Trash Bashing a Micro-scale Power Facility

I just finished a quick build and paint job on a plastic blister from a pack of air fresheners that I procured from work. I'm trying to cull a good portion of the plastic bits that I've collected and part of that is to actually make some stuff with it!

Nothing complicated here, MDF base, various greeblies for details, ink-jet decals. I'm really happy with the way the solid black decals look but anything with color just gets washed out by the color beneath it. But it beats trying to hand paint them.

To get the sandy texture I first cover the MDF with wood glue and then sprinkle it with very fine sand. Once this is completely dry I cover the whole surface with regular thin super-glue. This not only bonds and seals it nicely but makes the texture less pronounced and more "natural".

A penta-dynamo fusion plant defended by two Tomahawk MBR-04-Mk VI destroids.

I rushed the drybrushing which caused the big splotches on the sides. Too overeager I guess.

Model kit sprue, LEGO knock-offs, 15mm tank parts, 1:1800 scale Eagle transporters, plasticard, 30mm sci-fi German gasmask canisters...

The blister from a five pack of Air Wick Scented Oils that I found at work. 

Vintage Battletech Demolisher Tank

Almost a proto-OGRE.

With two Robotech Tactics Tomahawks.

Needed a bit of hobby meditation last weekend so I built and painted this vintage Battletech Demolisher. It came with a sprue of bits like the pintle mounted guns and the strange "horns". It also included cast metal rods to use for smaller gun barrels but I just used brass wire.

The camo scheme just came together as I was painting, I didn't start out with a plan other than I wanted something dark red. Originally this was going to be for a Horizon Wars Martian army but I had some small House Kurita decals so it went right back to the Battletech universe.

Thse are still available from Iron Wind Metals but are a bit pricey at almost $30us. I'm glad I found mine in my lead horde.

Painted Robotech Tactics Tomahawk

Finally got some paint on these bad boys and am pretty happy with them. Again, I'm super impressed with the decals for these. The hips and ankles are held together with wire and I'm still not sure how the legs are supposed to be positioned. That would be a great bit of information for the manufacturers to share. Oh, and the bases are so unique that they are DOUBLE BEVELED! 

"Yer a big feller ain't ya?"

Why?

Assembling and Painting a Glaug Officer's Battlepod for Robotech Tactics.

After my misadventures with the first models I tried to put together for Robotech Tactics I decided to switch sides for a bit and build one of the Glaug Officer's Battlepods. This went together pretty well, even though there are still some oddities, and I thought it might be helpful for other modelers to see what I've come across.

The sprue contains one Glaug and one Quel-Regult.

All the parts to make one Glaug.

Bad part design of the little antenna that can't be removed from the sprue without snapping it. I'm leaving these off my finished models anyway since they probably wouldn't survive the trip to play a game.

For some odd reason the upper cannon has an odd hook-shaped joint that needs to be inserted before the two body halves are glued together.

The two halves hold the cannon in place.

The hip joint doesn't allow for any side to side movement and is attached with two flat connections.

How the hip joint fits to the torso. The legs attach to the small arched openings on the side of the hip.

Painting was very basic, quick and dirty. I'm purposely not spending much time on thiese minis but instead trying to keep things efficient while still managed a decent tabletop distance quality level. Flat colors followed by Citadel washes and a bit of highlighting and drybrushing. I went with a classic Zentradi color scheme.

One of the best parts of these kits are the decals. They don't have to be completely trimmed out and they slide off the backing paper pretty quickly. I've had decals from major model-making companies that didn't work as well.

I added sand to the base and although this obscures the markings that show front and rear fields, the tab on the back of the base will keep things lined up.

The decals are excellent.

Next up I'll tackle a few of the Regult pods!

Assembling a Robotech RPG Tactics Defender Destroid.

I recently received my first wave of rewards from the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter and dove right into building the models. This was a mistake. By not taking the time to get to know the kits better I now have two legless Tomahawk Destroids that are going to require some major surgery to get back into the fight. Not that the kits are overly complex, but there are some design decisions that have been made that make assembly a bit frustrating. And this is not really a criticism of the model designers, not that it would do any good at this point, but more a cautionary tale and hopefully a few valid pointers.

My God, it's full of sprues!

Tragedy strikes!

Since the Tomahawks are in triage I'll be building a Defender and taking my time.

First off you have the sprue of parts. Each sprue makes two Defenders. I clipped the various parts out with model cutters and cleaned them with an X-Acto, needle file, and sanding stick. Here's one of the first things I noticed, the plastic that these kits are made of seems to act differently than normal model kits that I'm used to. It's tougher and doesn't like to be scraped or filed as easily as a kit from Bandai or Games Workshop. It's not as hard to work with as the Sedition Wars stuff but is still strange. Even after working on it quite a bit I'm still left with plastic fuzz. 

The instructions are simple enough but numbered parts would have helped.

Once the parts have been freed from the sprues and cleaned as much as possible I assembled them into sub-assemblies. Most of these went together easily, the main torso actually fits together really nicely, but there are some gaps in the legs that are obvious in the photos. I originally used polystyrene cement to build the Tomahawks in hopes that I could fuse the seams and then scrape them clean but there are too many ridges in the way. So I used cyanoacrylate glue which kicked too quickly to allow me to squeeze the parts together. 

Notice gaps in the legs. I'll have to try gel polystyrene cement next time.

On to final assembly and another issue. The hip sections on the Destroids are made of really small ball and sockets that only want to match up in one particular way. And combined with feet that only attach in one way it's very easy to put the legs on in such a way that the figure is leaning forward or backwards. Thus my first Defender looks like his cannon have some serious recoil. So there's some real frustration with having to use super glue in assembly which doesn't allow for final positioning but the hip joints are too small to use polystyrene glue without destroying them. And do not try to reposition the legs in any way, there's not enough of a joint and the just tear apart. Thus my legless Tomahawks.

This joint is frustratingly weak and only wants to work in a particular way.  And the legs make it impossible to have them both straight, they are cast so that one is stepping forward.

The molds have been made in steel for these kits so too much criticism is worthless and stupid. These are the models that we have and we can only do our best with them. But I can't help but wonder how amazing these kits would have been if produced by a company like Bandai, Kotobuikiya, or Max Factory. They are not terrible, they're just not amazing. But since I have dozens of them to assemble it's necessary to learn their quirks and move on. After all I just want to have some cool models and destroy some Regults.

Next up: The Spartan and Phalanx!