Azazel does a great community challenge each month. The idea is to get people painting. November’s challenge was something mechanical. Not something I would normally bother with, but in all honesty,  as it was a challenge I decided to give it a go. I had a mooch about for anything mechanical. The options I found were:

6mm road wars vehicles

10mm Gatling gun and crew

15mm Flames of War Vehicles and tanks

20mm Dark Future Vehicles

I decided on the latter:

They went from the bare plastic to something I am rather pleased with.

Rather than going for all four vehicles I decided to just do two cars and two bikes as well as drivers and a couple of operatives in their body armour to act as the dismounted drivers.

There were some issues with the builds and painting for that matter one regarding painting… I am rubbish at edge highlighting and then my original green on the renegade was too close to the khaki of the main body, it really got lost. this was solved by simply painting over it in a dark green.

For the look of the thing, all of the dashboards and engines were painted too. I don’t normally undercoat black, but it was what I had a rattle can of so I went with it.

The build issues weren’t hard to overcome, it just meant a bit of thought had to go into things.

Firstly each car has 5 pre-drilled holes (actually 7 for the Interceptor) some of these should have been filled prior to painting, but I forgot.

I added various bits and bobs from either greenstuff or some extras from a world war 2 tank sprue in my bits box.

The drivers proved to be problematic in that they just fitted into the Marauder and just didn’t fit into the Interceptor, I didn’t actually realise this until I came to glue the body to the chassis. Much swearing ensued… at least I know for next time… no doubt I will forget and do exactly the same as this time!

There were a whole host of weapon sprues available but I kept it to two forward facing guns for the Marauder and then three for the Interceptor (one in a turret).

I was lucky to be given some spare waterslide transfers for the interceptor, one had hornet on it which is appropriate as I had decided to paint Yellow and Black onto the rear of the car. The Marauder transfer came from an ancient GW Brettonian sheet of shield designs.

So how do I feel it went…

I am pleased to get them to where they are, I probably (or definitely) spent more time on these than I would normally. I would like to think it was because I was wanting to try and improve and not because it was a ‘challenge’… I know I thinned the paint a lot more and put lots of layers on (something I wouldn’t normally do with vehicles). Adding all the extras is something new too. I deliberately went out and bought extra bits and bobs, jerry cans and oil drums etc, not to mention drivers and people on foot. Maybe I was enthused by how well I thought they were looking!

When I will get to paint the other two cars and bikes is anyone’s guess, but my mate and I both have the ‘Atomic Highway’ Roleplay game so maybe they will get painted up for that. Either that or get booted onto eBay to help fund the 3D printer pot.

My December’s challenge is going to be a pile of 28mm Heroes from my Flintloque stash.

I  started on the Ghoul officer, but have nearly finished him before December…

Luckily I have plenty more to keep me going…. one day I might get to finish my Mongols.