Bloodpact Baneblade Completed Pics

Hey all,
Sorry it took longer than expected, but they are now here, the pictures of my completed Baneblade!

As mentioned in my first post about the Bloodpact Baneblade here, this beast is the first unit I ever did for my Bloodpact. Originally I was just doing it up for something that looked cool, but then as time went on, and my local GW store had a tank camo scheme comp for the release of the current (new at the time) IG codex, the project went from a concept piece right through to the start of a growing Bloodpact force.

Now, the Baneblade kit has a lot to offer for both imperial and traitors alike, but not so much so in the case of the imperial symbols everywhere and the machine spirit shrine at the rear. So first thing I did during the assembly of this beast was to defile all those pieces of Imperial belief adorning it. To further add to the traitorous feel, the vehicles lascannaon, autocannon and heavy bolter barrels have all been modified with pieces from multiple Chaos Vehicle Accessoriess sprue. Spikes made out of paperclips twisted together were added to the hull at random intervals at odd angels to serve as mounting points for the barbed wire I would add later on.

The smoke launchers were replaced with havok launchers, and a tank trap from the Battle Field Accessories Set was attached across the front, not as a dozer blade, but more as a trophy collection point for when the this tank goes on 'crowd control' duties. Extra communication arrays have been added to the side of the turret, with the normally short aerials being replaced with longer lengths of wire.

To make it stand out from other traitor Baneblades, I cut off the battle cannons end, and attached it to the demolisher cannon, more that doubling its length. As my battle cannon now no longer had a barrel end, I attached the Hellhammer cannon barrel end in place of the old 1. To me it makes the tank look that much more deadly, and to emphasis the point that when this cannon fires there is going to be carnage, using a scene from Dan Abnetts book 'Honour Guard', a corpse has been attached to the end of the barrel so that it looks like this guy was attached over the cannon mouth when it fired, leaving his remains dangling, serving as both a message and a trophy.

When it came to trophies and defiling, I kept everything in theme to chaos and more specifically the Bloodpact. So copious amounts of blood, gore, and corpses had to be used. Across the front as seen before I had piled up a mound of guard helmets, and over the machine shrine, I have attached a mutilated guardsmen. I chose to paint him in the same colours as the helmets on the front. Using a knife from the Cadian Heavy Weapons team sprue, and a piece of parchment made out of green stuff, I attached it to his chest, with some line work to make it look like a message is written on it.

To keep with the theme of the Bloodpact recruiting from defeated units of Imperial guard, and to tie it in with the rest of the ground vehicles ive got on the go, the tank was first painted in a 3 colour urban camo scheme. Then once that was completed, I painted on my own blood effect recipe to look like blood has been brushed on by the Bloodpact, as well as spray ups from the corpses crushed under its tracks. Liberal coats were added to the front to emphasis the carnage dealt by this behemoth when it goes on a rampage.

To add to the look that its wet blood splattered over the sides of the tank, I added bloody hand and foot prints leading up and away from each ladder, in the case of the ladder on the tanks side, they lead right up the side of the turret and into the first hatch.

After all the painting was done the barbed wire was added and coated with brown ink to give the rusted look, and the tank commander with hatch were attached into place. I painted this guy seperately as its hard to airbrush his colour on when attached to the tank. Its alot easier to mask up just his hatch rather than the whole turrent piece.

And there you have it, the completed Bloodpact Baneblade in all its traitorous glory.

Until next time all.