Debate the Tyrant’s cause if you like, but it’s hard to argue with 1200 rounds a minute.

Brother Salvio, Lamenter heavy weapons specialist

This is another model that has been living in my head as a nebulous idea for well over a year. In fact, I’d say my failure to settle on a way to execute this concept for my ‘Heavy’ specialist is why my seven-man Lamenters Kill Team project has currently been running for a year and a half! But now he’s done, so let’s have a big round of applause to welcome Brother Salvio!

Influence

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There are a number of sources that I’m ‘riffing’ off with this member of the Kill Team, many of them from video games. The Team Fortress 2 Heavy is an obvious one, as are Halo Spartans carrying turrets (particularly Jorge-052) and even the Call of Duty Juggernaut. What is boils down to is a heavily armoured soldier carrying a large gun that you might normally expect to find on a vehicle! To help sell the theme of heavy armour, I decided on MkVIII ‘Errant’ armour for this marine, particularly as this has the enhanced face and neck protection seen in many of the characters linked above.

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If you haven’t been following along with my Lamenters Kill Team project, then I should explain that it is intended to be Badab War era, so these are ‘true scale’ Marines rather than Primaris Marines. Every member of the team so far has been wearing armour appropriate to the era, which so far means MkVI, MkVII and MKVIII. So how did I go about turning MkX armour into MkVIII to match the reference images shown above?

• Used modelling putty to increase the height of the neck gorget.
• Selected up-armoured shoulder pads with elbow joint protection.
• Replaced the skull on the chest with a jewel.
• Filled in the detail on the wrist bracers to create a smoother armoured feel.
• Removed the additional protection from the top of the MkX knee pads.
• Left the MkX ankle joints intact – this was the first time I noticed MkVIII armour also uses them!
• Replaced the Primaris backpack with a Tactical backpack.

I also added extra ammo pouches and grenades to enhance the impression of bulkiness.

Effects

I’ve just published a full LED Motorised Assault Cannon tutorial on my website here, so I won’t go into too much detail in this post on how the assault cannon effects were achieved. The short version is that I used a 3V miniature motor, a Small Scale Miniatures 3V yellow 0805 chip LED and my Nighthaunt Candle technique to creature the muzzle flare.

That’s it for this week, I hope you found that interesting. Come back again soon to find out if I ever finish this bloody Lamenters Kill Team, haha! Hopefully I will be able to finish them soon, as it looks like we might possibly be in for a new edition of Kill Team.