Five Dollar Super Heavy Tank....

 I picked up this $5.00 toy tank today at Dollar General that I intend to use as a super heavy tank for my sci-fi setting.  As you can see it's pretty big.  The tank is 4 inches wide, 7.5 inches long, and 2.5 inches tall.  I think it scales okay next to these Wargames Factory Shock Troopers.  I intend to remove the electronics, it's a cable controlled remote control tank.

Stylistically it looks very similar to a German Leopard II tank or a Type 99 Chinese tank but it doesn't see to be an exact copy of any existing tank.  The biggest down side to the toy is that it has only one gun and no secondary armaments.  I plan to add at least a few other weapons to the finished model but I would have preferred additional weapons.

 Although it is pretty big it is no where near as large as this Games Workshop Baneblade super heavy tank or other sci-fi tanks so I'm pretty happy with it.  I'm not sure what army I am going to use it for yet but I play to buy at least a few of them and I may even use them for more than one force.

Hell Knights Medium Hover Tank Finished!

 I finished the medium hover tank for my Hell Knights.  The model is converted from a Matchbox toy. The missile launcher is scratch built from different sized zip ties.  I have two other toys I've started converted so I will have a full tank squadron.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out and hopefully I'll have the other two assembled and painted shortly.

Painting progress on Hover Tanks and Mech!

I've got the new hover tank for my Hell Knights mostly painted and I've also been painting a mech made from a Transformers toy.  All I have is a wash and some weathering and these will be ready for the table.  I have two more of the tanks I've started working on as well.

Medium hover tank for Hell Knights and two new Mecha toys!

 So I picked up three Matchbox tank toys over a year ago with bog clunky wheels and started messing around with one of them to try and turn it into a hover tank.  Here is the original thread. Progress went pretty slow on it but I finally finished it.  This was one of those projects that got put on the back burner for no particular reason.
The original toy had a fixed turret but I managed to fix that problem.  The turret still hangs up a bit on the pilots hatch but it won't really affect it's play ability and it's still much more useful than having a fixed turret.  I had to glue a piece of plastic pipe into the top turret and then I glued a piece of heavy cardboard under the turret hole with a hole in it to make the turret turn.  Nothing on the conversion was all that technical so I'm not sure why I kept putting it off.  It's going to serve as a medium hover tank for my Hell Knights army.

 I went out today and picked up two new Mecha models from the new Pacific Rim movie.  I know almost nothing about the movie but the toys looked like they had potential.  They both stand about 7.5 inches tall which puts them in about the right size for medium mecha in my setting.  I'm going to do some conversion on both of these models.  The extra arm on the red one will be turned into some kind of over the shoulder weapons mount and I will probably add some weapons to the blue one.  The models cost $19.95 each at Hastings which I thought was a pretty good value.
There are some down sides to these toys.  There seem to be made with quite a few vinyl parts which will make them difficult to paint without dealing with off gassing.  I think the Krylon "Fusion" paints may work the best.  They are a good selection when painting any plastic toy and they seem to have worked out fairly well when I have used them on similar projects.  Another issue is that they have very odd articulation.  It's likely I'll pick a pose and glue them into place anyway but it's still annoying.  They are also lacking in weapons so I will have to add a few to them.

I think they blue one has a striking resemblance to the Quasit Militia Mech from the Battletech setting.  I've been wanting to do some 28mm Battletech mechs so I may pick up another one or two for that purpose.

Flying Lamborghini for Station 42

A while back I picked up a Hot Wheels "Custom Motors" kit that was about 1/43 scale with an option to create a flying car.  I liked it quite a bit and it turned out looking really nice all painted up.  The only problem was that there was only one model and I was only able to pick up one copy before they were off the shelves.

I really wanted more flying cars so I decided to try and make a few myself from other 1/43 scale cars.  My first attempt is this flying Lamborghini.

Here is the shot of the car with my scratch built repulsor drives.  I made them mostly from different sized zip ties.  The fins are from some super cheep toy airplane party favors I picked up at Dollar Tree.  I stripped the tires off the wheels and took the axles out but used the plastic wheels to fill the wheel wells so the drives stuck out far enough.

 Here is a shot with the drives glued in place.  This was a very tedious process because I just glued them in the empty wells.  On the next one I'm going to glue some thin plastic inside the wheels because the holes where I cut the axles from made it harder to glue the drives in.  The Lamborghini is just a cheap die cast toy I picked up at Dollar General for less than $3.00

I've got a bit more work to do on this.  I'm thinking of adding wings and some other bits.  I kind of feel like the Hot Wheels car looked a bit over done but this one doesn't quite look finished so I think I'm going to add more.

Hell Knights large hover AFV and Drone painted!

 I've had the build on this large hover AFV finished since August but I've just now managed to get it painted. I'm really happy with the paint job but I'm a little disappointed with the Krylon matte varnish I used on it.  I use the Krylon because it's decently priced and because there are several places in town I can pick it up.  Normally it comes out decently flat.  Not as flat as Testorss but usually flat enough.  Every now and again thought I get a can that comes out more satin the flat in nature.  I'll definitely be varnishing it again with Testors when I get another can.  

