Prometheus Rising Studios   Ben Mininberg's models, toy customs, and design work.

My interest in Warhammer 40k has been greatly revitalized this year with the release of the 8th edition of the game, which greatly streamlined the rules. With the much lower barrier to entry and release of an all new Death Guard line of Chaos Space Marine models, 40k has been monopolizing my hobby time for months now. The Death Guard are Heretic Adeptus Astartes that have pledged themselves to the Chaos god Nurgle, god of death and decay. They are 1oo% my jam, with loads of opportunities for gross gribbly bits and, most importantly, filthy, dirty, rusty armor. I wanted to add some armored support to my fledgling army before the full Codex came out, which meant Chaos Predators. I am basing my army on the 2nd Plague Company of the Death Guard, hosts of the Ferric Blight.  I am modeling them as a well-equipped Vectorum, with lots of relic armor and equipment that has decayed over the millenia, but not mutated as much as other Death Guard armies. I wanted to use old style Predator tanks that have survived since the Heresy, but I was not married to the Deimos Predator kit from Forge World’s design, or to the idea of paying for those. Instead, I decided to make my own as a bit of a challenge, to see if I could come up with nice gaming-quality models for 3D printing that would not look out of place on the table alongside official models. I had previously printed some Rhinos from files I downloaded on Thingiverse, which I used as the starting point for my own Rhino-based vehicles.  I mostly was trying to avoid having to model the tank treads, so the existing files were a great starting point. From there, I decided to blend the details of the Forge World Deimos kit for the turret and front armor with the original Predator Tank kit from Games Workshop for the armored side sponsons. For a clunky, millenia-maintained tank, I added some stovepipe exhaust stacks to the sides. In the first image above, the grey sides of the tank are the existing files I borrowed from Thingiverse, and everything in black was drafted by me from scratch. The rest of the pics above show the progress of the tanks, from bare plastic to acetoned and primed, then base colored with an airbrush, and finally detailed and weathered for maximum grunginess. Lots more pics after the cut walking through the painting process.

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