Iron Warriors Rhino APC (Diabolical December ’18)

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So it’s apparently been over a year since I finished any models for my Iron Warriors. I think we can all agree that that is a bit rubbish. (And no, that Atilla that I just finished doesn’t count!)

This Rhino is actually one of the first “proper” Iron Warriors models that I ever got – it was part of the purchase made from the same guy who sold me the Forgeworld Dreadnought/Helbrute linked above back around 2005-6 or so. Like the dreadnought, it was fully painted, albeit not to the standard that I was fully happy with, and it had a rather odd, heavily converted tank commander hanging out of the top. I’m not sure what I did with him, but I did see it somewhere last year. No matter, as it didn’t fit my own vision for the Iron Warriors.

Speaking of “my vision”, this thing was covered in spikes. Specifically, those bloody “fence railings” that come in the Chaos Vehicle “upgrade” sprue. Now, I don’t *hate* them, but they do become a bit tiresome when you seen to find them on every bloody Chaos vehicle around. I can certainly see them making sense in my vision of a Night Lords or Word Bearers force, but for me, the Iron Warriors are more about blunt force than an excess of spikes, so they had to go. So anyway, I pried them off and cleaned up where they had been affixed.

Other things I changed from the original paint were the slightly uneven hazard striping on the doors to black and a complete do-over of the top hatches’ hazard striping. Essentially using the original paint as a coloured undercoat/rough guide. I added all of the shading to the bronze areas, and picked out each individual rivet in silver, added all of the paint chips, wear and weathering, redid the grey highlights on all of the black areas and cleaned up some of the highlights/edging on the silver areas.

I also reworked the rear access hatch, redoing the Eye of Horus in red gemstone paint and adding a blue tint that you can’t see in the photos to the roundel around the Eye. My new commander (and hit hatch) also pops in and out of the hole. I went with a custom combi-plasma mostly because I couldn’t find a combi-bolter or a storm bolter, but did find half of a storm bolter, so I got an old-school plasma gun and a set of paired grips and did a little bit of cutting and gluing to make it work okay on the mount, but went with the “at rest” weapon pose. The commander is made from the standard lower legs from the Rhino kit, and an upper torso from my ill-fated Puppetswar purchase. There’s even a bubble-hole on his chest, but it’s less obvious due to the placement of the guns, and on this guy we can just call it a touch of battle damage (I couldn’t be arsed filling it). The head is from a plastic Grey Knight. I gave him the grey-purple-greenish complexion that I’ve done on my other unhelmeted Iron Warriors. I liked the combination of exposed cable and the skullcap, which I painted in a leather brown as a nod to the leather helmets worn by WWII tank crew (and Donald Sutherland’s Oddball!) I did putty over the =I= symbol on the forehead, though!

The chain was already affixed, but it was plain, shiny metal, so adding a paint/wash mix to it gave it some depth also made it no longer stand out from the rest of the model in an awkward way. Originally, I’d painted the interior of the commander hatches in a duck egg green, since that’s a real colour used for that sort of thing, but it didn’t “feel” right, so I redid it at the last minute (as in, after the “final” coat of varnish in my custom Necromunda Blue, and then revarnished by brush. Much better.

So now I only have one more of the models to go from that original IW purchase all those years ago! Not sure if I’ll manage to get it done in December, as there are two other models I’d like to prioritise – but we’ll see how it all works out…

38 thoughts on “Iron Warriors Rhino APC (Diabolical December ’18)”

  2. Those “fence railing” spikes also make the vehicles a serious pain to transport without snapping off constantly.

    The FW IW upgrade parts look fantastic! Really give it a sense of heft and bulk that suits the IW very well. I think I like that head better on a Chaos Marine than I ever have on a GK, too.

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    • Thanks Mark. My Iron Warriors are all based on metallic/industrial bases, so I wanted to keep the weathering to something that could easily have happened anywhere and still be left on the vehicle rather than something like heavy, fresh mud. (or heavy, dried mud!)

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  7. Fantastic work on the Rhino mate, you see so many tanks where it looks as if they’ve tried to put every bit from the chaos sprue on because it was in the box, even with chaos sometimes less is more, the forgeworld parts by Simon Egan always make a model look great.

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    • Thanks Dave. I do know what you mean. I’ve got a couple like that here in the Mek Shop needing to be stripped down and rebuilt. On the bright side, I should be able to make some nice fences for terrain pieces!

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  8. For some reason I’ve had you down much more as a figure painting chap rather than a kit builder, mainly I guess because I’ve only seen the end result and in most cases that’s been figures. This therefore feels like a departure which I’m sure it is not. In any event it looks like one cool machine.

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    • Over the years I’ve become less and less of a kit builder. I think it’s because I get really anal about getting things “perfect” along with not being perfect at doing them. When I see people like yourself and especially JNV’s scratchbuilds that look like actual kits, it probably puts me off even more, since the bar is so high!
      Regardless, I’ve got an absolute ton of vehicle and other kits sitting around here, and so I’m just going to have to force the point and get them built and painted over the next year(s!)

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  10. Brilliant looking Rhino! I am really fond of using that particular head as a head for “unhelmed” models myself: Works really well, especially with older armour marks — in fact, the cover artwork for Horus Rising even has an Astartes with a similar looking cap in it!

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    • Thank you on the Rhino – and good spot on the novel cover as well. I need to go back and finish that book sometime. I suspect I’ll need to restart the whole bloody thing, though.

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    • Thanks mate. The gradual rewrites have reframed the Iron Warriors as much more bitter “Renegades” than Chaos Worshippers – which I really like. Along with their penchant for Siege Warfare and their blunt demeanour and that’s the feel I’m trying to go for in my force, despite the Chaos Stars festooned all over so many of the models.

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  12. Oh, I somehow almost missed this post altogether! Great looking Rhino, very Iron Warrior! The tow hooks and the chain look a bit weird on the sides if you think about it (good luck getting out if the left door in case of emergency!), but hey, it’s chaos.

    I’d like to point out that while the Chaos accessory sprue is pretty silly and impractical, the skulls on it are some of the best GW skull sculpts I think. And you can make great skull helmets for Chaplains and suchs out of them, as detailed by Ron of FromTheWarp. Also, the round bit with spikes makes for a great “Iron Halo” for a Dreadnought.

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    • I had that thought about the chain as well, but I left it on anyway because it looks “heavy metal” enough. Besides, in a rush situation I’m sure that it’d just shatter as they opened the side hatches with Astartes charging through. The side Tow hooks I thought looked okay – in a more “meathook” sense, though hanging bits of dead guy off them felt a bit too on the nose compared to the threat/implication of it..
      Just checked out the Chaplain helmet tutorial. Not too shabby, though I have SOOOO many skull helmets of all kinds, not to mention so many unpainted Chaplain models. That’s something I should do once I go on break, actually… paint a Chaplain or three.
      My god. Two days left…

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  13. Pingback: Heavy Metal Thunder! Iron Warriors Vindicator (Mechanismo May ’19) | Azazel's Bitz Box.

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