Tauchikoma Broadside

She is pieced together from both a regular XV8 Crisis Suit and a Forgeworld XV88-2.  I liked how the Forgeworld Broadside weapons look, and after inadvertently learning they could be easily mounted on the backpack mounts of a normal suit (the connector bar for the arm slots right into the backpack groove), I couldn't get the image of the broadside Tauchikoma out of my head.

I started with the normal tauchikoma body and trimmed down the FW Broadside 'heatsinks' to glue to the normal backpack's jetpack arms, trimming down some of the nozzles.  The space between the jetpack and heatsinks was filled with greenstuff.  I left the bottom-most nozzle open, figuring it might be fired when the railguns fire to help stabilize.

I had to ponder for a while to place the second array of missiles, the first set was obvious in the space the normal tauchikoma carry their primary weapon system.  I ended up attaching them to the 'screw' nubs on either side of the backpack where I suppose normal tauchikoma would have line launchers like in GitS.  This should allow the existing line launcher power and control interface to fire off missiles without having to run any new control circuitry.

Looking over the pictures, there are resin bubbles in the railgun muzzle vent things.  Those are going to be a pain to clean out >.<

As an interesting aside, I went hunting for the tau'chi'koma that were my inspiration, and while I believe I found the thread they were in; all the images have been removed.  I recall there being a broadside or 2 in that set, but can't verify it or compare the 2 units.  ;.;

Edit: Hahaha!  Thanks #2501 for reminding me that you were the one!  Here's his Tau'chikomas.  Though this does lead me to wonder what the thread I found was...  It's here by the way.  Anyway his broadsides are quite a bit different then mine, but that's ideal.  And my second one will look different from either as I don't have any more spare FW Broadside torsos (which is odd as I have another set of railguns >.> ). 

 

Super Blog Chain Giveaway!

Having won a couple of Dark Angels Sprues in JRV's giveaway at Okidus, I'm offering up my own Super Blog Chain Give Away.

For mine I have a nice unassembled XV89 crisis suit up for grabs.

Interested in a chance to win stuff?
To Participate:
1) You must have a blog

2) You must have something worthwhile to offer up to give away for free.

3) If you win, you must hold your own blogsite give away using the same rules to pay it forward. You must contact me and Santa Cruz Warhammer with a link to your give away so we can send bloggers to your site.

4) You may only enter once per give away. If you enter twice, only your first entry will be considered.

To Enter:

1) Be a follower of this blog (I do update, honest I do! :p  )

2) Leave a comment to this post with the following information:

--Why you want or need the prize.

--What you will give away on your blog to pay it forward.

--Where your blog is.

The Prize:

Well, when I went to take pictures of the parts, I noticed I have a R'myr chest plate even though I only have 1 R'myr and it's assembled and painted (with the right chest plate).  So I went through my stuff and found a cast 'regular' torso that was for my Tauchicoma project that I'll include as well.  It's cast in a almost translucent white resin that anyone who's followed my blog knows doesn't photograph well.  Sorry the suit isn't on sprues, but i have a bad habit of removing the sprues to store the parts in compartmentalized bins.

Winner Selection:

The winner will be chosen by me based on the reason for wanting the suit and your blog.  Not to say new blogs won't win (I'm a relatively new blog myself, and I'm not saying what about the blogs I'm looking at/for ^.~ ) but I like looking at blogs.

The winner will be chosen Friday the 17th of September (two weeks from today).

Crisis suits

I have done some painting / construction on my crisis suits so I have basecoats on four more suits. I apologize for the low quality of a couple of the images, not sure why they're acting up. I'll try to get some better pictures tomorrow in the daylight.

I fails at the bloggosphere thing! I just noticed it's been over a month sense I posted anything here. Sadly it's a 2 fold problem. Firstly I haven't done much in the way of miniatures... Secondly I've been too lazy to post anything or take pictures.

This is the best picture of the crisis suits, and the suit is kneeling to take aim (I thought it was a good use of the nice rotatable ForgeWorld legs).


