After starting my Taurox conversion yesterday (found here in Part 1 and Part 2), today I pulled out the Scion kit. Since I first saw them I have been dying to put Curious Construct Pickelhaube heads on them. In my mind the baroque armour was crying out for a bit of 18th century Prussia!
To make them look a bit more special I replaced the helmet spikes with bigger ones and made helmet plumes out of copper electrical wire. I had done this before with my Praetorian Rough Riders (a step by step making the plumes is here). This was roughly what I had in mind:
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| Just look at the size of that spike! |
Here is how they tuned out:
We have been told that Col. Gravis is working an another head especially for this kit. I'll be quite happy to have some with a different helmet to mix things up down the track.
The scion kit is really nice in the flesh. You do have to be cartful not to mix up the bits because each Hotshot lasgun will only fit one set of arms and one backpack. It was a bit fiddly lining up both hands on the arms and the power cable too, but that is all part of the fun. I liked the extra bits of equipment in the kit - the little Imperial Handbook is a nice touch. One odd thing though, there are enough Krak and Frag grenades to deck out the whole squad but in the new rules only the Tempestor is equipped with them. Its a shame when the rules and the kits don't line up.
I also made some more progress on my converted Taurox today.
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| Here it is next to a Banewolf to gauge the scale. |
If you are planning to build one of these yourself and would like to paint the interior, I stumbled on a handy tip. If you don't glue down the floor and bonnet they easily slide out to paint - even with the rest of the kit built.
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| Driver in place. |
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| Floor and Bonnet section unglued so I can paint it. Check out the detail. |
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| Here it is again slotted into place. |
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| The back area. You can see where I raised the the track guard (the white bit under the seat). I will add some greenstuff to clean it up a little. |
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| The gunner seat can be positioned at floor hight or raised to look out the turret. |
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| I raised my gunner as high as I could. |
At this point I realised I had a problem. My nice Pickelhaube spike was too high and hit the roof!
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| It stuck out quite a bit! |
I really wanted to keep the spike because planned to have a removable roof and painted interior. After a bit of thought I decided that this part of the roof was under the turret so wouldn't be seen. So I made space for the spike and it fit perfectly under the turret.
One thing that bugged me with this kit was there was no Heavy Stubber included! Why give me loads of extra stuff that I don't need (like two sledgehammers and other tools) but leave out a crucial upgrade like a heavy stubber! In fact ALL of the Optional Vehicle Equipment is missing.
No: Seachlight, Dozerblade, Heavy Stubber, Smoke Launchers, or HK missile!
Anyway I had to go and raid another kit to find a Heavy Stubber. There was nowhere for it to fit well, so I mounted it in the turret view port. It happened to line up with my gunners hands quite nicely.
It doesn't look like it will be hard to build it with interchangeable guns, just the odd magnet here and there. There is still more to add to this but I feel like it is almost there!
Finally, here is the group all together.
And alongside my Teutons (or as I call them Prutenians - which is a latinisation of 'Prussian')
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| The Taurox will get a set of hussar wings to match the other vehicles in this army. |
I'm looking forward to getting these all painted in a batch before I move on to something else!