Riptide ready to roll out!

Just a quick update... I finished the riptide y'vahra conversion's decals and took a group pic with the rest from the small force.  I decided to name the mech "lil' joe" and put a snarky anti-imperial comment on the shield.  It isn't It was still a bit glossy so I did another flat coat after this picture was taken.

While there were a few bumps in the road, I'm rather pleased with the final results.  I had an idea of what to do next and came up with a few ideas for the drones.  Normally, they're on separate bases but I was thinking of mounting them where the wings are (which are magnetized to prevent breakage).  The small end of the drones fit nicely in the groove.  I was trying to think of how the drones that accompany the much faster Y'vahra mech would keep up with it and I came up with "docking" idea similar to how the devilfish transport works.

I'm not sure if I'll work on my remora drones (much bigger "predator" drone style models) or the small missile drones next.  I'm leaning towards test fitting the smaller drones as a proof of concept but actually modelling and finishing the bigger remoras next. 

Y'Vahra in final prep for D-Day

I'd gotten a decent amount of work done in the past two weeks on my Riptide conversion.  It's not completely done yet though as the pic above was taken as the Elmer's glue was drying right after the base flock was applied.  I've still got to do the multiple overcoats of varnish (which then take a half day to fully dry in the summer heat and humidity) along with decal application in between.  I'm still figuring out exactly what decals to put where though.  I had initially planned to put a larger Allied white star on the arm shield generator but I don't have any large enough from my FOW decals and the only offered one from a fellow gamer into Bolt Action is a bit too big sadly (but thanks for the offer, Judgedoug!).  I kept largely the same scheme on the larger mecha with the faux D-Day stripes on the leg, various blues for the plasma weapons, and the white armored shoulder pad on the left.  I wasn't sure where to add the splash of red initially as I didn't want to add a giant mecha bonding knife to the model.  Even though it is largely ceremonial, it felt odd to have a weapon on the hip when neither arm would really be able to use it ever (unlike with the crisis suits).  I've been going back and forth on that one but I'll likely skip putting the old farsight sword (the one I used temporarily for a dual wielding sword commander earlier in a blog update) on his hip.

Since I'm always bugging others to put up scale shots, I put in a couple of figs from various games into the progress shot.  From the L to the R, we have a WHFB ogre (converted to a shadowrun troll RPG pc fig), a space marine, a Robotech scout pod, a Heavy Gear Cobra (made unusable by their most recent southern field guide), and my Tau Commander Farsight conversion.  I hope to have the final shots of the done model up by the end of the week.  Hopefully I'll be a bit more accurate with my completion assessment this time around.  :)

Finally, my apologies to any subscribers that got a phantom new post update last week.  Since I didn't have too much to report regarding painting progress (just the base coats for the main colors), I decided to finally add tags/labels to my blog posts.  When going through the entire list of posts, I accidentally republished an old update again but corrected the mistake soon after.

Back to the Tau

After some work on my VOTOMS 28mm models, I'm back to the Tau.  What prompted my VOTOM work was that I could do it while listening/watching Infinity N3 battle reports on youtube.  I plan on using my Scopedogs with the Infinity rules but I finally got my hands on the silhouette templates that are used for LOS in that game and the VOTOMS are much bigger than almost every TAG (their version of mecha both manned and unmanned) in that game.  Since LOS is incredibly important, I decided to take some time to reconsider how I'd use them in that game (as well as eventually using them for a 28mm Heavy Gear Blitz/Flash game).  I also plan on doing a little bit of touch up work on my newly acquired Robotech minis as well (mainly putting them into a single coherent color scheme as well as adding some decals) but I'd like to get in a game first before doing that.

Luckily (and unluckily), the parts that I needed for my Riptide Y'Vahra conversion finally became available.  Sadly, none of the pieces I had planned for my conversion actually fit the shoulder and I'm decided on using the original riptide shoulder piece for the shoulder instead.  It's still an improvement over my earlier kitbashed attempt IMO and matches the thigh armor style so I'm ok with it.  I'm still not happy with the pose I chose (except in the full frontal view) but I'd likely snap resin instead of glue if I tried to reposition it.  My plan is to finish up the Riptide Y'Vahra this week.

And to cap this post off are the newly released pics of the upcoming Tau mecha previewed today at the Forgeworld Open Day at GW HQ.  The reception seems mixed overall but I'm definitely a fan of the gun hedgehog look of this mecha.  It reminds me of a Tau version of the Robotech MAC II Monster.

