I love stupid personal quests, the more insane and irrational it is the better. At least when it comes to modelling and collecting gaming crap.
Robotech was what first drew me into the world of big giant robots, from there I transistioned to Battletech and onto various minis games. I used to watch the show back when I was a kid and even Transformer and stuff like Gundam couldn't come close to touching the awesomeness of Robotech.
Now as an adult I cringe when I rewatch the show as there's a distinct god-awfulness to much of the story and the animation but compared to the stuff that was on at the time it was pure gold and the mech designs are still at the top of my list for all time favorites. (despite teh horridness of the show)
As you probably know I've gotten hooked on wanting to build larger N-Scale mech models, something that worked it's way into my brain as a result of cruising the battletech forums. While I was googling for info on various models I saw a pair of posts on the The Miniatures Page forum .
Somebody had rounded up a bunch of the 1/200 scale Robotech Models and run some games with them. That was like a huge explosion going off in my head and launched my current crazy modelling crusade.
I already had a most of the models and figured it'd make an awesome table project to use at next years Adepticon. I've spent the last two months scrounging around on ebay and looking for the remaining models I need, finding a few but more often and cursing a lot at the lack of their avilability.
With hours and hours of searching and hunting somewhere along the way I learned a heck of a lot about the history of some of the older Robotech and Battletech models which I posted up here:
http://www.mechdudesblog.blogspot.com/ Be forewarned it's really long and wanders all over the place.
Anyways here's some of the stuff I pulled off ebay and through some trades, all of these kits were originally mastered in 1983 so they are old as dirt, there's been a re-release of most of the kits in 2001 but they are all out of print which has made finding them difficult. For as old as they are the quality is not bad and they look decidely better when painted. Some of the kits I had to do a double take on when I saw the pics on the game reports, the bare models can look decidely ugly at times but when painted they are infinately more appealing especially since it all pre-dates even 1st edition rouge trader 40k.
These are all going to need some work, they are a combination of snap together kits that also are held in place with small screws in the back of the torso. Later on I'll disassemble them and glue them so the gaps aren't so horrid.
I also have this guy, who's
HUGE even at 1/200 he's about 10 inches tall and about a foot long so he towers over all the other mechs which are about 3 inches in height. He's not built yet, he'll probably be the last one as I plan on taking my time with that model.
As I'm planning on using them for a game I have multiple copies of most of those model, the only models I'm missing at this point are the Zentraedi Officer Pod aka Glaug and the Light Missile Regult Tactical pod, both of which are like finding the holy grail nowdays. I'd managed to find the pods I posted above last week which were newly listed on a buy it now auction. I landed them through dumb luck and I was doing a total happy dance as I'd found them less than 10 minutes after they were listed.
What then made me into a sad panda was that the seller had listed both the officer pod and small missle pod at the same time and somebody had beaten me to them, so close.... so very close...
I know it's a very long shot but if anyone spots them in a hobby shop in some remote corner of the world I will be happy to throw mad amounts of money at you if you can land a copy. There's several differant companies that make them but it's all the same kit, just differant cover art. I dont' care what maker it is so long as it's 1/200 scale.
I'm also on the look out for
any of the Zentraedi pods as I'm going to need around 20 of them. I suspect I'll be casting them given that it's taken me 3 months just to find 4 copies.
(There's 1/144 scle ones and 1/100 which are fairly common, the 1/200 scale are the tough ones to get ahold of)
Here's pics of the two most common boxes for each kit. The white versions are the newest release which actually have two models per box. There's also a Plastic Battletech Kit which has black box design, the Officer Pod is called a Marauder under Battletech naming. (exactly the same model)