I hate starting new blogs, never know quite what to put. Anyway, i'm a bit late in starting this, as i've already started building, but the intention is to document and record the process of building my current project, a Warhammer 40k Airborne Imperial Guard army. For starters, a bit of background nonsense:
I've played a normal infantry based Imperial Guard army for some time, but I a few christmasses ago while spending time at my parents I decided i wanted to try something different. I'd decided before the project really started that i wanted to use the Elysian Drop Troops lists from forgeworld, mainly for the sheer silliness of an entirely air-mobile army. But as the current Imperial Guard codex has since come out and opened the option for Valkyries in normal games i'm trying to make the army compatible for use with that too.
The Valkyrie design came about from me musing over creating a stand-in of similar proportions to the GW model that i could easilly make from plasticard sheets, with as few curves or overly detailed sections as possible (such as the engines - i didn't want to have to go superdetailing anything if possible).In trying out designs and ideas and thinking about similar looking planes i remembered the Disney cartoon Talespin - i loved this cartoon as a kid (still do :D) and remembered the transport seaplane used by the main characters. A few google searches later and i had my inspiration.
I knew the angles on the fuselage would prove tricky but i was confident i could construct something similar. Thinking of how the FW Vulture uses some components of the Valkyrie, i thought i could use the same idea with mine and could use an interchangeable fuselage to convert between the two. Given the wing shape i already had, the obvious choice for inspiration was the p-38 Lightning, one of my favourite ww2 fighters.
The project lay dormant for a year as other, more feasible projects got in the way. When looking at it again i made the decision to use magnets to attatch the interchangeable fuselages and also to allow weapon fits to be swapped out. I also found i had trouble envisaging the shape of some of the fuselage plates on paper and couldn't figue out the dimensions i'd need to cut out. Realising i'd be better off working in 3D, i enlisted my brothers aid in finding something that was simple enough that i could use, that would give me measurements to work from and also that was free :) Finding Google Sketchup i took my first bumbling steps into 3D design, and i'm quite pleased with the results:
The Valkyrie design
The Vulture design
I've made designs for a retro-looking drop sentinel sort of based of the vehicles in an old ps2 game called Ring of Red, but thats for a later date.
I'd looked into writing up some fluff to go with the force as a point of interest, and also to explain what i'm doing using seaplanes as Valkyries. Basically I thought of a regiment hailing from a planet where most of the population centres are out to sea or on peninsulas, occupying the few comfortably habitable and fertile parts of a planet where most of the land masses are rocky deserts. Mining goes on in these deserts, and various ork invasions in the sector have left areas still infested with feral ork tribes. Efforts to exterminate them have been unsuccesful, but raids on occupied areas are infrequent and are easily kept in check.
Raids on mining settlements are more troublesome however, and require the local regiments to be adept at rapid response deployments. The lack of available space for proper airfields near civilised areas means that the ability to take off and land at sea is preferred, thus amphibious troop transports and support craft are used
I'm probably going to tidy this up and expand on it at some point, but its not a massive priority. I mainly want to get stuff built!
I was wanting to continue a seaplane theme throughout the other airpower elements of the force, but as i looked at the different units available this became more and more difficult.
Branching out to Marauder stand-ins and possibly even larger designs was easy, there are plenty of designs to look at as many historical flying boats tend to be transports of similar size.
When looking at stand-ins for the Thunderbolt and Lightning fighters was originally looking at trying to incorporate elements of design from the Schneider trophy racing seaplanes of the 1930s - planes such as the
Supermarine S6 and the
Macchi MC-72 had a really nice shape to them that i though would translate nicely into model form. However, in working through converting over a design i ran into several glaring problems - First, in a sleek single engined craft designed to be driven by propellor there is no place to put a exhaust when converted to jet propulsion without messing with the lines and fuselage shape; second, floats look really out of place on an interceptor! I knew they'd be a problem from the outset but was hoping to work them a bit closer to the body and pass the off as doubling up as extra long-range fuel tanks, but they'd still be huge and unwieldy-looking even before the 40k 'chunky' aesthetic. I just can't picture and interceptor keeping up with anything with stuff like that strapped to them
In looking into Twin-boom aircraft designs similar to the valkyrie i did stumble across quite a few interesting fighter designs from the ww2-post war period though, and i think some of them could be adapted quite nicely to 40k planes. I especially want to do something with the
Vultee XP-54, and since it was quite big and had quite a heavy weapons loadout it might fit nicely as a Thunderbolt.
I'm thinking something similar to the
Saab 21-J would look nice as a lightning, as its such a bizzare little plane. I'm not a fan of the wing shape thought, so i'd change that quite a bit if i did. Another option is the
Heinkel HE-162 as its small and a nice weird shape.
I also found that german manufacturers Blohm + Voss made a flying boat design during WW2 that is very similar to how my valkyries ended up, but it has 3 engines and is more of a recconisance design. i'm tempted to adapt it but i'll probably wait until i find a better use or FW make a suitable valkyrie variant
If i find enough enthusiasm to actually finish the fluff I'm probably going to keep the Valkyries/vultures and fighters as totally separate organisations and have the fighters either carrier-based or land operating so i can justify not making them float planes. As long as everything looks good and i'm happy with the designs i'm not too fussed though :)
Right, thats more than enough waffle, gonna try and post the progress shots next.
Welcome to the Flying Circus!
