Topic: Cheap Mechs

Check these out, £2.50 for 5! They have been around for a while.

Plastic so convertable.

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Science_Fiction.html

Paul

Re: Cheap Mechs

Yup. Been watching those for a couple years.  May end up getting a couple of those sometime soon.

Was thinking this morning of how cool it would be to just do parts in resin so folks can kitbash the mecha the way they want it.  wink

Re: Cheap Mechs

go0gleplex wrote:

Was thinking this morning of how cool it would be to just do parts in resin so folks can kitbash the mecha the way they want it.  wink

I've always loved that idea; out there somewhere is a guy who sells molds for casting your own resin starship bits, then assembling them into custom ships.

I'd love to see custom mecha bits myself, and I suspect there are plenty of others out there who would too.

Re: Cheap Mechs

Just do half dozen different feet, lower legs, upper legs, waist, upper torso, upper arms, lower arms, hands, heads, and about a dozen guns n missile tube/boxes and end caps for the lower arms for like missile launchers or energy weapons.  maybe even some jet exhaust port type bits...

Re: Cheap Mechs

When Wardogs was first being worked on, I figured that modular would be a sweet idea for the system.  Having 4-5 of each part  would be sweet and give players a ton of options

Let see:
Lower body
Upper body
Head
Upper arm (left/right)
Lower arms/weaponry (if built separate from the upper arm, some of the non-hand ones could be used for both sides)

Five of each type gives you ~78,00 choices (for starters)
-Bren

Re: Cheap Mechs

I've actually done a couple of scratch built mechs for battletech.....
Not that they are of professional quality...... but it can be done.

Definitely going to be getting Wardogs as soon as I have finances free.

Nahuris

Re: Cheap Mechs

I must say that those are pretty nice minis for being generic minis.

I also got super turnaround time on them.

Re: Cheap Mechs

How tall would these 'modular mecha' need to be, overall?

Re: Cheap Mechs

thedugan wrote:

How tall would these 'modular mecha' need to be, overall?

If you go with 1.5 inches, you would be in the realm of normal mecha games in my opinion.  If you nailed down an actual train scale (like they did for CAV), you get a lot of stuff for fairly cheap.

-Bren

Re: Cheap Mechs

If you're looking at various unit sizes, then it becomes a bit more complex...at 6mm a PA trooper is about a quarter inch tall...where a size 10 unit is going to be about the size of a large CAV figure...with CBT mini's falling in the 4-7 range.

Re: Cheap Mechs

Perhaps the unit size could represent something other than how many stories high the unit is, similar to the way Btech went. Yes there is a difference in height between say a Stinger and Atlas but it is not OTT. More noticable is the bulk. The Assault Mechs are Heavy!

Paul

Re: Cheap Mechs

These same minis can be had from Nexus and also from Red Shirt Games in Canada.

They are reasonably generic and will work with 2m to 10mm figures. being very large with the former and quite small with the latter.

Measuring sole to crown they are all in the 35-40mm range.

I am already considering ordering a pack or two, along with some styrene shapre, beads etc, and Alumilite resin to cast up some conversion bits.

Even a simple division into legs/torso/arms/weapons would allow for quite a bit of variety in assembled models.


As far as scale, avoid any dead give-aways like open crew hatches and they could be any size/scale. A "cockpit" canopy could just as easily be a sensor suite canopy.

I usually scale mecha relative to each other rather than anything else on the battlefield anyway.

Re: Cheap Mechs

Mine just arrived.  I ordered from EM4 rather than Red Shirt Games because I didn't need 30 of them and shipping from the UK was both cheaper and faster.  They arrived in 5 days from when I ordered them. From the UK to the west coast of Canada.  I have no idea why I can have things sent to me from overseas (got some stuff from Japan today as well) that's faster and costs less than stuff from inside Canada.

The actual detail on the pieces is deeper and crisper than I thought it was going to be.  As for using them in N Scale, they'll work, but they'll definitely be lighter mechs/power suits at about 5-6 metres tall.  The deep recesses will work well for my painting style as well, as I generally go with a base coat, dark wash, base coat again and then a highlight.

I haven't seen any of Iron Wind Metals recent releases for Classic Battletech, but these plastics strike me as being nicer and more detailed than the odd looking boxy stuff that was produced for Battletech under FASA.

Re: Cheap Mechs

I found out about Wardogs a few weeks ago. After finally getting thru most of the demo rules, I've made plans to get the printed book. I have many Giant Robo rulebooks in my collection and Wardogs is definitely on my must snag list. After playing CAV, I was estatic to see lock on rules. I really love the fact that Wardogs appears to let you make any kind of mecha your heart desires which lets you play Battlemechs vs CAVs vs Mobile Suits vs Gears. (unless I missed something)  At any rate, when I saw this post, I instantly thought of my collection imiatation Gashpons. They were 50 cents a pop and I ended up taking about 8 bucks in quarters and dumping them into the machine. I haven't seen any of the machines around any more so I started looking online to see if maybe I could find some on ebay. Anywho, I stumbled on a site that had them here. http://www.specialtystoreservices.com/product.aspx?category=3231&link= They are really neat and look like they could be painted up pretty easily, but I leave mine unpainted to keep they're gashpon feel. As far as scale, They're probably closer to 6mm. They fit in well with Battlemechs or Exo Armors (Jovian Chronicles, think mobile suits). In comparison to CAVs, They're almost as tall as a Vanquisher (by that I mean the cockpits are almost level.) Unfortunately, the only way to get one or two to see if you like them is to luck out and get them from a vending machine from a dollar store or supermarket.

Re: Cheap Mechs

Very cool link.  You should take a picture of all the different mecha for all of us to compare scales.  In any case, 25 cents for a 2" mecha is an awesome deal!

-Bren

Re: Cheap Mechs

Well...a little something put into motion.

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=51788