Land Raider Crusader - Part 1 - The Discovery

A linebreaker without peer, the Land Raider Crusader 

can smash through enemy formations, 

disgorging Space Marine assault troops 

into the heart of the enemy position.

- Games Workshop

Hello and welcome back to an exciting week on The Art of Caesura!

I mentioned last week that I am really pushing to get a painted Black Templars force together with 10th edition now upon us. I really want this edition to be the one that I become more involved in my local gaming community, and a painted army is the first step in that direction. 

And I used to have a fully painted Black Templars army - back in 3rd edition! You can read about my introduction to Black Templars, and my reflections on the recent range refresh in this post. I actually still have that army (I must dig it out and show you sometime), but when I started to get back into 40k in 9th edition, I wanted to have an all new Black Templars army with all the shiny new things from the current range. 

However, when they announced that Primaris Space Marines would now be able to ride in Land Raiders, my interest was piqued. My old Land Raider Crusader was the pride and joy of my army 20 years ago and it's still basically the current model (mine had a metal upgrade kit for the hurricane bolter sponsons, assault cannons, multi-melta and frag launchers - in the current kit, those are plastic); but I think the rest of the tank is the exact same model!

So, I decided to do something that I had never done before...repaint one of my old models!

Last year, when I was at my childhood home in Canada, I found my old Crusader in a box in the basement. After several years of service, and many more in storage, it was...not in great shape. I gathered all the bits I could find, bunged them in my suitcase and flew them 7 207km to my home in Ireland. 

When I had the chance to actually sit down and look at everything, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, although many of the metal bits had fallen off, very few pieces were broken and, remarkably, none were actually missing!

So, what happened was: I bought it and played with it for a year or two before the Black Templars upgrade sprue (the original one, mind) was released so I went back and tried to "upgrade" the front hatch unfortunately mangling the mechanism that let both does open simultaneously. As you can see, I never got around to painting those upgraded bits. 

Interestingly (perhaps) the original Black Templars sprue was the very first CAD (computer-aided design) that Games Workshop ever created!! The second one was, I think the Orc Warboss from Warhammer Fantasy. They mentioned that in one of the StormCast podcasts that Wade used to host before he was a Lorekeeper.  

Anyway, as you can see, I somehow lavished WAY more attention on painting the INSIDE of the tank than the parts you could actually see (where I basically sprayed it black, painted the treads Mithril Silver and called it a day). Thank God I painted the inside to some standard, because there was no way I was getting a brush in there for the re-paint (as you'll see in the coming weeks). 

I honestly don't know how a middle portion of the tread fell off. Your guess is as good as mine!

Ouch. Not looking great. It actually kind of hurts to see it like this after the memories I have of it kicking ass on the tabletops of yesteryear! But hey, that was the impetus for this whole process. 

Man, look at that DUST! I didn't even clean it off, I just sprayed over it!

One of the hurricane bolter sponsons was fully intact! What are the chances!? Considering they each weigh about half a kilo and the other one was in a million pieces. 

Now, this last pic is actually of the dozer blade of my old Vindicator that I found at the same time as my Land Raider Crusader, but I had to throw it in. I mean how awesome was I (obviously that's an Eldar guardian painted in the same colour scheme as my regular opponent at the time. What you can't see is that the blade on the far left is broken off and in my head-cannon a genestealer had been impaled and managed to claw it's way off. Hence the 3-clawed scratches. 

I sense an exciting month of Land Raider Crusader posts right here on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: Barbecue Showdown - Season 2 - Netflix.  

Gaming: Diablo IV

Next Week: 

Call in the Techmarines