Overall painting plan and method
Preparation and detailing
Undercoat:
Basecoat:
Top coat:
Mapping:
Camo Pattern:
Decals
Chipping:
Matt Varnish
Filters: Burnt Umber; Black
Spot Filters:
General Rusting
Fuel and oil staining
Detailing

Preparation and detailing
This model was washed in warm water with simple green used as the degreaser. It was soaked in the mix for a few hours before the parts were carefully scrubbed with a tooth brush. The parts were then left out to dry overnight on a tea-towel.

I then cleaned off the mould seams where possible. Forgeworld has come a long way since the first models I bought and mould lines are few and small, little to no reconstruction work is required on the detail of this model. The worst mould lines are on the trench crossing rails at the back, where the mould has not line up perfectly. However it's not so bad that filing can't reduce it to manageable proportions.
Nothing that is on a sprue is clipped off. Parts are left on sprues for ease of handling during spraying, and to keep parts together and not lost in my carpet!

I am not doing any ultra detailing on this models as it is already pretty stunning out of the box, besides the Real World^tm, has really done a number on my paining time over the last half year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Undercoat: Halfords Grey Primer
With all of the bits clean and prepped I spray the parts with Halfords Grey primer. This is a car body repair primer and has no trouble sticking to the normally hydrophobic resin used by GW. It forms an intermediate layer between the hydrophobic substrate (the model) and the wetter GW chaos black spray.

Basecoat:
Undercoat as usual with Citadael Spray Chaos Black, working in even strokes 8in from the surface to get a light even coating.

Top Coat:
All of the spray work is done in Vallejo: Model Air colours.  It is Basically done in Four stages:
 - Top Coat
 - Mapping
 - Camouflage
 - Unit Campaign markings
 - Tracks:

Firstly the Tracks (Still black) are masked off with  Tamiya Masking tape and the body of the model is sprayed with the top coat of VMS:

Then the Mapping with Vallejo Model colours, Various shades of the topcoat were created using VMA: mixed and thinned with VGC: Pale Flesh; VGC: Snakebite leather VCG:Burnt Umber.  These various mixes were painted onto the vehicle in large Continents.  The Top coat of VGC was then sprayed over the model to blend in and tone down some of the variations.

Then the Camouflage pattern was sprayed on free hand with VMA: Again in large continents.

The Masking was then moved off the tracks to the body itself around the tracks and the tracks given a coat of VMA: Burnt umber.

What is an Earthshaker?

Well, this is both an easy one and a hard one at the same time. An Earthshaker is the name of the design of the gun itself. At the same time an Earthshaker can also be a generic description of a type of gun in the Imperial Guard covering a myriad of locally produced types and models. Calling a gun an Earthshaker is a bit like saying its a Howitzer. There are many different designs of Howitzer. Big Bertha was a Howizer; Just as the modern M777 in the US Army is a howitzer, but no-one is likely to confuse the two.

Games Workshop website is quite silent on the background of the Earthshaker artillery gun. It just says its mounted on the Basilisk Chasis as a Self Propelled Gun and used to soften up positions prior to assaults.
I will be using the static guns favoured by the Death Korps and not the SPGs from Game workshop.
Imperial Armour has quite a bit more to say:
There are many more of this type of gun carriage in use in the Imperial Guard than the Mobile mounting.  They have a range of up to x and the range can be controlled by the number of charges loaded behind the shell.  The Guns can be overloaded with higher charges.  When this is done the barrel wears out faster, and If it is done too often the Gun becomes inaccurate and can explode.  Crews who are found to misuse the guns in this manner without express orders can be shot as punishment for damaging valuable war material.
Earth shakers have a variety of different load-outs including HE; Incendiary; smoke and others.

Why an Earthshaker battery?

It's the Death Korps of Krieg! Do I need any reason? The Death Korps of Krieg specialisation is siege warfare on a grand scale. Think world war one, where networks of trenches and barbed wire, spread 10 miles wide and 500 miles long.

When the 23rd founding of the 291st Death Korps regiment left their home world, the did so founded as a Panzer-Grenadier regiment. But in the GrimDark, even the specialist Grenadiers need Artillery support, and given the preponderance of siege regiments coming out of Kreig , big guns are always in plentiful supply. So when the 291st shipped out, it did so, with several companies of dedicated artillery, and a full regimental artillery train.

