Tuesday 10 January 2012

Progress on Huntsman Spider Tank, and Red Dragon Terrain

My wife gave birth to our daughter at the beginning of December, and free time is at a premium. I have not had a chance to finish off the figures I put up in my first post, but lest you think nothing is being done, I do have a brief update.

Back in September, I put in an order to Ramshackle Games for, among other things, a Huntsman Spider Tank (with turret), or HST for short. I really like the look of this model, and although I initially ordered it with the intention of using it for some Victorian Sci-Fi/Steampunk gaming, it definitely has a place in my post-apocalypse world. I'm thinking about using it with a force of scavengers (using figures from Copplestone Castings and EM4.

This is my first time working with a resin kit. Biggest difference to metal and plastic models: it's brittle. Although it was well packed, a number of pieces had small chips when it arrived, and while getting it cleaned up I've had a few pieces break. I've mostly been able to glue pieces back in place, but it's also given me a chance to play around with Milliput a bit, to do repairs and gap-filling.


HST with Urban Mammoth figure for scale

This past weekend I started assembling the HST. So far I've attached the head, the HST leg locators and the back plate to the main body. One thing that threw me at first was that the leg locators seem to be asymmetrical (see image below). At first I thought that perhaps there was an error in the order (like receiving two left legs), but I've seen the same things in others' build pages on the Lead Adventure Forum.


I'm hoping that it won't make a huge difference when it's finished, but I have to wonder why that particular design choice? The other question I have is what others have done when mounting the turret so that you don't have to cut up the detail in the top hatch (see image below)? It may be a bit hard to tell, but there is one gear in particular that sticks a good 5 mm above everything else. My plan for now is to drill an appropriate sized hole in the base of the turret so it can fit over that gear. I'm also planning on magnetizing the turret so I can change it out for the hatch cover, or some other smaller turrets I got from Ramshackle Games.


In November, I won a number of auctions on eBay from Red Dragon Terrain. The seller has a number of nice lines, but I was most interested in his buildings with the intention of putting together a small section of a ruined city. I ended up winning all seven auctions I bid on, winning enough to put together eleven buildings, including three 3-story, three 2-story, and five 1-story buildings (four of them ruined). The kits are plastic and have nice detail on the outside, but no interior detail. At this point I have cleaned and washed all of the ruined 1-story buildings, and assembled one (shown below). My only quibble is that the corners don't line up really nicely. I'm considering trying to cut the edge of each piece at a 45° angle to make a nicer join, but will have to check first to see how that would interact with the intact buildings (which have floors and ceilings). Still, I got pretty good value from this sale, and I think they'll make a nice start to a game board.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, its Rob, from Red Dragon Terrain. I was looking up my site to see what came up, and yours came up pretty quick! Thanks for including me in your blog, its always amazing when I see my models up on other peoples sites.
    I'm just a casual builder, so its certainly a work in progress as far as making buildings fit together. I use silicone molds I made up myself from models I made out of various O scale architecture components. I'm open to ideas about how to improve the models, if you, or anybody yo know, knows anything about mold making. I got most of my tips from Bruce Hirst, who you probably know.
    Thanks again,
    Rob

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