Converted Reaver Jetbikes

Continuing on with the Start Collecting set, I've built these 3 jet bikes. In keeping with the rest of the force, I wanted to keep the sinister feel going and my brother had mentioned the idea of arming them with some of the spare spear polls from the raider. I built the first one and liked it so much that I built the other two the same way. I did have to do a bit of conversion for the third one, as the spear was a trophy spike with a bunch of skulls on it. I swapped the end for a skaven spear head (I really like plastic glue for this kind of thing as it gives a lot of strength) which seems to have worked well.

Needless to say, I went with the helmed heads, as not only are the cool, but masks are a key theme of the Haemonculus stuff, so it was an easy choice. I did think of saving them to use on another unit down the line, but in the end I couldn't help but use them.

I haven't glued them in the flight stands; as I want to be able to paint them. These last 2 pictures show them with some airbrushed basecoat layers in grey/white. I'm planning to use white on some parts of the bikes, and white and black are both much easier to paint with the help of the airbrush as it lets you lay down a very smooth coat of paint, not only allowing for a subtle blended look, but also avoiding some of the problems with the inherent claginess of most white paints.

Well, that about rounds out everything in the box set. I guess I'd better get to work actually painting some of it!

Grot Deffkopta Squadron

The title pretty much says it all, and what the title doesn't say the pictures do. These Deffkoptas were actually the first thing I built for my all Grot army. They were surprisingly thrifty too from e-bay as the original models come from the Black Reach box, which at the time about 2 years ago meant that the models were quite abundant.

Conversion wise I basically removed the Ork pilots and replaced them with grot ones. The orks didn't want to let go though (they're actually melded into the seats). I managed to re-sculpt the seats again after a lot of hacking away at the raw plastic. Using the plastic runtherd kit it wasn't too hard to convert the grots so they looked like they were actually piloting the things (thank god for those stikkbomb arms!).

They've done me fairly proud on the tabletop too - it's hard to argue with 3 twin-linked rokkits flying about the place for a fairly low points cost.


Definitely my favourite moment was when the unit was reduced to a single kopta. I managed to knock 1 hull point off of a chimera with the rocket and then charged. With hammer or wrath I had just enough strength to glance the rear armour. I rolled the dice and what do you know; a pair of 6s. The chimera was wrecked and it was just laugh out loud funny. I seem to remember the game ended with the Kopta in combat with an imperial guard platoon command squad. After about 3 turns they were still swinging ineffectually at each other!

Does anyone remember that old PS1 game RC Stunt Copter? I had a demo of it and the only thing I can really remember was how uncontrollable the thing was (for some reason I seem to remember having to rotate the analogue stick constantly to go up or something). I never could get through the window in that barn!


Is anyone else thinking it might make a great new box game for GW? -  RC Grot Copter. The aim is to race around a course collecting as many mushrooms as possible while not crashing. Also there are weapons ... and maybe a few robots.

Heresy Jetbike Captain

With the advent of Games Workshop's Betrayal at Calth box set, I like many others took the opportunity to start a 30k collection. After some time deliberating about which legion to play I chose Imperial Fists. I'm not ashamed to say that it was largely because I've never painted yellow seriously before, as it certainly wasn't for their winning personalities in all the books!

Anyway, so far I have a finished tactical squad and a Vindicator Laser Destroyer all ready to go (more on those later), but what the army really needed was an illustrious leader. I had a look in the book for inspiration and once I discovered you could put a Captain on a jetbike I knew what had to be done. I've never liked the forgeworld jetbikes for obvious reasons to do with them being rediculosly ugly, far too expensive, and way too phallic so those weren't an option.

For this conversion I used Samael - Master of the Ravenwing, combined with parts of some Phalanx Warders and a While Scars Helmet from the Forgeworld set. I still need to do some gap-fill and green stuff to mesh it all together, but we're getting there.