The Gun Cutter- A mock up

Evening all.  So after some scribbling of ideas and ruminating on the insanity of embarking on what looks to be a huge investment of time, not to mention plasticard... I knocked together a rough mock up out of an old carton and my trusty glue gun.  The point of this is to make sure that it hangs together as a whole and to help me visualise how I'm going to model it.  Judging from the size it looks like it will have to be a modular build so I can store and transport it easily, as the current dimensions are about 55cm long with a 35cm wingspan.

This is actually the second attempt- the first one was way too fat and bulky and looked stupid.  Hopefully this doesn't look (as) stupid, anyway it's pretty close in shape to how i visualise the Gun Cutter described in Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn novels with the hawkish profile and dagger like aspect.

The diagonal bit under the belly is an access ramp which might be intended to house a Chimera or Rhino inside the lower fuselage, that depends on my insanity levels when it comes to cutting the plasticard (I've ordered 8x A4 sheets of the stuff, and I've got a feeling that might not be enough)

The engines, of which there are four will be scavenged from some pod racer toys.  I've seen this done on some Thunderhawk scratch builds and they look spot on for a 40k ship.  I need lots of vertical jets to make the prospect of this huge lump operating in a gravity well at least fairly plausible, because let's face it..... in the grim darkness of the future, there is no aerodynamics.

Looking at the photos I'm questioning the proportions, maybe the fuselage could be longer and or skinnier.... hmmm.  I'll sleep on that, and start buying every imperial flyer bit I can find on ebay for the next few months.

Munitorum transporter

I little while back I was musing over the type of vehicles in use by the Department Munitorum for getting troops and supplies around. Forgeworld have a grand line up of vehicles availible for non-combatant roles and it was while browsing these I noticed a gap in the vehicle pool. A soft skinned multi- purpose transporter a bit like the ww2 Opel Blitz or the United States Mack truck would fill this gap, while the Imperial Guard would save their precious Chimeras and super heavy transports for the front line. Such a vehicle would be very basic, dependable and get stuff from A to B without fuss.

After looking around on thee internet I came up with this rough sketch and went down to the local model shop to procure some styrene section and sheet....

The transporter (I'm yet to think of a name for it) will be unarmed but will have the option to mount a heavy stubber in the turret above the cab. I thought a transport capacity of 20 with armour values of 10/9/9 would do the trick. I need to have a play with the Vehicle Design Rules soonish. With a transport capacity of 20, three vehicles should be able to manage a (maxed) IG platoon with a support squad which seems a fairly realistic. Imagine three of these in convoy taking urgently needed reinforcements to the front.

I have so far fabricated three chassis, so now for the hard part of doing the cabs and body work. I was stumped over what to do about wheels for a while until it struck me that LEGO makes nice chunky 40kesque truck wheels, twelve of which I procured from these friendly people for a few quid.

Well here's the work in progress, I'll hopefully have something looking truck like soon.