Centurion Vehicles: Whirlwind

I played a battle with a new friend of mine, Rich. I took the enigmatic Necrons against vanilla marines in an Eye of Terror tournament scenario. He had two Whirlwinds. Though they didn’t do much damage, the psychological effect of a huge template guess weapon was impressive. My metal men kept 50 inches away the whole game. I had to get me one of these.

My boys obliged on Fathers Day 2003 with an old style Whirlwind from a local hobby shop. (There's a new Whirlwind model, but you have to buy a new Rhino and some parts from the extortionists at Forgeworld - I was pleased to have this one.) I wanted another Rhino as well so I held off putting it together for a week or two until I got a Razorback that I could paint at the same time.

This is a plastic tank kit with a heavy pewter rocket platform. In the test fittings I discovered the though it would sit all right, it had a definite urge to flip backwards. I addressed this problem a bit buy taking a coke bottle lid, filling it with lead shot and superglue and glueing it inside the front of the tank as a counter balance. I didn’t overdue it and it’s not perfectly balanced, but it helps. It’s good for a tank to have a bit of weight in it anyway -- light models suck!

I felt that I needed Rhinos when I was working on this and lit on a plan to make a quick conversion of the kit so I could take off the rockets, put on a storm bolter and make it double as a rhino. I used a couple of spare bolt guns, and extra marine base some lead shot and plastic and made it happen. The vehicle is not much more versatile - Whirlwinds are a specialized weapon, rhinos are ubiquitous. Also, this little conversion means I don’t have to buy another greedy Games Workshop model.

For painting I started with a white primer and a black base coat (I could have saved a step here with black primer, but I’m not always the brightest light on the tree). I thinned down some Americana DecoArt Dioxazine Purple Acrylic Paint (a deep dark purple) and went to town with my Aztec airbrush. Alas, this will probably be the last time I mention that old airbrush, because it was a pain in the ass to use. The nozzle is screwed up somehow and the paint shot out left and down. After an hour of cleaning, I figure the nozzle is just done so I moved to my Sotar 20/200 airbrush, which did a better job faster. I don’t know why I keep trying to use that Aztec.

I painted the tank trying to keep the black in the recesses. I could hardly see the purple when it was finished, the black was so dark. I then move up to my Centurion Lavender color (Armory purple - the company doesn’t exist anymore) This I darkened just a tad. I carefully highlighted the panels, painting layers of color until I moved to straight lavender.

When I was done, it looked very stark; the contrast between the colors was severe. However, I knew just what to do. I went back to my dark purple and carefully misted the model which blended and united the colors. When I was done, I had a beautiful bubblegum purple model.

After painting black over the metal parts, I painted the metal strips bronze (to match the Centurion scheme). I used Liquitex Iridescent Silver to pick out the bolts and paint the treads. I painted the brightest red I had on the nosecones to make it look menacing and “rocketish.”

The model was gorgeous, but it was a playing piece. Putting my brain in the closet, I coated it with Testor’s Dullcoat sealer to protect it for game play. Naturally, the shine on the metal bits was muted and the model lost something. I may go over the metal parts with some gloss coat later, but for now, I’ll live with it because I like it well enough, the purple really works, I’m lazy and I have a million other models waiting their turns. I did gloss the red rocket nosecones though, just because.

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