A trio of purple tank snipers

Arr shipmates, time for more purple marines!

This time it is a bevvy of Predator Annihilators. Three of these things caning out nine lascannon shots a turn at space marine accuracy is enough to make any armour commander's eyes water.

TwiddlyBits are back too, you'll also notice that the weathering is a touch more subtle than last time. I managed to kill off the ridiculously saturated Karak Stone's coverage by thinning it with a bit of dilute isopropyl alcohol. Isoprop is one of those handy chemicals in painting as it is excellent for cleaning things, thinning alcohol based paints and in this case: killing the acrylic medium a little to thin the paint coverage a bit.

While we are talking about alcohol based paints, I am growing less enchanted with the Vallejo Liquid Gold. As it gets older it seems to start to clag up and form clumps. This makes it infuriating to both mix smooth and apply, you have to fiddle around and inevitably spend time cutting in with the basecoat as applying it cleanly is a pain. Sadly, it seems to be brilliant for a few weeks and then it starts to deteriorate. Did I get moisture in it on some overly humid day? Who knows. Suffice to say, I think I'll be trying out the Army Painter gold to see if it is as much a straight copy of the old citadel metallics as their excellent steel colours are. Frankly, all I want is shining gold.

Something I am very happy with though is the lovely patina achieved by the AK Interactive Rust Streaks. The trick of being able to use white spirits to alter the coverage and location of the paint without harming the acrylics underneath is very nifty. I will do a review at some point in the future.

The TwiddlyBits have become a major part of the army's character and helps tie the crew to the tank through the shoulder pad decoration. Speaking of crew:

Something I had never thought of doing; using a guard torso in a space marine turret. I like it. There's no reason at all that space marine tanks should be driven and crewed by space marines. In fact it makes no sense, you spend all of the time and effort to select, surgically modify and train a marine. You equip this fellow in the finest protective gear known to mankind (increasing his bulk by about 30%) and then sit him in the cramped confines of a tank. Makes not even a little bit of sense. Surely chapter serfs and servitors would be the choice? Most chapters (and indeed the chaos legions to a lesser extent) have a traditional selection process and secrets that they must protect. Fail selection and you can never go home. You belong to the chapter and serve as best you can. How better than in a tank? Frees the marines for the kind of mobile warfare they do best and saves killing elite warriors when the tank inevitably gets annihilated by one of the 40k universes many lethal thingies. I think I'll be nicking this concept.

Well, that is almost it for Project Purples, 6 predators and 2 speeders down. 2 More speeders to go. Hopefully they'll be finished by the end of the week. Until then...

TTFN