With the release of a number of add-on packs for our 15mm range recently, I thought I’d have some fun upgrading one of our vehicles with some of them. I chose a Shaman hover tank which I’d decided to paint up as part of an as-yet-unnamed Belgian mercenary unit that I’m planning to raise as and when we release more vehicles for the mercs.
I wanted to make a command vehicle so I replaced the remote gun mount with a Neo-Soviet sensor unit and fitted a pair of aerials to the turret roof. The sensor unit was just glued over the top of the mounting hole for the gun, while the aerials were attached to the flat of the turret roof – I drilled and pinned them for a bit of extra strength. The turret bin was filled up with a selection of stowage items – jerricans and a storage box – and a crewman in helmet was put in the open hatch. The last addition was one of our forthcoming pintel weapons, a 6-barrel gatling, although I cheated here and used a spare plastic 3D print since we haven’t made a mould of them yet! I mounted this in a short piece of plastic tubing first to bring it up to the right height for the commander.
The colour scheme echoes that of the Belgian army in 1940. I gave it an overall coat of Citadel Bestial Brown, drybrushed in a lighter shade. The crewman was painted before being glued in place, the stowage painted on the vehicle, then everything was brushed in Army Painter strong tone dip. Decals came from Dom’s Decals and my spares box, with the final coat being Tamiya flat clear (don’t use AP’s aerosol varnish, it reacts with the dip and can ruin all your hard work).
I had a lot of fun with this little project, and I’m looking forward to creating an entire mercenary unit in the same style (so yes, keep an eye out for new models in that range soon).
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