The big 2026 contest series is the gift that keeps on giving for my painting motivation. Artisan’s Contest XLI was the perfect opportunity to work on a war machine.
I couldn’t resist buying the first fantasy GW Chaos Dwarfs in ages when the Helsmiths of Hashut army box dropped. Avid listeners of Brazen Broadcast will recall that I (and many others, of course) immediately saw potential for an Iron Daemon conversion in the Tormentor Bombard kit. That prow kinda already looks like a train.
A basic idea quickly formed. I used the excellent boiler from the Kharadron Ironclad and some tanky bit I had from an old Kickstarter which luckily fit right in the middle to build the core of the engine. One of the smoke stacks from the Dominator was a good addition. I’ve put one part of the mortar on either side and planned to fill the gap with plasticard. Luckily their size is the perfect fit for the muzzle parts from the Dominator guns, so I had two of those. So far so good for the first step.
The prow of the Bombard comes in two pieces, and since I didn’t really want to hide the nice kharadron engine behind it anyway, I thought it should be possible to have them on the side, kind of like you see these things on old steam engines.
I stacked a bunch of spare rhino and land raider doors from my 40k bitzbox for a quick mock-up:
Nice. With basic kit bashing done, I already felt artisaning. But for a true entry in this esteemed contest, I needed to get my hands real dirty. Inspired by Xander’s work, I dipped my toes into blue stuff casting. My tank needed more wheels anyway!
I decided to multiply one set of wheels from the Bombard and one set from the Hellcannon, I thankfully had lying around un-assembled (it’s a different problem, stop bothering me). This was my first attempt at doing this, and tbh I’m reasonably happy with it! I used brown stuff which I absolutely love. The quality of the cast is … passable. At least for my use.
After I had left this project sitting for a few month to gestate, I’ve picked up the pieces and build a basic frame for the tank. Leftover sprues were cut to shape, two of those tank doors made a great base with their gridded texture. Gaps had to be filled with milliput and sanded or downright “sculpted” (that’s the third major Artisan’s Contest technique done). More bits from the Bombard found their place in the final model.
In the meantime I started a little side-hobby and got myself a 3D printer. So instead of filling the halves of the bombard cannon with plasticard, suddenly there was a better way. The model was finally assembled with some pretty sloppy milliput work, if I’m honest. Before painting I was able to correct some of the biggest problem areas but there are no new pictures
All in all this was looking pretty good! I’ve assembled the crew largely as is, but I switched the torch thing in the Chaos Dwarf’s hand for a wrench (a torch made little sense for him. Originally I had plans to also incorporate the furnace from the Bombard kit but just couldn’t get it done.) The Hobgoblin has a rod in his hand which normally connects to one of the stabilisers from the Bombard. I snipped it off and put some bit on it I had snipped of a part from the Ironclad. I like that it looks like a tool of unknown purpose. Next was priming everything in the previously used pink/cream. This was also when I had to decide on the skin tone of the Hobgoblins in my army. I kinda like this more yellowy tone we see a lot with Hobgrots and I went for something along those lines. I already have a green skin army and wanted to differentiate my Hobgoblins from my Goblins.
At this point I started having doubts about the whole project. I felt I had put myself in a corner with my chosen paint scheme. There was so much of the same brass colour on the model! And the rest would be yellow. It looked like a 40k space marine tank. I even looked at Imperial Fists tanks to see how they circumvent this, but actually they largely don’t. We all know there’s an ugly stage to any paint job and sometimes you just have to trust the process. So I proceeded as planned.
And there it is, my kitbash-converted Iron Demon! I’m quite happy with it, I was able to transfer what I had in mind to the model pretty well. I made my peace with the two-colour-nature of the model too.
On to the next contest!
I was always one to stay away from ambitious projects or just painting my most valuable models because of the “I’m not there yet, first I have to get better at painting/converting/whatever” thing. And that’s really just nonsense. Still struggling with it though, but at least now I know how foolish that is.
I will come back to it in then future, maybe I can do it then.
