There are some Forge World models I have had lying around in boxes for literal years – they spend their time getting assigned to one project or another, then hang around waiting for me to get to them, then getting re-assigned to a new project… while gathering dust.

I had two Malcador tanks lying in this state but, with a coming renewed drive to get the Spireguard of Tizca ready to fight in the Prospero campaign, came the motivation to get these tanks done – especially when I saw that, relatively speaking, they would be quite easy to put together and I had already determined a lightning fast paint scheme for the armour of the Spireguard.

Even given the age of these kits, putting them together was a decently fast process. There was a bit of a chore in cleaning up the resin on the hull and track pieces, especially when compared to Forge World’s current method of casting, but nothing that was too much of a bear. And once that was done, everything slotted together nicely with no wonkiness or wobbleability.

The paint scheme was, as mentioned, copied from the Leman Russ I had done some time ago, and it is very, very fast. A little bland, maybe, with a bit too much red? Perhaps, but given that the Spireguard will be the first to face the Space Wolves Censure Host with no help from the Thousand Sons themselves… well, these tanks are going to be on the battlefield for just a few hours before getting blown apart, eh?

The only real time sink in the painting is on the tracks, and that comes down to drying time rather than actual work so, again, not too much of a pain. After that, it becomes a matter of picking bits out in the dirty white to try to break up all that red, and figuring out where the transfers will go to continue that process.

The Defender might be my favourite of the two. The standard model does a good job of appearing like a forerunner to the Leman Russ, but the Defender has quite a nice ‘tween-wars’ feel to it – more complicated than the rolling boxes of the First World War, but not quite reaching the focus of tanks in World War Two. There is a feeling of trying to cram ‘just one more gun’ onto it, and the asymmetrical hull adds to that.

Quite what it will be able to do against angry Space Wolves is another question, but it will (briefly) look good doing it!

With these two done, I am cracking on with my painting schedule (having lost a week to a nasty cold) and, this weekend, I immediately found myself mired in a long project. I had got it into my head to clear my desk of all Titans in one fell swoop, so I am currently doing four of them… which means four lots of armour edging that I have come to loathe. On Sunday evening, I finally finished the base colours for the edging, which means I just have the shading and highlighting to do. Those are easier and quicker steps, but still a massive pain in the rear end to actually do.

Once done, the Titans will need just a little detailing here and there to finish them, which is great… but there is still a massive hump to clear before I can get to the nicer/easier bits and then call things done.

In the background behind all of this, I am furiously building new models to a) fuel my new-found motivation for actually getting things done and b) give me all the ready-to-paint models I will need for my Grand Christmas Break Project…