Old Soldiers part 1- The Junkyard of Shame

Oh such shame; I can't bear to look.

I'm planning to have a completed Imperial Guard army by the end of 2013.  It's not the first time I tried; I really haven't succeeded at this since the turn of the millenium.  My sympathies have always been with the infantry so my armies (practically executed or theoretical) suffered from obscene model counts.  As a model painter (not army painter:( ) this caused a conflict of interests that only ever ended in tears.  The little plastic and pewter ones that models shed when you curse them out, jam them in a box and throw them down an oubliette.

I'll address the infantry in the next "Old Soldiers".  My history with AFV's is even more shameful.  I painted a few as one offs.  Some others came into my hands in army boxes and others still ended up being victims of my early experiments with vehicle conversions.  The point is the armour never deployed en masse to a single regiment.  Over the years what I ended up with was a sizable box of full/ partial/unpainted machines in various stages of decrepitude.

My plan is to repair/recondition then deploy the Junkyard of Shame.  As I fix these models I'll post a before and after if possible and if my memory works well enough share some of the horrors each of the vehicles has experienced in it's service life.  If I remember correctly there are fourteen victims in the junkyard so lets roll out the first;

The 9th Tirnov were my Imperial Russian styled guard regiment.  For some reason the tracks were the only part that survived;  When I did repairs I had to mate it with another hull assembly (from either an old basilisk or griffon kit).  This model had been freeloading space for more than twelve years.

• Added a whip antenna, stowage.  Changed up ML for a HB and coaxial stubber
• Based the model.  It's an idea I'd been throwing around with a friend (Dave beat me to it) because it always bothered me that my troops had nice bases while vehicles looked naked
• Played with weathering powder, sponges and graphite for weathering and battle damage
• Added 2nd/ 3rd ed squad markings; Blue coy, Red platoon, 1st squad
• Tried Future floor wax on lenses for gloss effect 

I happy with the end result and I was able to experiment with some techniques I'd never tried before.  Considering where it started I'm escstatic.  Now if I could just finalize the design for my infantry I might actually have an army someday.