New artillery for my regiment

[commissarbob]

Hey all, just thought I would start a log sharing my new artillery formation I am putting together for my siege regiment. The basis of these conversions is the heavy siege gun from MaxMini. Not having actually worked with any of their products but liking how they look I went ahead and ordered three. When the first one came in I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. The barrel had a significant mold shift and had resin dripped on it from another pour and the base plate had drips across it as well as the upright for the crank was mushed and filled in. I got in contact with MaxMini and they replaced the parts VERY quickly, so kudos to them! Anyways, I have the replacement parts and the remaining two from my order came in, so now the fun starts...



As you can see I am using Leman Russ hulls as the basis. I really like the look of a heavy artillery piece with the bulkier hull. The base plate 'just happens' to perfectly fit the width of a standard Imperial vehicle and it comes with three sandbag barriers with each gun, so bonus. The barriers have extremely fine detail easily the equal of Forge World and the guns themselves were cast clean with minimal warping of the parts. I will continue posting as I make more progress.

[cheminhaler]

Excellent - it'll be interesting to see how well they fit on.

[chapwilliams]

The bore size on those guns is ridiculous. True guard fashion
what are you playing them as, medusas, colossus?
very interested to see how well they fit.

[commissarbob]

Well, my intention is to play them as Colossus siege mortars, but given the similar size I may be able to fudge them a bit for Medusa on occasion. The guns went together pretty well with minimal fuss after a bit of normal clean up.



The rest of the filling in was pretty simple as well. I cut the plasticard plates to make the new top and rear of the crew section and to make the heavy bolter mounts more in the DKoK style. From there I added a strip to the joint between the front hull plate and the top plate to cover any non-perfect mating and to add visual interest and keep to the look of the heavy hull. I cut a side off of the top plate with the hatch that normally goes above the stock hull weapons mount and placed it on the top plate which I feel worked out pretty well. To fill in empty space I added smoke launchers to the top section just above the hull weapons mount. I just need to figure out where I want the spot light now. After notching the hull placement guides on the inside sides of the track sections the completed siege mortar assembly slid in exactly as designed. I have to say that I am quite happy with the results and it matches pretty much exactly what I wanted.

[dougeye]

looking good

[Cosmic]

Really fantastic, Bob.

Were they expensive? Basically are they a viable option against FW's Bombard etc?

[commissarbob]

They cost $36 plus another $26 for the bare bones Leman Russ, so $62 each verses $88.72 (59 pounds). So yeah, I saved a little bit but traded potentially more work. I say potentially as I have had some Forge World models that the parts fit was terrible that I basically had to scratch build bits to make it fit.