Grey Knights - Part Four - Land Raider Banisher

This is perhaps the final part of the series covering the creation of a small Grey Knights army until the release of a new Codex and/or new models. You can catch up on Part One, Part Two & Part Three by following these links.

In Part Four, I had bought myself a Grey Knights Landraider Banisher from Forgeworld. This is also referred to as a 'Vortimer Pattern' Land Raider. This vehicle carries 12 power-armoured marines, or 6 Terminator-armoured knights and is armed with twin linked Psycannons and two Heavy Incinerators (and a Multi-melta & Stormbolter!) and would be perfect for racing up the centre of the battle field, weathering fire as it went or Gating to unleash it's incinerators and spilling forth the Terminator contents to secure an objective.

Since building a Leman Russ and a Rhino way back in the late 1980s, this was my first tank/vehicle I've built, and to tell you the truth I was quite nervous, especially when I realised the instructions supplied just covered the main tank and not the extra Grey Knight (GK) pieces that Forgeworld (FW) bundle in. Furthermore, I had held out from building it until a pintle mounted multi-melta arrived from a parts vendor. 

It wasn't just the lack of tank-building experience that worried me, but the sub-assembly/painting approach too. I took to the various GK Facebook groups to look for hints, but apart from suggestions of dry-fitting the pieces and squeezing tight the various parts when gluing, everyone seemed to think this was quite simple to complete. So, on I went...

As you can see from the pictures above, the FW GK resin pieces look pretty cool, and fortunately for me, weren't warped or out of shape in any way, so no hot water manipulation needed.

What I was pleasantly surprised about were little touches, like a mechanism to open the front-bay doors of the tank...

I also heeded the advice of the GK community and dry-fitted the items as I went (after stripping off any mould lines etc).

The main body of the tank went together easily. I swapped out the various 'standard' pieces for the FW items. I did this over a weekend just to ensure everything was solid and dry.

Admittedly I did play around with inserting magnets on the doors and side-mounted flamers, but this didn't really work for me as I couldn't get a strong enough contact to prevent the doors falling out with a slight knock. I also had a quandary as to the door/weapons positioning. Even though it would seem madness to have troops coming in/out of the side doors with a giant incinerator pointing at them, I didn't want the lovely details of the doors to be hidden at the back behind the weapons sticking out.

I then proceed to prime the tank in sections, although I regret gluing the side-mounted weapons in first as it would be been easier to get at the inner areas to paint. Although I don't regret gluing the doors on, some much more dedicated painters would have enabled the doors to come off and painted the inside of the tank, which includes scanners and engine part details. 

As you can see, I didn't glue in the multi-melta, psycannons or stormbolter. I found they pushed firmly into their holes on the tank and could be removed without losing their tight fit. This makes storage/transport much easier for later, but importantly it meant they were easier to paint.

I primed (almost) everything with Ledbelcher spray. The track parts were primed with Chaos Black on spru and then glued to the model. 

It was clear that the amount of painting required was considerable when compared to a miniature soldier, but the GK 'silver' scheme was much more forgiving than some Space Marine chapters. 

Following some Nuln Oil and Agrax washes, there was a lot of 'edging' to complete and not all of it really shows up very well on camera, but you can see progress being made. I also ensured the GK gunner was painted like his chapter mates, with a more blue tone to his grey armour.

Voldus points the way... "Fire!"

I think the purple gives a nice distraction from the rest of the bare-bones metal of the tank, and ties in nicely with the rest of the army. I added 'script' to the shields too, and ensured the purity seals and book pages were lightened up too. I also added the same 'heat' effect to the incinerators that I had added to the Dreadnought and Dreadknight in Part Three which I think works pretty well.

Have to say the kit was fun to build. I definitely made mistakes and learnt from them along the way. I think the experience will definitely help when I come to build the various Rhino variants for the Sisters of Battle army that I am collecting too.