Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Malibu Jaguars... with new hat!

Yes, I opened up a blog post with a classic Simpsons reference as it seemed appropriate.  Recently, I sold some Heavy Gear Rafm minis to Ashley over at the Paint it Pink blog and she was kind enough to include a Fire Jaguar head in with the lot so that I'd have matching hats/heads for my Jaguar squad.  When I was assembling my RAFM gears last year, I found out that I had a mispack or missing parts rate of one in three sealed blisters.  As a result of that terrible QA back in the 1990's, my Jaguars all had mismatched heads unfortunately (along with a mispacked Hunter backpack as well).  I did the best that I could in trying to get a cohesive look for the small squad of three gears and ended up press moulding a Fire Jaguar head to match the two that I had.



It's far from the prettiest looking Jaguar head with the extra VR-style visor over the typical optics but I thought it conveyed the advanced targeting on the Jaguar somewhat compared with the typical heads on my Grizzlies and Cheetahs.  I had been on the lookout for a third matching head and Ashley came to the rescue recently!



I added a bit of paperclip to represent an antenna as the model is a "thunder" command variant with the satellite uplink modelled around back on the V-engine.  I don't know when or even if I'll paint these up but Ashley's blog is scratching the RAFM painting itch with frequent updates.  With this squad now officially done and her doing updates as well, I'm a bit motivated to try and do the final Hunter squad for this force.  Initially, I stopped as I noticed a few more Hunter mispacks on top of the issues I was having with the Jaguars but I'll have to re-evaluate the situation with them this upcoming weekend.

7 comments:

  1. Paint them, go on, you know you want to.

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    1. I do.. a little bit. :) I'll see how my interest holds up after I get around to first assembling/converting the Hunter trio first. In the meantime, I'm content to paint RAFM HG vicariously through you!

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  2. I've been perusing your RAFM posts looking for a picture of the rear of a Cheetah, as mine is sans butt-plate and I need to make a replacement. So far all the shots I've found show the Gear from the front.

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  3. I should be able to help you in that regard. I've been converting my butt-plates to actually be attached to the butt instead of the v-engine but I might have one left unbuilt to take some pics of and email you.

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  4. If you're interested in selling any, I could use some for a campaign I'm working on. I'm converting a Battletech player to the Dark Side, and his interest is spurred more by the old 1/87 scale models than the new teensy weeny ones. Plus, with my failing eyes I find them easier to paint as well.

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  5. Thanks but it took me almost 20 years to get a collection started again so I'll be keeping them for the forseeable future. If I change my mind, I'll contact you though.

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