Aeronautica Imperialis (with Epic 40K models)

I blogged about a mini-project I started a few weeks ago, inspired by Fawcett Avenue friend Ethics Gradient and his blog "Another Slippery Slope" (see our Links section).

I enjoy painting tiny airplanes because a) they're relatively inexpensive, b) they paint reaaaally fast, c) they look cool, and d) it's fun to game with them.

This project coincides with my recent sci-fi mania in that it involves Games Workshop "Epic 40K" scale aircraft. I decided to paint Orks and Imperial aircraft in a quasi-historical theme, the Korean War of the early '50s. Orks=MiGs, Imperials = F-86 Sabres and Corsairs. Here are the results...




These are Imperial Marauders that I converted to the Ork cause. I thought they looked alot like Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmoviks, which the North Koreans used, so I went against canon and painted them up Orky. First I added some greenstuff to the nose for extra armour, to the wings for some Orkish-looking reinforcement, and to the engines for the Ork-standard issue heat shielding.


Ork aircraft...

And a close-up of the "Honchos"


Here are the Imperial planes... the silver ones are smaller OOP Thunderbolts and the ones in the foreground, the larger current ones. The latter are kitted out as Corsairs for ground attack, in the "Navy blue" scheme with low-vis tactical numbers.

Since I had six old T-bolts I painted some with black and white stripes and some with yellow and black... both of these schemes were used on sabres in Korea.

A close-up of the "Corsair".

Lots of fun to paint. Looking forward to a game with them soon. Maybe a ground attack mission against some of Greg B.'s Epic Imperial Guard...?