Storm Talon kit bash

I keep getting nagged by my wife about the obscene amount of unopened boxes around the house. I have scores of tanks, FW kits, and flyers knocking around from half a dozen different armies. 

Among these goodies are two Storm Talons. I rushed out to buy them when they first launched, desperate for a bit of aerial supremacy. Then, after mulling it over, I decided they were a bit of a points sink for something that wasn't really that good. Marines can't really keep up with Guard or Necrons when it comes to airpower, so my view is that they should stick to anti-air (Telion on a quad gun, I'm looking at you).

With that in mind, I've been putting off unboxing my Storm Talons for a while, until a few days back, when the horde of unopened boxes reached a critical mass, and I got a thorough ear-bashing. 

So, on to the model itself. Despite the bad rep it gets on the internet, I don't dislike the shape of it too much. However, since we're doing a pre-heresy army, I didn't really want to just put it together as per the original build. So, once again, ebay to the rescue!

This one was relatively simple, just requiring the typhoon launcher and the assault cannons from the Storm Raven kit. 

There's a large hole where the assault cannon was, which needed to be filled in with plasticard and greenstuff. I made a bit of a botch up with it, but I'm confident that next time I'll make it look a bit more swish. 

As mentioned, the Storm Talon doesn't feature in the list which I'm currently considering for tournaments later this year, so it may be a while before I get this baby painted. 

For now, its time to put it back in its box, where it was originally. Just don't tell my wife. 

Thunder armour scouts

First of all, my apologies for not blogging for a while. My wife and I had a baby two weeks back and we've been busy fiddling with nappies and trying to get the poor little fella to sleep.

When he does finally hit the sack, I take out my other baby - my burgeoning White Scars army. With puffy, sleep deprived eyes, I've been hunched over the kitchen table cutting, glueing and rummaging around in my bits box.

I think I may have eaten a full tube of superglue in the past two weeks, just through biting off the hard crust that forms over the tips of your fingers. Sorry, I'm weird.

So, enough about my own gubbins and on to the project itself. My army list, which is constantly in flux, now includes a scout squad with sniper rifles. After a lot of umming and arrring, I finally decided against using the generic GW scout models, and instead, went on a bit of an ebay bitz finding mission.

The model above is the product of a few things I had knocking around the house. A (badly) painted MK3 torso and legs, some MK2 arms, a Cadian head, and shoulder guards and cloak from the Chaos Marauder set. This will roughly be the set up I'll be using for the scouts, when all my bits come.

It's not exactly the same as the artwork, which looks a lot bulkier, particularly in the shoulder pads. I was originally considering modelling my own with greenstuff, or picking up some of the company champion shoulder pads. However, I opted to go for a more pared down model, since they are scouts after all.

I've bought some Mk4 backpacks, but I'm still uncertain whether I'm going to use them, similarly too because scouts should be more mobile and have less cumbersome armour.

Although thunder armour was only used in earth unification armies, I reasoned that during the transition at the beginning of the Great Crusade, the legions may still have sought a lighter alternative to Mk2 armour for scout squads. Hence, some old suits of thunder armour may have been brought out and reconditioned for use off-Earth. This explains the differences between the artwork and the versions which I'm churning out now.

I'll post up some more stuff which I've been working on recently.