Space Marine Overlord Gunship

The Space Marine Overlord Gunship is the Primaris equivalent of the Thunderhawk... apparently. I say apparently, because it's not the most fleshed out part of modern Warhammer 40,000 lore.

My build is modestly sized, at around 1.25x the size of the current Forge World Thunderhawk Gunship model, but descriptions in the lore suggest it may be significantly larger, though again, the few descriptions that exist aren't particularly precise, or consistent with each other. And that's one of the interesting aspects that comes into play with large Warhammer 40,000 vehicles. All of them are compressed in terms of scale, and the larger the vehicle gets, the more the scale seems to get compressed. Standing on it's tail, mine is somewhere between the height of a Reaver and Warlord Titan, and that feels big enough to be imposing, yet just about managable on the tabletop.

Awkaward crop from a social media video to demonstrate the scale of the Overlord Gunship.

I wanted to keep the build nice and light, so the main core is made from a material called foamed PVC, which is a plastic sheet with included air bubbles, which keeps the weight down and makes it easier to cut. It's skinned with panels from 1mm styrene sheet, which provides a nicer surface than the Foamed PVC. If you want more details of how I built the Space Marine Overlord Gunship, then you're going to have to watch the YouTube video, because frankly, there's a lot to cover!

All In, the Overlord took around 7 weeks of work, but there were definitely some long days in there. Thankfully it was dead cheap to make. I spent less than £40 on materials, not including whatever I raided from the bits box. And even having spent around £80 getting the panels laser cut, the total cost was far less than one of those fancy resin flyer models from Forge World.

But, none of that really factors in to it for me. I built this model because I wanted something unique, something that’s mine. That’s the enjoyment I get from this hobby. I rarely play, and these days I rarely build a model as Lord Workshop intended. And that’s the way I like it!