First Contact - local farmers are introduced to Imperial war machines.

This is a Dark Angels Land Raider Crusader assault tank from Games Workshop. I built mine with sponson-mounted hurricane bolters (essentially 6 linked bolt guns on each side of the tank), a roof-mounted twin assault cannon, a storm bolter, and a hunter-killer missile. It’s part of the Dark Angels 4th Company, which is nicknamed ‘The Feared’.

On the starboard door, you can see the 4th Company identification panel, which is a diagonal red stripe on the green. I added the little skull decal because it looked cool.

The other decals come from the Dark Angels decal sheet from Forge World. They’re expensive, but you get a BUNCH on an A4 sheet, and several of them are full colour or metallic.

I’m not an experienced airbrush user and I made some epic mistakes when base coating this tank, using badly mixed Vallejo Game Color Dark Green. After messing this up (and the Repulsor Executioner too – which will feature in my next update), I redid the whole thing in Vallejo Model Air Olive Green. Being pre-mixed for airbrush made it much easier to work with, and the few areas where my washed-out Dark Green base coat peeked through made it look like I’d done edge highlighting. Happy little mistakes indeed!

Tank armour recipe:

• Vallejo Model Air Olive Green
• Vallejo Game Color Dark Green
• AK Decay Deposits
• AK Engine Grime
• Ammo Streaking Grime
• AK Engine Oil
• Vallejo Model Color Bronze
• GSW Liquid Pigments Black Soot (for exhausts and vents)
• Vallejo Model Color Bronze
• GSW Liquid Pigments Verdigris
• Vallejo Model Air Red

Tank tracks:

• Vallejo Metal Color Gunmetal grey
• Tamiya XF25 Rubber Black (For road pads on tracks)
• Vallejo Model Color Bronze (For recurring aquila motif on tracks)
• Vallejo Metal Color Silver
• AK Track Wash
• Vallejo Thick Mud – Brown Mud

Guns and exposed metal:

• Vallejo Metal Color Gunmetal grey
• Vallejo Model Color Bronze
• Vallejo Metal Color Silver
• Citadel Shade Nuln Oil
• Dirty Down Rust
• GSW Liquid Pigments Black Soot (for barrels of weapons)
• Vallejo Model Air Red (for weapons armour plate)

Purity Seals

• Citadel Contrast Skeleton Horde
• Citadel Agrax Earthshade
• 0.05 Black pigment pen
• Citadel Technical Blood for the Blood God

Next up, I’ll share the work I did on the gigantic Repulsor Executioner!