ith all the math out of the way and the way forward clearly laid out in terms of what we needed to build, the time for "flavor" details was upon us. This stage was the most fun, as we got to flex our creative muscles and try out some cool ideas for organizing the Tank Company in a visual fashion and theme.

Marc pretty much put forth the request at the onset of the project that the tanks should have squadron numbers based upon variations of hundreds. Each tank would have a unique number starting with a particular hundred. In this case, 400. Each squadron would have an ascending tens number to denote which tank belongs to which squad. Within each of these squads, any tank number ending with 1 would be a command tank. So, tank 401 would be the Company command and tanks 411, 421, and 431 would be squadron commands. The remaining tanks 412, 413, 422, 423, 432, and 433 would fill out the Company. Sounds confusing, I know, but it makes more sense when you look at the company on the tabletop. Instead of painting the numbers by hand, we agreed that decals would probably be the way to go.

Creating the army badge.

With the number thing under control, it was time to think of any army badge for the company. Every piece of equipment and, in theory, every trooper's uniform should display an army badge. This insignia assists in the administration and movement of the vast amount of military hardware and personnel deployed throughout a combat zone. Nothing really leapt out at us from the transfer sheet, so our attention wandered to the vehicle accessory sprues. There's a nice winged skull on there that sparked an idea. If the wings were carefully cut off, both the skull and wings could be used on the tank. The skull would serve as the army badge and the wings would serve as a type of symbol specific to this particular (as of yet unnamed) Imperial Guard Regiment.

Speaking of names, every tank needs a name! So we set out to choose some sort of naming theme. Heroes of the Imperium? Menacing titles? Animals? In the end we went with Latin-sounding names like Neco Ferratum, Fustuarium, Maleficus Malleus, Ultrix Amplus, and such. There are a lot of English-to-Latin translators and dictionaries online. Plug in a few words and see what you come up with. I'm pretty sure our Latin is all kinds of wrong, but the names certainly sound neat!

Finally, after all the discussions of names and numbers, we arrived at the crucial question: what color are we going to paint these things? Go-Go pushed for an urban camo scheme of dark grays and black or a deep blue. Marc was leaning towards a jagged camo scheme, but he wasn't too certain of which colors to use. I was thinking of something a bit more simple and traditional in the vein of a solid color and some bands of color on the tank somewhere.

We spent a few days going over these options and how to achieve them. Some ideas would involve masking areas of the tank and using two colors of spray primer, while others required blue tac to hide parts of the vehicle to achieve blobby camo patterns. Time was an issue however, so certain ideas had to be discarded in favor of speed. In the end, the cover of the Apocalypse expansion book answered the question. There's a light green Baneblade driving through a pack of Orks. The tank features the Imperial aquilla across its front and red blocks of color. The colors look good and appear to be pretty basic in terms of painting difficulty.

Deciding where to place the colors wasn't too tough once the colors themselves were decided upon. Using the instruction sheet for the Leman Russ, I scribbled some ideas about where to place squad markings, turret numbers, and air identification bands right onto the sheet. It's like a tank coloring book! Give it a try with your own tank color schemes; it really helps you get a feel for how things will end up looking in the end. With the paint scheme solid, it was time to work on making the Tank Company happen. But one more detail remained...

The final bit of planning involved when we were actually going to get together to work on the Tank Company. Monday nights are a local gaming night at the GW Bunker, so we decided to meet up there as well as work on assembling the tanks during lunches and a few nights after work during the week. We figured this would be sufficient time to complete the project within the 2-week time frame.