.

I wanted the heavy bolter to look old-fashioned, so I ended up using one of the metal ones from the classic Razorback set. A bit of double-layered card let me connect them, and then I mounted them on one of the classic Rhino domed hatches. As I mentioned above, I left the whole assembly free so I could rotate the heavy bolters or remove them for battle damage.

The lascannons were a challenge, one I played with for a while. After a lot of thought and a few simple tests, I realized it was going to be too much work to make them movable. A rough decision, but it also gave me a lot more options as far as building them went. I dug through all my assorted tank parts and here's what I came up with.

I took the plastic lascannons from the Razorback set and clipped off the cables. Next I took a lascannon from the Imperial Guard heavy weapons sprue and trimmed off the pin that would usually mount it to the tripod. Then I fitted them together bottom to bottom. It took a bit of shaving here and there to get a fairly solid fit that kept the barrels parallel and even. Two round Warhammer Fantasy shields gave me a mounting point, and also added stability to the whole structure. On the opposite side (the "outside" of the weapon) I used one of the small plates from the first Chaos vehicle sprue. This made the whole assembly rock solid and unified the piece by hiding the join of the two lascannons.

Since I was using plastic lascannons, I decided to use 25mm bases as the weapons mounts on the sides. I placed them over the cardboard mount and glued the hell out of them. They're superglued to the cardboard and I think there's even a ball of green stuff underneath the base.

So, sides are on. Front logo is on. Next I'll attach the treads, the weapons, and final spiky Chaos bits before I prime it.