Hell Is Other Resins...

The good news is that Anubis is nearing completion. All the brush work on the main model is done, which means I get to go back over it with an airbrush and do some weathering soon. Well, as soon as I get my ancient airbrush cleaned and up to par. The bad news is, while I was priming his wings, the wind picked up the box and, well....

Snap! went the sensitive spar on two of them. This brings us to the title of today's blog. Anubis was crafted from a clear resin that is the most infuriating shit I've ever had to work with. It has a measure of elasticity, yet it shatters. It's rock-hard and doesn't sand well at all. About the only thing it takes to is drilling, but you have to do it by hand, because a Dremel running at the slowest speed will, in fact, melt the resin, giving you a drill bit coated in black, translucent crap. The only thing it didn't do in the mold, apparently, was air-bubble, but there are enough crevices and weird imperfection on the thing that I had fits sanding it down. Oh, and did I mention that the clear resin is EXTREMELY PAINT RETARDENT. Thank heavens I had some Tamiya Mr. Surfacer on hand, because other primers just slid right off. The Anubis kit was a great deal at the price, but in retrospect, I should've passed on it completely.  Once the model is finished, I may even sell it and console myself with the Revoltech (despite the heinous paint job)  or Kotobukiya versions being released eventually. 


Then there's this:

A General Grievous Tyracron commissioned by a client. Overall, the project went well and I'm very satisfied with it, but I wish I'd been able to use a metal Hive Tyrant instead of a Finecast one. Finecast, while being light and fluffy, is also crumbly and incredibly brittle. It has a small measure of elasticity and there were no glaring problems the sculpt, however, it's not much harder than, say, very brittle chalk, and I was nervous every time I had to cut or drill into the thing. Unlike my half-metal version, this thing is not at all top-heavy (a plus) and can stand without the larger base (the client wanted to be able to use it as a Nemesis DK) but man, is the FInecast resin ever flimsy. I can't imagine trying to work with some of the smaller models. 

Now, it drilled well, took to CYA glue and paint like a champ, and generally held the detail from its casting pretty well too. Thankfully, some of the horror stories I've been reading here and there didn't apply to this kit, but nonetheless, there was some chipping of the parts right out of the box. If I'd been assembling it as a stock Tyrant, the whips and swords would have eventually just snapped right off from continued use. Luckily, those sexy serpentine lightsabers are themselves quite sturdy. I have a hunch he'll be primarily a shelf piece, but the client has a working Star Wars army, so who knows? Transport him carefully!

Some hot Grievous vs Grievous action for you. 

Every Jedi's worst nightmare. For that matter, Space Marines wouldn't like two Swarmlords coming at them, either. 


More commission stuff on the way, plus some Necron action (ooooh I can't wait, can you?) Yes, I did order some Ghost Arks. I may magnetize them to work as Doomsday Arks, but if the size factor is equivalent enough, then my Tyrannofexes will simply step (or hover?) into a new gunship role in my Necron army. I'm not entranced with the Annihilation Barge design, so that role may go to my Harpies. Again, it'll depend on the form factor. It looks like one or two of the things I ruminated about waaaaaay back during the Codex: Royal Necrons post are coming true, too.


Happy Monday, people.  

State of (my) Hobby....

Been a turbulent summer so far, what with changing jobs and all, so I've been busily doing life things and sort of neglecting my hobby bench, and more's the pity. So, this is going to be a "what's next" article. Short answer: that ebon chap is ready to be worked on, so a finished Anubis will be the every next model you'll see. Other revisions to my To-Do list include things that are on....


The Back Burner: 
• All Tyracron Projects: I know, I'm sad about it too, but this Fall is set to bring about a Necron Renaissance where (hopefully) our favorite robots won't suck, and that means a (hopefully)  a slew of new parts and inspiration to work from. Plus, let's be honest, the Nid codex sorta got nerfed and that screwed things from a playing standpoint. I will say that I've had nothing but good battles with the Tyracrons, although none of those have been against adversaries with AV 14. 


• Fantasy Projects: At some point, I'll be painting some suitably Japanese-looking cannons to make my Dwarf Samurai army a more fully-filled out one, and then putting it on the auction block. I need the space, and one of these armies need to go. Sorry, Samurai Dwarves, you were my first WHF army, and my first large-scale army project ever, but you have to go. If anyone is interested in a unique, character WHF army, please contact me. Otherwise, off to eBay they'll go. In their day, the did a lot of pounding on goblins and undead alike. Sad Panda. :(


Coming up after Anubis:
• To show you I'm not full of shit I'm standing by my word from a previous column and converting up a Storm Raven. It'll be looking more like our friend the Helghast Dropship:

You remember him, don't you? I'll be splicing his genes with our other buddy, the better Storm Raven design that uses the actual kit:

See all those redeeming features? It's a lovely design and not at all the kind of visual punch in the face that thing you can buy off the shelves is. Remember the pledge also that it's going to be able to swallow a Dreadnaught. Ooooh that'll be a pain in the ass, won't it? But I will not have my Dread frying off all of his expensive Autocannon ammo on re-entry. No sir. 


• Also, my Vendettas are getting wheeled landing gear like their modern equivalents, the Black Hawk and the Osprey. (Not the Valkyrie, which shall remain stock) Now that I'm working at an aerospace-associated non-profit, I get to stare at really, really nice photos of planes and rockets ALL FUCKING DAY (so awesome!) and it hit me that the IG need to wheel things into hangars and such. You need to pull them around when they're not powered up, and to do that you're going to have to hitch your Centaur up and pull the thing around. Yes, in the 40k universe you have repulserlift technology and servitors with forklifts for tits and all that, but it'll look so damn cool, so I'm doing it. 


• There is also another Orbital Frame kit, this one of the Vic Vyper, which is getting joints put in as we speak, but is a long way from being finished. This one may preempt other 40k models, because it's really, really, really cool. I may even resurrect my airbrush for it, it's such a nice model. 


• Lastly, the Emperor's Tarot poker deck is going really, really slowly because I keep drawing an erasing various cards, so barely half of them are done. Producing a sheet of number cards is the easy part, it's the major arcana that are really, really hard. I'm sure John Blanche, the God of Weird Dark Future Imagery, could fire a bunch of them off in no time, but I'm not as prolific as I used to be, because now I am employed and have a third of the free time I used to. 


So that's about it. Things are picking up, and we are again looking flush and getting our life on track. Maybe I'll take that vacation to England I've always been meaning to, and visit you all across the pond, too. Ah, to be able to plan things again.....

100th Post! (Also, Contest...)

One hundred posts. We're finally here. 

I started this blog as a hobby project,mainly to blow off steam by writing down random raving thoughts. Then I saw how massive the hobby community was here on the interwebz. 

And then I was laid off. Hello, free time.

There are so many of you, and where possible I add to my blogroll because they're so cool that other people should see them. Admiral Drax, Tears of Envy, Stelek, Brent, Mordian 7th, B.Smoov, Ron over at FTW, Col. Corbane, Oniakki and so many others; all lights in the void. I'm glad you were out there for me to find and learn from/ogle at, guys. Way to light up the internet. 

I'm an arts guy, and stats really aren't my thing, but the reigning most popular post of all time? This guy.

 

It's not like his ego needs any more boosting, but Grievous got 2,194 pageviews. what's more, this blog has gotten 70,554 total. Jeezus. If I had put all these damn models in an art gallery on a street somewhere, it'd be time to change the carpet. All this might be old hat to you seasoned travellers out there, but to me it's just breathtaking. 

Thank you, really. 

All 219+ of you. 

And so, the contest. It involves this guy:

I mentioned before that I'm building a 40k-scale Knight Warden Titan for a contest over at the Adeptus Mechanicus Forums. He needs a nice, Titan-y sounding name. All you have to do is come up with a name for him and post it in the comments section of this post before March 19. What's the prize? 

