Raising Kain

Or Building a Better Spartan...

I wanted to build the Kain Weller character from Robotech Tactics, a special Spartan Destroid pilot that wields two shock batons, but I also wanted to try out creating a more versatile Spartan using magnets.

This... is... a... Spartan!

Looking at the Spartan sprue, which is designed to build two models, I didn't have enough arm options to include:

1) right arm with GU-11 gun pod
2) right arm with shock baton
3) right arm with empty hand
4) left arm with shock baton
5) left arm with empty hand

In fact, the sprue has plenty of right hands, but only two left and I'd need one for the other model...
I ended up cannibalizing a second sprue, which I already had built two models from with GU-11 gun pods permanently glued to the models.

I still needed a second left hand. 
For this I took one of the "fist" right hands, cut off the thumb and shifted it to the other side of the palm.

Will probably need a little green stuff.

I assembled my arms:

1) right arm with GU-11 gun pod

2) right arm with shock baton

3) right arm empty-handed

4) left arm with shock baton

5) left arm empty-handed

The next step was to magnetize the arms and sockets on the main body so that they are interchangeable.


I mark my target spot to drill.

Dramatic reenactment.

Indent created!

Next thing is to drill the hole.  I have created a "modeling hack" for doing this.  By taking one of the clear plastic tubes that come with the paint brushes I use and then cutting off an amount of it that matches the thickness of the magnets I have, I have an effective stopper which keeps me from drilling too deeply or too shallowly.

Always the right depth for the magnets.

After placing my little tube, I drill away.

Notice the off-center drilling there?  Total rookie move on my part.

Sort of like this...

After I magnetized the parts, I pinned the model to the base.  This model would be more stable with a little help.  For this, I use regular paper clips.




Up the bottom of the base...

...and flush cut off.

Now all the options are available.

GU-11 gun pod

Two empty hands

Shock baton

Kain Weller with two batons

Due to the sprue layout, not all of the Spartans can be so flexible in build, but this one was fun to put together.

Totally Toob-ular

Wandering around my local Michael's craft store, I noticed they carried toys in tubes (the Toob brand from Safari, Ltd).  In particular, they had some interesting looking trees...

The trees looked about the right size for 6/10mm gaming, so I bought some to check them out.

The trees are made from durable plastic, come pre-painted, have integral bases and each tube has ten unique trees.  They cost about $8-10 for the ten, but with coupons you can get them for much less.  It is a higher cost for trees at this scale, but the combination of variety, out-of-the-box utility and durability of the plastic means that these trees are convenient and should last a long time.  To me, the value is there.

The height is just about right, with the tallest tree coming in at around 3-3.5 inches.

Lurking in ambush.

The integral bases are too small to provide much stability during gaming.  I glued them down to 25mm Litko bases and added some basing material.

Looking spiffy.

The pre-painting is pretty basic, solid colors only.  The trees have decent sculpted detail -- in the future I man put a wash on or dry-brush them.

Unintentional height comparison, the blue and yellow shielded dudes behind the trees are Baccus 6mm Romans.  These are "realistically" sized.

I'm happy enough that I bought huge numbers of them and they will be my primary wooded terrain pieces for years to come.

A Quartet of Corners

For your consideration, another of the Burn In Designs buildings.  This one is the "four corner building", a rather nice looking design that can be used as an office building or apartments.

The building is composed of thirteen wooden parts: four walls (two short, two wide), a roof and eight 'corners'.

The four walls have got identical window/door patterns laser-cut out of them.  This wouldn't be noteworthy except that the wider walls have got blank spaces along the edges of them to accommodate the corner pieces, while the shorter walls don't, which makes for an awkward arrangement when putting the building together.

As before, the building was glued together with wood glue.  First the walls, and roof, later on the corner pieces.

You can see in this picture that placement of the corner parts on the short wall will overlap some of the pre-cut windows.  This requires some careful placement in order to avoid partially covered windows (unless you like the half-window look, which isn't bad looking).

A little awkward.

To add a little sazon to the building, I cut some L-shaped strip styrene and glued it to the edge of the roof.  I also added a part of a Phalanx model's arm from my bits box to serve as a HVAC unit.

Keeping cool...

The end result of assembly looks good:

Painting this was the hard part for me.  I just couldn't get the colors I wanted to work the way I wanted them to.  In the end, I left it as is and added the dark paper in the interior.  I may revisit the paint job in the future, but for now it will remain as is.

It looks better in the picture than in real life.

You'll notice that the overlapped windows match the darker paper color.  I painted the overlapped wooden parts in the windows a similar color to the paper, to make it less obvious.

Spartan for size comparison.

Long-side shot.

