So I got a commission to build two of my paper Thunderhawk models for a client, this Space Wolf version, and a Grey Knights version I’m starting on later tonight.  Unlike previous builds, I’m reinforcing the walls of the fuselage, canards, tail sections and wings with 1/4” black foam board. I had to match Fenris Grey as per the customer request, so this is a bit darker than the Space Wolf vehicles I built back when I ran a Space Wolf list in 40k games.

I’d also like to point out that the Land Raider, Dreadnought, Whirlwind and Predator models above are templates by Eli Patoroch.  Without him, I probably would not have started making 40k papercrafts and thus would have assumed that having a nice tabletop army would be out of my financial reach.

Also worth noting, that the new Thunderhawks have magnetized wings and slotted sections to enable the model to be easily broken down for storage and transport.  The lascannon wings also fold flush with the main fuselage.

I’ve finished my template to make Thunderhawks and I’ll start the process of color swapping and adding iconography to have templates for all the predominant chapters.  This Blood Angels ‘Hawk is the second I’ve built, and my nephew pointed out the accidental smiley face I make with the front ramp banner as the smile and windows for the eyes.  The banner reads “Mors E Caelo” which is babelfish-latin for “Death From Above”, something I thought would be fitting for the Blood Angels.

This is not the first papercraft Thunderhawk template.  Eli Patoroch had made an excellent model with a fully detailed interior and raised paneling everywhere.  In fact, I heavily referenced his model for the engine details and underside that I couldn’t get clear photos of elsewhere.  My Thunderhawk is nowhere near the level of detail as his, but it is less than half the pages while using standard 8.5 x 11 paper instead of 11 x 17.  It can also be built in a single afternoon instead of over the course of a few weeks.  I tried building Patoroch’s model back when I played Space Wolves, but I only ever got the body and parts of the wings done before giving up on the project (I realized that I was building the wrong scale since I was auto-correcting the scale to fit on my paper).

Also, the heavy bolters are articulated, which the people at last week’s “Tanks-giving” apocalypse game thought was neat.  I plan on building five more of these over the course of the next few weeks and selling them on ebay if anyone is interested.  I’m expecting they’ll sell for about $45 to $75 given that they are just laminated cardstock.  I’m selling them for the cost of my time spent building them since the model template is available for free online to anyone who wants to try building it.

Here’s a front shot of my papercraft Thunderhawk and a Warlord titan.  The Thunderhawk still needs the heavy bolter sponsons and it’s engines completed, but it was usable for the game.  The titan has a long convoluted origin being passed along from person to person with each owner putting a bit more work into it.

Here’s the back of the Thunderhawk.  It was annoying in the game because NO ONE on our side of the table brought any AA weapons or aircraft to shoot at it with.

Here’s John’s METAL stompa next to a plastic kit.  Welded together from chunks of steel and rebar, it weighs about forty pounds.

My Dark Eldar fighters.  Two of the razorwings are paper and the Voidraven bomber was made from a Batwing kit.

The game was fun at first, but it was heavily rigged in the Imperium’s favor.  Most of the contol points started in their deployment zone, they had the only fliers and had several strength D weapons to the xenos’ 1 (and it was BS5 on a Stompa).  My three Ravagers were killed over the first two turns by a Grey Knights player using two rifleman dreads, but almost all my fighters survived to the end of the game, taking out large chunks of infantry.  I tried to let one of the Chaos marine players use the titan, but he wanted to spend the points on more terminators (which ended up dying to a larger group of Black Templar terminators).  It was fun though, so I’ll definitely show up for the next one this spring.