HOBBY: Stormlord Apocalypse!

My first glance at Apocalypse Reload was at Baltimore Games Day earlier this year and as soon as I saw the Stormlord transport version of the Baneblade in the book I knew I had to build one. It seemed like an amazingly fun model to use in games and I just had to have one!

For me, the Stormlord is a colorful, story-filled idea that inspires all kinds of exciting imagery. It’s a giant rolling fortress that can contain massive numbers of brave soldiers or in the case of Chaos, hordes of abominations. As it trundles forward on massive tracks its ferocious rotary cannon buzzes away, mowing down enemy troops while the heavily armed passengers inside add to the cacophony by firing their own weapons repeatedly from the vehicle. When it stops, a mass assault ensues under the covering fire of the vehicle’s enormous main gun. Fire belches from the heavy flamer sponsons at any enemies who dare to get too close while lascannon turrets blast away at heavily armored threats. The Stormlord is just the kind of thing that makes this hobby so much fun for me. As it happens, a friend of mine who frequents the local Battle Bunker was also immediately enthralled by the idea of building a Stormlord as soon as he too saw Apocalypse Reload, so within a few weeks of the book’s release we both had finished Stormlord conversions, his a stalwart Imperial Stormlord and mine a nefarious Chaos Stormlord.

The pictures in this article show the end results of both of our projects. Although the models may differ in a number of fine details the basic techniques used to build them both are the same. One fun feature they have in common is that the main guns, the Vulcan Mega-bolters, move up and down on both versions.

There are a couple frequently asked questions that come up when people see these models, so I’ll provide preemptive answers here:

Q: How are the rivets made?
A: The grey rivets are cannibalized from the parts of the Baneblade not used in the finished model. The white rivets are made by slicing thin discs off of plastic rod.

Q: How long did it take to do the scratch conversion?
A: This is a rough estimate, but I’d say approximately 20 hours, perhaps a little more, of scratch building went into adding all the custom work to GW’s plastic Baneblade chassis.

Below are some additional photos of the finished projects taken from several different angles. I hope this article inspires a few of you out there to try something like this on your own. As usual, comments and questions are welcome. 40K Apocalypse now!

Imperial Stormlord:


Chaos Stormlord: