Metal Slug Tank plastic kit

I have to say I was super excited to get and build this kit. I've been a Metal Slug fan for years and always give it a play if I see an arcade machine of it, I always liked the art style and loved the Tank Police inspired tank. Wanted my very own one for years and was super surprised to find a plastic model kit of it. I'd seen several unacquirable garage kits of it from Japanese model shows but never a regular plastic kit, mind you I kind of doubt it's licensed since they called it Metal Bug.


Here's the box, it got a bit squished in the post :(


When you open it up it has this slip cover inside


and then lots of parts






Just looking at all the bits and the clean up required put me off at first so I did up the anime helicopter kit 1st before returning to the nightmare of the suspension on the tank. Sooooo many parts

This is just for the front wheels. Each of those pistons was a separate part that needed cleaning




the hull and complicated suspension continues




there was a bit of a gap at the top above the lights. Needed to use a strip of plastic card to fill it


most of this stuff won't be visible once it's built but damn they put effort into giving you detail


the turret coming along


the turret is mostly done here just need to add the antennae which of course broke getting them off the sprue, so did most of the little grab handles so I replaced the handles with bent wire and the antennae with guitar wire (which did bad things to my cutters T_T )


the back end was ridiculously complicated with the pipes and the disk brakes and platform etc etc


Everything done except the tracks


and here she is all built. The tracks were just as much a nightmare as the suspension but they look great when all together










and for those people thinking I wonder if this would make a good say Space Ork tank here is some size comparison shots (note these are an ork boss and nob so a fair bit bigger than a regular grunt)






I really am happy with the finished tank and look forward to getting it painted soon. Should probably airbrush it save my sanity.

Cars 2 Spy Jet

Saw this at the local Kmart toy sale and thought to my self "Gee that looks like a good scale plane to go with minis". So I bought myself a goofy plane with eyes on the front.



Turns out my hunch was right It is perfectly scaled to go with minis. I think it would make a great objective in a modern game like Infinity or say Shadowrun. Of course I'm going to have to unscrew it to work out how to get the windscreen off and get rid of the eyes underneath.





It even has an opening roof and tail boarding ramp. You can easily fit 2 rows of minis inside on 25mm bases and still close the top







A few different angles of the plane





The underside is really the only let down, the wings are basically just the top surface, the bottom is hollow but on the table it's not really going to matter.



All the shots so far have been without the tale since I was thinking it looked a bit like Tony Stark's private jet from the 1st Iron Man without it but here is what it looks like with it's tale.



Oh and for the curious the minis I've used for scale are Copplestone Castings' Future Wars range and Foundry's Street Violence.

Robogear Condor

Was always a bit curious about the unusual kits that come out of Russia from http://www.tehnolog.ru I picked up this kit from eBay

Not many parts but a bit of cleanup is required. The plastic used is a bit cheap feeling, not quite the same as styrene used in Japanese or GW kits.

The kit went together pretty easily. Just needed some putty to clean up the joins.

The figure that came with the kit looks like a tiny action figure. The detail isn't very fine and the proportions are a bit crap. The cockpit is designed for him to just sit in there. There's no real seat detail or anything particularly detailed inside. Would be easy to make something out of styrene I think.

It's a stumpy little kit with a big body and a tiny set of wings and tail but I kinda like it. The under the body missile launchers aren't any good but the wing rocket pods look great. I think the kit could be an OK alternative to the new chibi space marine flyer. At about $16 from eBay you could almost have 5 of these for the price of one marine flyer.

Anime Helicopter Gunship

Hey readers I'm not dead or quite given up the hobby yet, just been very sidetracked by writing video game reviews and other things over at www.techromp.com

I've been keeping up with minis news but haven't painted anything for months. The news of a very Metal Slug looking resin tank kit from Ammon Miniatures made me trawl the net seeing if there were any more accurate kits out of there. That turned up an overly detailed plastic kit I ordered from China. Starting on that showed me how out of practice I was so I started on something a bit simpler to build, this very nicely molded kit from  Kotobukiya (I'll get back to the Metal Slug kit in a later post)



I thought this kit looked rather interesting. Wasn't sure if it would be big enough to look OK with gaming minis but it reminded me a lot of the wonderfully menacing gunships from Patlabor 2. I thought it might look good with some Infinity minis which my friend is trying to drag me into.



3 sprues of nice clean parts. Very little flash or mold lines. I would have taken a bunch of in progress pics but it went together in one night.





Probably a bit too small for a pilot, and that's using a very finely scaled Forgeworld pilot for reference.





forgot to put on the missiles and rocket pods for these pics so here's a later pic of the gunship on a Gundam flying stand



The gatling gun under the nose is massive on this thing but the rocket pods are tiny. Would probably look better with 1/48 rocket pods.