Thursday, January 13, 2011

Anathema Assault Tank, Part 2 - Build in progress

In what is the longest follow-up to an earlier post for this blog (so far), I finally sat down and built the Anathema Assault Tank that I purchased last January. I was tired of painting and felt I needed to build something - rather than more Dark Eldar, I took my life into my own hands and rummaged around in the Closet of Doom (ominous horns)
.

The Anathema Assault Tank is a relatively obscure Superheavy Tank known for its unorthodox 'tricycle' design. It is notoriously prone to "throwing a shoe' as the tank's Cataphracti crew humorously dub the problem - the bolts holding the traction plates in place tend to shear at speed, pitching the 100kg metal plates a surprising distance. There is an unsanctioned betting ring among the operators of the Anathema Assault Tanks regarding successfully hitting an enemy with the flying plates.


...And that's how I'm going to justify the fact that one of the treads is seriously out of true, now that I've looked at the picture. I attempted to remove it to no avail, fearing that I'd end up shattering the pieces. In game terms the Anathema will be used as a proxy Malcador Defender. It technically has the same weapons loadout, although their distribution is slightly different.


The kit was quite seriously out-of-true and even getting it to this state of build was a serious challenge. The resin is very brittle, and there were several occasions where I broke pieces attempting to trim or sand them. Most of these errors are hidden, but a perfect example are the holes in the tread plates designed to accept resin-cast axles provided with the kit. In an attempt to clear the flash from the holes, I broke two of them before deciding another tack was called for. Instead I'm going to use small bb's or beads to represent the lugs.


There's still a bit of gap-filling and minor detailing to do of course, but all in all it's brutish and slightly ridiculous, which perfectly encapsulates the Adeptus Mechanicus to me!

4 comments:

  1. Wow, it really looks excellent!
    I'm sorry to hear about the issues with the kit and the build, but the result looks really good.
    I look forward to see it painted :)
    Cheers
    Klaus

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  2. It's such a great looking kit, though. When you first posted it I was going back and forth between your pics and the FW site to find all the pieces; it really is a unique kit. Sorry to hear about the substandard resin and casting issues, though. Take heart, though; a wobbly tread-plate or two is just the thing to add character to an already characterful model!

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  3. Thanks folks. From what I gather this was one of the first few casts of the model, and I assume either the resin mix wasn't ideal, or the fact that it's been sitting in a box for a year has made it brittle. I haven't seen another one in a long, long time so I'm not even sure if it's even still being made (though with the obvious casted GW bits in the kit it wouldn't surprise me if they got a C&D). All in all I'm pleased with it, and I'm looking forward to finishing the build and getting it painted!

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