"Robotech/Macross 1/200 Project" Topic

This will be an overview of my personal project to pull together a nice game for doing Macross/Robotech battles with limited figures, and using only readily available parts and figures. So no rare model kits, everything should be readily available online. Though note it does make use of Mechwarrior figures which should be easier to get, but as time wanes this thread will become outdated. I am not going for any form of strict continuity, just some good old fashioned blowing stuff up. So if my Battle Pod is not good enough for you, well, I apologize.

Veritechs are fairly easy to come by, cheap eBay, Hobby Link Japan, or any number of other sites, I purchased the 1/200 Macross Variable Fighters Trading figures. YOu can get sealed case of these from HLJ for around $25, though shipping wwill set you back a bit further. The Second wave contains Skull Leader, which may be of interest to you. I like the fact it contains Variable Fighters from other series as well, as these add a bit of flavor.

Battle Pods however are rare and expensive it seems. So I scoured the web looking for alternatives. here is what I came up with, break out your eBay foo, and acquire a handful of Night Stalkers:
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Chop of the arms and the head turret. You may wish to fill in the arm sockets. That simple mod should leave you with a suitable Battle Pod, though perhaps a bit smaller than it should be.

To get a Officer's battle Pod buy some Maruader IIC:
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There are no physical modifications to this figure, though replacing the Autocannons with a sort of laser rifle would improve the illusion.

Both of these figures can now get suitable paint jobs.

There you have your most basic mechs, there are of course some options for the destroids. You may want to use others, and I have yet to find a really good solution for the Gladiator. So find one you like for him.
Rifleman IIC – Raidar X
Warhammer IIC – Tomahawk
Malice – MAC III
Longbow – Spartan

Now for terrain, that is always an issue in any game I find, thankfully, I have pils of Heroscape terrain that works great, the marvelscape makes great concrete and Blacktop which is very handy for cities. Ah yes, cities, took me a long while to come up with something other than scratch build. Here is what I found (from here actually)
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This stuff is a great scale and looks pretty nice when done, the only complaint I have is that the octogonal shapes can be far more fiddly than if they;d have stuck with rectangles.

And finally a rules set, after pondering many options, I am settling with a variant of the Robotech RPG. I am working on a consolidated rules set with stat sheets now. Here is a preview of that stat sheets, note I have yet to work out how to do missiles in the game, which is obviously very important.
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So, I'll be uploading my own pictures soon, I have a bit more work to do before I am ready to show you all the stuff. Hopefully this can help anyone who is considering working on a Macross project.

Good luck to you! It's 2009, so it's a great year to do some Macross wargaming!

Sadly, like you said, there are very few Zentraedi mecha that are easy/cheap to get and that is a killer when you need about 20 or so battlepods for a decent game.

Someone out there has been doing some Macross games. I'll find the thread for you because he did have a nice collection of Zentraedi mecha.

Did someone say 1/200 Veritechs and Destroids???
Ta-da! A cheaper alternative: auction

Also, for the real deal: hlj.com/product/NCM806

Good luck! I might be right behind you except with a different rules-set!

Ok, I see you found that thread. I remembered that this fellow used 1/200 mecha too. I wonder how much he paid to get them?

Oh, the old 'unseen' mecha from Battletech can easily cover most of the Destriods (Rifleman, Archer, Warhammer), and the Wasp/Stinger cover the battloids. Zentraedi mecha… good luck there except the Marauder. I guess the FASA crowd didn't like the Zentraedi mecha.

I know about the models actually, I just like that I can get other Variable Fighters other than the VF-J1 with the collectibles.

Oh Cilidar, there are no Destroids there, hence the need for the Mechwarrior figures, I have found one other potential solution, but am not ready to reveal it yet should it cave through.

Anyways, I do intend to get that set as to get some Armored units and to give one to my nephew for him to try and put together.

TGunner, the threads you are thinking of I've already seen, the ones by Greg, he did some great stuff and is a large part of my inspiration.

I happen to have a few of the Unseen mecha in Battletech scale, they are too small however.

"Oh Cilidar, there are no Destroids there"

Whoops, I thought the two in the bottom corner were Destroids and not armored Valkyries.

Not a big deal. Anyways, I have started conversion work on my only Night Stalker, and also have begun to paint up my Marauder. I need to order more Night Stalkers, but am waiting till I can place one larger order rather than a few smaller ones. So maybe in a few weeks I'll have the cash, that or I need to start selling organs.

Early pic of some of the stuff.
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Bwa ha ha, finished my first Regult, I will happily admit, it is not the same, however I think it does very well. Kinda an alternate view of what the battle pods could have been like, maybe an offshoot branch of the Zentradi formed them with their own technology after somehow getting cut from the main fleet (failed drives perhaps)

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Tell me what you think.

I think it works with the paint scheme you gave it. Sounds like a fun game you plan on running.

WOW, looks great! What are you going to use for weapon mounts?

Nice stuff, Glenn M. Interesting speculation, the idea of 'offshoot' Zentraedi. Actually, given the storyline behind Macross Frontier, its well within the realms of possibility to imagine a similar outgoing colony which runs into just about any alien horde of mecha. Methinks I'll have to consider that in the future…
In the meantime, for those who are interested, my Robotech rules, 'Pineapple Salad!' should be available to all – for free! – towards the end of April. Stay tuned!

wolvermonkey, are you referring to the different types of regults, or the fact that I am missing most of the small laser turrets. I don't intent to add the small laser turrets as they'll just break off. I also haven't figured out what parts to use to build the missile pods and such yet, but I am looking into it.

