Regimental Reporting: Octoberfest Approaches

Greetings Commanders! First Founding's Octoberfest 40K tournament will soon be upon us and I am in my usual pre-competition quandary as to which force to take! I've taken the Kabal of the Sand Viper (my Dark Eldar) to the last three tournaments as they are a lot of fun to play, but I'm quite tempted to dust off some of my other models and give them a chance for glory on the table top.

I've been struggling to come up with a competitive Space Marine list and I don't think my terminator-heavy Grey Knight force will do well at 1250 points.  However, I have got a new Imperial Guard list in mind.  I've got a decent amount of Guard models painted, but this particular list needs more tanks!

Leman Russ Tank

Regular readers will know I have a lousy memory and that I have blogged a number of painting guides, including one for my Guard Vehicles so I can paint any new units with a consistent scheme. So with notes in hand my hobby time this weekend has been spent painting some new Leman Russ reinforcements for the glorious Cadian 82nd.
I'm working on one of each Russ variant. First up the Demolisher/Punisher/Eecutioner variant:

Front view

Side View

And secondly the standard Russ:

Russ: Left Side

Russ: Right Side

There's a reason for the lack of guns on the tanks at the moment! I'm batch painting the tanks, and adding a set of new sponson, hull and turret guns for my whole Russ collection (hurrah for push fit parts) as part of the process.

A tank heavy list will have a number of weaknesses, not least vulnerability to close combat (tying up non-flying vehicles in assault is almost as effective as killing them since they can't fall back and shoot), and a lack of units to take objectives. I've got some ideas how to mitigate these in the list but they'll need play testing (as well as putting some of my Tank Commander theory into practice).

So just Octoberfest play tests, Kill Team and Frostgrave in the few weeks; it's a hard life being a gamer!  I'll feedback how the play testing goes and share some more pictures of the tanks as the painting progresses.

(And if it all goes horribly wrong or I change my mind (again) the Sand Vipers will have to sneak their way back to the table top for the tournament.)  Thanks for reading as always and see you back in the Officer's Mess soon.