The Reavers are a Space Wolves lost company based on a space hulk with little to no control of where they wander. This has led them to specialize in ship to ship and ship-board combat. For planet side encounters they make heavy use of drop pods in lieu of more valuable transports.
I have 3 DIY drop pods that have seen heavy use in my hybrid lists. More recently I’ve proxied two additional pods more of a pure pod based list and been happy with the results. This means I need to build two more pods. I decided to use the same templates as used for my older pods but take them a step further.
These are my current pods, still in need of a little more paint, with a few marines for scale. I don’t have any WIP shots of these. They were made from foam core and cereal boxes with orange juice covers as the retro thrusters. I started with the GW dreadnought drop pod template which I downloaded from one of the old GW websites. It produced a pod similar in size and appearance to the Forgeworld Dreadnought Drop Pod which was too large for my taste so I’ve re-scaled it to more closely match the GW drop pod kit in foot print and height.
For my next pair of pods I decided to use styrene. This allowed me to modify the design and create pods that open. As far as difficulty I found that these have been comparable to the previous ones. There is extra work required for the hinges and petals but I will not need to pre-paint the edges of anything before spray painting, and plastic adhesive cures more quickly than the PVA glue I used for the card stock ones so there’s less time holding pieces together and waiting for them to stick. Here is a finished plastic pod next to a cardboard one for comparison:
As you can see these will fit nicely together once they’re painted. The real difference is when they’re opened:
The opened pods give a much more dramatic feel when deployed than the closed ones do, although the petals can be a bit of a pain to move model around. I’ve magnet mounted the storm bolter so it can be removed to represent Weapon Destroyed. I could even build a Deathwind Launcher for it if I were so inclined. I like the more open interior compared to the GW pod. I imagine the Reavers relying on their armor and magnetic boots to keep them safe rather than seat belts and padded head rests. If I ever pick up the GW kit I’ll probably leave those out of it. Overall I’m happy with this pod. The fifth one is almost complete; it still needs the center console and weapon mount before I attach the doors:
After that it’s time to paint them!
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I used to have three of these I built using the French templates. Unfortunately, I became a paint-and-model snob, and refused to field them anymore. They had a deepstrike mishap into my trash can. :P
The styrene version looks very nice.
I would eventually like to replace the carboard ones with GW pods. I still don’t think I’d toss them, I’d just save them for when I wanted 8 pods!
In the mean time I think landspeeders are at the top of my purchase list.
Your functional plasticard ones makes me feel lame using my plumbing pods. Then again, my build time is about 5 minutes :P Yours are much cooler though.
For $5+5 minutes your pods look pretty good. Of course, the freehand paint work goes a long way to make up for lacking physical details.
It was already a cool design, but the opening doors put this model over the top A++!
Thanks!
The one thing that still bugs me a bit is I haven’t found a good bit for a simple thruster on the top.Â
I think the top of the, now old, GW paint pots would work. You must have a billion of them I imagine.
Nevermind, I see you’re using it inside the pod. Using it for two different things wouldn’t work. Hmmm.
 I’d thought of trying those after seeing them used effectively as retro thrusters for Ork Rokks but it’s a bit too big to fit on the top without serious cutting down. While pondering it they started to remind me of the domed console in the GW kit so it went inside instead. I’ll probably just paint them as is until I think of something.