Death Company Stormraven Gunship 1

Santa really delivered this year, and in the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of getting to grips with the largest Games Workshop model I have ever built. That is to say, built for it's intended purpose. I once 'put together' a Land Raider for use as an Ork Battlewagon, so let's make the distinction here and say this is the largest model I have ever actually followed the assembly instructions for!

Testing a few ideas, taken from the Blood Angels Codex

As with most of my models I like to add some conversions, and as there is no way of making the 'Flying Brick' any more attractive without major kit-bashing I have decided to leave the structure largely unchanged, and instead add Death Company details to each of the larger panels. The Death Company is comprised of soldiers who have become so consumed with fighting they have lost the ability to function in normal society and are instead destined to die in battle (marked by their black armour), as they are overcome with the memories of their Primarch Sanguinius' final hours where he was cut down by the traitor Horus, ten thousand years before the current Warhammer 40,000 universe.

As their method of transport to their final battle, it could almost be treated as a flying homage to both the Death Company and to Sanguinius himself. This week I started with some easy 'skulls' as pictured above, and continued assembling the chassis.

Click for a larger version.

I used some Instant-Mold to form the mold for the hollow sections, then building them up with Milliput Black (much harder then normal Milliput). A few skulls of Green Stuff finish off the details, and I may go back and make some better skulls in the future. As with most modelling projects it's very easy to get carried away making all the small details as perfect as possible, but in this case I hope to push on and let the complete model speak for itself. Even without conversions I will probably take months to finish this guy!

Size comparison. I can't wait to detail the base!