One is good, two is better, so why not use four?

Work proceeds on the Guard, albeit slowly - I've managed to paint all the heads, hands and eyes for the Tournament army, next up is to get the base colors for the fatigues and armor. In the meantime however my recent Forge World order showed up in the mail, and I took a little time to build the Thudd Gun:

It's definitely larger than the original Thudd Gun model, though I have to say I think the new sculpt is far superior to the old one. I ended up using an old CD for the base, and added the standard CoD bits that I tend to use for scenic decoration for the army.

Unfortunately FW doesn't make dedicated artillery crewmen for the Cadian range, but I was pleased to discover that the mortar rounds included on the Heavy Weapons Teams sprues appear to be the same rounds included in the ammo crate that comes with the Thudd Gun model, so I was able to come up with a loader model that looked fairly appropriate. I look forward to fielding this artillery piece in my upcoming games!

Couple more goodies arrived along with the Thudd Gun, including the Vendetta upgrade kit and a Vulture kit with the new Punisher Cannons. I will say that the Valkyrie kit has taken the crown from the Chimera in the "Kits I don't enjoy putting together" category. I'm realizing now how badly I managed to build my first Valkyrie and I'm not looking forward to building two more at this point. On the up side, I know what I did wrong with the first one and won't be repeating those mistakes!