The walk of Icarus

Flight commander "Icarus" Hayles has the dubious honour of the most shot down living thunderbolt pilot in the task force. Due to frequent rescue efforts by ground forces, the Icarus has become a specialist liaison between naval assets and ground troops. Here he can be seen co-ordinating Thunderbolt operations to assist in the Grav-Chute Deployment of the F Company Assault Platoon. 

I spent a while pondering what to do for a fleet officer for my Death Blades.
I wanted a rogue trader era model that could be used as an officer of the fleet, but would also fit in with the 1980's models that make up the army. For a while I thought about kit-bashing some conventional Cadian and old school plastics, or even using the current officer of the fleet model. That model has a lot of character, and looks the part. However in the end I decided to stick to my self imposed rules of no recent models, and started hunting around for something suitable.

As well as painting up all of my RT era IG models I am developing an Epic version of the army, which relies heavily on thunderbolts for anti-air, so imagined that a downed pilot might be able to fit in as a fleet officer and make a good model to have for special scenarios, and suit the overall theme of the army. After a bit of searching and being tempted by the excellent but prohibitively expensive limited edition forgeworld thunderbolt pilot I stumbled upon a model that was suitably sculpted while also being a satisfyingly heavy chunk of lead. The imperial pilot model from the eighties had enough trimmings to indicate an officer rank, but was also posed to be part of the action. I snapped him up for a not very bargain price of about ten bucks and painted him up to suit the rest of the army.

I tried to paint him in a way that he fits in, so went for a predominantly grey uniform, with yellow trimmings to match the command squad that he will most often be assigned to. I went for black and silver for the hard parts of the uniform, to match the rest of the guardsmen too. The base was simply one of the dragonforge resin bases that the rest of the army are on. But I did have to snip off the tag to do this (as I do with all my models), which is one thing that I may regret down the track. But I am accumulating a nice collection of tags.

Perhaps one day he will get a Thunderbolt fighter of his own to command again. If I ever finish this army I might pat myself on the back and shout myself a trip to the forgeworld web site to celebrate. Until that day the paint desk calls...