Why, it's a sprue of Shock Troops from the by now famous Wargames Factory range. You've seen them in this space before. I will slip them in a padded envelope and mail them to the winner. 

I also want to take a minute to remember our friends in Japan. I'm sure you all know about the recent calamity. They're having real tough time right now and can use your prayers and support. Let's all keep a good thought for them, and help out where we can. As a testament to the enduring spirit of Japan, the Gundam statue in Shizuoka is still standing. There have been pictures going around of it toppled at the knees, but these are from when it was taken down for renovation the first time. 

So that wraps up post 100, and here's to the next 100.

Thanks, people.

PS: Yes, I know I missed Old Stuff Day, but life gets in the way, so I hope the Grievous pic makes up for it.

PPS: Yes, I drew that mecha girl at the top. She was meant for another 100th-something project, years ago, but I ended up using something else, so she just stayed in limbo until now. Hope you like her. 

I, Dolores...

Resin kits are a tremendous pain in the ass.


But, I'm getting ahead of myself. 


As you may or may not have figured out, I'm a tremendous mecha-head. Two of my all-time favorite games are Zone of the Enders and ZoE: Anubis for the PS2. They're high-speed, kickass 3rd person mecha-combat games from the same crew (sort of) that brought you the Metal Gear Solid series, and the designs are simply amazing. The producers made several half-assed attempts to expand the series into other media. That brings us to this tragedy:

I bought kit before I saw the series, and lord, the series ain't good. It's a lighthearted farce that makes a mockery out of an otherwise very serious game universe. That big trucker fella on  the right? He spends the series driving that pink mecha in the back. The pink mecha? She has an AI personality laughingly made to resemble a 12 year old japanese girl. 


I am not kidding. 


It made me very sad. 


Brave lil trooper that I am, I watched the entire series. 


Later, I had to cleanse my brain by watching the grittiest episodes of the Band of Brothers series. 


I will leave it at that.


Anyway, because the ZoE protagonist mecha, Jehuty, is my grail kit (more on that in another post) and Dolores isn't a bad design at all, I quickly jumped on the chance to buy a pair of kits from a recaster on the cheap (and I mean CHEAP). They came like this:

Also, because I like toys, I decided to articulate as many of her joints as humanly possible with aid of readily available (and really, really cheap) ball joints from Kotobukiya and Wave. Let me tell you, if you love drilling and power tools, then take on a project like this, because you'll do a lot of it. Just be sure to mask up, because resin dust will kill you. In addition, Dolores' original paint scheme was... well.... hmmm...

So I took it upon myself to change things up a bit, and added a lot more black and crimson:

This was a fixed-pose resin kit, so there was some sanding and green-stuff remodeling involved, primarily around the knees, hips and torso. She's jointed in the neck, shoulders, upper arms, elbows, hips and knees. I wanted to joint the wrists, but they were just too slender to cut into and joint. In fact, I ended up having to repair them with some fine metal rod (aka paper clip). I ended up with a kit that is, quite satisfyingly, posable:

Although those knee joints give me pause. I may have to hunt down hardier ones in the near future. 

That wire base thingy holding her up is $4.50 and sold in packs of 2 from Hobbylink Japan, which is where I also purchased the joints. I'm rethinking the decision to leave her wings black, and may paint those pink so they accent her engine nacelles. Yes, those are double-ball joints. They have amazing articulation and hold up quite well. 


Anyhow this was such a fun and satisfying project that I may do this to other things not meant to have joints, like 40k kits. If you're hobby-inclined and like a nice involved project, I recommend trying it yourself. Word to the wise, though, do your drilling somewhere well-ventilated and wear a mask to keep the dust out, because it's very fine and will get in your lungs. 


Happy Thanksgiving, people. 

Tyracon Retakes...

Ooooh, the OCD part of my brain is acting up again. It's making me retake pictures after looking at old posts here that were dark as fuck, so here we go, in more or less chrono order:

Tyracron mk 1. Hmm, still a little yellow (damn tungsten filter...) and, shame on me for not photoshopping out some warps in the paper. Still, hmm...

Doomy. Brighter, but still looks like I've been taking pictures through popcorn butter. I still have a bunch of those heads... maybe I'll use them on my Zoans.

Deathleaper. I gotta say, I'm tempted to chuck the lights at this point and move to a room with more direct sunlight+mirrors. In its defense, Deathleaper's silver bits were dark-washed way down, since I wanted more muted stealth metal. I also color-dodged the hell out of and spent half an hour color-balancing out all the bits of yellow tungsten flare that the filters missed. I have GOT to get some yellow-blocker bulbs for these lights. 

Harpy. Man, I've forgotten A) how much I liked the model and B) how fucking GOLD it got, against my meaning it too. I'm still verrrrrry tempted to just strip it and start over, or at least add some mottling to the thorax and wings. 

Tervi. Painting-wise, I kept him dark, as I meant to, including the carapace, which is why he isn't shiny as hell like some of the others. By the way, before sticking the Tervi models to the bases, they STOOD UP BY THEMSELVES, BALANCING PERFECTLY. Seriously, it's fucking creepy when that happens. I mean, it's good, because I don't have to search for lead scraps to weight the base, but man. Creepy. 

Overall, I think I'm doing a pretty good job at sticking to the whole "eldritch robots who want to eat your soul" theme, but my lighting system (such as it is) is going to need  a lot of work. I thought it was a matter of photoshop skills, but you can only do so much with what you have, so obviously, there are going to be a lot more experiments where these came from. 

Lastly, the goddamn Inquisition codexes. I expected some kind of neutering rewrite, but what we got was shoddy editing consisting of someone basically deleting pages (oh look, they nuked a 2-page illustration!) and leaving things like points costs, glaring errors, and so on alone. GW didn't like the IG armies having anti-pysker and invulnerability save-defeating gear, so they screwed the players on that. 

Without fixing anything. 

Well, screw 'em. Now the Inquistion models are only good for Dark Heresy, and you'll NEVER run into/use Grey Knights/Battle Sisters in there unless the shit has really hit the fan. If there's a monster that you need a Grey Knight Terminator squad to handle in DH, then your little group of acolytes is truly fucked, and you need to roll up new characters. 

Ah well. 

This is Greg's fault.

Greg tactfully pointed out the less-than-stellar lighting conditions from the last shoot, so I dug around on the web and found a tutorial on lightbox building and lighting. I still have to get some nice cool (ie not-yellow) bulbs for the shop lights, but the abovewas shot in the result. I papered the inside of a box with white shelf paper,  leaving a curved surface on the back and minimal seams (they can be photoshopped out anyway). Is it too small to me to do whole armies and tank companies? Yes, but for squads, monsters, etc, it should work okay. 


So thanks, Greg, for telling my lighting was shit. Now it's bright as fuck. 


As you can see, the Angels of Fire color scheme is a dark palette anyway, but it does light up nicely. 


No, I won't retake every damn photo I've done already, even though the OCD section of my brain is screaming at me too. 


Happy Father's Day, people. 


You too, Greg, if you're a father. ;)

Completing the Brood...

In addition to finishing Deathleaper, I also used up the last of the 'Nid Warrior parts and Tau legs on hand to flesh out a Tyracron brood. I really am glad I decided to stick with the Crisis suit legs; the posability they give the models really is head and shoulders above the old 'Nid ones. For instance, they can react to something in a blasty-killy way, like this fellow:

Unfortunately, by the time I got to our friend here, I'd run out of regular Crisis suit feet. Luckily, I had these metal ones lying in the bits box. It makes sense he'd have the extra stability anyway, with the larger gun he's toting around. One the other hand, this chap's pretty eager to get stuck in, getting ready to follow up a scything talon one-two with an axe blade:

One of the problems people had with my using the Necron arms was that they looked too spindly next to the 'Nid ones. Spiders and insects have different roles for different sets of limbs, beyond just moving about on them; with spiders, the front two are feelers, the back two are spinners, and one is even used for reproduction. Similarly, the Tyracron's middle limbs are for finer work (like firing weapons and operating their arcane technology), and so don't need to be as bulky as their forelimbs, which are more useful for things like climbing, leaping about, and of course, killing you.

