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Land Speeder - Recon Assignment || Marines Malevolent, 2nd Company || Third War for Armageddon
Starting off a new, purely firstborn force for my Marines Malevolents, I wanted to do something classic. Since I knew I wanted to incorporate Whirlwinds into the army, I figured the humble Land Speeder would be a great addition - providing some targetting assistance for my artillery.
Since this kit is no longer in production, I had to print one! The file I used was Angelic Skimmers v2.1 by Caddyh11. The details are generally quite nice, and nobody I've shown it to has noticed that it's not the original plastic kit. The file has some issues - for one, it isn't split up, but rather one giant chunk of resin. It made painting the pilots a bit of a pain, as well as changing elements of the gun. Secondly, some of the geometry is a bit off, with some polygons bowing inwards where they shouldn't. The worst of it is on the middle of the steel grav-plate/bull-bar (whatever it is) at the front of the speeder. You'll notice I added a bit of battle damage to mine to obscure it. Of course, being a 'pay what you want' model, I can't really fault it!
I tried having a bit of extra fun with the base, since it didn't need to fit any boots or treads on top of it. I even added little bits of paperclip rebar sticking out of the shattered tiles, although it's not particularly visible on the final model.
I went back and forth a lot on how to paint the black markings onto the hull of the speeder, and ended up going for some black diagonal stripes, inspired by the modern box art style the Horus Heresy tanks use. The rest was painted using my usual recipe of Bad Moonz Yellow contrast and a raw umber oil wash.
Next up should be a pair of Whirlwinds, and then onto the infantry!
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