Easy Storm Speeder turret conversion

There are many big, difficult issues in the world. War, famine, corruption, ecological collapse, the Storm Speeder's turret design. I could go on. Today's post holds an answer to one of those issues. It's a very, very simple answer, so in the interests of not burying the lead: I plopped the Impulsor turret in the relevant hole.

No conversion work is needed, you just pop it in. You don't even need glue; once the surfaces are painted, it'll hold nice and firmly.

The internet has joked long and hard about poor Brother Tinnitus up there in the turret. Ironically I don't think tinnitus is his biggest problem, given that soldiers generally fire shoulder-mounted missile launchers, literally rest their cheeks on their rifles while aiming, and are generally subjected to all manner of loud noises whether or not they're manning a turret.

No, Brother Tinnitus' biggest problem is knees.

I doubt he has any.

Presumably his role requires a double amputee, and in fairness there'll be no shortage of those in a Chapter. Regardless, I decided to get shot of him. This has the duel benefit of being simpler to paint, and providing a look that I personally prefer.

Now granted there is a printable STL for a conversion kit out there, but I don't own a printer, did have an Impulsor turret kicking around, and crucially had seen this Reddit post. So actually, it's not even me who answered one of those big questions I posed at the start of the article (or starticle, if you will).

I imagine as a fast, low-altitude recon asset, one of the main benefits of having more storage in the back is more room for fuel. As a vehicle that has to operate independently, they'd need the ability to engage any kind of target, then fly away as fast as possible. The Impulsor's missile pod is (a) something the Chapter would already need to manufacture in significant numbers, and (b) has HE, AT and AA munitions as standard. Likewise the grenade sponsons look generic enough that they could be loaded with anything. With that visual ambiguousness, all that remains is for me to swap out the prow gun to tell my opponent which variant I'm using. In general I expect to use the Thunderstrike to work in concert with other anti-armour units, but all the variants have their uses.

Storm Speeder Hammerstrike

Painting

As the crew are in Phobos armour I've done them in the fieldgrey of my other Phobos units, and there's really nothing further of practical use to add, beyond the obvious need for sub-assemblies on this thing, particularly the pilots. Oh, and I guess I should say I added a brown dust wash to the hull to add a little more visual interest as that much fieldgrey looks very bland.

Screens were painted black, the designs added in white, then the whole thing was covered with Citadel Contrast Warp Lightning followed by a gloss varnish.

Despite being a relatively small vehicle, I found it to be just as much work, if not more work, than a full-size tank thanks to all the detail of the crew compartment, and the general profusion of greebling common to all Primaris designs. I'm glad to have one in my army, but I'm not sure I'll paint another.

Canonically, in terms of unit markings, speeders are like bikes - they're not piloted by dedicated vehicle crews, but by the marines in battle companies. These two lads have therefore been painted as members of Squad 8 (hence the VIII on the right pauldrons). The rest of their squad will comprise 5 lads with flamers (the colourful bait) and 3 snipers (the nasty surprise).

That's it for today; I'll leave you with a shots from a few more angles.