 Here's a back shot showing the doors open.  This was a nice feature on the toy I converted this hover craft from so I wanted to retain that feature since this is suppose to be used as a troop transport.  The GW Stormtroopers are shown for scale.  I used these minis for my Armored Assault Squad troopers for my Hell Knights Mercenary Company and this transport was designed specifically for them.  I will be building at least one more of these transports since I have enough troopers for two squads.  Now I just need to stat it up and start using it in our campaign.  

I showed this Hotwheels Batman "Bat" toy yesterday that I picked up for about $8.00.  I decided to paint it up as a combat drone.  For one thing the cockpit was a bit small for a manned speeder and I would have had to tear the toy apart to paint it because they structure made the side windows very hart to get at.  Since it was rivet constructed instead of screwed together that would be been much more difficult.  The other reason thought is that this version of the Hell Knights are not Imperial guardsmen.  They are not stuck with 1930s era weapons and tactics like the Imperial Guard.  I thought using this model as a drone instead of a speeder seemed even more high tech and it still fit within the armies theme.  I used a missile launcher from an Imperial Guard Sentinel walker to give it a bit more firepower.  

Hotwheels Batman "Bat" toy

I picked up this Hotwheels "Bat" speeder from Batman to use as an air speeder for my Hell Knights army.  The cockpit area is just barely large enough to be considered for a 28mm scale pilot but I may paint over it anyway and just use this thing as a kind of drone.  I think either would work reasonably well for this design.  One weird thing about the toy is that the army mounts are positioned asymmetrically which isn't so bad because they are clearly designed to be able to sweep back and forth to track targets.  It does come with a flying stand which is nice but it is awfully short for an air speeder type craft.  I will probably upgrade it eventually.

 Another thing about that model that is kind of strange are these roto blades on the bottom.  They are however made of soft plastic so they were easy to clip off.

This is a pretty good model as is.  It's a bit on the Iconic side of things but I think painting it up in Hell Knights cammo will make look different enough to make it work.  I may add a missile launcher above the cockpit areas to change it up a bit and add a bit of fire power but that's something I can do anytime or even as an upgrade.

In The Future There Will Be Robots!

I just wanted to show off some of the toys we have amassed for our Mecha project for Station 42.  I've already shown one of the mechs with the Titania Planetary Guard update.  Here are some of the others.  Many if not all of these will make and appearance in our "Station 42 War" campaign.
We will still be using "No Limits" as our rules which will make it easy to create stats for these models but we will also be adding several house rules and some new equipment which I will publish as the project progresses.  Eventually I would like to pick up some nicer models but for now we are using these to kind of test out our rule ideas.

Anti Grav Assault AFV Work in Progress

A while back I made this post about a toy AFV I found at Dollar General.  It's a pretty big sucker especially with those wheels.  For the last couple days I've been working on futurising it.  I replaced the wheels with some odd looking pencil sharpeners that represent the anti grav drive.  I also replaced the gun with a scratch built laser canon made from the guts of a mechanical pencil and some wooden beads.  I also cut off all the gas cans and mufflers and other inconsistent bits. 

This is suppose to represent a super heavy AFV designed to transport heavily armored troops into the thick of a battle and then act as support for them.  It's basically the equivalent of a Land Raider for Warhammer 40k. 

I've still got some detailing to do to cover up the holes that resulted from removing the details.  I'm going to cover them up with tech bits but since I want to be able to make more of these I'm going to try and stick with easily acquired items.   

Avengers Toys for converting to 28mm Sci-Fi vehicles.

 I recently picked up an Avengers Quinjet from Walmart to convert to a Sci-Fi drop ship.  I haven't done anything yet but since then there have been a number of cool Avengers toys released that could be useful for miniature gamers.  I hope to get another one or two of these ships to use as transports for my Hell Knights mercenary army. 

 These little VTOLs look really interesting.  I can't tell from the packaging if they have any landing gear but I can probably manage some if they don't.  I think these would be great for Shadowrun and a number of other Sci-fi settings.  I'm planning on getting at least two to use as air support units for the Hell Knights. 

 I'd like to get at least two or three of these "tanks" to use as self propelled guns for the Hell Knights. 

 My setting has Mecha in it but it's hard to find good robot and mech toys.  These look pretty good and I think with a little modification they would work nicely.

Most Robot toys are either too tall or two short but these look really good.  I think these would make good medium sized mechs.  I'm planning on getting one each for my Hell Knights mech forces but I'm going to change up the armaments so they don't look the same.  The little holes in the chest are for the figures heads to show through but I will be filling these. 

I hope to pick up one of each of the mechs and the tank and VTOL tonight after work.  This is one of those cases where I may still get in trouble for buying all this stuff even though I have a wargame wife but I think she will change her mind when she sees how cool they look.