I don't recall the exact reasoning behind my purchase of a Terminus Ultra Land Raider, but when this limited edition kit was released back in the inital days of Apocalypse, I bought one. I was fairly new to Warhammer 40,000 and didn't quite understand the Terminus Ultra and certainly wasn't experienced enough or had the foresight to magnetize this uber-powerful Land Raider so that I could use it during a standard game of 40K. I had some Ultramarines from donations and starter sets, but this Land Raider would be a quick addition for Apocalypse games for my Imperial Guard and aid my Baneblade in wiping out tyranny and evil. After buying the kit, it didn't take long to start building this tank. I put together much of the interior and part of the exterior and realized almost immediately that I wanted to paint the interior before assembling the rest of the exterior. Granted, the Terminus Ultra cannot ferry any troops into combat and by not glueing the front clamshell door shut, I was allowing an innacurate representation of the tank to exist. There would be major extra capacitors and other equipment crammed into the ultimate Space Marine tank, but I was very content on painting a nice interior with 'military' colors. After a shot while I painted the interior.
Once the interior was finished with its painting, I happily assembled the rest of the tank. It was part primer and part grey plastic for the longest time as I did not move forward in painting the Ultramarine livery and exterior. A large Apocalypse battle did bring the Land Raider into combat once and it managed to draw some attention while my Baneblade and Hellhammer pounded some Eldar into oblivion. With my Ultramarine army mostly non-existant and not playing nearly as many expected Apocalypse games, the tank just sat around in its half painted stage and no progress was made.
After a year or so passed, I finally decided to paint the exterior of the Terminus Ultra. This was my 'test model' for any forthcoming Ultramarine painting and in typical fashion I started large scale on an army instead of painting a smaller model. Most of the painting was done in two nights. The first night I painted the entire model in Regal Blue to give it a dark base color over the black primer. I then painted the tank in Ultramarine Blue and highlighted it with some drybrushing using Ice Blue. I was fairly pleased with how the tank looked after the body was painted and before any highlighting.
The next step was the treads and rear engine detailing. I wanted to put as much metal and 'realistic' coloring into the model as I could. I ended up using the same technique on the treads that I did with the Baneblade. I started off using some Venom Brown paint on the treads as a basecoat. After this occurred I put a flew layers of Gunmetal drybrushing over the treads and finally washed it with Badab Black. The muffler exhaust work was given the same rust treatment of the Baneblade and instead of using the blue body coloring for the engine cover, I used Tin Bits and Dwarven Bronze for highlighting.
Detailing was the final stop with the Land Raider and I decided to use more Gunmetal and Silver for the weapons with a Badab Black wash giving them a realistic and worn look. I ended up being very pleased with the look of the guns considering there was not a ton of time spent on them. The 'military' green theme carried over to the smoke launchers and I used as much metal and realistic colors as possible on the weaponry. Yellow and black striping made their way to the Hunter Killer Missile and front Lascannon and some greys here and there. In paying homage to the original red coloring used throughout Ultramarines, the windows of the hatches and helmet of the tank commander were given blended red coloring.
