The last tank I bought for my Star Wars Legion CIS Droid army was the Persuader (some would call it the snail tank) tank. Ironically, it is the first large vehicle for the game that I actually finished painting! I bought a pair of these some time back (why buy one, when you can buy two?).
I assembled the tank shortly after I bought it and even primed it, but set it aside, as my gaining focus went to something else. Last week I got a little bored of painting historical and terrain, so I pulled out the tank and started to work on it.
The kit is all done in grey injected moulded plastic. It has great detail and assembles reasonably easily. You do need to be careful when adding the various road wheels and gluing the main sections together. The instructions are not as clear as they could be, so double check your work at this step or you might miss some road wheels! I assembled both one evening while watching episode three on TV.
Looking at the footage, the vehicles looked silver, so I prayed them both with some GW blowgun paint as a primer coat. Then they went into a box for a while… As I mentioned earlier, I pulled them out last week and decided to finish them up. Looking at the photos online, I had to decide how to give some variation in shade. I decided to give the majority of the vehicles a black wash. I applied a blue wash to the center circle area. I then added a Vallejo dust wash to all the tread sections to dirty things up and give some more color variation.
Once all the last wash dried, I drybrushed the entire tank with some chainmail paint. I then hit the entire vehicle with a light silver to catch the highlights. Next, I used some Iraqi Sand from Vallejo to drybursh the treads and connecting area to dirty up the running gear. I hit this with a light sand highlight next.
Next I pained al the weapons and antennas with GW contrast black (I consider this a magic paint). After that dried, I followed with a drybrush of Vallejo London Gray on these areas.
Next came the eyes. I hit these with some basic red paint and a white dot. I managed to get some unseen wet wash in the areas, which caused the red to run (unplanned). So, I had to wait for this to dry and hit these areas with more silver and backwash. This ended up giving a bit of a red tinge to the area that gives a bit of a glow look (all by accident!), so I left this alone after that.
Looking at the tank, I thought they needed something else to add some interest. I decided to pull out some contrast blue and paint a few panels and recesses(I figured this would tie these to my CIS color scheme). I then painted the same panels with magic blue and a slight highlight of light blue. I hit the entire tank with a semi gloss sealer, being careful not to spray the treads. I thought this worked we’ll and moved onto the base.
I went with the same technique as I used for my troops. I started with a brown spray paint. For hand painting, I hit the arc recesses with some light earth and then started to apply GW badlands earth to the whole base. However, this base is huge, so I was not totally sure the amount of texture paint to apply. I used a lot of a pot, but probably could have used more! The paint ended up drying with an uneven color effect. At first I was worried, but after I drybrushed everything with Iraqi sand, I was happy with the effect. I test fitting the tanks on the base and applied some spiky tufts here and there to match my other figures. I then painted the edges dark brown and dull coat sprayed the base. A little Elmers glue and the tanks were attached to the base.
While I had to apply washes one at a time and wit for them to dry over a few days. The actual hand painting and finishing was done in one evening. Being silver, the models made for an easier paint project. I am happy with the result and let’s see if this motivates me on finishing some of my other tanks…..
- Manteuffel