Deathwatch the Skies

When you're tired of painting metal boxes, why not take a break and paint one with wings?

The Corvus Darkstar, the special airbus for the Deathwatch, is next to roll off the production line for Leofa's vehicle commission. Nice model! Looks much more plausibly airbourne than the other Marine flyers, not that it's hard to do. You could glue a bumblebee to some patio tiles and they'd look more aerodynamic than a Stormraven.

I tried a slightly more complicated camo pattern for this one, interlocking stripes rather than random triangles. Masking tape helped a bit with getting them straight, although I tell you, that stuff is harder to use than you expect. When you stick it down over a lump or bulge, it can throw the whole line off-kilter, or make it narrower where the tape has folded into itself. Took a few tries to get it nearly right, anyway, and I still I had to colour-match Mechanicus Grey (the undercoat, which I don't have in my box) to redo a couple of areas.

The wing-tip jets rotate, the bomb launchers spin, and the front guns can of course be swapped to whatever pleases your eye or list most. There's a choice of missile launcher or shield projector for the top, as well as optional hurricane bolters, and assault cannons or lascannons for the nose. The front doors are also on magnets, and can also be seen on the Rhinos from earlier.

Leofa is very chary of his wallet (rightly so) and will likely use this to be various other Space Marine jets when it takes his fancy. Which is fine, I reckon, they all take so many design notes from each other that they're pretty interchangeable. This one even has the same split tail as a Valkyrie, for example, and it's about the same size.

It's a good model. The only slight qualm I have about it, and I had to have one, is that it sits very straight on its flight base. There's not much room for manouver there, it slots right into the fusilage in a very particular way, and it makes it look less manouver-y than it could, ironically. Still, that's a super-minor niggle!

Only three more models left to go in this selection, plus a big baggie of bits. Done before summer's out, I hope!