Crassus Heavy Transports

Crassus Heavy Transports of the 9th Necromundan F (yellow) Company. Transports such as the Crassus are used by the regiment when a combination of heavy armour and speed is required to get the infantry into engagements. 
They are seen as a mixed blessing by the Necromundans, who appreciate their thick armoured protection, but know that when the Crassus are deployed it is to engage a powerful enemy force.

I am lucky enough to have four of these great, fan-made Crassus models to add to the transport pool of my Epic Imperial Guard army.

I have decided to paint them all up using the company and platoon markings of the units that they will be carrying, so will have the same markings as the chimera transports (where relevant). So these are all yellow company (as denoted by the yellow side stripes, with the central stripe being the platoon colour. In this case they are yellow (command) platoon, red (tactical) platoon, white (conscript) platoon, and black (abhuman) platoon.

I painted up a little command symbol on the side of the command crassus, to further differentiate it from it's fellows, and show that the company commander (and usually army supreme commander) will be in there.

I have kept battle damage to a minimum on these models, but have tried to achieve a weathered look by use of drybrushing with layer highlights, and plenty of ink washes. Sadly most of this subtlety has been lost in these photos thanks to my questionable photography skills!

I am not sure how often I will use all four of these in games, but I am hoping to a fair bit as I like the idea of the heavy transporters, and believe that large tanks such as these are much more suited to epic scale where you can run plenty of them, and also have a bit of manoeuvre room.

The big heavy ogryns in the back of this crassus have clearly weighed this one down!

In games they are surprisingly fast for a tank their size, and tend to rush forward to engage a unit while supported by other formations. They can be a little tricky to use well though, as they are two unsaved hits away from a lot of dead infantry! I try to race them forward near the end of turn 1, and hide them behind line of sight blocking terrain before engaging early in turn two before they can get shot at too much. Mixing other vehicles into the formation doesn't help them out too much, as they are war engines, so can be targeted specifically. So no hiding behind three Leman Russ tanks!

So that's it for now. I'm looking forward to using actual models in my games, rather than just the bases as proxies that I have been doing up until now!