I have been updating the blog and website (bringing pages over and updating images) when I was reminded of this Forge World Ork model concept that I discussed in a blog post about Games Day 2009. A battlewagon with a huge missile on the back.
We never did see anything like this from Forge World, which is kind of understandable, as from a gaming perspective, having a huge missile doesn’t really work on the tabletop, as it is more of a strategic weapon rather than a tactical weapon, however it would have made a nice model.
With the imminent release of new Ork stuff from Games Workshop, I wonder if we will see any new Forge World Ork models? What do you think and what would you like to see?
The Thunderhawk gunship is used by the Adeptus Astartes as their primary means of deploying forces for ground combat as well as their primary source of air support. The Thunderhawk gunship is often considered the lynchpin of any Space Marine Chapter, as it is able to fulfill many combat roles. The Thunderhawk is fully capable of functioning as an orbital drop ship, a heavy ground attack gunship, or as a bomber. The aircraft is able to quickly carry Space Marine forces from orbiting starships down into the midst of a battle, while at the same time providing supporting fire against enemy ground or air targets.
Forgeworld Space Marine Thunderhawk Gunship.
This model is one of the Forgeworld Display models. When you see it for “real” you realise how large the model is. I am not a great fan of the model, however I do quite like the Thunderhawk Transporter.
This Thunderhawk was part of a airbase diorama at Warhammer World where there were all the different kinds of Space Marine Flyers.
Thunderhawk
There were lots of nice touches in this diorama, such as the above Thunderhawk getting rearmed for its next mission, whilst Space Marines guard the landing pad. Around the airbase, there were squads of Space Marines marching , as well as vehicles moving around and into position.
The Churchill AVRE was one of the so-called ‘funnies’ designed by Percy Hobart specifically for use on the D-Day beaches to break through the German fortified defences. The AVRE was the most successful ‘funny’ type and AVRE vehicles remain in service with the British Army today.
This Churchill AVRE was on display at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. For many years it had been a target on Sailsbury Plain and then spent a fair few years as a monument on the Normandy beaches.
A variant of the British WW2 Churchill Mk.III or IV tank adapted to carry and support assault engineers in breaching heavy defences, crew of 6, powered by two Bedford 6-cylinder petrol engines, armed with a 290mm Petard mortar
There was a 15mm resin and metal version of this tank available for Flames of War.
However it has now been replaced for the forthcoming (March 2020) plastic Churchill that can either be a later mark Churchill, the flamethrower Crocodile version or the AVRE version.
In gaming terms most specialist vehicles don’t really work, however this AVRE version with it’s Petard Mortar has a place if your opponent had troops skulking in bunkers.
Kyle Reese was a Resistance soldier in the post-apocalypse future, where most of humanity had already been wiped out in a deadly nuclear Third World War, sparked off by an artificial intelligence entity known as Skynet.
Kyle Reece is a metal miniature for the Terminator Genisys Miniatures Game from Warlord Games.
This is Reese when he is fighting Skynet in the future.
This Thousand Sons Legion Osiron Pattern Contemptor Dreadnought was in the display cabinets at Warhammer World.
Thousand Sons Legion Osiron Pattern Contemptor Dreadnought
For many decades, the arts by which the powers of a psyker could be maintained medically into the half-life of Dreadnought sarcophagus internment eluded the Thousand Sons, just as it had many others of the Legiones Astartes who attempted the task. It was not until the mind of Magnus itself was focused on the issue, which he saw as part of the wider Librarius Project to establish firmly the place of the psyker within the Legiones Astartes, that a solution, albeit a difficult one, was created.
The use of a crowning psychometric barrier lattice for the living brain of the mortally wounded psyker was his answer, a device he named the ‘Osiron’. Difficult to construct and using principles few even among the Imperium’s foremost psi-arcanists understood, the Thousand Sons immediately began fitting it to the highly adaptable Contemptor Dreadnought chassis in their possession with startlingly powerful results.
In 1915 the British Army started to use armoured cars in India, particularly on the North West Frontier, to relieve troops needed elsewhere. They proved so successful that this soon became standard policy. Shortly after the war the Indian Government purchased 16 Rolls-Royce cars to a new design but these proved so expensive that subsequent orders were placed with Crossley Motors in Manchester who made a tough but cheap 50hp IAG1 chassis. Substantial numbers of these cars were supplied between 1923 and 1925.
The body design, which was very similar to the Rolls-Royce version and built by Vickers at Crayford, had a number of interesting features. These included a dome-shaped turret, with four machine-gun mounts, which was designed to deflect rifle shots from snipers in ambush positions in the high passes. A clamshell cupola surmounted the turret for the commander, while side doors opened opposite ways on either side so that a crew member could dismount safely under fire. The crew area was lined with asbestos to keep the temperature down and the entire body could be electrified to keep large crowds at bay.
By 1939, when the Royal Tank Corps in India had handed most of its equipment over to the Indian Army, the Crossleys were worn out. The bodies were then transferred to imported Canadian Chevrolet chassis, with pneumatic tyres, and in this form served with Indian forces in the Middle East in the early years of the war.
You can imagine in an early Very British Civil War scenario in the early 1920s, the Vickers factory making these armoured cars available to one of the armies for fighting the civil war. You would have to think about some rules for allowing the entire body could be electrified and the impact that this would have in games.
The Vickers Crossley Armoured Car was also exported to Japan who made use of them in China.
Mainichi Shimbun [Public domain]Company B make a 1/56th scale metal and resin version which is available.
Created as a dedicated assault dropship for the Legio Custodes, the Orion can carry a full task force of the Emperor’s Talons into combat. Protected by frontal armour superior to that of the Legiones Astartes Thunderhawk Gunship, its Arachnus heavy blaze cannon and Lastrum bolt cannon can swiftly clear a landing zone of hostile infantry and armour with brutal efficiency, allowing the units within to deploy before it soars back into the sky to unleash death upon any foe who dares approach.
This Legio Custodes Orion Assault Dropship was on display ay Warhammer World.
This Storm Eagle was in one of the display cabinets at Warhammer World. It is very much what I feel the Stormraven Gunship should have been.
A formidable gunship, the Storm Eagle mounts fearsome firepower for a vehicle of its size and is capable of transporting twenty Space Marines directly into the thick of an assault.
The exact provenance of the Storm Eagle is unknown, but it bears clear similarities to the Stormravens employed by the Blood Angels and Grey Knights. Certain sources place the principal manufacture of the Storm Eagle upon Tigrus and Anvilus IX, both primary-grade Forge Worlds that suffered catastrophic damage during the Horus Heresy. In recent decades the number of Storm Eagles in active service has begun to increase, especially amongst those Chapters known to have favourable relations with the Adeptus Mechanicus. This has lead some observers to believe that production has been restored at an as yet unknown location.
