The same night I did Colonel Watts I also finally painted the Techmarine to go with my Thunderfire Cannon:
Target acquired.
The Thunderfire Cannon itself is actually one of the earliest models I ever painted, way way back years ago when they were first introduced. It’s a super basic job with a wash over the metal doing all the work. One nice thing about it though is that the Kingbreakers decals stand out real nicely on the housing. This is absolutely the most poorly manufactured model I’ve ever dealt with though, shockingly so for such a simple one. Everything is warped, none of the handful of pieces go together correctly, and at the time it was near impossible to correct any of that because it was produced in metal (it may be resin now). The turret doesn’t even fit into the track platform correctly, and the interface is just a big circle. Absolutely atrocious. If I was going to field more I’d scratchbuild them or use a Mantic Forge Father Hailstorm. Patrick has one converted to have a Marine sitting on top, all done up in Imperial Fists yellow, and it looks fantastic.
I wasn’t real sold on the Techmarine’s servo harness at first, but painted and assembled it looks good and has a nice big, bulky feel to it. This guy was done super quick, just picking out some details and washing everything. The end result doesn’t really pop or grab the eye, but it doesn’t really have to. Standing way in the backfield and lobbing shells across the board he’s hardly ever the focus of clutch photos or anything like that, but he’s certainly above tabletop standard and ready if his moment comes.
It will though be nice having him fully assembled and painted. For years I’ve been using other models (namely an EM4 Space Ranger) or playing him for years without the harness attached, and it’s super easy to forget that he has a flamer and a plasma cutter built into it, alongside his bolt pistol. A good example of WYSIWYG and the physicality of models actually mattering and making the game flow faster. Doesn’t come up often, but they can really matter. One or two times he’s run forward to pop an Obliterator or a Daemon Prince in my home base with the plasma cutter and it’s way easier to forget that option without the actual model.
In general it’s a bummer that the Thunderfire model is so atrocious, because it’s a great unit. It was solid to begin with when introduced in 5e, but in 6th and 7th edition it’s really solid: The gun (T7 W2 3+) and Techmarine (T4 2+) are robust enough to survive; it’s one of the Space Marines’ few indirect fire and blast weapon options; it has a couple different modes to tackle different enemies; the Techmarine himself is well equipped; him bolstering the cover from a piece of terrain is quite helpful in and of itself; and the whole thing only costs 100 points. The only thing I’d change is to make them a squadron so you could take multiple guns in the same Force Organization slot, which seems like it would be perfectly natural.
