Batmobiles! 40k Style...

No really, they really do seem to be Inquisitorial Batmobiles...

Today's offerings are a pair of Inquisitorial Interceptors made by Wargames Exclusive, another third party with interesting products and a loose interpretation of intellectual property... Seriously though, at least these guys don't do the Chapterhouse thing and just use TM's at will. I prefer the nod and a wink approach. As you'll see on the site, these are not what you'd call "roomy" in scale. Indeed, I started to think of these as 40k versions of Formula One cars, single occupant, built for speed and little else. I can see them being outriders for transports or pursuit interceptors very nicely. What they aren't is really inquisitorial transports. More like support vehicles. The styling is further toward the grimdark bonkers than my usual tastes allow for (commission though so irrelevant) but I will say that they've executed the bonkers nicely. They're on the right side of "way too much" and so they work. I like 'em.

We'll start with the more aggressive of the two. All of these cars came in a few solid lumps of resin. Assembly was a piece of cake and while painting them took waaay longer than I anticipated they were fairly straightforward to pull off.

The brief was for a mix of black, red and brass. Usual inquisition colours. I ended up going heavy on the black as - bluntly - it was cool. Heavy iron and satin black with occasional red accents? Yup, that'll do nicely. It's tough to see in the picture but this one got some subtle heat staining on the exhausts - what with them being so close to the engine. The exposed parts also got a good oiling with the Ammo Engine Oil enamels.

The dude in the back regrets choices he made...

This car comes complete with a servitor at the back and a servo skull at the front. I figured the skull was for seeing where they are going through that girt hench engine and the servitor is to tune the engine and take over for brief periods when those assault cannons need firing. Also, you gotta love the Adam West era rocket engine at the back there.

Then, we move on to what in my head was the Munstermobile. First, let me just say, I love the grill and lamps on this car. They worked just cracking. Obviously a rather large feature of this car are those massive eagles on the rear wings (badum tish). I agonised over those. Brass would have hauled it into the realms of ridiculous bling. Steel would have changed the tone of the car, rather more utilitarian. Black would have looked like I'd forgotten to paint them (nb there are some scrolls at the front underneath the =I= symbols. I deliberately left them black as they would have ruined the balance of the vehicle in anything else). Finally, I realised that a dark smokey red with a nice low gloss finish would look smashing and mercifully, I was right.

A word about the lamps, It always bugs me when I see lamps painted as always on or as gemstones. The bright colours offer a splash of interest, sure, but it just feels weird. Most lights on vehicles are off most of the time. Unless you are painting the thing to look like it is in the dark it is tough to square the "look". Instead, I like my lights to look "off". How you achieve that is by starting from damn near black. Highlight up to almost a pure colour (and a muted one at that) on the lower edges but make sure the overall tone is dark. Then put a couple of heavy glazes of the colour you want them to appear over the black and gloss varnish. You'll get the colour tone - those are clearly red and yellow - but they won't look like gems and you won't need OSL to feel "right". The Stay Back command on the back was inspired by pictures of military convoys in conflict zones and I thought the Reaper in conjunction with the message was adequate warning...

So yeah, fun project. It's made me want to arrange something similar - if a little more restrained - for my own Inq28 collection. Nifty models.

TTFN