Civilian Runabouts

This weekend just gone I ran a Hammers’ Slammers game at my club’s Open Day (more of the game in a later post).

To provide a bit of scenery and colour, I painted up some of our Raeside grav utility vehicles in civilian colours. I went for a pallette of industrial orange-yellows, since the vehicles were placed as part of the colony base. I started by assembling them as normal, then dressed them up with various stowage items – jerricans, crates, boxes, tool lockers etc. One even got a Soviet external fuel tank bolted to the back (I wasn’t sure if the superglued join would be strong enough, but it’s holding up so far !).

After a coat of grey car primer (which annoyingly went a bit grainy – it was a warm day), they were airbrushed in Tamiya paints – two in yellow with a touch of red added, the other in an orange shade I mixed up specially.

Then it was just down to brush painting the details – black skirts for one, black details for the other two, and various colours for the stowage items. Next was the infamous Army Painter Strong Tone dip – applied with a brush, I don’t go for dunking the model in the tin! Decals were applied on the still shiny dip, before a final airbrushed matt coat to flatten everything down. Decals came from various sources in my copious spares box – there are GW Tau and Imperial Guard markings, a few warning signs from a large Rafale aircraft kit and a number plate from a 1/76th German truck. What I really wanted was a decal that said ‘Survey’ for the orange one, but I couldn’t find anything suitable.

The end results are pretty effective and add nicely to the clutter on the table.