Fast Attack! Part 1: Land's Speeding.

I'm building my Marine army in bits and pieces on the cheap, and that means hunting for deals and/or making gold out of other people's trash when I can. To that end, I only have one stock speeder, seen top right in this photo. The rest.... well, the rest are motley crew indeed. 

My first kit, as it were, is this thing, made possible by a friend of mine offering a bits box delve as payment for painting a regiment or two of his dwarves. You'll notice the hull isn't exactly STC-standard. It is, in fact, the product of a torn up speeder upper hull and a 1/35 scale jeep, which fit together almost as if they were made for each other. The rest of it made itself, from those wicked forward intakes to the missile pods from some forgotten aircraft kit he'd never assembled. "Go for it man, take your pick." Bryan had said. 

As you can see, it bulks bigger, rides lower, looks meaner. I always thought GW never knew what the hell it wanted out of the landspeeder design, and that it might even change with the advent of new codexes (arguably, it did, into the Storm Raven lol). Anyway, the Typhoon got the usual treatment of paint and script and made it into my air force, followed by the stock kit I got off eBay for  a song. 

I wonder how GW explains the thing touches down with that weird sensor mast thing on the bottom? Shouldn't it be up top for the same reason as the current-model Apache helo's? Oh well. It's fail and I almost sawed it off anyway. Still no visible landing gear on the thing. Maybe they'll fix that (among other things) for the Ultramarines movie. 

One of the big trends out there right now is pre-Heresy builds, and personally I've always liked the older open-cockpit design of the mk. 1 models (not to mention the nice heft of a brick of metal). I got these two as a combination of three or four bits lots, one after the other, over months. The mk. 1 Landspeeder was another one of those models I'd always wanted from the old late '80's but never bought, so now was my chance. 

Yes, those are Sentinel pilots, converted to Marines by virtue of green stuff and extra shoulder pads. Of course, I kept the steering controls and leather helmets, because I thought they looked all old-school and arcane compared to the new Marine stuff. I rebuilt the engine sections from metal and plastic bits, sealing them to the chairs and center section with green stuff and CYA glue. I decided pre-Heresy elements in my force would have a coppery-with-brassy-fittings look to show they were from an earlier time. 

The Mechanicus have upgraded this speeder with a current-model multi-melta. Those chairs and pilots are from the old mk 2. model with the dorky-looking sloping front on it, a design I absolutely hated. The sloping front looked half-assed, and the stubby wings didn't do anything for me, so I skipped the other bits the seller was offering and just got the pilots and their seats. 

So, you tell me, two squadrons of two enough? I see list builds spamming speeder squadrons, but I always thought you needed some bikes in there, too, somehow.