Dark commune, and Opus Storm speeder

This spring has been crazy at work, so I apologize if I do not update as often and don't have the much to show. This means that what i usually do in a week I now do in a month. So this month I did the two guards for the Dark commune. These look more like some fantasy models rather than scifi models, but I do like them. The helmets are reminiscent of the Nazgul helmets from LoTR and the poses are equally threatening.

For colours I choose the same as for the standard bearers, grey under robes and purple over robes. The armour was done as rusted metal with some bronze. When taking the photos I realized I need to go back and work on the blades and hands a bit more. Nothing that will change anything drastically though. 

When not painting I have been building on the opus. This is also painfully slow. I have finally managed to get the internal panels pinned to the external, which means I can start with the details as they are now related to each other.

I have also started work on some gunboats, in the for of some Storm speeder. These will be defending the ground around the Opus and pick up any downed pilots, at least until I get a nice recovery ship (haven't figured out what would be best for this). The buy was a bit of a mistake. For some reason I still had the old Land speeders in my mind, and that was also what the opus was built for. So the loading bays on the sides, blew the deck, where I first intended to dock undock these is now to small and they can not fit through the doors. So I will have to find another purpose those.

Well, I did not really like some of more Primaris like designs of the storm speeders, so off course I had to make some alternations. First of was the air intakes for the jets. The grills were a bit to restrictive, so off they went. I will add some visible turbines inside that I have as leftovers from the aircrafts. I also added som cowlings to define the air intakes a bit more. Then I also added some larger exhausts for the jets as the original ones looked a bit small. Then I exchanged the winglets for some larger wings and added hinges to them so that I can fold them for storage. This meant that I could use to original wings as vertical stabilizers. I think these alterations brings a better balance to the model, less front heavy as there is now more going on at the back.  I will also remove the extra gunner from the turret and exchange him with some targeting arrays. It thought it would look strange with a guy sitting in there while it is in storage (I made the pilots removable). I also added some landing gears for the same reason. They can not just hover all the time. There is still more details to add but so far I like the build.

I guess that this version of the Storm speeder is more of a flyer that the standards ones, and it ties in better with the rest of the aircraft I have (it is also as big).  Even if it would have been nice with a canopy for the pilots.