When is this Battery of Earthshakers?

Once More the 291st has ventured forth to the Maelstrom Zone.  XII Company along with elements of the 501st Elysian Drop Troops became embroiled in the Astartes Civil War which became known as the Badab War.  This Last weekend I attended a campaign weekend run by the Tempus Fugitives hosted at Maelstrom Games.  The focus of the campaign was the End-game of the Badab War, an Imperial civil war, which embroiled several sectors of imperial space at the end of M41.  Effectively it became a Space Marine civil war with many chapters pulled into the conflict taking one side or the other for reasons of their own.

I was again in attendance with the Bromley GCN.  Having had no time to paint in and around arranging builders and my own job,  I pretty much had to take the same army as last time.  When I got there, and unpacked for the first game I realised I had forgotten 10 Krieg infantry and a Vendetta. This disaster meant a quick substitution for models I did have in my case.  Out came a tooled up Vulture to cover the missing Vendetta.  I had to loose the Lord Commissar to make it fit, and then add every option the Vulture had to make the points work. even then I was a little short.  I couldn't fix the infantry thing and had to operate without a Squad of infantry in more than one game.

Overall Result for me was 3 Loss and 2 Wins.  Every Game was against a Space Marine army, which i suppose was to be expected in a campaign focused on a Space Marine Civil War, and a bit of a novelty for me as I usually play xenos.  They did make for a tough opposition.

Two of My losses were Capture and Control, inherently difficult for my army to achieve and one of my losses was an Annihilation game that ran to time.  I had 50 Terminators with storm shields to eliminate in 5 turns! where half of them are  deep striking in my face in the first turn.  The number of terminators on the board meant even wildly scattering plasma cannon fire hit something.  I seriously culled the Deathwing that day, but with over half of them using storm shields and thunder hammers it was very difficult to wipe out a whole squads.

Flush Vat 3041, we need five more Kriegsmen

Highlight of the weekend was the space wolves game, My opponent, Stephen, deployed his his Wolf Riders in view of the Executioner Spam.  Fearing them a lot, I glassed the area with Plasma fire.  I caused enough damage to force a Morale check, which they failed, then ran off the board!  It was a fun game for both sides and Stephens Space Wolves came out with a win despite having lost more than three quarters of his army.  One more turn and I would have annihilated what was left, but we ran out of time and he was on an objective.




Once a gain a brilliant weekend put on by the Fugitives.

I traveled up to the Tempus Fugitives campaign 'Into the Maelstrom' at Maelstrom Games this weekend. This is the opening phase of the much larger Badab War.  In these early phases the Astral Claws lead by Lufgt Huron are still loyal to the Imperium .
I attended with the Bromley GCN (aka Bromley Redcaps) with a mixed army of 1500pts 291st Death Korps Armoured Company and 1000pts Spearhead of 501st Elysian Drop veterans.  We played a cycle of 5 games in which I achieved: one loss; one draw; and three wins.  For me, that is a legendary score!  To top of this run, The Redcaps strike force won the campaign for the Imperium, and I got nominated for the 'Best painted army' award.  I didn't win it, in the end the vote went to  heavily converted Tyranid army.

Overall I had a ball, the weekend was well run and kept to time.  The whole thing has re-energised my painting/modelling mojo, and with the majority of the phase one house renovations nearing completion, I may actually get the chance to finish some of the draft blog posts (and models) in my queue.

Just played a doubles tournament with 'The Good the Bad the Bromley' My second was Death Jester with his Eldar, me with my Death Korps of Krieg.  1000Points Each.  We played three very friendly games:
 - Game 1: Imperial Guard - Imperial Guard
 - Game 2: Space Marines - Space Marines
 - Game 3: Space Marines -  Imperial Guard

We won one drew one and lost one.  To my great surprise we were first equal with three other teams! When the  tie breaker was taken into consideration we were third.  To top it all off, we were both voted best painted armies.

The Hardest game and the game we lost was the Guard - Guard Game.  They had over two hundred infantry models on the board with three blocks of 45 infantry each. My army was almost entirely anti-tank with 3 Vendettas and Veteran Grenadiers with Melta Spam.