I can’t remember when I built, primed and camouflaged this Malcador Defender but it was a long time ago. Maybe three or four years ago. So it’s about time I painted it.

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Malcador Defender

It’s painted in my Cadian Camo scheme and will be run as a Cadian Malcador Defender.

This model was purchased with a voucher after my Forgeworld Vulture was a nightmare to put together. Games Workshop kindly sent me a new Vulture once the mould was remastered and a voucher for the cost of the Vulture. Sweet!

I got the Malcador Defender purely for the rule of cool. It’s a beefy sized model and looks awesome. It’s just so silly too – 7 Heavy Bolters is how I’ll run mine with the Demolisher Cannon.

In 7th Edition such a combination of weaponry was terrible. All your weapons had to target the same unit in 7th. So you’d be shooting your Heavy Bolters at the same unit as the hard-hitting Demolisher Cannon.

But in 8th Edition that’s all changed. I can now target infantry with my Heavy Bolters and heavy infantry or vehicles with the Demolisher Cannon. Perfect.

Work in Progress Gallery

Commander

Malcador Defender Tactics

What tactics are there!? It’s just a big tank that has a lot of shots and a big cannon.

It also fires Overwatch on a 5+ which is nice. And if we couple that with Defensive Gunners for 1CP it can Overwatch on a 4+. This is pretty awesome and means it can Overwatch as well as it can shoot normally.

So this leads me to only one conclusion;

Drive it up the middle

This is an 18 Wound Leman Russ that will attract fire. It’s not going to be dealing masses of damage especially if it’s moving – the Heavy Bolters will be hitting on 5+.

But I think driving it towards the table centre with some Catachans for support, plus a Psyker for Nightshroud would be fun.

This makes me want to get my Bullgryns painted. All nine. Nine Bullgryns leading the charge followed by a Malcador Defender would be a rare sight. A glorious sight.

If it’s driven up the middle – and has insane Overwatch then the Malcador Defender won’t be charged. It’ll, therefore, attract all the anti-armour firepower the enemy has to offer. And that will result in a dead or nearly dead Malcador Defender. But it will also result in every other armoured vehicle being perfectly fine – having had the Malcador Defender take the worst of the punishment.

We shall see soon…

Tracks

I tried something different with the tracks on the Malcador Defender, I am happy with the subtle results and will be applying the same effects to my other vehicles.

I used a Vallejo Red Ochre Pigment first and then used the yellow – Vallejo Natural Sienna – over the top of the red. It gives a nice subtle worn/rust effect. Images below…

Malcador Defender Gallery