This week both the Cerberus and Sicaran Venator go up for pre-order, so we can all get our grubby little mitts on the Heresy’s largest and fastest tank destroyers. Before we get stuck in, a thank you to Games Workshop for sending us this Cerberus for review.
Building and Painting the Cerberus
If you’ve built a plastic Typhon already it’s very, very similar. If you haven’t, but have built a plastic Spartan Land Raider, then it’s also very similar to that but with a giant triple barrelled laser stuck to the front. This thing is exactly what you think it is: the same sprues that builds the hull of a Typhon or Spartan and then a big-gun sprue that makes the main weapon; and of course everyone’s favourite plastic sponson sprue that’s now in every vehicle (not rhino) pack.
So as a build, it’s pretty nice. It fits together well but took me a bit longer than I’d expected/hoped taking up the entirety of a Saturday afternoon to get together. I did leave the tracks off however for easier painting, which is incredibly easy to do and recommend you do the same! This let me spray the tracks silver before shading over in Ratling Grime and drybrushing over with Leadbelcher.
The cannon itself is fitted so that it slots in what appears to be the same connection as the Typhon siege tank. You build the bulk of it which attaches to the hull of the model, then the gun slots in with the gun shield sliding over the front of it.
Just like when building the rhino, or really any other tank, it’s useful to have rubber bands on standby when gluing the hull together to make sure it sits as flush as possible.
For painting, I don’t have an airbrush (or really the space for one) so I’m left with spray paint and brush work. Pretty simple spray and brush work, too, really. I fully built the model, aside from the tracks as mentioned, and did the following:
- Spray hull Matt White (I use Colourforge but any white spray would be fine)
- Spray hull Army Painter Daemonic Yellow
- Spray tracks Colourforge Steelforge Silver
- Cover over the tracks in Ratling Grime
- Drybrush tracks with Leadbelcher
- Paint the black armour plates in Black Legion contrast (I find it flows on nicer, takes 2 coats usually)
- Paint the windows, guns, pipes etc in Iron Warrior (yes, ironic)
- Paint the bronze bits on the guns with Castellax Bronze
- Apply transfers (I use MIG Decal Set and Decal Fix and can’t recommend them enough then cover over with Stormshield which is GW’s brush-on matt varnish)
- A bit of Talassar Blue contrast paint goes into the windows/lamps
- Contrast Baal Red on targeting-looking lights
- Light drybrush Dawnstone Grey around the edges of the black
- Light drybrish Iron Warriors around edges of the tank
- Stipple parts of the hull in Iron Warriors for battle battle damage
- Carefully apply MIG’s Deep Brown panel liner into recesses and panel lines, also all over the metals; this is oil based so apply last and have eyeshadow applicators to hand to remove excess – these work better than cotton buds since they don’t fray
And that’s it! Those 15 steps really roll off the tongue too. It might look like it’s a lot of steps, but it’s very simple to pull off and there’s definitely plenty of room to do a lot more as well.
I’m very excited to get this on the table, though. I’ve focused my Fists so far on primarily close quarters/close combat fighting and have been lacking in a real anti-tank threat at range; I don’t even have a lascannon squad built!
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