Speaking of things that want to kill you, the Harpies are nearing completion....

Airships!

Sort of a side post this week , to fill in the time while I work on the Harpies some more, among other things.


Some time ago, back in the heady days when there was still a FASA (sort of?), the Crimson Skies board game and metal miniatures came out (at the time, my gaming group and I played the hell out of it; it's great fun) Given what was available, I embarked on a side project to re-create some of the airships from the Final Fantasy games. Mind you, this was years ago and I'm a better modeler now by magnitudes. Anyway, instead of presenting them in the order in which they were made, here they are in order of the games:

Setzer Gabbiani's Blackjack from Final Fantasy VI. The PS1 version had beautiful trailer and all new (at the time) cg cutscenes, not to mention a gallery of stills for me to ogle while I worked on the model. That's a Reaver torso in there, along with jets from some old metal jump packs. I couldn't find a sailing ship hull that small, so an epic Ork Fighta worked nicely.

Those rather baroque tails are old thin hex bases from Aerotech fighters (which fetched an alarmingly high price on ebay). I liked the Blackjack much more than the airship you exchange it for halfway through the game, which looked like just a blimp with jet engines.

The High Wind from Final Fantasy VII. Still my favorite ship from all the games so far. Hey wait a sec-- something looks odd about her tail section...

Why, those elevators are monstrous! What happened to the overly complex series of rudders and flaps? Well, if you'll recall, it looked like this:

Each nacelle had a lower set of four rudders and three elevators; a veritable grille. Although I'd be up to the challenge now, I don't want to break up a venerable miniature. At the time I must've just said "to hell with this" and gone with the whale-tail. That propellor shaft needs to be longer too, but oh well. It looks nice on the shelf. 

Final Fantasy VIII's Ragnarok. At the time, I was hard-pressed to find decent reference material (and that red is too much on the orange side...) . The original artwork makes it look shockingly complex, until you realize it's just a mecha dragon with a bloody big cannon on it:

Given what was available, I think I did a decent job, although again now I'd do certain parts entirely differently. The cannon is an old metal bright lance I somehow came by back in late '80's/early '90's. A guy at the (now closed) Fairfax GW store just GAVE me a huge handful of metal bits. Man, but those were the days. Of all of these models, the Ragnarok bulks the largest.

Another comparison shot for you. Finding the parts to replicate this thing was an ordeal. If they hadn't put out a series of fish-like tanks for an obscure Babylon-5 based ground combat  game (it had a lifespan of 5 minutes) then the model probably wouldn't even have been possible.

The Hildegarde III from Final Fantasy IX. Thankfully, crazy-ass designers took a turn for the delightfully steampunk. Some people hated that game, but it hit the right spot for me on a lot of levels. If I could've gotten some stills of the summoned convertible airship Ark, I would've made that thing, too. Once I got the summon, I used it almost exclusively; it was cool as hell. 

The boat hull and steamship paddle wheels came from an obscure mini I found at the local gaming store. Looking back there was a lot of detail on the original that I just glossed past. I must've been working on some kind of "good enough" mentality back then. 

That's the last one. The airships for FF-X and so on were so outlandish and unnecessarily complicated it would've been impossible to make them without significant amounts of green stuff and a lot of patience. I'm not even going to go into that bizarre thing from X-2 and its weird arm/wheel nacelles. Jeezus.

Speaking of Crimson Skies, I can do a post of the airplane minis some time. They're great designs and were a lot of fun to paint and use in the wargame. I didn't do the full range, though they're still readily available. I'm guessing the video game kind of eclipsed the hex-based boardgame, which is sad, really. 

The Universe Wants Mechanical Tyranids...

