Warhammer Studio paints super-heavy vehicles for the Battle of Tallarn

The Warhammer Studio’s super-heavy vehicles for Journal Tactica: The Battle of Tallarn make a simple point: big armor needs big visual decisions, not just more paint. The new supplement pushes tanks to the front with Armoured Spearhead missions. If you are staring at a Fellblade, a Glaive, or any other Age of Darkness centerpiece and wondering how far to take the weathering, the Tallarn material gives you a clear direction.

Tallarn is built for tank painting, not just tank rules

Journal Tactica: The Battle of Tallarn is a 48-page gaming supplement for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy, and it is built around vehicle-heavy battles. The Armoured Spearhead mission pack puts the machines at the center of the table, while the Mailed Fist rules layer in one Legendary Mission and three Leviathan Missions for asymmetrical and multiplayer vehicle fights.

The supplement also adds new and updated units such as Solar Auxilia Rapiers, Command Tanks, Cohorts Vagus, and updated profiles for Charonite Ogryns. The whole release is leaning into a very specific visual language: hard military hardware, massed armor, and battlefield scars. Tallarn itself is framed by orbital bombardment, specially crafted viral agents, and the Iron Warriors invasion, with the Tallarn Reborn fighting from subterranean bunkers and stockpiled Imperial hardware.

Start with the large panels before you think about small details

The strongest thing the studio’s Fellblade showcase does is treat the tank as a color-blocking problem first and a weathering project second. The hull is a huge canvas, so your first decision is not where the chips go, but how the main panels read from across the table. That is why the five Warhammer Design Studio painters split the same super-heavy chassis into five very different Legion looks, each one teaching a different way to control those vast surfaces.

Adam’s Salamanders Fellblade used green, black, and fire motifs, but the important part was the finish. He pushed weathering and oil paints to give the machine a grounded feel. For a Tallarn-inspired build, that same approach works brilliantly on dark green, worn brass, or heat-stained metal.

Andy’s metallic Ultramarines scheme is probably the most useful technical recipe in the bunch. He started with a black undercoat, moved to Leadbelcher spray, added Runefang Steel Air, glazed with Asurmen Blue Contrast, then worked in scratches, Baneblade Brown weathering, and Zandri Dust dusting. That sequence gives you a readable sequence for a super-heavy: establish the metal, tint it, break it up, then pin it to the desert with dust.

The studio’s best tricks are the ones you can steal immediately

James showed what to do when the armor has broad, flat panels that feel empty without a plan. He used Word Bearers transfer sheets across the Fellblade’s large surfaces, which is exactly the kind of bold marking choice that keeps a huge tank from looking plain. On a super-heavy, transfers are not decoration after the fact, they are structural design elements. Place them early in the scheme, and let them dictate where grime, chips, and panel fade should sit.

Les’s Thousand Sons Fellblade is a great centrepiece. A tank that large needs one dominant read from arm’s length, whether that is deep red, blue, yellow, or desert-faded bone. The temptation is to overwork every inch, but the best centerpiece tanks stay legible because the main color blocks stay clean enough to hold the eye.

Phil’s Imperial Fists tank is the best reminder not to overdo the damage. He kept the weathering subtle so the yellow stayed visually clear, and that restraint is worth copying. On a bright scheme, too much grime turns the tank into mud with guns. Keep the chips smaller, let the panel color do the work, and use dust and wear as accents instead of the whole story.

A practical Tallarn-inspired workflow for a super-heavy looks like this:

• Build the main color blocks first, and make sure the hull reads cleanly from distance.
• Use transfers or campaign markings on the largest flat panels before weathering.
• Apply oil paints or streaking effects to tie the upper hull into the lower grime.
• Finish with dust tones, especially along the tracks, lower glacis, and panel edges.
• Keep bright Legion colors, such as yellow, from disappearing under too much damage.

The plastic range now backs up the painting brief

The Fellblade is the latest plastic kit to arrive in the Age of Darkness system, and in January 2026 the Glaive appeared in plastic for the first time, with a volkite carronade and the familiar Fellblade chassis.

For builders, that chassis-based approach matters because it gives you hull and sponson variation without changing the basic visual mass of the vehicle. For painters, it means your scheme needs to be portable across similar silhouettes. If you can make a Fellblade read as a Salamanders war machine, a metallic Ultramarines brute, or a dust-caked Imperial Fists command tank, the same method will carry across the rest of the super-heavy line.