Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Drop Pods built!

In concert with the Storm Eagle, the rest of the Khamasiin's infantry will be dropping into battle via jump pack or drop pod. That means I needed to build some drop pods - three of 'em in fact! Now while it's not the most difficult model to assemble, good lord is it tedious. Almost every piece is repeated five times and building three of 'em at once meant fifteen repetitions at a time. The horror... the horror...

That said, with some perseverance (and not a little bit of swearing), the three pods have rolled off the assembly line!

To facilitate painting, the models were built in three sub assemblies. The bottom 'starfish' was built first, then the stabilizer fins and engine were assembled using the starfish as a placement guide but leaving the fins unglued at the bottom. The fit is tight enough that they stay clipped on quite well, but will be glued in place once they're painted up. The center console was left separate as well, I'm not a big fan of the restraint harnesses (a little too busy for the interior) so they're being left out for now.

While the top and bottom sections are removable, it's also a truism that they really only fit well in the position they were built. Rotating them to an alternate position works to an extent but in certain cases they don't line up well. To avoid that I marked a single fin and made a matching mark on the starfish (single, double and triple hash marks respectively) so I know which top goes with which bottom and in what orientation. A little pre-planning goes a long way to prevent future problems!

Another quick tip that I found helpful when building the bottom section - The ramps sometimes stick or are prevented from closing easily by the design of the center section. I find that if you shave down the hard corner on the hinge connections, the doors open and close much smoother.

All in all not the most exciting bit of construction for the force, but feels good to get them out of the way! At this point there's enough assembled to start doing some test games, and a fair bit more to add to the painting queue!