Warhammer 40k - Painting Imperial Guard - Baneblade

 Hey mates!

This time around am sharing a older project that I started working on 5 months ago.

This model is an Imperial Guard Baneblade.

I had picked this baneblade up 9 months back for 50.00 bucks. I didn't really know much about it or anything and it ended up sitting on a shelf in my garage for a good while. 5 months ago I started work on it formally really excited to get it painted at that stage I was planning to run Guard hardcore. 

I do not run guard, but still enjoy working on the models. I actually sold this Baneblade today and am planning on picking up a eight variant kit NOS to do it over. I really loved the first Baneblade but was time to let it go to a new home. 

Session 1

 I took to fixing it up the model, casting some replacement bits and getting it to look like a whole model. 

The model was missing a lot of parts, and had several damaged when it arrived from ebay. I ended up tracking replacements from friends or just made reasonable replacements. 

So this is after the second clean up work, this model had come very rough. I don't have pictures of how bad it was, but needless to say I felt robbed when I first got it. 

 I did a lot of clean up in spots and model lines. I then had primed it but stopped work on it cause was missing parts. Now you can see some more of the replaced parts. The second lascannon turret, the twin linker heavy bolter guns, ladder, piping and some side panels where all added. The smoke launchers I was able to make an acceptable replacement. 

Session 2

I used a Grey color scheme just like my troops along with going through imperial Armor vol 1 and taking some stuff from that book. 

Grey Scheme

Citadel - Eshin Grey

Citadel - Mechanized Grey

Vallejo - Cold Grey

Vallejo - Basalt Grey

Session 3

Once I got the baneblade to the next stage, adding bits, detailing some basing and other fine detail work.  I was feeling very good about this piece, in a lot of ways I wish I had kept it at this stage and just did the final touch up work. 

 

Wire Cables

I cut the plastic cabling and replaced it with weaved metal cabling. This gives me a lot more options when it comes to the placement of the cables itself. I drilled holes in the anker bits and then mounted the cables. 

Because the baneblade was bought used and glued heavily I had a hard time removing some of the bits that usually should be removable or magnetized. So I am pretty much resigned to the fact i wont have crew coming out of the hatches like my next one will. I am still thinking of converting a few Guardsmen to site on the chassie or be riding on the front. I ultimately felt this may look weird though since none of the crew are looking out of there hatches...  Next baneblade will have more crew peaking there heads out of the hatches. 

Session 4

I started working on the tracks and bottom fender edges. I like typhus Corrosion so i used that on the bottom and tracks. Great effect was happy with it, but i got this Idea of piling it up higher and putting it on upper areas of the model. So I started spreading it and next thing I knew I had covered ALOT of the model with it. 


Painters fear set into my heart and I was venting to Fayte alot to point I am sure he was annoyed.

I was not certain if i wrecked the model I had tried to save or if it was fine. I feel looking back that I would of stuck with my first idea. This miss calculation in my vision really prevented me from 100% loving the model. 

Anyway that is the chance you take. I got impatient and excited which cost me some good feelings. 


I dug really hard into my local community, spikey bitz, ammobunker and other friends for feedback.

Mostly everyone is saying its actually not bad, alot of people really like it so that made me abit more at ease.

Overall I liked 70% of the model and that not enough for me to keep hold on it. Especially at my current stage of hobby ability 

 I did some more dry brush work, keeping it focused on the tracks, and bottom edges of the model. 

I used Ryxa rust to dry brush on the bottom parts, I feel this has added a much better contrast so the model is popping more like it did before covering it in brown .

I added more bitz and camo netting along with glow affects .

The end result

This was a really great project, I learned a lot from the different steps I took. I can guaranty another baneblade will appear on this blog and into my ownership one day. 

This whole post is pretty much a salute to something I feel was a major project for me this year. It did make it into a top three contender ship for a tournament prize but was ultimately defeated.  

The great thing about this piece is I have everything I used to make it have character still. 

Anyway thanks for joining me down memory lane on this post.