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Looking at the new guard codex, I feel that the rules for the valk and vend really represent helicopters better than planes, so I am looking at kitbashing an imperial helicopter gunship. The base model I want to use is a 1:48 scale Hind pictured below:



For the conversion the obvious changes would be to replace the weapons with lascannons, and maybe modify the nose to look sort of eagle-ish, or for a valk replace the nose weapon with a multi-laser. What other modifications would people recommend?

Hmm, I would say mady beef up to rotors, but thats just me. make it a bit boxier around the ends. taek away the tail rotor and maybe replace it with something more 40k-ish like a jet or some techy thing. I would say not to change the nose to much but close up the bubble. and make it more boxed. keep the ball turret in the nose for ML and maybe make the wings on the side a bit straighter and shorter. Of course this is just me. it it up to you.


Oh yeah add some incongraphy

"Looking at the new guard codex,..."

how'd you manage that?

sounds cool making a guard chopper! yes definatly bluk up the rotters and get rid of the back rotter thing(i don't know much about choppers) and bluk up the body to make it less round!, all guard vechiles are bluky and not round!

Go for it

I'd dump the rotors completely (main and tail) and move the exhaust nozzles further back (they stick out the sides of the engine housing) and also change the tail slightly (maybe by angling the tail vanes down more).

With BIG ENGINES, anything can fly.

It never quite made sense to me......

Imperial guardsmen without helicopters????? Are you crazy!?!?!?

I hope this conversion turns out as awesome as it could be!

Helicopters are not the only way to do VTOL. Valkyries and their ilk would be relying on suspensor tech and vectored thrust out of their heyoooooj engines

Uge' rivets everywhere!

imperial guns, needs to be a bit more square ish (all imperial vehicles seem to be box's)
and rivets.

i second the idea to beef up the blades aswell, only a 5-10 min plasticard job

I was looking around at other sites and found the following you could use for inspiration:

Catachan Huey conversion
http://warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2865524

Thanks for the input everyone. I picked up the model today, and after looking at the components in person, I will definitely bulk up the rotors. Another fast change is that the crewman the model comes with will be getting head swaps for cadian shock trooper heads. I decided to use it as a valk rather than a vendetta, and the machine gun in the ball turret will be replaced with a sentinel multi-laser I have on hand. Also, the swatter missiles in the wing tips will be replaced with HK missiles i have on hand. I do like the multiple missile pods the model comes with, so I may stay with those rather than find some GW equivalent.

There are a few small sensors on the exterior I will be leaving off (what imperial vehicle has sensors).

The tail rotor will be staying, as it is necessary to the functioning of the chopper. The tail rotor will be slightly bulked.

As for bulking out the rest of it, I do like the angular look of the craft, and i was wondering it would look more imperial if I simply added some angular armor plates to it, that still have the same contour as the model, but still add more visible hard angles.

I think you should go the route of takeing off the rotor system completely, I think helicopters are probably obsolete if you have suspensor technology, I do like the shape of the russian helo better, I would think that vehicles made in different factories,by different workers, on different planets would tend to look a bit different. The lasgun is made several different ways, the vostroyan one, the elysian one, the catachan,the cadian,etc... I would take the ideas used in the above picture from warseer and apply it to your model, that would be cool! Also, you need to think about how practical it will be to play with and transport a model with long rotors sticking off the top.

Another vote for "ditch all rotors". Also, I would fatten the wings considerably; make them big trapezoids, kinda like an F-22. It'll look more like a V___ (insert IG skimmer name here) that way.

hmmmm the roto is large so maybe remove them or trim em down a bit, yes you could make it angular, hey who cares if choppers are obsolete, choppers would probably be easier to maintain and repair them suspensor tech flyers so dude its ur army ur choice!

that pic is awsome

Helicopters are really complicated. Thats why so many of them fall out of the sky unexpectedly.

well if you can find a service record of supensor tech flyers and there saftey record i would be more then willing to say they are better but of course they don't exist yet
well sorry about that but in IMO i think choppers are better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
besides supensor tech flyers would be comlicated AS WELL!
its an agument that won't end!

I reckon you should keep the tail rotor. Hope to see some pics of this project, sounds like it's gonna look pretty cool!

JD21290 wrote:imperial guns, needs to be a bit more square ish (all imperial vehicles seem to be box's)
and rivets.

i second the idea to beef up the blades aswell, only a 5-10 min plasticard job

Like JD21290 said, you'll have to box-alise is so it'll fit in better with all the boxy tanks.
Also, you should stick some big thruster motors on it.

I dunno about getting rid of ALL the rotors. Because then it wont be a heli... itll be a weird thruster jet thing. Good ideas tho, seriously do this prodject I wanna see it complete