This is one I assembled earlier, not sure what it's up to... Looks kinda confused.


This one is so going to end up with a broken foot, he's my first attempt at a running pose, and as such there is only one foot in contact with the base... Kinda scary. this one hasn't had the OSH hand mod done as it had it's fingers retracted for running.


This one I like. Having just mashed a plague marine (visible on her base), she's beckoning toward her next target.


None of these crisis suits are glued to their final bases yet, as a few still need them painted, and they're not finished being painted themselves.

And last but not least the Newest Devilfish! (Well, maybe, it is only a devilfish compared to crisis suits, but eh)

Tau-chikoma

After seeing the tau-chikoma over at Musings of a Metal Mind I just knew I had to make at least one of my own. So instead of painting last Tuesday like I planned, I built a tau-chikoma. And I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to get it posted here >.> Sadly it's not because I've been doing other miniatures related things. ;.;

The assembly is actually a lot more straight forward then I thought at first. Though I neglected to take pictures of the stages. Initially I was trying to attach the 'front' torso to the back torso first. This was horribly hard. So I gave up on that and attached the back legs first. They should be attached so the curvy part (usually toward the crotch of the suit) goes forward with the armour on top. I played with the legs a bit in both arrangements and found that the space forward gives the better range of motion.

After the back legs are on the front torso slides right into place with little trouble. One thing I do suggest is to cut off the stock shoulder ball joints before gluing the torsos together. I also drilled into the spaces the joints were so the front legs sunk in a little and looked better. On the next one I'll probably drill/carve them out more.

After attaching the front legs, I made my big oops. Wanting to make it so I could swap out the nose weapon on the model and to reinforce the torso to torso joint (which for me wasn't as sturdy as I'd have liked), I decided it was a good idea to fill in the space in the torsos with resin. This in and of itself was a fine idea... however, I neglected to take the proper precautions so the model wouldn't fall over while the resin was curing, so I made a bit of a mess. Luckily I was able to peel/scrape off most of the spilled resin, so the model doesn't look like a blob. I did loose a lot of the detail on one of the rear legs, but it's in a mostly hidden place, so I'm not too worried.

The final piece was the head/face. It'd made from a trimmed thinner Stealth suit optics and a piece of standard house power wire that I had sitting around.



I think next time I'm going to trim the overhangs of the front torso a bit so it can sit lower on the model. This second image is actually the first I took, but as is normal for the white resin, I couldn't pick out details and took it before I found the housing wire, so I gave it a quick green brushing (which isn't done too well, but eh), which is the first image of the blog.

Crisis Suits Painted

First XV8 suit from the paint shop is the infamous R'myr pattern which became popular after the success of the T'ros campaign. This suit is painted in the scheme of Larron's Uash'O hailing from the forest moon Da'ya, and has yet to earn any distinguishing decorations.



Incidentally, the R'myr suit and the 'standard' XV8 below are not glued to their bases yet. The R'myr suit stands on it's base without support (proving that the models can balance! O.o twas an accident, but neat anyway). The R'myr above is a completely stock model. I'm tempted to add a big knife to it to truly tie it into the rest of my suits. Below is the other suit I'm working on. It has most of it's basecoat done painting wise. It's built with the right hand, shoulder pads and head of an XV84. I believe the legs are for a XV89 as they have kneepads, but I'm not positive. The left arm is a vanilla suit arm with a chaos terminator's fingers glued in. (A nod to Old Shatter Hands for the idea!) The large knife on this model's left jump engine is originally from a friend's Khorne Berzerker sprue, I filed down the face-like decoration and added it as I thought it looked neat as a representative of their bonding knife, the painted on ones just felt like a cop-out. I'm planning all my suits to have one, even though only the leader can take the upgrade. I haven't decided how to mount one to the right side as half my suits will have left handed gun arms, meaning the right arm is going to have the fingers.



Anyway, enjoy. Hopefully I'll have more progress on the Firewarrior torso soon.