Chaos Renegade Arillery Converstion: Quad mortars complete!

Taking a small break from posting bat reps and playing games I have decided to try and get my army look more like it holds official models and not Proxies on everything. I also have decided what is going to be changed in my army list concerning my troops choices to be more effective in the field, hopefully they will bear fruit to my hard work and many victories will arise. Also before I get in depth about my Artillery I am happy to announce that I am going to restart and revamp my You tube Warhammer videos concentrating on Chaos Space Marines in the UK and how they hold up against other lists. But for now, lets look at some very nice models.

Now, being an avid 40K player I do enjoy having the official models for my armies. My Blaster Master and Lascannon combo list, which I used in Steel City's 40K tournament last year is proof of this although finding and buying 8 Lascannons was an extremely difficult process. This year however, with the release of AI13 my sights turned back to Artillery models and my love for Iron Warriors. Out of all the options I liked the Field artillery Quad mortars the best for damage output on Toughness value units, also with the easy ability to give them cover saves and boost their leadership I thought there was no real downside to them (although the inability to kill Serpents is unfortunate, FAQ +1 Strength please!). Anyway, the Forge World official models are rather expensive, and although most of the models are brilliant and pretty I did not like the look of the Quad Mortars housing. Also the Renegade Rules state that it is an Immobile artillery platform, but the model has wheels?

Nice model, love the ammo case and the barrels... but the wheels? Nope

They also would scar me with the price, before the Forge World bundle for 4 of these and crew were released - Noticed we all liked it didn't you Forge World - The price for 4 of these and crew would be well over £140, which is way over my budget for buying Warhammer, so I had to look elsewhere.

The two places I found what I was looking for were Ramshackle Games with their Drone Crawler found here: http://shop.ramshacklegames.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15&products_id=436
And Puppets War with their Frag Launcher packs found here: http://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=254

Both were ordered on the same day, but the frag launchers came a full week before the Drone Crawlers, sounds bad but I did check their Terms of service and it did state to allow a 3 Week waiting period for my toys. These crawler 4 crawler bodies and Frag Launchers cost a total of £55.99 including postage and packaging, which for me is a bargain.

Gluing them together was easy business. I modeled the Frag launchers onto each side of the Drones miniature rocket launchers by filing down the sides until it was smooth and gluing on the Launchers. The Drones only had a couple of slips on their moldings, which were easily filed away to make for easy fits. To protect myself from my own clumsy hands I did use some green stuff to cement the legs into position as the glue dried, this also sped up the process tenfold. Here is the current stage of my Artillery:

The guns sit well in their housings, and the legs are completely balanced.

Shot of the Turret away from the housing, I am glad I do not have to glue it down.

A Squadron of 4 gives me 16 S5 Barrage shots a turn. By turn 4 I should be running out of targets.

I think these guys look extremely impressive and very Chaotic, taking after the Defiler with the crab like design. I am going to be painting them up the same way as my Fire Raptor with the yellow and black hazard stripes on a boltgun metal body.

Let me know what you think and show me your Artillery designs for the IV legion. Should I mention I got some spare crawler legs and frag launchers too? Looks like I am finally going to convert a Brass Scorpion!

Painted models coming soon!