Monday, April 11, 2016

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - (Counts-as) Skyhunter Jetbikes in progress

Did a little kitbashing over the weekend - One of my favorite aspects of the Tzeenchian lore are the (admittedly somewhat downplayed in recent editions) Disc Riders, and I loved the mention of the single-man anti-grav chariots the Thousand Sons rode around on Prospero - thought it was a nice bit of foreshadowing. I've done some disc riders for an old Tzeentch Renegades force back in the day, and thought it could be fun to try and put something together to represent them for the Heresy-era Thousand Sons as well! Still very much a work in progress but thought I'd show what's been done so far...


The basic idea came from the description in A Thousand Sons which described the skimmer as an open-backed chariot-looking sort of conveyance, so the basis of the conversion is a high-elf chariot from the fantasy range which I felt carried a little bit of the Egyptian look. I clipped off the axles for the wheels and trimmed and re-positioned the yokes(?) as sort of anti-grav vanes on the sides.


The Skyhunter Jetbikes that I'm intending these to stand in for are each armed with a Heavy Bolter, and while I'd originally thought I'd just have the marine rider carrying the weapon, some test fitting proved that the heavy weapon is slung too low to fire over the frame of the chariot. In order to help the skimmer more closely resemble the jetbike it's intended to proxy, I instead went with the centerline-underslung weapon instead, trimming down a few leftover Heavy Bolters from the Betrayal at Calth set.


Still more work to be done on the underside, I started off with half a wheel to act as a mounting point for the flying stand which will be painted as the repulsor generator. I still need to find some decent looking thrusters and other gribblies to add to tart up the undersides a bit, but so far so good!


Haven't built out the actual riders for them yet, but set a couple baseline tac marines in place to get a sense of scale. Overall I'm pretty happy with how they're turning out!

18 comments:

  1. Those are super cool! Fluffier than a fluffy thing on National Fluffy Day!

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  2. lol, well now that's a novel concept!

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  3. Great stuff, kind of reminds me of Flash Gordon

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  4. Super cool, great conversions Mordian, love the look of these.

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  5. These are brilliant! Prefectly fit the Egyptian theme the TS have.

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  6. Great idea. Love how they are tunring out. I think you should have a control panel of sorts in the cockpit for the riders to use, that would look good and make it more sci fi too.

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  7. Great outside the box thinking there man. Plus more Thousand Sons work!

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  8. They're mildly insane. Which I suppose is somewhat appropriate.

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  9. This is a genius kit-bash! Looks brilliant, & very in-keeping with the esoteric & mystical Thousand Sons.

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  10. @Catachan Commissar: Thanks man!

    @The GunGrave: Hah! That's pretty fluffy!

    @Da Masta Cheef: Indeed, sometimes you just gotta go wild with the bits and see what happens. :)

    @TheMightyFlip: Haha, for sure! FLASH! AAH AAAAAAH!

    @Siph_Horridus: Thanks very much!

    @Col. Hertford: Cheers, man!

    @NafNaf: Excellent idea! That will definitely help - good call, man!

    @Strumwulf: Thanks!

    @Rory Priest: I appreciate it!

    @Zzzzzz: Haha! Absolutely!

    @Pawn Cocktail: Thanks very much!

    I really appreciate all the kind words, everyone! Will definitely have more pics to come!

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  11. actually i love the tac marines riding those. so cool.

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  12. Haha I was thinking of a very similar conversion this morning actually! If you haven't yet, the age of sigmar prosecutors legs look like they'd make great assault marines

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  13. Hrm... Banner poles on the back ends with thin standards flapping in the winds would really look cool on these and give even more of a feel that they are flying about above the battlefield?

    Otherwise, I love them. Good stuff mate!

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  14. Clever work there Mordian, the chariots make for great jet bikes for them and don't seem out of place at all in the craziness of 30k.
    They are missing bright banners fluttering the pride of Prospero :-)

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  15. @Zab: Thanks man!

    @Timeo: Excellent! I'll have to check 'em out!

    @Dai: Good call! Some nice whippy banners are a must-have!

    @Joe B: Thanks very much! Banners are a go!

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  16. And if you need a jetbike for a character model - consuls, or whatnot - you only need to make the one :)

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