40k (WIP); extra armour

Extra Armour

With the Dark Eldar Codex out with their numerous fliers the Old Breed are getting some much needed Anti Air support in the form of a third Hydra.  And since someone asked how I made the extra armour for one of the Breed's manticore I thought I might as well put some extra armour on the hydra and do a tutorial on how it was done.

Materials

0.5 mm thick plastic card (real thin, almost like paper)

1 mm thick patterned plastic (I used 4mm tile card)

I beam plastic strips (optional)

Sharp Knife

Steel Ruler

Pencil/ graph paper

Imperial eagle bits from the IG vehicle sprue.

Method;

Before doing anything I did a bit of research on different types of extra armour, browsed the internet looking at historical and gaming sites where vehicles had extra armour looking for a interesting pattern for the armour. In the end I went for WW2 schutzen based on the FOW German panzers. I used the pattern because I had already done something similar with some of my FOW tanks and because it did not have a right or left side so when I do inevitable mix up the left and right sides it won't matter too much.

Using the ruler I measured the side of the hydra. The measurement where transferred to the graph paper. The pattern was then drawn on the paper. Once satisfied, the pattern was cut out of the paper to form a template. For a reality check the template was placed on the hydra side to ensure the fit looked good.

The template was then transferred on to the thin 0.5mm plastic card and drawn twice. The two new templates were then cut out.

The paper template was then transferred to the back of the textured card and drawn twice. The new templates were then cut out.

To make the armour a bit more interesting a section in the centre of the textured cards was cut out to fit in the imperial eagle.

Plastic templates

The textured template was glue on to the thin card template and the imperial eagle was glued into the gap in the textured template. The edges of the templates was trimmed to make them a better fit.

   

All the parts gluded together

 

To attach the armour to the rivets from the hydra's side skirt were shaved off and the thin card side was glued to the levelled side skirts. Alternatively the side skirts could have been removed all together and I beam strips could have been used as spacers.

finished extra armour