Building a Landspeeder

I had an evening to my self last night, and so I decided to do some modeling. I probably should have worked on one of the many half-done things I've got lying around - the super secret project or my much neglected Angels of Redemption. But I really felt like putting something together.

So I had a rummage in my box draw, and pulled this out. I'd picked it up a while ago - around the same time I got my Assault of Black Reach set I think - and it had sat in the draw ever since.

Despite what it says on the box, it's not actually a dreadnought. I ordered some hobby stuff - greenstuff and magnets I think - and the shop was also getting rid of a landspeeder pretty cheap. The catch was that it was just the sprues - no box, no decals and no instructions. The dreadnought box was just what the shop had stuffed it into for shipping (which seems a bit odd to me - "we threw out the landspeeder box, but kept the dreadnought one for shipping!", but whatever).

It was a previous generation landspeeder - the current model can also make tornado and typhoon pattern land speeders, includes a heavy flamer and some chapter symbols. So in other words, more bits! About the only options this version has is either a heavy bolter or a multimelta.

After cutting all the bits, I carefully started dry fitting pieces. I originally thought I'd just get all the bits ready and save the actual assembly for another day, but naturally the desire to break out the glue got to strong.

The biggest problem I found with the model was that some of the main pieces are somewhat warped. This is a pretty common problem with the landspeeder model - particularly the the top and bottom parts of the chassis.

I was able to use some of the other pieces to help reshape the bottom piece- the seat base helped pull everything up, and the sensor on the bottom helped pull it down.

I planned on gluing the top and bottom together as late in the process as possible - probably after I've painted the marines. I wish, however, that I'd held off sticking on the bumper bar thingie, because that's going to make it much harder to line up the two sections correctly.

I'm also finding it a bit tricky to get the screen behind the seats into place properly. I think there's some extra flash or a mold line that's making the piece just slightly to big. I did a little bit of shaving down, but I was reluctant to do to much because I couldn't really tell where the problem was.

But it's certainly a cool looking model, and it was fun to put together so far (let me reserve final judgement until after I've joined the top and bottom).

The only thing left to decide is how to outfit it. Like I mentioned above, the only options included in the box are the heavy bolter and the multmelta. Either sit on the bar you can see in the bottom image, so there's not really much scope for magnatising them so they can be swapped out.