Relictors Drop Pods Finished! - 3 Troop Pods

Hello avid readers, thanks for stopping by. So, I finally finished all of my remaining Drop Pod doors and now have 5 Drop Pods finished, 1 from ages ago, and 4 new... all painted to match the earlier pod - which made me paint the interiors to a high standard to match the first! No scrimping and saving time for me.

+++EDIT+++ I've edited this post's picts to put this one first, as it captures the Pods best! Nothing better than a shot of the Pods disgorging their cargo on some alien or heretic planet!!  I got all the Pods and four of the Tactical Squads out for a show... so until the next post you'll have to make do with this grainy pict capture, I've taken more in colour and less like a grainy pict capture for eye candy next time.

Here is a shot of the 3 new troop Pods in all their door-chevron glory - I thought painting 20 doors was tough, but 120 chevron stripes was evil! All marked out with pencil stencil first so they are the same orientation and size. The chevrons on the door were a lot easier than they looked, firstly I used a 1cm card stock to measure lines and marked with pencil along the door length, I then painted the yellow in between the lines with Citadel Foundation Tausept Ochre, then 2 washes of Devlan Mud on the lower halves and then a final line highlight of Foundation Iyanden Darksun on the upper edge. 

One of the new Pods has a missile launcher for some variety, albeit, only a minor difference! I think I'm done painting drop pods now... for ever! Ha Ha.

I forgot to take a shot of the outsides, so this is the original pod. Trust me, they are all identical.

Relictors Deathstorm / Dreadnought Drop Pod Finished!

So here is the finished Pod, the first of my project of four Pods I've been busy doing recently. This one is different from the others as it uses 3rd party parts, namely Chapterhouse Studios Armoured Doors and is a Dreadnought Pod or Deathstorm Missile Pod. I've used the small StormTalon aquila's to decorate the doors to match my first Drop Pod and as usual, a white skull chapter badge.

I love the look of this Deathstorm Launcher, and gamewise its not bad either, cheap and great against horde armies, on the turn it arrives it pie-plates every unit (friend or foe) within range, with a large blast. After that, every turn it fires one large blast at an enemy unit within range - see Imperial Armour books for rules.

Here is the view of the Pod set up as the Dreadnought Drop Pod, or Lucius Dreadnought Pod.

Just a different view of the Dreadnought Pod configuration showing the Deathstorm FW sensor head and the deck protrusions.

This shows the magnets in the Pod vanes. For more notes on construction see my earlier posts on magnetising drop pods and using Armoured Doors 3rd party products. I'll be posting the completed 'normal' pods soon, just as soon as I've finished the remaining 4 doors... nearly there!

A final shot... or 40!

Lord Halfpenny's WIP Forge World Stuff

Hi!

Recently I've been pretty busy building up several of my Forge World kits, and I thought I'd share some of the WIP.

Spartan

Firstly, the Spartan Landraider- this kit is huge, and was pretty straightforward to put together. I'm planning on making a few additions over the next weeks before painting

Typhon

Second up is the mighty Typhon tank- this was a little harder to build, the tracks were extremely warped, thus I ended up having to remove a track link to fit them into position.

Deimos Predators

I've built up two Deimos Predators, with the various main weapons pinned to allow me to swap them as required.

Fellblade Superheavy

The mightiest of my new Space Marine tanks - this tank is a beast - I love the feel and look of the tank, it feels and looks right.  I had planned on building a Fellblade using the Baneblade tank, however I'm glad FW saved me the hassle of building one!

Scimitar Jet Bikes

I've built 4 of the HH Scimitar jet bikes, which will count as either attack bikes/land speeders in 40k. I've added different heads/arms to the drivers, and converted one to have a Blood Angel wrist bolt pistol.

StormEagle

I built this a while ago and I am now painting the flyer. I've armed it with both the lascannons and meltas, so once it drops of the troop cargo - it will become a flying tank hunter.

Caestus Assault Ram

I've had this a while, and it has been used in battles previously, however I am only just getting round to painting it!

Armoured Drop Pod Doors - 3rd Party Resin Conversion Kit

The Chapterhouse Studio's Armoured Drop Pod doors are great for making a Games Workshop Space Marine Drop Pods stand out from the others. I've used them to differentiate between the normal Drop Pods and the Support element Drop Pod which can be played as a Deathstorm Missile Pod or a Dreadnought Drop Pod as seen in the previous post (here). The small Aquila are from the StormTalon kit, the doors come unadorned.

The casting of the underside of the Chapterhouse Door Armour is not perfect - so to fit flush to the GW Drop Pod, I removed the rivets (12 rivets each door) from the plastic Pod doors that were under the Chapterhouse Kit. The resin kit is designed with holes for these rivets, they just don't always cast with enough room so it's easiest to just trim them off the door instead, allowing a flush fit.

The second thing to note is shown in the photo above, once closed, the rivets on the Drop Pod vanes catch at the bottom end of the Chapterhouse Armour when fitted. This can be easily trimmed off to allow smooth door action, or in my construction, the vanes have a certain amount of give as the are only fixed at the top, in my design the bottom is magnetised to the Pod deckplate and door sub-assembly, meaning the doors slide past these rivets without too much problem.