MacrossMartin, I intend to watch the other Macross series soon actually a friend of mine has them subbed. I'll keep an eye out for Macross Frontier. I'm also very interested in your rules, we'll have to see how they play out compared to what I am using.

Hey Glenn, just shop around with the other Mechwarrior minis. I bet that there is a mech that has bits you can use for missile launchers. Maybe a Catapult?

Yup I was. But even the standard issue regults had a bunch of gun barrels on it. Since the base mini's soft plastic I guess it would be easy to drill a hole for some brass or plastic tubes for the barrels. Just thinking out loud. The mini you posted looks great as is. Makes me want to dig my model kits out of the attic and start building them.

I was thinking some of the tanks or infantry with missile launchers as they;d be cheaper than mechs. But yeah, I need to wait till I get some more cashy money.

You didn't have to totally remove the arms, they would make a good alternate location for the Regult's main weapons. Just consider it a new version of Regult, consider the stealth Regult as an example.
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So we know they came in alternate versions.

Does anyone know if this an official thing, or is it a Fanboy work.
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The REF tactical Battle pod MK III?

EDIT:
I also like my guy armless, though I may make some alternates using other parts. I am currently examining the Mechwarrior stuff for the Male and Female Power Armor as well.

These are all rather interesting:
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Some good possibilities here, wonder what I can come up with.

All those designs in your last two posts are from the Sentinels RPG book, Glenn. I'm pretty sure they are all based on 'official' concepts for the aborted Sentinels series.
You might think its tricky to find Zentraedi in 1/200th, but just wait until we start looking for Invid… ;P

I already tried, it appears to be next to impossible. Once again, I am going to be looking into alternate sources. Perhaps I'll be lucky and find some potential Mechwarrior clix that'll be suitable. I am thinking about trying to find limbs on the various units that may work, and then stick various parts together for the odder stuff.

Actually, I am not too familiar with the other series, how large are the Invid? Are they the same size as a Veritech, it seems to me they are a fair amount smaller from the pics I have seen.

Ah yes, here is my Officer's Battle Pod, I am not as happy with how it turned out, but at a distance it should prove to do the trick, I am going to peek around for other alternatives.

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Not bad though, Glenn! I'd go to the trouble of puttying out the 'nose' to be longer and with 2D-curve facings, but that, of course, is the first step down a long road to the Never Finished Army…

As to Invid – yes, the smaller 'crab' Invid are smaller than a VT, but there were 'Officer's Battle Pod' mecha which were larger. I started sculpting some many moons ago. I might give it another try, if there's enough interest to let me recoup the costs involved. I'm certain I'll have to sculpt Male & Female Zentraedi P.A. before I see any! I sculpted and cast Female P.A. for my own use in 1/285 ages ago. Surely doing them in 1/200 won't be so hard? (He tells himself…)

For an alternative Officers Battle pod you could work on the Hellstar (Left): picture

And the Griffons might make nice Destroids: picture

Ah, speaking of Invid I found these……

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Some cool Invid versions on the first link. Would make for some great minis. Oh found this size compairison pic too.

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Don't know about the Hellstar, Cilidar – little too angular for me. I'd like to see what Glenn would turn 'em into though! Could make a v. nice Destroid. Those Griff's look a lot like the original Battletech counters! Ah, memories… how they fool us into believing things were better way back when…
Nice link, wolvermonkey! Are you trying to encourage me to get sculpting? ;)

Say, if we keep this up, can we petition for a Macross/Robotech Board?

I intended to order a Hellstar as a possibility for a Tomahawk actually.

I found this link for my size comparisons:
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For the Invid Scout, I may have found a decent body alternative. The Explodohawk from Monsterpocalypse has the right shape, given some legs and the arms from the Night Stalker (that have been conveniently chopped off), it may be suitable.
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I'd probably make two cuts in the body to even the angle out though, shopping out the head area and then flexing the body to form a less sharp of an angle, as the plastic is soft, that should work without too much damage to the body. I happen to have one of these, but I'd need to find some legs.

"I intended to order a Hellstar as a possibility for a Tomahawk actually"

Sounds good.

Also, on a side note, if your into space gaming I thought this might make a nice Vajra lesser queen (Macross Frontier): link

I have not yet seen Macross Frontier, though it is on my list, along with watching Macross as Macross and not as Robotech. Apparently they recently did a Macross Dub in English that is not Robotech, so that is very interesting to me, I also know they did a dub of Macross Plus (pretty good actually)

Some of the Invid come from the video game Robotech Invasion, mainly the heavy enforcer and mortar scout. And maybe the grappler, I don't remember running into that one. The Overlord comes from the Robotech Shadow Chronicles movie, and it transforms. It has that battloid mode, a mode that looks like a shocktrooper on steroids, and fighter mode which looks like the scout on steroids.

Reinforcements have arrived!!!!

Hmm, the bottom one could be a scout perhaps, remove the Missile Turret, add it to a regular Battle Pod.
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Clockwise starting at 12 and ending in the center. Monster, Tomahawk, Tomahawk, ??, ??, Defender, Spartan. The two ?? were Spartan potentials, but I settled with the Griffin.
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Vehicles (Not sure these will all be used for this, but others may see use with my Epic armies) The Coolant Truck will be used for certain scenarios I guarantee it.
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Invid Soldiers?
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I have already started chopping away at the figures.

Good Luck with those Glenn! Certainly agree with your assessments for the potential of the mechs in the second photo. Me, I'm in the middle of trying to fix the glaring mistakes on the Nichimo Valkirye kits. Arrgh!