'Sister of Silence' of the Macragge 3rd Airborne

Sorry for not posting in a while, much has been going on in my life which has dragged me away from the hobby. Not least breaking my ankle wakeboarding, because you know; I am just that sensible!
I have  made the most of it though and used my pot to display my allegiance to Ultramar!

They offered me a blue cast.....like I was going to pass up the opportunity!

Anyway, back to the point of this post!! My brilliant friends Matt and Emma bought me a Baneblade for my birthday, so of course this got my hobby juices flowing and re-ignited my desire to start my Ultramar Defence Auxilia forces.

I was torn between whether to make it part of my  Macragge 3rd Airborne forces or my Quintarn Defence Forces. My mind was immediately made up when I laid eyes on the commander model that comes in the Baneblade box. He was EXACTLY what I was looking for to represent Air Marshall Victor Kassarin commander of the Macragge 3rd Airborne.
So work began on the superheavy and the Macragge 3rd Airborne were born.

First up, I painted the Air Marshall to make sure the colour scheme looked as good on model as it did in my head.

I am happy with it, I think it works nice and should transfer to standard guardsmen and tanks nicely. I will be using Cadian models for the infantry and the veterans will be mounted in Vendettas and have hostile environ masks. 
I haven't done the base yet as I am not 100% sure what to do the bases like. Either an airfield/bunker concrete floor or grasses. What do you guys think?

With that sorted and the paint scheme set I got to work on the Sister of Silence!

Building the model was a pleasure, although I had initially intended to magnetise the sponsons and make it possible to be a Baneblade or a Hellhammer that went to pot after fighting with the fittings for well over two hours and I gave it up as a bad job and stuck with it just being a Baneblade.

The Air Marshall added for a bit of size comparison.

Really love the detail of the model.

This was the model built, next up I undercoated it black then got my spray gun out and applied a coat of Mechanicus Standard Grey. The base coat went on in one spray as promised on the 'tin' and gave me the base colour I was looking for to start my work.

First off I painted the tracks and the underside. I always like to get the tracks out of the way first on tanks as they are the messiest bit for me and I can touch up the body around them and not ruin anything if I do them first. The tracks are just Leadbelcher with a Agrax Earthshade wash, nothing special but effective none the less. The underside was done by applying a Nuln Oil wash followed by a heavy dry brush of Mechanicus Standard Grey. I am going to add a light dry brush of Administratum Grey when I have done the rest of the tanks body work.

 I then moved on to putting some Leadbelcher and Nuln wash to the turrets (not the big one you will note, I will do that last). The are a lot lighter in person, the picture is just a smidge dark. Will give them a dry brush and some highlights once they dry fully.

 Have also done pretty much all the Leadbelcher on the main body of the tank.

 Hope to have at least the first wash on the majority of the hull done by tomorrow and can push on with dry brushing, highlights and the detail work then. 

Keep an eye out for further updates and progress in the coming days. 

Thanks for reading and I hope you like the work so far.