This past week, my wife and I decided to do a staycation, and do all of the chores/changes/additions to our condo that had been piling up. As luck would have it the day I started re-painting our living room, was the same day the Horus Heresy book from forgeworld arrived. All week I have been reading the book before in between major house work. It turns out I have enough FW goodies to do a really nice heresy era army. Naturally the question is which army, but we'll come back to that.
Today I finally had time to model. No matter what(or how many) HH army(ies) I decide to paint, the storm eagle needed to be built. It seemed like such a nice relaxing reward for all the work this week.
Wrong.
The storm eagle is bar-none the most painful forgeworld model I have have built. It seems that nothing in the kit was straight. Between boiling water, a hair dryer, and more rubber bands and clamps than I can shake my fist at I think I managed the kit ok. I did not do a great job though, which is kind of sad given how awesome the design is. The front of the model does not fit quite right, the plastic top coming a little too forward, and the I forgot to put in the bulk head, but other than that it is mostly constructed. A few hours until all the glue is solid and I will be able to see how bad the seams really are. Paint and battle damage should cover this less than stellar build.
What should I paint this up as? At the moment I am leaning towards Emperor's Children, but lacking a decal sheet or upgrade bits leaves me a little worried I could pull off all of the elaborate EC designs by hand. On the other hand, it would be really easy to paint this up to match my Ultramarine storm talons and Caestus Assault Ram. The battle of Calth is likely years away on the Horus Heresy publishing schedule, so I won't have any good reference material for Ultramarines for some time.
That's disappointing, because ever since I saw the rules I've wanted to add one to my army. I'm in no hurry so hopefully I get a good casting.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read, been told and seen it seems like ALL Storm Eagles have the same problems. Mine is sitting in a box for when I have a week or two of wanting to frustrate myself. Despite all of that, its still one of the coolest miniatures Forge World has produced.
ReplyDeleteThe body of the aircraft is so difficult to put together with it being part resin/plastic that I am not sure the best casting in the world would make it really easy. On the other hand, the model looks absolutely fantastic in person. The design really is stellar. If you want one Muskie, I would go for it, just commit to one really frustrating afternoon.
ReplyDeleteOuch, I hate it when FW stuff comes out like that. From the looks of it, you have done a fine job though, so pat yourself on the back!
ReplyDeleteIndeed, that model was a titanic pain in the butt to assemble. I'd run into the same thing when building the one I'd done for my Heresy-era World Eaters. Boiling water, hair-dryer, rubber bands and clamps aplenty. It looks cool once it's together, but it definitely took a lot of blood, sweat and tears.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to seeing how you paint it up - I'd think adding it to the Ultramarine air corps you have done so far would be cool...
I experienced exactly the same problems as you mentioned above. Sometimes i had doubts that this kit would ever be completed. And i was a little disappointed about the overall quality. For that money i expected a little bit more. But if you have finally build it, its worth all the effort :) http://wolfsherz.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/der-stormeagle-wip-1/
ReplyDeleteGreetings, Wolfsherz
If you think that's difficult try building a DE Tantalus! Holy hell was that a pain in the ass. Noting was straight, flash everywhere, brass etched decking, huge gaps to fill. It was a mess....
ReplyDeletesame probs as above also for some odd reason i got the instructions to the conversion kit not the full model kit which ment alot of the parts it was talking about were either not there or already on the main hull plsu i dont think 3 pages is with about 4 pictures each is enouggh to help u build it. i keept thinking i was missing a page
ReplyDeleteI have been building this kit up for the last month. Tried to build it for a group build on a modelers site. Too bad it had all the same problems. Hate to say it but the idiot that designed the master didn't know what he was doing. The sides don't fit as the shrinkage allowance wasn't figured in, also threw out most of the instructions build order. Glad I did as it probably would not have been finished. Anyway, with a lot of hot water, jigs and fixtures, scratch building, a fair amount of Evergreen plastic sheet and a lot of skill it is almost together. This includes the doors opening correctly and the gaps adjusted and fixed. The build in detail is on the 40k Radio boota forum and modelersalliance.com This beast really takes a lot of work to build well as the tolerances just stink. If you don't correct the errors as you go along, they add up and it ends up all out of balance.
ReplyDeleteI found mine to be a nightmare to build. my top section wouldnt sit flush so I had to file it, parts didnt meet properly so I had to fill them, some areas like side of front ramp and the rear ramp are extremely thin. Took me roughly 2 week to build and paint. despite the pain it was worth it. Had to add blue leds in cockpit and top turret (which it can't have but looks cool so I built it anyway lol), nice work on yours, looks way better then mine did at that stage
ReplyDelete