The Cult Goes Ballistic - the Deathstrike Missile Launcher

The industrious cultists down at the motor pool have managed to stea... errrr, requisition a brand new unit for my Astra Militarum Brood Brothers detachment - the Deathstrike Missile Launcher. This particular unit sort of appears to have taken eighth edition off, as it only fires once per game and "blast" type weapons were a bit underwhelming in that edition. However, with the new ninth edition blast rules, Games Workshop promises that "your favourite ICBM is getting EVEN DEADLIER." I'd already had one going just because I loved the look of the vehicle and figured it would go well with my Master of Ordnance.

One of the reasons I really liked the Deathstrike is because it resembles an actual weapon system (the 2K11 Krug tracked surface-to-air missile launcher system - NATO reporting name SA-4 "Ganef" - shown below) - so I took inspiration from that system in my painting and markings. Though the Krug has two large air to air missiles, it's clear the model designers at GW took inspiration from the vehicle. As I've been painting my army in Soviet / Russian colors anyway, it wasn't a big stretch to go all the way here and put the gray missile on the Soviet green tracked carrier. One other feature of the missiles themselves is the numerous warning and maintenance texts on several panels. I brought that feature through as well using decals from The Mighty Brush, though the exact set I used doesn't seem to be currently available. 

As always, there is a liberal dose of Genestealer Cult insignia, both neat (on the missile) and graffiti (on the carrier itself) from Scumb4g Kustoms. If you're doing GSC and haven't picked up his decals, then you're doing yourself a major disservice. The number "3" is also from The Mighty Brush, but the scroll text ("helix" or "spiral" in Russian) is a decal I printed on my laser system at home.

Painting continues the "black and white" theme, though the missile is more 50 shades of gray than it is my typical 50 shades of Russian green. I used a silver gray color over a pre-modulation coat on the missile itself. The chrome stripe is Alclad (masked). My pre-modulation on the vehicle itself didn't work as well this time, so I decided to go back with a little white and yellow ochre oil dot filtering before moving on to the next steps.

As with the other vehicles in my army, this one received a fair amount of weathering, but as it is not a front-line vehicle, I gave it a bit less chipping and rust. The missile itself is fairly clean with mostly panel line washes and a little shading making up the extent of the weathering (as it is a "consumable part"). For those of you who like heavily weathered vehicles, fear not, I have some new tanks in the works that should fit that particular bill.

I wasn't a big fan of the look of the rear hull, so I decided to add an additional armored plate with rivets to it. I cut the plate out of sheet styrene and then I used a Waldron Punch and Die set to make rivets which I lined up with the plate above. I think it gives the model a more finished and uniform look (translation - I'm an absolute loon with advanced modeler's syndrome).

I decided to go with an open hatch on this one as presumably the operator is getting the vehicle into firing position and will close the hatch before touching off the missile... at least one would hope. I did a head swap for one of the Genestealer Cult heads, but otherwise the inside of the cockpit is stock. Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of it as I spent a bit of time working to paint the details.

So now the Cult is ready to go with some major heavy support just in time for a ninth edition buff. As I mentioned in Friday's blog entry, I don't really chase the meta any more, but if the meta happens to travel along my path for a while, I'm not going to squawk either. This was a pretty fun vehicle to get together and I wouldn't mind getting together the Manticore version of it at some point down the road.