When a Cauldron of Blood and a Raider love each other very much....

I know I've been a little quiet on here recently, but I've been busy behind the scenes. I thought today I'd show off my first re-rebooted Raider.

The idea for this model goes back all the way to my earliest days of posting on DA, with Version 1 of the model using the old-style Raider and the metal Cauldron parts. When both models got updated to be, in GW's typical style, bigger, madder and more complicated, I toyed with replacing the model with a new version but at the time I had no appetite for re-doing the entire army. Finally, however, I've got around to re-jigging the entire force for 8th Edition- I've already made 30 Witch Elf/ Wych hybrids so now it's time to start on the motor pool.

As I usually do with such projects, I built another Raider stock first to get the idea of how the kit worked, and tested various versions of the idea on it. For a previous project, I had parts of the Cauldron kit lying around, so I used the pre-assembled stairs to test fit and work out how to cut things about to get everything to fit. I failed to notice a bit of flash on the stairs, which I used in this build, until waaaay too late but you can't see it and I'm not telling you where it is, so nyah.

Obligatory butt-shot.

Eventually I settled on cutting the platform which the Avatar statue goes on down shorter until the stairs would just about reach it, slightly shortening the boom that supports the Cauldron, and having the stairs lead down to the well before the front gunner's position. That sounds a lot easier than it in fact was. Possibly due to the alterations to the boom, the Cauldron was poorly supported and moved about even when glued, so I reluctantly used the two crew with the spears as a structural element- they're glued solid to the model and hold everything in place. This was exactly as irritating during painting as you might expect. The rear platform was also then supported by cutting down all the struts that wouldn't fit until they just about would.

A problem I was left with was that there are two holes in the Raider deck for pegs that support the central rack which holds the Aethersail. I could have simply filled these with Green Stuff but that would have left two very obvious blanks in the deck, so instead I covered the rear one with a couple of salvaged slave girls from an older model, and the front one with a pile of skulls from GW's oh-so-handy recent set. This also meant that the Death Hag who's serving as commander/ gunner can still rest one foot on hers without looking out of place. I added a pistol-grip to the Disintegrator, since she wasn't going to be holding it, by splicing in the end of a spare splinter rifle- since I'm going to need a fair few Wych-crewed Raiders I'm probably going to use this dodge again. A little Green Stuff cleaned up the merge.

Peekaboo slave girl. She's older than the rest of them, but she wears it well.

The rear fighting platform has a small magnet buried in it. This can just about support the Avatar statue, which isn't in these shots because it's not 100% painted and would have made the model deeply awkward to photograph. Primarily, though, the platform will be used to hold the Succubus leading the raid until she gets out. In a plan so cunning that you can brush your teeth with it, I'm going to have her standing on another skull, which will have a magnet in it, allowing me to remove her from her base and stand her on the Raider, so at least one won't have an inexplicable circle of green grass on board.

Finally a top tip for models with flying bases- before choosing which 'stem' to use, dry-fit the candidates into the receiving hole. Most of the time, one will fit snugly enough that you can pop the model on and off with some confidence, as is the case here. Wear may change that, but for transport reasons you really, really don't want to be gluing them.

That's probably just a vat of combat drugs. Why does it have a bone in it? Why not?

Painting- yep, I painted it. It was deeply irritating (I find this sort of build is impossible to paint pre-assembly) so I'm not saying any more about that, TYVM.