Variant Land Speeders in a Ravenwing Battleforce?

[Houghten]

I'm not talking about whether you're allowed to take Typhoons or Tornados, I can read a Codex ;)

What I want to know is about variant sprues. In a Ravenwing Battleforce box, you get six bikes, an Attack Bike, a Land Speeder and three Ravenwing sprues. When I got mine, I was mildly surprised to discover that the Land Speeder was the old sprue, without the heavy flamer, assault cannon or missile launchers.

I also learned that the old sprue goes together horribly. So many gaps to fill in with Green Stuff! So my question to y'all is, is that just because the box had been sitting on my LGS' shelf since before Apocalypse came out? If I buy another from the online store, will it have a heavy flamer and be a joy to put together? Or do GW continue to produce the old sprue just for the purpose of putting into Ravenwing Battleforces?

Edit: How did I manage to stick this into Fantasy General Discussion instead of 40k General Discussion? I have literally no idea. Sorry about that, mods.

[Mr.Pickelz]

Judging by the picture on GW's website, the land speeder has the assault cannon, I'd say you just picked up an old box. I've seen a couple of old boxes sit up at the LGS here for a long time, and I'm sure the ravenwing one here is probably just as old as yours. :p

[Houghten]

The Land Speeder on the front of the box has an assault cannon because there are assault cannon on the Ravenwing upgrade sprue. Thanks for your guess, but I'm afraid it's not a useful answer.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

What I've heard is that it still contains the older sprue of Land Speeder. Just hearsay, mind you.

[Limey El'Jonson]

Nope, you're hooped. They contain the old Landspeeder sprues. I've had four of them, and successfully (with a bunch of fiddling) build the speeders. The best bet for building them with the smallest possible gaps is to shave the top of the bulkhead (behind the seats) down by about 0.5mm and do lots of dry fitting, shaving and filing. Then glue the front OR the rear together and hold in place with rubber bands until dry.

If you want the variants, buy the base bodies from the War Store, as I did for Sammael's speeder (they're the old ones again), and get the heavy flamer from a bits provider. Use the Ravenwing upgrade sprues to fill out the rest of your needs.

I used Plastruct with a brush as a glue for it, so I could paint into gaps. As it liquifies the plastic, it will melt the two halves together. It's a solvent, so open a window. I did still have very minor gaps so I used Arrow green putty, then after sanding that down I smoothed it out with Tamiya white putty. Got a bit of a blog here:

http://forthelimey.blogspot.com/2011/04/sammael-landspeeder-part-1.html

Not a lot of pictures there about the construction, but you can see there what can be done with a lot of dry fitting and careful shaping. I hope this is of help to you. Best of luck!

[Suttobs]

It's the old one, I have no idea why.

You should have a Speeder Chassis, a MM, a HB, and an ungodly amount of Typhoon, assault cannon and HB bits from the RW sprue (3x of each and the AC and HB can be built twin-linked from each sprue)

If you want the HF bit, you're gonna have to buy it off a bits site, or buy extra Speeders. If you buy spare Speeder chassis, (or buy the old Speeder off ebay) you can expand your force pretty rapidly.

As an aside I think the new Speeder goes together 100x better than the old one, and is still a cluster.