Send in the Clones: The beginnings of my GAW. 
So with the plans in place I started work on my first force, the Grand Army of the Republic. I’ve had quite of lot of stuff in respect to Star Wars miniatures for quite some time now, (a massive WEG collection, micro machines vehicles etc…. most of those being 25mm or there abouts, but with a few bits and pieces that would fit the larger WOTC minis) so I was keen to try to include some of these into this new force.
The Revell LAAT Gunship is a lovely snap-fix model, a little under scaled, and lending itself more to 20mm-25mm use, however after seeing the wonderful piece painted by fellow Star Wars fanatic Agis:
It was clear then that this would be very very useful. I had one already in the box so a little eBay digging a few months back and now I have four, (soon to have five cheers Inso
).
I’ll be building these at a later date, so an update when they have been started. My main focus has been troops. A few eBay trawls and some polite pushing from Baggy and I had myself around 12 clones to start with.
Now the problem with WOTC bendies is two fold, both the material and the painted finish. The plus side is that the sculpts (in general) are really very nice and are completely let down by the two issues above.
However, the importance of using licensed minis as apposed to proxy for this project meant I had to embrace the fear and see what I could do with these.
I spent a few nights pondering this, watching TCW clone episodes, checking forums and threads for ‘how to clean up wotc figures’, dipping helmets in acetone etc…. I have to admit I was a little crest fallen.
Then I stumbled upon an idea. Diving into one of the storage cupboards I dug out my Kick Starter goodies from Dreamforge... The Eisenkern Storm troopers.
Let’s face it, they were inspired by both modern classic German forces and a certain nod to a certain white armoured group of imperial troops… Having a look at the weapons, arms, backpacks and equipment, it was clear to me that these would be the perfect donors to support my cloning needs.
So I set to work Saturday morning, armed with a nice new sharp scalpel, Season Four TCW ‘Battle of Umbara’ episodes on the telly and about three hours of free time and came up with these:
Standard clones: (arms removed, helmets cut and repositioned and Eisenkern arms added). Arms attached in varying positions, add to the helmet adjustments and the already dynamic positioning of the sculpt's legs and torso and in no time I’d built a fair number of really good looking clones.
As ever I then turned my attention to a bit of playing…. More later.
Advanced Recon Commandos (ARC Troopers).
ARC Trooper/officer. Senior Clone officers undergoing ARC training/memory flash are encouraged by their commanding officers to adopt specific ARC kit, Kamla skirts, paldrons, twin DC-15s blaster carbines and other specific kit.
So using another clone model I set about removing the arms and looking through the sprues for suitable limbs and other bits and pieces.
I then remembered that I also got the accessory box and in there found the Macro-noculars and various signalling arms. So armed with these pieces I started work.
I managed to get these pieces together, used the original hands as the Eisenkern ones where a little small and even used a modified luger pistol as an ARC trooper helmet sensor. The backpack also makes a perfect ARC kit pack too.
Once built, I then needed to add further details using green stuff and other equipment packs from the accessory sprue. End result, a generic ARC trooper using a set of Marco-noculars, signally to his squad in full gear, (this may become ‘Echo’ still to decide).
ARC 55-55 Trooper ‘Fives’
The Clone Wars series gives a great story arc in Trooper ‘Fives’. We first seen he as a raw recruit,CT-27-5555 (a ‘shiney ‘as the battle hardened clones refer to the FNG’s) assigned to Rishi Station listening post, through his progression and induction into the 501st to his final evolution to fully blown ARC trooper as part of Commander Rex’s Command Staff.
I love ‘Five’s armour, the phase two helmet is perfect with the ARC armour modifications so wanted to do this one well.
Using an ARC Trooper Sniper, model I cut off his phase one helmet, and using a blue stuff cast helmet from another clone model I simply swapped one for the other. I’ll add the luger sensor to the helmet and that is really all that’s needed other than a decent PJ.
And in all this I only cut my finger once! No Bacta available just superglue
More later…
December 21, 2013, 03:17:04 AM