Chaos is everywhere. It takes a specially trained unit of Space Marines to battle the forces of Chaos and to prevent the Blood God of Khorne from drinking too much and that unit is the Grey Knights. Before acquiring some Ultramarines, I decided the best way to play with Terminators and Space Marines was to use Daemonhunters and specifically the Grey Knights as allies. Being a dedicated gamer, I did what every other gamer does and let my Grey Knights slip deep to the back of the burner and the army resides mostly in unpainted pewter. However, there was a week when I felt inclined to paint something for the Grey Knights and put together a Land Raider Crusader with a couple Forgeworld bits.
I had picked up the Forgeworld bits when I was in Baltimore for the last Games Workshop GT event at the convention center and we traveled to the Battle Bunker. I loved the doors and couldn't wait to build a Land Raider to use them. There were two different sets to choose from, but for some odd reason I feel that everything needs more skulls and how can you resist having a very large and important book strapped to the front of a tank? For the body, I painted the entire tank in Gunmetal and then washed the completely base colored tank with the Blue GW wash. After this dried, I drybrushed the tank with Gunmetal and then applied a highlight coating of drybrushed Mithril Silver.
The color scheme I chose to use was the red/white/silver Grey Knight scheme used throughout the codex. I mixed this with my desire to use military green and other 'real world' colors in my schemes to provide a little unity between my Grey Knights, Ultramarines and Cadians. For the GK Land Raider Crusader the green is shown on the front launchers and also in the interior of the tank. The inside color scheme and painting is very similar to the work I had done on my Ultramarine Land Raider (Terminus) and the only major differences is the seat coloring as it is themed towards the armies themselves.
Another Forgeworld item I added to this tank was the Grey Knight Tank Commander. The original intention was to paint his helm in a gold color, but it was just too much metallic paint. I decided to go with the blended red helm that I had used on the Ultramarine Land Raider tank commander and it worked fairly well. The top of the Land Raider Crusader has a little more military green with the smoke launchers and the inside of the hatch doors and the black and yellow striping on the Hunter Killer Missile is another element that ties to two tanks together.
The backside of the tank that features the exhaust and the engine section nearly matches up identically to the Ultramarine Land Raider Crusader in color scheme and the exhaust uses the same method I had employed when I painted my Baneblade. Looking at the tanks side-by-side (I'll need to snap some photos) shows that they probably came from the same Forge World and were coloured and modified for the Space Marine armies they were intended for. It's like a rug... it just ties everything together nicely.
