Siege Dreadnought Mk.VI

I've come to the realisation, that I'm a very good starter, but not a consistent finisher. So, In an attempt to shake this persistent stumbling block I've decided to start yet another build! "Fantastic!" I hear you shout in overjoyed excitement, "this one's never gunna get finished either....were still waiting for that other Siege Dreadnought & the Hovertank to be completed too remember?" But...but, prepare yourself to be shocked & amazed. Are you sitting down? Holding firmly onto your armrests? Gnawing at the ends of your paintbrushes in excited anticipation?....probably not, but anyway, here goes....this little project has been completed. As I type this "riveting" blog post, he's now sitting in my display cabinet, finished, alongside my Walker. Yahoo!!!!

Ok, enough with the hyperbole. I can waffle on can't I :( On with the show;

I decided to have another go at building myself a Siege Dreadnought. My other Siege dread is still on the cards, but this one piqued my interest so he's been pushed to the back of the queue for a bit. This time I'm using an old Macross/Robotech Mech for the base model. This anime series aired in the mid 80's and it inspired at least a few of the artists who illustrated for Rogue trader to use some of the design elements of these Mechs within their illustrations,. The contributors and writers of the book also used the model kits to game with too. So you can see that the design aesthetic of these Mechs was really in line with the game world setting. There's a quote in Rogue Trader too, that mentions how they wanted to include some of these models in the book. Imagine how ace that would have been hey? They had photos of the models that they had made themselves, ready to include within the book, but at the last minute had to withdraw them for legal concerns. Drats!

But I've digressed again haven't I? Bugger it! I'll just show you some pics of the build progress so I can stop annoying you with boring chit chat. Here, look a this;

The Donor:

Seeing as there's no STC available for Siege Dreads I had to find a donor model to build one from.

There were only two issues with this guy that I could see in adapting him for wrecking duty in the Rogue Trader setting. One, was that it didn't come with a facility for an operator to sit in....all Siege Dreads have to be piloted. And second, it didn't have any "Siege" weaponry. I mean, apart from it's hands and the rockets in its shoulders, it just didn't scream "Smasher of well fortified Sci-fi emplacements" to me. So I decided to add some Las-cannons and to replace one of its hands with a masher as well.

Ok, here is were I set to work remedying the first problem, creating a cockpit:

Let the butchery begin!

RBT01 looks on as I ready the parts of the main body for a dry test fit.

With the missile pods/shoulders fitted to the body it looked a little too narrow :(

"Right you are sonny!" he remarks, while pointing a gun at my face!

I roughly estimated how much I would need to widen the body to allow room for the pilot.

Then tacked in a few sprue offcuts with Super Glue to hold it to the desired width.

I then continued to add sprues to the entire internal perimeter of the body. Then, to make
sure it was really well and truly secure, I caked it in hot glue :)

"Looks comfy enough. Now get that damn camera outta my face!"

Plastic phallus (which connects the waist to the body) fixed to the underside of the body.

I filled in the sprue surfaces with body filler and sanded it back level with the original body.

Now that the upper body had been modified to allow for a pilot to fit into it, it was then time to make up this said pilot (sucker) who'd be guiding this thing across the battlefield.

Enter the Dummy:

The pilot was made up of spares i.e. not good enough to use for a "proper" mini.

I stole the seat from a car model kit & modified it so that his scrawny arse could fit in it.

Poised to be holding some sort of joystick/control handle....fitted at a later date.

I repositioned his legs and feet & cut away the missile bay doors. The purpose of which
 will become clearer in later posts :p

So, this is obviously at the beginning stages of the construction. For the astute observers among you you may have noticed something in the background of a few of the photos? That's right, my Hovertank is lurking in there. Which means that I started this thing ages ago! I get bored easy you see, one project on the go is never enough :) I just had an urge to build this guy up while there was a spare moment, waiting for the glue to dry on a bit of the Hovertank. Wandering mind and all that.

Over the coming weeks/months I'll write up a few progress blog posts to document the rest of the construction.


And am a....I love yoos all.