..... and this picture proves it.  More cool-ass pics of this metal bug and the story on IO9 . In case you were curious, it's for sale at 4,500 pounds sterling. The people who make it are here and sell all manner of crazy-ass junk-sculpture robots. 


I think that proves that there are people out there as crazy as we are, and that you can make substantial amounts of money from our particular brand of crazy. 


Happy Tuesday, people. 

Cloning Tanks Part 1: The Leman Russ

It's been said elsewhere (and rightly so) that 40k is a "pay for play" hobby. Those models ain't cheap, and by making it possible to field squadrons of tanks and whole broods of monstrous creatures, GW is doing all they can to make sure you want to buy more and more of them. Cheap bastard that I am, I decided to stick it to the Brits with a cloning scheme. 

Here are the two originals. The Leman Russ I was lucky enough to find on-sprue on eBay for around $25. The Griffon came assembled for half that  (and required stripping and repainting), but I only wanted it for the shape and dimensions of the Chimera chassis, so he'd do for that. I decided to make two more of each, and went about tracing the major parts on sheet styrene, which is readily available online or from your local hobby store at comparatively rock-bottom prices. We're 3-4 sheets for $3.50. Add in another $5 or so for the I-beam sticks I used to make treads, and another $5 or so for the L-beams used to join the pieces at a right angle. We're still cheaper than a GW kit. They took about 2 days, total, to cut, assemble, and paint, but the results were these:

Since these were cobbled together well before this blog, I have no how-to pictures, sorry. I need more Chimeras for my IG, not to mention Rhino/Preds for my Marines, so in the future I'll document the process there. To sum it up, it was a lot tracing outlines, cutting, gluing, and waiting. Given the chimney bits I was going to use to make cannon barrels, I cut the turrets big. Lots of parts from leftover GW sprues (Immolator, Russ, Valkryies, Manufactorum and 1/35 tanks) but those monsters are 90% plastic card and yankee ingenuity:

Using those I-beams as treads adds a bit of height to the model, not to mention solidity to the tread sections, which are, as with the Russ kit, assembled individually before the body is built up between them. They're came out a bit wider than the LR, too, but that was due to my own measuring error. By the time I had the central hull sections cut and attached, it was too late. Oh well.

Those with sharp eyes will not that those are Sentinel multi-lasers, which will do in a pinch as lascannons since they're nearly identical. Embellish with a leftover smoke discharger here and an Aquila here and there and you have a burly tank, ready to blast away at those orks. The turrets are fixed in place ( I discovered the joy of magnets later in the year), as are the sponsons, which were a pain in the ass to cut and assemble. I think I prefer the Russian KV-style box turrets to modern slope-sided ones, for the classical industrial look. Also, they made it easy to paint my half-cog Mechanicus insignia on the side. Inside the cog on the left side is the Company number (forming symmetry with the half-skull), while the number in red on the side of the tank is the tank number/squadron number.

The slab-sided turret design is awfully susceptible to anti-armor rounds in real life. You want the slope to deflect incoming projectiles, and a low profile to be hard to target, so in that sense the standard LR turret is more preferred, even if its hull design still isn't. These tanks are an anti-armor unit's dream come true.... 

What really makes it for a tank, I've found, is hanging stowage bits off the turret and armor plates. It gives you that nice extra level of detail and breaks up the silhouette of the model, making it interesting to turn around in your hands. These also represent my first attempts at fake-rivetting by way of a leather punch against the plastic plates; I ended up punching more holes than raised rivets, due to thickness and rigidity of the card. Later on, when plating armor on a dreadnaught, I did it the hard way and actually glued on tiny punched-out rivets. Talk about labor-intensive. All of those hull markings took a bit of time, too, but again, look great. 

This is what happens when you have no archetype to work from for dimensions. This Monolith, my first-ever scratchbuilt tank, absolutely DWARFS the standard model. Personally, I think the massive size fits more with the fluff text, but it's the devil to pack and transport. The lesson here, folks, is to use a template instead of just pulling something out of thin air, like I did. Still primarily plastic card, and thus still cheaper than the kit, though. 