When dry fitting the Chapterhouse Studio's kit to the GW plastic door prior to using super glue, I needed to soak each resin piece in hot water and hold to the door so it cooled into a flush uniform straight fit. If you use resin kits, this is normal but worthy to note here.

 Here is the position of the doors closed if the vane rivets are not removed... not good.

Here shows the closed doors if the vane rivets are removed (or in my case, allowed to move past).

Hopefully this helps any potential Armoured Drop Pod builders with your hybrid kits! I hope you agree this kit gives the normal pod a great sense of heavy duty hardware and sets them apart from the 'normal' Pods! Overall a great resin extra and easily fitted to your drop pods.

Relictors Deathstorm or Lucius Dreadnought Drop Pod Interchageable Conversion

This is one of my four Pods under construction at the moment, the Support Pod if you will, either a FW Deathstorm Drop Pod or played as an empty Pod as a Dreadnought Drop Pod or for a few more points (and assault vehicle rule) a Lucius Dreadnought Drop Pod. Note the Chapterhouse Studio Armoured Doors on the outside of the open doors (looks thicker) - I'll post outside appearance photos next post when transfers have been applied and the Pods finished.

By use of several magnets seen in an earlier post (here), I am able to take out the Missile Pod from within the Drop Pod and rebuild the pod without any innards, except the nice FW Sensor piece in the deckhead of the interior - a Lucius Drop Pod doesn't have any weapons within, so this is rather fitting, and gives the Dreadnought more overhead clearance too!

The photo above shows the Pod once the engine block and vanes have been lifted up straight off the petal base, leaving the Missile Pod magnetised to the deck plate and the doors.

Above shows the magnets on the deck plate and within the Missile Pod, the other deck protrusions are from the FW Deathstorm kit with flexi-hoses trimmed off so I can remove the outer vanes without catching on the base plate. I used 5 magnets of same polarity so the Missile Pod always remains lined up with the door openings.

The above picture shows the two sub-assemblies, and the magnets on the inside edge of the end of the vanes and in the grooves in the petal base plate. Totally hidden once the pod is constructed once more.

Finally, the above photo shows the Pod constructed without the Deathstorm Launcher, configured for the Dreadnought Drop Pod or as a Lucius Dreadnought Drop Pod.

Hopefully this helps and gives someone out there inspiration to buy a FW Deathstorm and convert - two pods for the price of one! (Again, if you want to see how I magnetised - see here).

I will post the exterior shots in the next post, with a cautionary note about using the Chapterhouse Studios Armoured Drop Pod doors (lovely pieces that give weight to the outward appearance of the Pod and mark it apart from the run-of-the-mill other Pods nicely) but need a little care and attention to operate/fix correctly.

Relictors Drop Pod Project Progress - WIP Deathstorm

Just a quick post showing the latest progress with the 4 Pod Project - I'm nearly done, only 7 doors and two Stormbolters left, huzzah! This is the missile payload from the FW Deathstorm Drop Pod, a nice piece showing a lot of explosive potential! I've opted for a Tausept  Ochre coloured missile to match with my 2nd Whirlwind missiles and the yellow hazard chevrons from the pod doors. The brass coloured ends are meant to signify a simple fusing cap.

This has been magnetised underneath to enable me (with some clever jiggery pokery of the actual pod) to remove this payload from within and have an empty Dreadnought Pod instead. More of that later once painting has been completed, but it works like a dream and has an added hidden benefit when working with the Chapterhouse Studio's Armoured Drop Pod doors...

...To see how I've magnetised it see my earlier post showing the WIP gubbins.

Iron Warriors - Obliterators

Hi all – I’ve had almost no hobby time in the past month as I’ve been ripping rooms in my house apart and rebuilding them (it looks nicer now though) but this week I managed to get back into it with a unit I’ve been looking forward to tackling for ages; Obliterators.

As much as I like the unit and the fluff, the GW models are a little bit...awful.

But I did some digging around and stumbled across these alternatives from Polish(?) studio Hi-Tech Miniatures. They aren’t the cheapest models – roughly the same price as GWs Obliterators, but they look absolutely stunning and when I got them in my hand – they are absolutely worth it. The detail is incredible and I would rank them up there with Forgeworld pieces. They are also the perfect scale. I guess my only niggle is that these are the only three models they make and are so unique that if I want another unit I’m not sure what I would do... I’ll definitely be going back there for my Lord and Champion models though.

Its taken about a week to get them painted up – with all of the flesh and sinews being a bit of a pain to paint without messing up any of the metalwork – but I am really happy with how they turned out.

If anything, I would say that the pics don't do justice to the models – you could spend ages poring over them and find little bits you hadn’t previously spotted. Also the pics make the cloaks look shiny...no idea why – they look fine IRL...

Now these are done, I really must get some infantry finished. Maybe after a tank... thanks for reading.