Refitting the Destroyer

Putting together the Destroyer isn’t all smooth sailing. This is an early Forgeworld product and the fit… Is a bit lacking. Either that, or the years in storage has warped the solid chunk of resin bad.

20130113-213824.jpg

Here is the underside/ inside of the Destroyer hull, you can see the thickness and roughness of the cast — FW has since improved tremendously. Each white strip is a styrene spacer, I had to add them to level out the upper hull with the plastic Leman Russ tracks. The black base is just a place to glue the tank commander on.

Not only was these adjustments necessary, the back plate connecting to the bottom of the hull needed a lot of tinkering. Basically, there’s no way to fit it. At all. Wasn’t long enough to reach both sides of the hull, neither did it had much connectivity with either the hull or the top… Messy. Had to use a Tamiya corner wedge piece to get the necessary ‘bite’.

Not to mention the front glacis plate…

20130113-213833.jpg

Uh where do I start? Plate was short… On both sides. So you see a plastic strip on both sides as spacer and that made the plate unable to clear the rivets on the front hull — you need to slide and reposition the front plate between the rivets. It wasn’t terrible because that meant it had a good fit.

Then the entire plate was warped. Some weird geometry there, with both lower corners curling up and away. The resin plate was so thick, there’s no practical way to warm and reset the plate — I’ve tried. Ended up I just placed a blanking strip in front of it… You still can see where the lip curled up a bit beneath the blanking strip. Contemplating whether to rivet the plate for a consistent look. I’m not a big fan of riveting…

But finally, the adjustments are done, she fits more or less. Still need to putty in the cracks in some places, but she’s good for the priming and initial coat.

Sometimes, the mini finds you…

20130112-191618.jpg
Yeah, somewhat obsessed with this one today.

Was looking around for a suitable tank commander, but nothing quite fit the constraints.. Forgeworld stupidly fitted the pintle mount right at the front, blocking vision. Then I popped a Cadian command squad, saw the head with the sharp features, decided to use it. Couldn’t use infantry arms (they have shoulder pads which would be unsuitable in a tank), so went back to the Demolisher kit.

Turns out the arm flagging forward was just rightish to drape over the stubber if I pointed it skywards, and the bino just had the right fit… Some days, you look for a mini to fit. Others, the mini comes to you.

I’m going to name this tank ‘Patriarch‘. If I ever do a proper display, I’m going to call it ‘Patience of the Patriarch‘.

Something on a Lazy Saturday Morning

20130112-130400.jpg

Something that literally has been in the stable for years. Finally a concerted push to get it done. Probably will do it in German Grey — I normally default to dunkelgelb for armour, would like a different approach. And I think I got spray for that colour too…

Need to find the right parts for the tank commander.

Introducing The Factory

I wank around various scale miniature gaming systems quite a bit, so inevitably I have to assemble miniatures. I actually enjoy doing that…. that’s why I still do it.

One challenge is that sometimes, the way a manufacturer puts kits together is.. less than ideal. Which was why a few years ago I started a wiki trying to document how I put together some minis, with special emphasis on odd spots, fail points, weird shit.. you know, the usual nonsense that comes around in kits. But that wiki basically petered out. It was a bit of hassle to keep it updated.

Fast forward to 2013 and now I have a lair. So why not just transplant it over? I found the wiki again, and basically is in the process of transferring the content over. So, here’s introducing The Factory. 🙂

First article I have transplanted is how to put together Battlefront’s 15mm Cromwell tank for use in their 15mm game, Flames of War. Thankfully, I used a picture host instead of uploading to the wiki back then, which makes my life a lot easier when transplanting these articles.

Seems like the plugin/ app I used to connect this blog with the FB page isn’t working on pages, so I’ll have to blog the updates as I put them in.

Dark Angels cometh…

DA_logo So the new Dark Angels Codex is about to hit. Already have seen some of the new units, and frankly speaking this edition doesn’t give much to me.

Why? I play Battle Company. 5th Company to be precise. (And no, I decided on the 5th Company waaaay before Games Workshop decided that the 5th Company would make good poster boys.) So all the Deathwing and Ravenwing goodies just mostly missed.

Having said that, I do like the new Nephilim; the Dark Talon, not so much, but there are good parts there to “upgrade” my inevitable Nephilim (that also means I’d have to include Ravenwing elements into my Battle Company, which isn’t what I want but… too cool an aircraft.).

Deathwing Command squad looks interesting but since I’m not a Deathwinger it’s not a priority buy. Having the option to bring in a Plasma Cannon does broaden the horizons for the Terminators though. Deathwing Knights, I think the weaponry kind of looks sucky. Not going to be in major favour for it but with a Thunder Hammer replacement I can find room.

Vengeance and Darkshroud Landspeeders… not so keen. But have an idea to convert the Vengeance into something that looks better. So eventually will get one, and plus there’s this local guy who had the idea of a Limo hot tub Landspeeder…. 😀

Ravenwing Command and Black Knights, would eventually pick up, especially the Command; the banner has been in the works for decades since that infamous pic. But since I’m not a big Ravenwing fan it won’t be priority.

So, coming up to the weekend. I’ll only get my stuff on Monday, so it’ll be a quiet weekend for me.