Daemonic Tank Commander - Leman Russ Punisher Conversion

Well this blog started with a painting tutorial, what better way to revive it than with some painting/modelling stuff.  I recently acquired an Imperial Guard army to add to my Word Bearers force, and while I got a great deal on all the stuff I acquired, it was lacking a few key elements.  Namely, Leman Russ tanks.  So I picked up one Leman Russ and threw it together straight out of the box in a Punisher configuration, replacing the Imperial symbols with chaos brass etching, but I wanted to do something special for the tank commander.

Cue this guy:

So yea!  Took a daemon prince torso, ripped open a Chimera hull, added sponsons from a Predator and used the gun from a forgefiend (for some reason I just have a bunch of those guns lying around...).  This monstrosity was born.

I plan on doing something with the lasgun arrays on the Chimera, but I just didn't have time before the tournament.  I'm planning to take them out and replace them with smokestacks or something.

I will freely admit I had a little too much fun ripping apart the turret mount of this Chimera.  But for planning?  The toughest part were the sponsons.  I cut the "bridging" pieces that cross the treads out of different thickness sheets of plasticard, and shaved rivets off of the quad-gun mounting from the Aegis Defense Line kit, gluing them in the rows of 3 you see here.

Some spare CSM Rhino bits and a brass etch on one of the sponson "bridges" and voila!  Leman Russ Tank Commander!

In case you're curious, have a couple WIP shots as well (warning for ugly models):

And in case you are wondering why the sponsons are mounted so far forward, you can see here the Commander sitting next to a proper Leman Russ that is only slightly less chaos.  I actually aligned the ends of the barrels of the Commander's sponsons with those on the proper Leman russ, but Predator sponsons are shorter.  So, to compensate, they're mounted further up the hull.  It worked out for the best, as the CSM Rhino spike racks had almost exactly enough room to fit along the hull behind the sponson.  They actually fit so well that I couldn't have planned it better.  Huzzah for coincidences!