I've got the prints of a bunch of new vehicles sculpted for me by the amazing Mark Mondragon, and so I thought I'd share them with you all to give a heads up on what could be flying, rumbling or stomping across your sci fi battlefields soon.
Some of these pics show the new item compared to the Cafferata APC, which many of you have recently added to your forces, and for figure scale there is one of those ubiquitous alien mercenaries, a Kark whose name is Haifisch, who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
First up, so that Leland does not get impatient, is the Mekanoid Hatchet, a sinister robot configured as a gunship. It's armed with a large cannon for heavy work, seven bays for pulse cannons, and a battery of missiles in a silo in the top rear, mostly for anti-air work but which can fire HE at ground targets as well.
Pulse cannons are missing from the bays, and the right engine is not on, but otherwise here's what it will basically look like.
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From the front, showing the over and under eye-lens arrangement of all Mekanoids. Remember, this gunship is alive. (That said, there's enough room in the CPU ("head") for a crewman to sit in case you want to use it as a piloted craft).
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The vertical engines are positionable, and the craft will be too, as the flight rod goes into a ball, so the craft can be set at different attitudes.
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The Vespulids have proven enormously popular, glad you like them. So we are quickly following them up with the Ion Howitzer, a remote heavy weapon carried to the battlefield by a swarm (note the carry handles) and pheromonically controlled by the drone. The creatures position it a few hundred yards before they strike, and, as the swarm tears toward its target, this cannon blasts them with swathes of ion energy, shorting out systems, stunning men, and silhouetting them against the ground (for the Vespulids are night fighters extraordinaire). This will be a metal piece and I'm so pleased with the way it came out, simple and deadly.
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Yes, you thought it was vaporware, and it still is, but it's beginning to condense a bit! It's the massive Felid Lion Assault Transport, an eightwheeled monstrosity crushing all opposition under its humongous wheels! Run Haifisch run!
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As you can see the turret, er, doesn't quite fit, and fixing that is causing yet more delays. But hey, look, I have this physical copy to show you, so it's gotta be finished someday. Right? Right?
Oh no, Haifisch didn't run fast enough!
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Phew, apparently he did, but you know our Haifisch, from the frying pan ….
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Yes it's the approval casting of the Mekanoid Dictator, their planetkilling battle mech. The circular tubs on the legs and "cheeks" will hold pulse cannons made in white metal -- fourteen in all. It's a walking fortress, and that doesn't even count its batteries of forward firing HE missiles or its top mounted quad Humungo-guns (TM).
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We are fairly sure that this is the largest combat unit ever made specifically for 15mm. Not counting some armoured trains. And maybe some resin terrain. Oh and some forts. Well, it's big! (Actually, we have something we've made that's even bigger, but that's under wraps for now, guarded by three irate Garn under orders to eat anyone who's seen it!)
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Next is the Federal Hunter class gun carriage, named after the only British Royal Marine to win the Victoria Cross in World War II (and a Scotsman to boot). Here it is with its MLRS installed, and on the ground nearby, the pieces for the AAA and SPA variants. I'm almost decided that these pieces will all come in one set. We're fairly sure Haifisch is discreetly snapping some intel pics with his iphone.
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Last, and most definitely least, is the Humiliator class flying saucer for Planet 15. It suddenly materializes over the world's capital cities, after which the Martian imperialists subject the world to death ray demonstrations of power and, perhaps worse, extended megalomanical conversation.
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Wrong genre, Haifisch! Get out of there before you are sucked into the 1950s!
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In other vehicle news, John Bear Ross's hiney-kickingly good Chewk Drill Tank is at the casters now, though the status of the missing Chewk Raider infantry remains as murky as the sands of the Sepulvedan deserts. Mark Mondragon is designing for me the Donner class MBT, a tracked main battle tank used by some Federal Marine reserve units which have not yet been upgraded to L-HACS, and, as their main armoured unit, by the armoured forces of the Federal Army and many of the Freeholds. That includes those inherited by Jellina Joel, the genocidal overlord, before the Federation cut off her deliveries, and these are now crewed by her abominable Control Battalions. Picture a very big sci fi tank with two treaded drive-trains on either side.
For fun we had our own Grabula design for the Karks an APC for use by those omnipresent mercs when not serving under the Dominate. Cnidarians pilot the sophisticated grav vehicles of the Dominate and do not permit them to be used on mercenary adventures. It's the first vehicle we've had designed in actual material you can touch! Grabula did a fabulous job and we'll be sending this ramshackle vehicle off to the caster soon to be created -- it's classic monkey-model, welded plate stuff, something we think sci fi is a bit short on (second rate vehicles, I mean). As the Karks are my alien salute to Renaissance German mercenaries, their APC is decidedly Teutonic as well, and looks more than a little like a certain well-known halftrack from WWII!
Finally, in non-vehicle news, got the second batch of post-Apoc outlaws from Ben Siens in the mail, time to pick my jaw up off the ground!
Phew! Well, I have prattled on long enough. This hopefully will amuse some of you who were not able to get to Salute (including because there is an ocean between you and the show!).