Tau Supremacy Armor

Upcoming Unofficial Robotech RPG Tactics Skirmish House Rules and Tau Update

Just a quick update on my Riptide as well as a few ideas on what is to come for the blog.  I've had no luck getting the shoulder bits that I need for my Tau Riptide/Y'Vahra conversion but I have at least tested the plastic and primed the model.  I was initially afraid that the plastic wouldn't react well to the spray primer/base coat like with my Heavy Gear Votom Gashapon models but luckily that wasn't the case either with the test pieces nor the actual model.  I'm still planning on getting back to it as soon as I get the parts that I (hopefully if they fit!) need.  I'm a bit hesitant to fully start painting it though so I've moved onto other things on my waiting list.

I've had a bit of a resurgence of interest in my Robotech RPG Tactics models (or RRPGT or Tactics for short!) and have been planning out how to assemble them.  I downloaded the much improved construction guides that Palladium put out on drivethrurpg and they're a big help.  With only a single Battlecry pledge to my name, I don't have the luxury of experimenting too much with the models via conversions but I do plan on assembling a veritech squadron and some battlepods to fight it out on my cityscape terrain.  The rules as written are very streamlined and fast being meant for larger scale battles than my planned collection will be able to do justice.  After I get wave 2, I'll likely only have aobut 450pts per side with the minimum the rules recommend being 300pts for a standard game.  Without wave 2 (my current situation), I have to depend on special characters to get to the minimum game size of 300pts.

There was supposed to be a set of full skirmish rules in the game but they apparently ended up on the cutting room floor and were replaced with a page of introductory scenarios instead for new players.  My idea is to create my own skirmish rules like I did with the Heavy Gear Flash! set that I started this blog with.  Unlike with HG, the Robotech rules (with some caveats) do generally work with the scale of battle that they were developed for so my goal is to expand on them within the existing framework to work better at a model count smaller than intended.  I hope to have the update post for these houserules that details the both the goals and changes more concretely ready by the end of the week.  As stated earlier, I'm not rewriting large portions of the rules so I hopefully will be able to detail the house rules in just a couple of posts.  I encourage folks to leave comments on the future posts as I do plan on editing the house rules depending on how the reception is.

And now for the bigger mech!

I've been working on my Riptide Y'Vahra conversion for a few evenings and this is what I've come up with so far.

I had to create the head from scratch using left over and broken star wars, transformers, and 40k Imperial/Tau/Chaos bits to give it a bit more heft compared to the original.  It's a bit too big IMO but I still prefer it to the Thrud the Barbarian tiny head the original model came with.  The arm was similarly created and I'm happy with the final effect there.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to successfully magnetize it to allow fast switching of the normal riptide arm with the Y'Vahra variant weapon.  I figured I'd probably be playing the "normal" riptide more often and wanted the suit to look like a bigger upsized version of the smaller one so opted to glue that arm on.

One thing I'm definitely not happy about is my scratch built shoulder pad.  It just seems both too busy there as well as out of place.  I've since taken it off and repositioned it both higher up on the shoulder as well as reversed (so the short face/angle is pointing toward the elbow instead) and it does look better but I'm still not happy with the result.  I'll be trying to pick up some armor bits on ebay to test out a few other looks but for now both the shoulders are bare.

Farsight and Friends

I now have a legal Farsight ally force painted up!  I decided not to go too crazy with the decals (at the cost of about a half dozen or so that I applied and then took off) and just used the FOW decals as the colored ones made the model too busy.  I went with the white stars on the shoulder, chest, and back (in descending size order) as well as a few spots of text including some pilot nicknames on the forearms of each suit.  Additionally, I put a flag on the left shoulder to go with the theme.  I tried out designation numbers on the left chest for all as well as the white stars on a red bar for Farsight but they just seemed out of place.  Without further talk about stickers on my soldiers, here's the pic:

The next step for the force is to add in another (big) fig that I got in trade a little while back... a Y'Vahra!  

Forge World Y'Vahra Battlesuit

My plan is to convert it to be usable as both a Y'vahra as well as a normal riptide for when opponents aren't keen on using forgeworld rules (especially trial ones like the Y'Vahra currently has).  I'll have to make another left arm as I plan on using the right one for the normal riptide ion accelerator.,  I'll also probably try to convert the head into something a bit more proportional to the model.  The FW variant doesn't have as bad of a tiny head issue as the normal riptide but it still looks off IMO.  I'll hopefully start construction of the models today so might have an update on the next addition sometime late this week.