Dakkajet build complete! (Bell X-1 Conversion)

Not much to say, except I'm very happy with the final product. 

I'm really liking the top-mounted guns and using recessed rivets on the patch panels is a nice effect and nice change of pace.

Dakkajet has wings!

Did a lot of work on the wings tonight.  Started with cutting off the hover jets and covering up the holes with plates.  After that mounted and converted up the guns before finally getting them on the body.

I also put the landing gear down.  The reason for that will be revealed soon.

More work on the Dakkajet

Dakkarocket?

Mounted the cockpit and front landing gear wheel well.  Looking great. Lots of reinforcement to make sure the cockpit stays in place.

After putting the body together, blocked off the tail and mounted the engine. Random crap to make it look more mechanical. This area will get more detail after all the current work cures.

This has so far, been a whole hell of a lot of work, but I love the results so far.

Dakkajet underway! Conversion from Bell X-1 model kit.

In case you missed my video showing the build I'm working on, here it is:

I've put aside the Savage Orcs for now and have dived right in.  First step was to re-size the body to fit my vision. Cut the tail off, and the tip of the nose.

After fighting with trying to get an Ork in Chuck's seat, I scrapped the stock cockpit piece and started building my own.  Test fit on this pic, position looking good!

And after much more work here is the completed cockpit. Using arms from ..well I'm not sure where the left arm comes from, a control panel from the Valkyrie kit, and some bits from the X-1 kit, it works perfectly.

Pretty good progress IMO.  Need to get the engine sorted out next. I really like the look of the dakkajet that has the tail extending out over the exhaust, so I'm going to try for that same idea here.

That's it for now, tomorrow is game night!

No time to post..

Not much has been going on other then painting Savage Orcs.  Last two weeks I've played my mobile Tau list and so far it's pretty good. The suits put out a lot more firepower then I was anticipating and Longstrike..well.just freaking awesome.

I might try out something different next week.  An Ork/Tau infantry horde list.  I'll see.

Anyway just an update pic on the Savage Orcs.  They need to be done by end of June. 

I still want to jump on the Dakkajet project but can't stop working on these guys. I am in the process of doing 4 more which will be the front 3 ranks done. Once I get there, I 'm going to force myself to stop and work on the X-1.

So that's about it.  More stuff coming soon, if I can put the paint brush down.

Tau pure mobile list 1750pts

As promised, here is a mobile list I came up with that completely lacks any static units.  First to go was the Aegis, then the Fireblade.   Every unit in this list is either in a transport, jet pack (and thus can deepstrike) or outflank.  It you're playing a highly aggressive (demons) or mid-range shooty army (grey knights) it should work out great forcing your opponent to split his forces. The closest thing to static is the Skyray.

There are a couple things I'd like to do, for example give the missile suits skyfire.

I still want to get 1-2 Riptides. I would replace all 3 units of crisis suits with 2 riptides if I had them.

HQ (183): Crisis commander; Iridium armor, drone controller, cyclic ion blaster, missile pod, shield generator, target lock, onager gauntlet.

Troop (223): 12 Firewarriors; Shas'ui, Devilfish with SMS, disruption pod
Troop (159): 6 Firewarriors w/carbines, Devilfish with SMS, disruption pod
Troop (124): 18 Kroot, w/sniper and 1 hound


Elite (104): 2x XV88, 4x Plasma Rifile
Elite (104): 2x XV88, 4x Fusion blaster
Elite (181): 3x XV88, 6x Missile pod, Shas'vre w/Purtide

Fast (60): 5x Marker drone
Fast (96): 8x Marker drone
Fast (195): 3x Piranha, 3x Fusion blaster, 3x disruption pod

Heavy (190): Hammerhead, Longstrike, disruption pod, sms
Heavy (131): Skyray, Blacksun, disruption pod, sms

That's is. Highly mobile, very flexible deployment options, and still has decent firepower thanks to the multiple weapon faq for the crisis suits.

Hobby Update: Savage Orcs

I've been working on my one big must-do project and that is getting my unit of Savage Orcs (and Savage Orc Warboss) painted.  The stumbling block has been the color. I didn't want the same blue I used on the rest of my army, but wanted a kinda hybrid Blue-Green to show the (relatively) recent addition of the savages to the Clan of Gork's Snowshoe.

I mixed a lot of colors, many times. What I did find is that no matter the ratio, the greens would always dominate the blues, like the green pigments are always much more powerful.  It was really frustrating.

So I had abandoned the idea and decided to jump into painting them starting with Sotek Green.  It's very close to the old Hawk Turquoise. I then washed using my favorite Coelia Greenshade and then layer up with Sotek Green, then highlight twice with mixes of Sotek Green and Space Wolves Grey.

This got them painted but left me wholly unsatisfied with the result. Then I decided to try something completely out of the blue: I washed the first models with Thrakka Green.  This *almost* gave me the result I wanted.  Almost.  Next day I hopped on down to the game store and picked up the Waywatcher Green glaze.  This worked great, getting me very close to the vision I had in my head. 

First time I had really used a glaze, but the learning curve is pretty short. 

Still need to do the warpaint.  The other issue with these guys is now simply tedious they are to paint. Bone, leather, stone and skin.  Browns and beige oh my.  I was able to speed up the process by going to a drybrush on all the bone parts. 

Another part of that is getting in more color.  Reds really add to the look of the unit, but it's hard. There is some lizard skins on some of the models so doing red and green skins helps a lot.  I also painted the standard as they show on the GW website, with a transition from red to yellow.

That's about it for now.  I need to finish assembly on Farsight, then get him going.  Plus I'm getting the scratch building itch again, who knows what will come of that...