Warhammer 40,000 – Tank Wrecks Pt 1

In addition to the other items I've built for my terrain collection, I wanted to add some tank wrecks. In 40k 2nd edition, they actually served multiple purposes, as vehicles (and some other larger models like walkers/dreadnoughts) were not simply removed from the table, but were recommended to stay on the table as wrecks, to provide cover or an obstacle for the remaining units.

I have an "eBay rescue," if you will or rather, a former colleague of mine stopped playing Warhammer and sold off his remaining collection to me — that I wanted to turn into a terrain piece. As it was someone’s first kit of this size, some pieces were not properly cleaned beforehand or had issues with the glue. Therefore, it was a perfect fit for terrain, as it would be a bit too much work to put this to use in the retro army. Not impossible, but simply a good donor vehicle for my purposes.

But first, let us take a look at this Leman Russ kit.

For the Leman Russ Battle Tank, a few "marks" were released over time. The initial/original plastic kit was released in 1994, which got an upgrade in 2003 (for the release of the updated 3rd edition codex) with a newer Imperial Tank Accessories Sprue, and a bigger update in 2009.

What we have here is the 2003 model, which is the same as the 1994 one but with different tank accessories (the classic sprue of 1994, the "newer" sprue of 2003). All the bits marked in red come from the 2003 sprue and are, as such, not fitting for the 40k 2nd edition time frame of 1993 to 1998 and shall be removed.

Until I finish the reviews and build reports on the Leman Russ, you can look up the assembly instructions that I uploaded on the blog for orientation if you intend to do something similar.

As I wanted to repurpose this tank as a wreck, I didn't need to be gentle, and with a fresh blade of my hobby knife, I went around the model and removed the track guards, the newer cupola, and other bits and pieces that were not era-accurate.

With further battle damage most likely to be added, I removed some more parts that could be blown off or be damaged to underline the destroyed status of this tank.

While I had no final idea of how the tank would look, I gathered some spare parts from my bit box as well as the era-accurate accessory sprue to replace needed bits, like the commander's hatch.

If I were going for blown off tracks or maybe open sections of the tank, I would need to model interior/inner parts of the tank, which simply are not there. For that, I gathered some spare parts from World War II tanks as well, just in case.

The next step would be cleaning up and restoring the tank model to a certain degree, just to add battle damage in the next step. I have to take this to the drawing board and gather some more inspiration to get the right idea.