Project Capstone

Herein we find the first of several posts I'll be making reporting my progress in what I am calling Project Capstone.

I've been pretty keen on Raven Guard aircraft from day one.  Before even the Storm Raven existed I bought myself a Valkyrie for them to use (illegally of course).  When the Storm Raven appeared it was initially just for Blood Angels and Grey Knights (no idea why) but I went ahead and bought one anyway (despite how ugly is it too).  When Charlie suggested the Samalut IX campaign I splashed out and bought myself a Storm Eagle and by the time the campaign began I had space in either flying transports or Land Speeder Storms for every model that didn't have a jump pack or teleport homer.

5th company attached air wing

Honestly I've always loved 40k aircraft in general.  I have loads of the buggers.  I built an entire Ork army around the idea of Ork aircraft.  I have a bunch of Forgeworld aircraft of various factions, and even more in plastic.  My love of them far transcends their actual utility, which is handy because right now they seem to be fairly rubbish in-game.  But my first love, from the very beginning of my hobby, has been the Thunderhawk gunship.

Image Credit: Games Workshop, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.
She's beauty. She's Grace.  She's Miss Shoot-you-in-the-face.

Doesn't she just make you rub your thighs in glee?!  I have always wanted one.  When they produced one for Aeronautica Imperialis, I jumped on it immediately despite the fact that nobody in our group actually plays AI.  

Thigh rubbing intensifies.

Decades into the hobby, with a battle company completed, and having cleared a big chunk of my backlog and earned lots of credits on my hobby tracking spreadsheet, I finally bit the bolt-shell.  I watched and read a bunch of guides and gathered as much intel as I could, and last week I finally hit that fateful buy button.  A few days later and it was in my hands.

3 minutes of me digging through the box for those so interested.

For now I have begun working through all the bits.  Bits where the gate (basically the sprue but for resin) is too thick to cut with clippers I'm saving for later, either to be attacked with a model saw or, if I'm feeling brave, a Dremel.  The rest I am cleaning up and splitting into bags of "ready for washing" (you should wash resin parts before you use them to get rid of the release agent they use to prime the mould) and other bags of "needs to be heated and reshaped" which is currently running at about 10% of parts.  

The quality so far has been excellent, crisp shapes and minimal mould lines to contend with.  But I've built plenty of Forgeworld kits before so I'm braced for the inevitable betrayal.  

The first half-hour of progress.

Stay tuned for further updates as this mammoth project progresses.  But I also intend to produce a much more condensed guide as a final article.  I'm also looking for suggestions for names.  So far my Raven Guard vehicles all have mythological raven related names: Badb, Fechín, Fiachna, Gontrand, Huginn, Karšift, Kutcha, Morrigan, Muninn and Uluutuar, but I'm open to all suggestions.