Tiny Tanks

I've slowly been hacking away at some Monsterpocalypse models. The scale on the units is a little bit new to me; the only time I've painted something this small before was when I did up my mini Juggernaut. I actually put a lot more care into him than into these guys, but that's not to say I didn't face some challenges with this lot.

I decided to try to paint the G.U.A.R.D. models in relatively realistic colour schemes; in your average Kaiju movie you tend to have pretty traditional military vehicles after all. Even though it's technically a military vehicle, I wanted to paint the repair truck in the colours of familiar civilian construction vehicles. That basically meant yellow and black, with some basic metal colours. I probably should have added a touch of red for the brake lights, but couldn't be bothered. I tried to distribute the colours in a balanced way, but at the end of the day it's a pretty simple yellow truck. That's fine I guess.

I considered black and dark green as the primary colour for the tanks, but settled on a desert tan as it's a common colour for modern military vehicles and would help the tiny models stand out. Plus I haven't really used this colour before, at least not as a primary colour, so that was a little interesting.

Traditionally one tank gets a base with a star and a slightly different paintjob to mark it as the "elite" unit, but it went against my nature to "hard-code" things this way so instead I decided to try to find an alternative. I settled on a magnetised rocket pod to mark the elite models:

I designed the rocket pod from scratch in Blender and 3D printed it on my Anycubic Photon. It took a couple of iterations to get the details at the right scale, but overall it wasn't too bad.

I installed small 2mm round magnets in the bases of the pods and on the tops of the tanks. I magnetised all four tanks; why the hell not right?

While at first glance I thought they were not very different from normal tanks, as I painted them I realised that there were some details that weren't exactly "realistic" and I wasn't sure how to paint them. The turret armour and cannon especially; I felt that they should serve as the focal point of the miniature. I tried painting the cannon in the same tan, but it was a bit too subtle. Painting it in steel just led to too much steel colour. In the end I settled on painting the cannon in brass; it has a bit of a sci-fi look to it after all, so I though painting it in a less "realistic military" colour was excusable, and overall I decided it was just the best looking option.

I'm not sure why I tried to paint the headlamps in a bright blue, but after doing so on a one model I realised that the barrel would also need a glowing blue energy effect or else the headlamps would be the focal points of the model. I wasn't able to make the effect look good however (plus it took things too far away from the semi-realistic look I had settled on), so I abandoned that idea and painted the rest of the headlamps yellow.

For these tiny models that I was trying to knock out in a hurry I decided I couldn't be bothered with highlighting. So pretty much everything was just basecoated and washed. I think it worked well enough; I really want to get enough models painted up to play Monsterpocalypse fully painted from the start, and I don't care very much about the units to be honest, so... good enough.

While varnishing I ran into another case of Sugar Coated Frosting Of Doom! I had started with the "blue energy effect" tank as a test; I was unable to fully remove the frosting with olive oil so I gave up and stripped the paint from the model, painting it over to match it's brothers. I'm almost glad to be honest as I much prefer it this way.

After some research and trial and error, I eventually settled on applying Vallejo 26.517 Gloss Acrylic Varnish and Vallejo 26.518 Matt Acrylic Varnish straight from an airbrush. Now that was a whole story involving much time, effort, frustration, and money, but I don't want to go into it right now as the story is not quite over yet.


It took me FAR longer than I had hoped, but at last I have five pretty good looking models. Unfortunately in Monsterpocalypse the minimum recommended game size is fifteen units and a monster. Sigh. This is going to take a while.

Repair Truck:
The truck was first basecoated with Vallejo 72.705 GameAir Moon Yellow, Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey (I think, might have been Black Grey), and The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal. Then the yellow parts were washed with The Army Painter Quickshade Light Tone Wash, and the black and steel areas were washed with The Army Painter Quickshade Dark Tone wash (basically a black wash). The headlights were then painted with Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow, then a touch of P3 Morrow White was added.

GTanks:
The tanks were basecoated with Vallejo 72.763 Game Air Desert Yellow and The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal. Then Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold was painted onto the Desert Yellow for the brass areas. The whole thing was then washed with The Army Painter Quickshade Soft Tone Wash. After this the headlamps were painted Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow with a dot of P3 Morrow White. The rocket heads were then basecoated in Vallejo 72.106 Game Color Scarlett Blood (their typo, not mine), and a dot of Citadel Wild Rider Red was added to the tips to help them really stand out.