Old Crow VTOL as Valkyrie

I have finished respraying another Old Crow VTOL rebuilt as a 'Valkyrie' with Sand and 'pink-brick' camoflague.

I will probably add a bit 'o soot to the heavy bolter barrels, two underwing missiles and some kill markings below the cockpit but it is essentially finished.

Valkyrie Nose Art

I have added som 'bomber' pinup nose-art to my Old Crow Valkyries.

These are from Archer. They are laser-printed on white paper, cut out and stuck on with a thin layer of PVA glue.

One could easily make these but one avoids copyright issues by buying from a reputable supplier. They can be made on ink-jet printers but the ink must be stabalised with artists varnish or similar as it is water soluble.

All sorts of clip art is available or you can use your own designs. I doubt GW would care about scanning GW art to make transfers for use on your personal Citadel models.

I may try making my own dry and wet transfers next. The paper can be obtained over the web from Crafty Computer Paper.

Old Crow VTOLs

These are a couple of Old Crow VTOLs. The kit is a VTOL and a cargo container. I have built one pretty much as it comes except to put the container back a little and fill the space in with plasticard to give a smooth fusalage.

The second model has been more worked. I discarded the cargo container and built a hull with plasticard and Robogear walls. Then I fitted two Cadians with heavy bolters to make a gunship.

I basically use Valkyrie rules.

Like all Old crow kits, these are superbly finished and very robust. They are also good value.

John

Old Crow Vultures

Old Crow are a small resin model company that I got involved with over the Hammers Slammers Project.

They make a great range of 28ml vehicles. Compared to Forge world, they are simpler, chunkier, much cheaper, and much better finished. Jez machines each part of the resin kit to fit and he uses a non-warp resin. That does mean less detail but the models are great for wargaming as they are tough. A word of warning, machined resin fixes in about one tenth of a second with superglue and the bond is stronger than the resin.

These models are Raven Gunships, which I use as Vultures. The kits cost £20 each.

I have fitted out two. One is a tank buster with a GW Heavy bolter in the chin turret and twin lascannon on the fusalage hardpoints. I hung six GW Imperial Guard hunter Killer missiles under the wings. The tiny missiles on the wingtips (GW Guard rockets) are representative of decoys.

The second gunship has the same gun choices but carries two hellstrike missiles as flak suppressors. The missiles on the wingtips are GX old-style hunter killers from my bit-box. I use them in games when we have air-to-air combat. They count as hunter-killer missiles with an AA mount. They can only be fired at aircraft.

The rules are getting a bit mixed up about what counts as an AA mount on an aircraft. There are three conditions. All three must be met to claim an AA mount.
1. The aircraft must be an air superiority fighter, i.e. small, light, fast and manoeuvrable. That rules out Vultures, which are ground attack aircraft. Ork Fightas and IN Lightnings are fighters.
2. The weapon must be in a fixed, forward-firing mount only.
3. The weapon must be rapid fire, e.g. autocannon or shurikin cannon etc. That rules out lascannon, which are one shot ground attack weapons.

Specialised air-to-air missiles are an exception. They can be fitted to anything. RN sub-hunting Nimrods used to carry sidewinders in case they met a Russian Bear. However, an aircraft that does not meet the fighter criteria, such as a Vulture, fires at BS-1 against true fighters as the latter are more manoeuvrable.


My mate, Sean, kindly made the stands for me.

You can find a link to Old Crow on my sidebar.

I have used these vultures in combat against the Tau. They attracted massive amounts of fire and did not last long.