White Scars Anvillus Pattern Dreadclaw Drop Pod

I finally fished my Christmas present from the wife: the Anvillus Pattern Dreadclaw Drop Pod.

Just cleaning and assembling the thing took a few sessions. Fitting it together was actually fairly difficult.

It is a pretty large model! And when it is all together, it looks fantastic.

There were some gaps between some of the resin and plastic pieces so I tried to fill them with green stuff and smooth them as well as I could.

After several weeks of painting sessions (did I mention painting white is a real pain?), here she is, brand new and clean from the manufacturom. But a drop pod isn't going to look like this for long!

I figure a drop pod has an extremely rough life so it should look pretty worn and weathered. 

I wanted it to look like it had made many drops; a valuable transport with a long history within the Brotherhood of the Wind.

The photos aren't the best, but it looks decent in reality. 

Overall, this thing was a much bigger job than I anticipated when I started (but then again, so are almost all of my projects...). One problem is that I have issues with my white priming so I spend a lot of time just painting white on top of white, and white takes a lot of coats to cover anything! Also, the clean white look I have adopted is a lot of work since I am doing all that black lining of every crease instead of just washing and drybrushing the entire model like a smart, sane person would do. But, that clean white is what separates these White Scars from the Death Guard or the World Eaters and their dirty off-whites, and I like the look, even if it is a pain on a model this big.

I didn't even bother with the base, or doing much detail on the bottom of the model (just a boltgun metal drybrush down there), partly because I was burned out on this thing by the end, and partly because a drop pod flying around sideways the battlefield just seems silly to me. In my mind, this thing is meant to rocket straight down from a space ship, slamming directly into its target at a force that would kill anyone who wasn't a superhuman in power armor, and opening up to release a squad of space marines with guns blazing. Screaming down from space, then pivoting around to its side and flying around like a weird, slow jet just doesn't make any physical or tactical sense in my mind. (How does it hover along slowly if it is a jet? Don't the riders all fall over on their sides? In order to burn targets like in the rules, it must be pivoting back and forth between vertical and horizontal positions?) So I will just leave mine off the stand.

I am looking forward to seeing this thing on a battlefield soon.