Grot Tanks 1

Grot Tanks, how could you not love them?

You can’t is the answer. They call to you like a big eyed kitten, you’d have to be dead inside not to give in to one of them.

Yeah, anyway. I have decided to paint three of the seven I have. I can’t face cleaning up another four so they will have to wait till another time. I reckon even I can paint three Grot Tanks in one go.

Before I can paint them I need to finish modelling them.

How they looked after the quick build for the ZM games.

These three I built quickly to use in the Zone Mortalis trial games (where they performed above expectation) so while they may look finished in reality they needed more work.

First job was (carefully) pulling the exhausts and tracks off. I then removed the glue residue and drilled holes for some brass rod.

The holes on the hull to take the brass rod on the track units were drilled slightly larger and had some GS put in them. It gave me a little leeway in lining everything up.

The track units and exhausts were then reattached.

The original plan was to use the Dalek turret as the Kommanda Grot Tank, but alas the Grot Kommanda model just didn’t fit. So instead I did a turret swap. The Kommand Tank also needed a second weapon mounted in the hull and I magnetised a Skorcha.

I used both FW Grotzooka ammo boxes I had for this one tank, however I cut, drilled and scraped out the one and added different ammo (i.e. scrap). The two boxes were pinned in place.

The second Grotzooka tank had a new ammo box built and the scrap in the Grotzooka was removed and replaced.

Is there a better combination than Grot meet Dalek?

While the turret weapons are going to be glued in position I needed to do some work on the mounting due to the gaps. So the weapons where removed from the turrets and small styrene discs inserted. When the weapon was refitted (and pinned in place) they looked much snugger. The rokkit turret shows this the best, I also cleaned up (and GS a few miscast areas on) a crewman for it.

The FW Rokkits will be added to the rear of the turret but I’m keeping them unattached for ease of painting.

So all together they now look like this:

That is all that needs doing to the Grot Tanks modelling wise, so next step will be undercoating them.

Oh and deciding what scheme I will actually be giving them. All the Ork tanks in the force have some sort of camo scheme, each tank kommanda doing his tank in whatever scheme he wants. I’m not sure if to go with a camo scheme for all these Grot tanks or to show that these are Grots and not part of what the Warboss really considers his ‘proppa’ fighting force by doing a different scheme – basically bare metal with flashes of colour and a shed load of rust.

I need to decide soon…