Conversion: Robot Maniple

More Sassy, Yet Less Destructive

Welcome back. So many conversions going on right now, it's hard to keep up with what to post. In this post I have another treat for you AdMech players out there. If you haven't read my review over at MWC on Pig Iron's Wardroids, I suggest you read that first as this post will strictly be covering my conversions. The Robot Maniple in the fandex has many different options, and in the next version of the fandex these options will grow, yet be more organized at the same time. Either way, when constructing your Robot force, there's many weapons to choose from. The last game I played I chose to go with a Missile Launcher, Autocannon and Lascannon in a maniple of three Robots and this seemed to work out well, so that's how I'm creating the models. More after the break.

Lascannon

First let's take a look at the Lascannon. If you remember my recent post on several Gundam models I had found in the process of moving locations, this find will be quite important to any conversions I do in the future involving Lascannons as a lot of the mobile suit weaponry has a Lascannon type of style to it. I took one of these weapons (I'm sure 10 years ago I knew the exact name of this thing,) and cut it up into the following pieces:

Next I shaved down the fitting for the Robot's right arm so that it is a very small peg:

Next, I carefully drilled a similar sized hole into the barrel section of the new Lascannon so that it would fit appropriately on the Robot's peg:

Next I took the "scope" and the "power supply" of the weapon and glued them together like so:

I then glued the barrel into the arm's peg and glued the scope and powersupply to the side of the gun-arm like so:

After this I drilled a hole into the back of Mr. Bot and a hole into the power supply for our power cable:

Glue that power cable in and we have a snazzy looking Robot:

Autocannon

Next up, the Autocannon. This thing took a bit more effort, not near as much as the Missile Launcher, but we'll get into that later. For now, I made use of my plasticard tubes and ran the following setup to get started. I also carefully drilled into the plasticard to leave a section for the power cable:

Next it was time to extend the barrel a bit so this looks like an actual Autocannon rather than just...ya know, a cannon. Two more plasticard tubes solved this problem:

Next, we need an ammo-feed. For this I turned back to my Gundam findings and pulled out this neato weapon from a Zion mobile suit (Hey! I still remember that much!) I dremmeled off the clip like so:

And used some GS to fill in some gaps to apply it to the weapon and use the larger plasticard tube to lock it all in place like so:

Missile Launcher

Finally, the Robot that took more effort than the other two; the Missile Launcher. I'm pretty sure I went through seven different "finished products" before I came out with the one I was happy with below. About halfway through these finalized models I gave up taking pictures, so all I have is the following pics and descriptions:

From this view you can see I used a plasticard block for the arm launcher's setup. I wasn't happy with anything I came up with having the launcher extend from the arm directly, so I tried this way out and really liked it.

From this vantage point you can see I took a Missile Launcher off a Space Marine arm and set it up on the arm-setup. I also took the ammo for the launcher and placed it under the arm as this seemed like the safest place for it to set on the arm during battle:

I also placed an aiming reticule on the base as I'm going to make the eye on the launcher a tracer:

Finally, I used the power cable from the launcher and attached it from the base of the arm to the shoulder:

This guy is one of my favorite models so far, and I can't wait to see him painted:

And that's about it for these conversions. More to come, so stay tuned!