Hydra

Well, I finally got around to getting some paint on one of my 9 Hydras and I still need to put some attention to the hull-mounted heavy flamer.  The color scheme is my simple ash waste camoflage paint job. Prime the parts black, drybrush the whole model with Codex Grey, followed by drybrushing in irregular lines with Fortress Grey.

There are still a few details to be painted on the model but when I was originally working on my Armoured Company (back when you could take 6 Russ as a single troops choice) I needed to get the army painted for a GW staff Eye of Terror game.  I assembled and painted the entire army in 3 days and didn't sleep for about 75 hrs.  The details just didn't matter but I had 3 colors!!  The organizers of the game said that you could take one Force Organization chart, points were irrelevant.  Thus my Armoured Company was born as it was the most powerful force that I could think of.  It was so large that I could only deploy 2/3 of it in a 6' long by 12" wide deployment zone.

The army consisted of 3 Vanquishers for the HQ, 3 Aces in Vanquishers for the Elites, 24 Leman Russes/Exterminators for the Troops, 9 Hellhounds for the Fast Attack, 6 Basilisks and 3 Demolishers for the Heavy Support.  It was shock and awe at its finest.  One day, I should like to get them out and take a picture of it to share.

Details on my previous post on the Hydra can be found here   http://fortbuyaki.blogspot.com/2009/12/imperial-guard-alien-invader-devastator.html

Imperial Guard Alien Invader Devastator

Hydra Flak Pattern Buyakis

Knowing what we all know about GW and how they move slower than the fastest servants in the Imperial Bureaucracy and the release schedule is often times years late for choices in Codices, I created my own Hydra Flak tank model so I could run 9 of these in the 2009 'Ardboyz tournament.  They did pretty well and scared the jeepers out of most opponents.

I already owned 9 Hellhounds and didn't feel the need to buy more models to convert over so my solution was simple.  I needed to create a baseplate that fits over the Hellhound turret ring and the rear hatch including the fuel tank feeds.  After making that, I made the turret, and created the autoguns and drum feeds.   With a little bit of Micro-mark technologies, I made enough to outfit 9 Hellhounds and away we went.

The real beauty of this bad-boy is that I can remove the peices and go back to using a Hellhound when I wish.