Trying something a little different

So I'm still more or less running on neutral for the Thunderbolt project, which also means the Thunderhawk project is on hold for the moment. In truth alot of my hobby stuff is kind of on hold or at least on slow-mo for the immediate time being. Money has become a bit more of a consern then I had anticipated so I need to curtail my hobby purchases for the immediate time. But, that doesn't mean I'm not doing stuff. It just means I'm doing different stuff. Here is one such example:

Yep a paper hammer drop pod! There isn't a particular reason I built this model, well not one beyond the fact that I had the template and didn't have anything better to do with my time that I was interested in. So a couple microwavable pizza boxes, about an hour in photoshop to color the template, 20 minutes to print out the 3 pages and like 3 hours to build it.
Over all I like the final product, there's just one little problem:

It is too small to carry a full 10 man squad of marines. You can see here how it would only 4 marines. Not a particularly huge deal I suppose, but it is a point of annoyance for me. I think I'll build 3 more and modify them to be Deathwinds though.

I purposely glued the door panels open mainly to be fair to my opponents but also because I just really can't stand seeing a closed drop pod sitting on the table. It's kind of like with the Storm Raven model if you add the hurricane bolters. How the *bleep* do the marines get out of the thing? I know I know, it's representational not functional. But you know? It's my model! If those points bug me, that's my problem! :P

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Duke Nukem?

You ever have a moment when you're working on a project, you look up for a second and something catches your eye? So you stop what you're doing and concentrate to figure out what that something is? And then you figure it out and you are like "Where the frack did that come from?"

That happened to be earlier today. When I noticed that I had a 40k version of Duke Nukem sitting on my work bench looking back at me:

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More speed!

So I've been working on a new attack bike squad for my Blood Ravens. From what I've been looking at rules wise, I think Biker armies are gonna be the default go-to army for 6th edition. Hammer of Wraith, T5 all the time, a 12" move with an extra D6 charge range, relentless. I mean let's face it bikers got a lot going for 'em now.

So here is my new and freshly converted  attack bike squad:

So I'm sure you're sitting there saying "Wait a second, you said they were converted. And that they were attack bikes. Yeah the one dude's got the scanner array backpack, but what's actually converted? And why aren't they attack bikes?"

Well, I guess I used the wrong word. I think I would have been better off saying they are transformable as opposed to converted. Allow me to show you what I mean. Here is the same bike squad with different bitz:

You can see the two forward most bikers are now armed with a melta gun and plasma gun.  Here is another change:

I magnatized them so I can swap the configurations between Biker and attack bike. With the addition of magnets in the right shoulder, the models are able to swap arms so they can be armed with different weapons. By putting magnets in select locations in the under carraige of the bike and matching points on the side car I can attach and detach the side car as needed.

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We are the Blood Ravens!

A good while back I was playing Dawn of War II and I had become inspired to begin work on a Blood Ravens army. Well they had sat on the back burner for far too long and with my funds effectively stopped, following my recent medical bills, they came out of the case and got some paint on some of them. Here are two of the bikers that I got painted the other day.

First up we have the Captain on a bike:

Blood Ravens Captain on a bike with a relic blade

Model wise he's a fairly straight forward conversion. Grey Knight helmet and great sword in right hand. The sword hand was attached to a converted rifle holding arm that I cut below the shoulder and repositioned it to be held outward. A couple other little bits add to the seniority of the model like the Raven Guard faring on the front of the model. The base is one point I would like to reference though. It comes from Dragon Forge Studios and I highly HIGHLY recommend their bases. I swear by them.

Next we have the sergent for the squad:

Blood Ravens biker Sergent with Power sword

I installed a magnet in the sergeants' left shoulder to allow him to use different weapons. This is going to be compatible with my other magnetized models in the army, allowing them to swap weapons as I see fit.

Equipped with a bionic arm and chainsword.

Equipped with a chainsword

 

 

Armed with one power fist

armed with an alternate power fist

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