Next time, I'll show you what I did with the Griffon. (although from the previous all-army photo, you can pretty much guess)

Air Support!

The Valkryie/Vendetta is one of those rare birds that's both a beautiful kit and an extreme joy to use on the battlefield. Of all the Forge World designs to mass-produce, GW certainly hit it out of the park on this one, although at $50+ it's sort of cost-prohibitive. (thank God for eBay)

I won't bore you with pictures of the stock kit, since you've already seen a million of those by now. What I will flash up here is the Vendetta conversion: (as always, click to enlarge)

There are magnetized hardpoints on the wings and wingtips, as well as on the body for the landing gear. I mounted searchlights on the wingtips over the old landing gear wells, which are, of course, still magnetized.

I don't like the idea of an aircraft putting all its weight on wingtip gear, and the four landing gear that FW designed the Valkyrie with just don't make sense to me. (especially that thing under the nose) If this thing lands in mud, that nose-pad is going to get stuck, fast, so we did away with that. I kept the tiny zep gear intact in the back, lengthening it a bit, and moved the wing gear under the body, so it's a bit more solid, now. The Lascannon mounts are made from good ole' heavy weapons team lascannons, mounted together with bits of sprue:

With a lascannon mounted in the fuselage on either side of the nose, we're ready to shoot down those nasty Wave Serpents with their force fields and lance weapons. Of course, if we need another Valkyrie, it turns into one:

But the magnets skew things, dammit. Really I only use those wingtip mounts when he gets mounted on his flying base (realistically, they'd retract up into the body, of course). I also detailed the inside, but left out the gunners. My Guard are a Skitarii regiment, so we auto-target those heavy bolters from inside. I keep forgetting to put mechanized servitor torsos in before I glue the roof on, though, but who's going to look inside anyway?

If I was going to enter one of these in some kind of competition, I'd go back and use some surgical tools to add some kind of servitor to the pintle mounting inside. Looking at Cool Mini or Not and sites like that, I doubt these would even place. Of course, if I were making a model specifically for a competition, I'd have gone that extra mile from the word "go", complete with dry-transfer aircraft decals instead of my hand-painted scrawl. Of course, I would have also weathered it with stippling instead of directional brushing, as well as the chipped-metal effect to the leading edges. A real Mechanicus craft would had an armored cockpit with cameras instead glass, too, I suppose. 

I was originally going to magnetize the base as well, but I wanted the grip to be extra-solid, so I decided to go with pins instead. These are thick paper clips cut with tin-snips, and it grips the model quite well. I don't know how they intended to mount it otherwise, because that translucent stalk-part doesn't clip well into the plastic mount for the helo. Both of my bases are like this, and I've never had a problem with the model slipping off or tipping over. For some reason, I've yet to detail the bases with materials. Maybe it's because the helos travel too fast, so the ground beneath them is constantly changing anyway? 

You will probably never see a Super Valkyrie like this carrying missile pods and anti-armor lascannons, unless someone makes an Apocalypse sheet for one. Both of Forge World's helos are woefully underarmed. Modern helicopters like the AH-64 Apache and heavier Mi-24 Hind carry two pylons per wing in addition to a nose/turret cannon (the Apache gun tracks with the gunner's helmet, too. Way cool!). That's sixteen anti-armor Hellfires or four multi-rocket pods, in addition to the wingtip struts, which can mount one anti-aircraft Sidewinder. I guess I'm spoiled by mechanical designers like Masamune Shirow, who think their tanks and things out a little more. 40k is supposed to be a dark future of slow technological decline, but come on. 

Here's a teaser-image for future posts. Damn you, Dave Taylor. Your army in that White Dwarf article made me fall in love with the Mechanicus, and gave birth to this Guard army. I really should mount those heavy weapons teams on proper bases, but no one I've play has cared. From that distance 50+ infantry doesn't look like a lot, but then this edition of 40k is better for vehicles than foot hordes anyway.