Artillery Battery Reporting!

My chaos space marines are nearly all built, with their vehicles, daemons, and other goodies - this leaves me with a large bulk of modeling left to be done for my renegade guardsmen.

This far I've only built 35 infantry models (one full platoon of three squads with command section), three mortar teams, and two lascannon teams.  It's time to bring in the big guns!

A pair of Wyvern / Hydra self-propelled artillery will compliment my army's theme as city-fighting heavy combat engineers, employing their man-portable mortars as well as the impressive Wyverns to rain shells on entrenched enemies.

So looking at the kit, I was impressed.  The new kits that have been produced are top notch, in my opinion.  Great sprue layouts, intelligent mould lines (conveniently on hidden faces of components), and many movable parts!

Step 1 was to figure out if there was an opportunity for an LED - the only viable source on the model is the large spotlight on the front of the shield.  Instead of a headlight, I opted for a single red "targeting computer" which will tie the red color of my Marine army into these renegades (the renegade scheme will likely be a dusty brown), and add some nice atmospheric lighting during games.

The method for lighting a vehicle can be found in a recent blog post, the same principle applies here, though it was admittedly a little trickier having to route wires through the pivot point of the main weapon on this one. 

The OCD in me loves that lal my 5mm LEDs fit perfectly into most GW model kits.

Above, you can see the very slow-but-steady approach to lighting a model with LEDs.  Checking and re-checking to make sure everything jives is paramount, and as I was doing it on a lunch break with a handful of students watching (and asking questions!) it paid to go slowly.

It's aliiiiiiive!

Battery fits!  I ran out of coin batteries, so shoved a full 9v into the crew compartment.  A nearly perfect for, just opened a gap to give it some breathing room for easier access to replace a dead battery.

Computer tracking online!

All done!  Just needs a little bit of chaos love - some chains, carvings, skulls or spikes?  Then it's off to build the second one, then paint the beasts, finally resulting in anti-loyalist firepower for Kyle to deal with!

Now where did I out that can of brown spray paint..?