Starting work on the Land Raider...

Here we go!

 Ok, I've done a total of 27 space marine infantry figures thus far.  That is sanding down mold lines, priming, assembling, gluing, holding while the glue sets, painting, second coat-ing, washing, detailing, and second coat detailing, over two dozen little guys.  And I still have more to do.  But I needed to do something else because I have gotten really, really, REALLY bored worked on little people.  Good thing I had a land raider crusader/redeemer sitting on the shelf waiting to be worked on, because it is exactly the kind of thing I was up for working on.  So I am.  I figure this is going to take me about 20 hours to do, which means it could take me two or three weeks to finish, depending on how busy I am.  I would love to see my complete kick ass looking land raider right now, but its a labor of love, and the more time I spend on it during painting and construction, the more I'm going to get out of it when its finished.  And here on the blog I'll document the progress of the project.

Ok.  The Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer is one of the biggest models there is in Warhammer 40K, and possibly the biggest model for the entire space marines army.  It clocks in at 124 parts- the Storm Raven Gunship for the Blood Angle Space Marine faction, which is probably the vehicle closest in size to the land raider, has 116 pieces.  In game play, the Land Raider Crusader gives me 12 Strength 4, armor penetration 5, twin linked (meaning you get to roll twice to hit) shots from the side mounted storm bolters that shoot 24 inches.  The top mounted assault cannon gives me a 4 strength 6, armor penetration 4, twin linked shots.  It can carry 16 infantry figures who can assault on the same turn the disembark.  It has armor of 14 all the way around.  Right out of the box, before you add any additional weapons such a multimelta to kill other vehicles, this thing is fast moving, enemy infantry shredding, moving fortress bar none.  I plan on throwing my terminators inside and just demolishing the armies of my foes.  Hordes of cheap orks or necrons?  Bring 'em on.  But first I need to build the thing.

Its gonna take me a while to get this all put together.

As I said, this thing has a *ton* of pieces.  Here are the sprues untouched, just out of the box.

Yeah.  That's almost as many items as were in the entire Assault on Black Reach Warhammer 40K starter kit.  I love seeing all these pieces though.  It reminds me of when I was a kid and got the Lego Blacktron Message Intercept Base for my 9th birthday.  There were sooooo many little bags of lego pieces to put together.  That thing was HUGE.  I remember that it took me 5 hours to put it together.  I *loved* that toy.

Well, as my mother always said, "the bigger the boy, the bigger the toy."

This thing isn't going to be done in 5 hours.

First step, wash off the sprues.  Its a pretty standard step.   I want to get all of the oils and whatnot off of the plastic before I start going to work on it.  I want the primer and paint and glue to go on without any problems, and I don't want any little bumps or ridges screwing up the pieces or the fittings between them. Little soap, little water, little kitchen sponge action, little drying off, we done.  There were a few parts with little crevices where water had beaded up and I couldn't reach it with a towel, so I let the sprues air dry for about an hour before I applied the spray on primer.

I've done enough blogging about my priming and I think you all get the picture.  It took me a while to prime everything, flip it over, and prime it again, and let it all dry.  There are six separate sprues in the package, and my spray paint box was only big enough to spray two at a time, so I would spay them out, wait ten minutes, flip the two I was working on over, do them again, wait ten minutes, take the finished ones off and put the new ones on, and repeat.

A detailed section of the inside of the Land Raider.

Based on my work on my rhino space marine transport, I have decided to work on several pieces of this project while they are still on the sprue instead of cutting everything out and working on them seperately.  I decided to do this for a few reasons.  First of all, it makes it much harder to misplace any of the pieces.  With 124 parts, and some of them very small, its easy for something, such as the instructions, a painting book, the paper towel I use to clean of my brushes, etc, to cover up a piece, which results in my wasting time looking for something, and its kind of a buzz kill.  Second of all, keeping the pieces on the sprue makes it very easy for me to paint the pieces and move the 'em around to get the bast light and painting angle without ever having to touch the piece itself.  Less smudging is better.  Third, it cuts down on items getting knocked around, scratched or otherwise banged up.  So hey- I'll see how it goes. I know it'll mean that I need to repaint the places where the pieces connect to the sprue after I sand down the connection spots after I clip the pieces out.  I'll have to see if it is worth the hassle.

One last pic before I end this entry.  This picture shows a computer counsel that will also be on the inside of the land raider.  The instructions call for constructing the land raider from the inside out; its pretty much impossible to paint the interior once the the model has been constructed, so I need to work on detailed parts like this now.  The rest of the model, while big, isn't especially detailed, at least not in comparison to the interior of the raider.  I bet at this point I have put in about 3 hours of out and out work, not waiting for something to dry work, on this thing.  And I keep working on it.  I'll have more photos soon.

Until next time,

David D.