Imperial Guard - Manticore painted

Ah artillery, one of my favorite things about the Imperial Guard. One of the most potent is the Manticore - once relegated to the Epic line, it (and the Deathstrike) got a plastic kit a little while back. I'd picked one up and half painted it before haring off to work on something shiny and it's sat forlorn on a shelf since then.

 

But no longer! Finally took the time to finish it off - after dusting it off, of course! The background fluff for the Mordian 7th suggests their colors are predominantly black with red trim (echoing their company motto "In the dark, blood will flow"), so I've gone that route on their vehicles as well. Unlike many Mordian regiments, the 7th was drawn exclusively from the Night Rippers hive gang and many gang emblems worked their way into the company heraldry. Most common of which is the jagged knife as shown here, and sometimes takes the form of a simple geometric black-over-red shark tooth pattern as well.

 

The Manticore is certainly fearsome on paper, though I'll admit it's been somewhat less than amazing on the tabletop for me thus far. Granted I've only fielded it a handful of times, so more experience with it is needed. Now that it's painted it'll be far more likely to be added to an army list, as well!

Heavy Artillery - Manticore and Charybdis, Part 1

With the release of the new Deathstrike/Manticore kit, I knew I had to have one for the Mordian 7th. The first step was to determine what I wanted to build. The kit is unfortunately designed in such a way that you can only assemble it as the Deathstrike OR the Manticore, though I give them credit for designing a kit that gives us the option, it's rather ingeniously designed! I'd built a Deathstike carrier a while back and as potentially devastating as it may be, I found it to be a bit too random for anything but the largest of battles. So, Manticore it is!

The new kit was a breeze to assemble, and with careful gluing the missile rack can be raised and lowered, which I thought was a nice touch. I left the Storm Eagle rockets separate to facilitate painting, and am somewhat regretting not leaving the launch ramps separate as well, but I'll muddle though.

While I was at it I'd picked up a Whirlwind model for the launcher, as I regretted selling my previous Charybdis Assault Launcher (which I use as a proxy Griffon) and have been itching to build another one. I decided I wanted something a bit more animated with this one however, and decided to use a pair of missiles scrounged from the new Sentinel kit to represent it in the process of firing. I tried to sculpt a bit of flame from greenstuff, and will be using some orange or red clump foilage to represent some smoke billowing from the rear of the weapon system. I still need to build a hull for it, but while I was fiddling around with it I was pleased to note that the collar ring on the base fits the various Planetstrike weapon platforms. I may have to build a few more of these to build an ersatz Hyperios Air Defense system!