It’s been a good week this week, it’s not been raining, the sun has been out and I haven’t had any traumas at work or elsewhere, so all in all a good week. On the hobby front I have a few things to share with you this week, I’ve an example of why you shouldn’t leave grot riggers unsupervised in the workshop. Then I’ve actually got some new grot riggers to share with you along with something of a revelation. Now to be fair revelation is probably biging things up just a little bit but I’m going use it as encouragement to get to the end of the post to find out what it is.
First up we I have the results of letting the grots loose in the workshop. I had this idea that an Adeptus Mechanicus Onager Dunecrawler would make a nice Orky creation, even if I wasn’t clear on just what I wanted to do with it. The one thing that it needed to do was fit in with the rest of the builds I was doing and look like it had the potential to be fast. Now because I was lacking in ideas I split things into an upper and lower build and decided I would worry about how to join them up later. Upper build started by just adding some extra armour and some engine parts such as an air intake and proper exhausts. It was whilst I was doing this that I had the idea of making it into fast Dread so added the mounts for a couple of dreadnought arms to the front. In my mind it was something of repair or scavenger vehicle that would work with a fast army to get parts for new creations. By roughing up the weapon mounts that came with the kit I ended up with something I was really happy with.
Then it was time to work on the lower section and key issue I had was this if had legs it just wouldn’t be fast enough. But at the same time I didn’t just want to add a set of wheels and leave it at that, which was when I decided to see what it would like if it had wheels at the end of its legs. That would give it the impression of being able to keep up with everything else, which at this time is a couple of trukks, but also be agile enough to get in amongst any wreckage for the good bits. Now I have to say what I ended up with bears no resemblance to the inspiration and that inspiration was the moon buggy from Moonraker. For some reason I had it my head that it had its wheels on the end of some spider like contraptions. It was only when I finished and looked up a picture that I realised just how wrong I was. But it does have small wheels. In my mind the wheels can all be independently controlled so it can move in just about any direction. A few extra armour plates and bit of additional cabling finished things off.
I still have some work to do on the details, a few extra bolts here and there, along with the close combat weapons but it’s just about ready for paint. The only thing is I’m still undecided on whether or not l like it when it’s all put together but I’m hoping that once I get some paint on it I’ll fall in love with it. If not, it’s been a fun build and will enjoy painting it so still a positive.
As a size comparison this it alongside my converted Redemptor Dreadnought. It won’t quite fit on the same base because the legs are splayed out a bit too much, but other than that I think it fits in terms of scale.
I’ve also had a care package of grot riggers this week to start to build up the ranks. These are from Wargame Exclusive and I have to say I’m even more impressed with them in the flesh than I was with them on line. There is a blister with four different riggers that could be used for a whole host of different project. I then got one who is trying to pump to for the fight with the Meks who just don’t know what they are doing. There is baby grot that is essentially the baby yoda from the Manalorian. And the final one is Waaahg TV which is a Grot sitting behind a TV screen that is just a really fun looking model which I’m really looking forward to painting. I just wish there more of these sorts of models out there to add character to an army.
Revelation time. To be honest I’m feeling a little bit bad about this now as I may have made this out to be a bigger thing than it really is. As you will have noticed over the last few weeks or even months, I’ve been gluing a lot of rivets and bolts onto things and it brings up a few unique issues. The main one is limiting the amount of glue needed so things stay tidy. I’ve had some cheap, very thin CA glue with a precision applicator. I think the issue with using this is that the CA glue is very thin and you always end up with a lot more glue than needed. I’ve been using some Green Stuff World Gel Formula CA glue and the revelation has been picking up some precision tips to work with this glue. I said it was sad but it means that I can apply this literally one small drop at a time and make things much neater when adding rivets.
That’s it for this week and I have to say that I’m feeling really happy with myself at the moment and feel that I’ve earned a few beers for myself tonight. Quite handy that I’ve just had delivery from Beer52 so I’m not short of a couple of options to choose from. For next week I’m looking at getting started with the paint job on the repair dread as well as the Wargame Exclusive Grots. I’ve also been thinking about some ideas for a Deaf Kopter build that I think could be quite interesting and I’ve not seen anything like them out there yet.
Now as I’m sure the sun will be over the yard arm somewhere I think it might be time to open a cold beer and have a nice lazy weekend. Keep yourselves safe and hope to catch up with you all again next week.
