Sunday, 3 April 2022

Warsmith's Words: The Retro Raider

 Welcome back to the Vault! My recent hobby sessions have taken a slight tangent. Hobby Brain has been saying "Finish the Iron Warriors Kill Team". Hobby Heart has said "Blow that; build the new shiny!"

Heart beat Head. My friend Jon at Battle Bling recently released a Land Raider mod kit which turns the plastic model into a retro Raider with a lot of nods back to the Proteus. One impulse purchase later, the bits were in my grubby mitts!

With its calling back to early models I figured this model ought to be an ancient Chapter Relic, and should belong to the Veterans of the Long War. I had ideas to convert the Lascannons and Heavy Bolters with Death Guard bitz (Entropy Cannons and other Nurgley guns) but I couldn't find all the cannon parts in the spares box.

And so the Iron Warriors have received reinforcements!

The dark grey is the original plastic kit; the light grey is mod kit. The conversion parts are all 3D printed resin! This has been interesting and educational to work with; there's much less warpage compared to other resin kits, and you have to contend with the print supports as opposed to the traditional casting gates.

The detail is very sharp, and a decent fit to the original model.


The printed parts needed some minor green stuffing to fill a gap on a top track (possibly due to poor positioning on my part), and a very small "split" on on track. Other than that there were no imperfections on the parts.

The two parts of the main chassis did need a thin piece of plasticard to fill a gap; however it's so slight it's barely noticeable.

 I've enjoyed building the kit but it will sit on the painting queue for a while; I really do need to return to the Kill Team. Perhaps they will get to ride in the Retro Raider! Certainly the beast will need a worthy name.

The Retro Raider kit will return to the Battle Bling website next month. I understand it will be as a more traditional resin cast kit as opposed to 3D print. I'd like to explore 3D printing more; Battle Bling show the technology offers a lot to hobbyists!

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