Showcase: Legions Imperialis Iron Warriors Thunderhawk Gunship (inc. painting guide)

After the disappointment of the Legions Support box a couple of weeks ago I’ve bounced right back with an absolute stunner of a model, the Thunderhawk Gunship! Check out some gorgeous photos including an updated army shot and paint recipe card in today’s blog post.

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Iron Warriors Thunderhawk Gunship prepares to touch down ready to disgorge it’s lethal cargo of Legiones Astartes.

First off, this isn’t my first Thunderhawk Gunship. Back in October 2011, I started to document my progress building and painting a 40K scale Forgeworld resin Thunderhawk. It wasn’t until October 2012 that I finished it completely! The Legions Imperialis Epic Scale one only took me a week to build and paint.

I really want to add more fliers to my Iron Warriors but sadly, at the time of writing they’re all out of stock apart from the Thunderhawk so I couldn’t start a new Aerial Formation, instead I decided to add the Thunderhawk to my Demi-company as transport for my second core slot of 4 bases of Tactical Legionairies, I then moved their rhinos over to the Garrison Force and gave them to the Missile Launcher Support Legionaries. Every body in the entire force has a transport now wether it’s a Rhino, Land Raider or the Thunderhawk.

Here’s my updated spreadsheet with the Thunderhawk Gunship added.

The spreadsheet formations above align with the actual formations in the picture below. The Demi Company is on the left, the Armoured Company is in the middle and the Garrison Force is on the right.

In my last post I mentioned that the army picture was out of date, well this one is up to date and this is the entire collection I’ve painted so far.

How to Paint Iron Warriors

Finishing off this post is my paint recipe card. I’ve posted this before but I’ve included it for convenience. I spent a bit longer with the windows, using a few more glazes of Frostheart to create a better gradient. The other difference is I used decals on the Thunderhawk. I tend to steer clear of decals and transfers but at this scale free-handing the Iron Warriors icon is out of the question for me, especially after I’d just spent half a day free-handing hazard stripes. I actually don’t mind the decals at this scale, I think it looks ok.

Also, here’s a bonus shot of my Thunderhawk Gunship photo, but edited in the style of a Forge World photograph. Not sure if I prefer this one or the punchy orange version a the top of this article.