The Battlepod of Foamcore Dame

I've seen some players of the game post pictures on line of using 3d puzzles as terrain for Robotech.  I am not a huge fan of paper terrain, but the pictures look good and so I checked out some of the CubicFun puzzles at Amazon.  They are stated to be scale models, but the scale is not given and I decided to pass on buying any for fear that they would look out of scale with the rest of my buildings.

Rick, why does that building have much smaller doors and windows than all the others?

It just so happened that I was in a store and they had these puzzles on clearance, so for five dollars a piece I figured it wouldn't hurt to try them out.  I picked up the St. Peter's Basilica and Notre Dame.

The puzzles themselves are printed on foamcore.  I would have preferred card, but at least they are light.  The box contains several sheets of foamcore with the preprinted parts that need to be punched out.  Each piece is printed the same on both sides.

The parts come free from the sheet pretty cleanly, but care should be taken on thin points or small parts as the paper could start to separate from the foam center.

Remove parts like these gently.

Any corners, bends, folds, etc. are already done on the parts, just make sure not to handle them too roughly or you risk damaging them.

The parts use a slot and tab construction that requires no glue.

Church under construction...

The puzzles are fun to put together, if you like to put things like this together.  I like building models, so this was an enjoyable and relaxing few hours.
Thought went into the design on the models, they go together well, they use a layering effect to create three dimensional appearance, they are sturdy for what they are made of.

They are also quite large.

Defender and Regult with 28mm Copplestone miniature and buildings by GameCraft and Burn In Designs.

That same Defender model in the courtyard of the Basilica.  This thing is about two feet long.

Same Regult next to Notre Dame.

Aliens invade France.

UEDF protecting Vatican City.

In terms of scale, I still don't know what these are, but they fit well with the other buildings I have.  They aren't appropriate for a Macross City board, but there was fighting in other places and these would serve well as large, central features of a table.  I chose them because although they are iconic buildings, I could 'get away' with using them as generic large churches or even as a government building (the Basilica) in just about any city setting.

The Ministry of Peace.

Bonus shots, my first painted models for the game:

Got a little brown on your stone...

My first mdf kits (evah) are from Burn In Designs (link at right).  I like this material!

For my residential neighborhood, I picked up a three-pack of 6 Story Brownstones, from the Federation City product line.

These types of apartment buildings can be found all around American cities.

The buildings come three to a pack and are all identical.  They consist of four walls and a roof, which all fit well together (wood glue is perfect for them).  Compared to my GameCraft houses, these apartment buildings are large.

As I've seen elsewhere, the tabs on the buildings stick out a bit after assembly and should be sanded down.  Don't get too vigorous with the sandpaper, though.  Some of my buildings are now a little wavy in spots.

Assembled and sanded.

After sanding, I filled in the cracks with Milliput and added a styrene rod to the roof to serve as a chimney.

The wooden material is very easy to paint and the dark paper that I inserted into the interior of the building glued on nicely.
I've finished one of these buildings, so far. 

It's not exciting to look at, but it isn't supposed to be.

I'm happy with these buildings and will be ordering others from Burn In Designs.  As a first exposure to mdf, these have been a positive experience.

Thanks for wrecking my house.  I didn't really want to live there, anyway.

Little Business to Report...

Part of my GameCraft purchase included a few resin buildings.
Resin has the reputation of being able to hold detail very well, but also being prone to air bubbles that can ruin the details you are trying to so-nicely show off.

I ordered this set of small businesses and this larger building with a restaurant on the ground floor.
The three of them came in a white-ish resin that required almost no cleanup of flash.

The backs of the buildings were rough with some deeper pitting.  I filled in the larger holes with Milliput and will paint the backs darker colors. 

This roughness/pitting in the back of the models doesn't concern me much.  Having spent much of my life living in large cities, the rear-ends of commercial buildings are frequently pretty ugly.

Lots of unsavory back-alley deals go on here.

This is pretty minor stuff, nothing to be concerned about in terms of determining the quality of the product.

The other sides of the larger building were perfect.  It's really a nice looking model, with window panes and decorative brickwork. When I get to painting it I will have fun.

I can already hear music in my head as tiny patrons sip foreign coffee and laugh during a wonderful summer eve's dining.

The other two buildings had some problems.

This second building had very nice details, with minor warping on the front bottom corners of the facade.  This is not really an issue to my mind, as both corners turned inwards identically and this gives the appearance of being intentionally designed by its architect.

The second one has the same detailing as the first, but in this one bubbles created damaged arches.  I filled these in with greenstuff.  I'm not a sculptor, but when painted it should look okay.

Overall, I'm happy with these buildings, they fit in with my general expectation of quality from GameCraft, even with some of the problems that resin is noted for.

So far I've painted up one of them.  It took about as long as it does for me to paint up a typical 28mm miniature.

Lovely arches.  Those window frames and door knobs are sculpted in.

I will definitely be buying more resin products from GameCraft.