Toy Soldiers Depot is another of the miniatures sources that are worth being aware of. Their stuff is not targeted at 40K, is cheaply made and is of course, cheap. I'd seen a post about their stuff over at Dakka and had been meaning to order a couple of bits for a while. The Dakka post had suggested an APC as a Chimera alternate and then I also found a great looking artillery piece. After making probably the cheapest order ever I had a couple of bits on the way.
The first piece, the APC, didn't take long to get passed off to my kids. Firstly, its a lot too big to be a chimera. Although, realistically its probably the size they should be, rather than the proper GW model. We can fit how many Ogryn in that?
The kit can be found here. It costs a massive $3.99. Having accepted the size of it I set about doing some conversion work. Adding a heavy flamer and other such bits that are part of the chimera. That's when I discovered it is made of uber plastic. Firstly, getting the tracks in was a huge pain and needed a lot of trimming and cutting to get them to fit. Then I discovered than none of the assorted glues I had worked on this thing. Super glue doesn't stick at all, polystyrene cement won't melt it, gorilla glue does nothing. Maybe I should have tried one of those kids glue sticks.
So its too big and magically repulses glue. Well it was $4 and I have kids. Problem solved, they can have this one.
The second kit which you can find here had more possibilities. For one, glue actually worked. I decided to turn this into something for my IG. I only have a Manticore at the moment so figured a basilisk would be a nice addition. Thing is, its too small and too stubby. Well if you look at an oval flying base it actually has a similar footprint to a Chimera chasis. I figured basing it on one of those, and then adding some bulk to enlarge the profile would give me something that was close enough, at least for friendly games.
The conversion on this one was really easy. I tracked down a Basilisk armored front which fit on after a bit of tweaking, and extended the barrel with a Russ Nova Cannon. Then it was just a case of adding some atmosphere pieces such as a crew to the base and I'm done. The base I found is a thing of beauty. The Secret Weapon Trenchworks base that you can find here. It was the perfect fit for what I wanted to do with this.
I got the base finished and then added holes so I can just leave the vehicle itself pinned in place. Still working on the vehicle. I need to get the weathering done on it as I doubt they really managed to keep the tires that clean. Otherwise, here is an almost there view of the finished concept.
This cost about $22 plus some bits. The gun itself was just $6 if you have enough bits and a desire to do something similar yourself. A good result from an unusual source.
Marcus
No comments:
Post a Comment