If you live in the United States (I’m not sure about elsewhere), you’ve probably heard the expression “His eyes were bigger than his stomach”. Well there seems to be a corollary to this in regards to minis, and that is “His plans were bigger than his attention span”.
It is not uncommon for me to bash/repose a mini fairly quickly only to have it spend weeks, or months, waiting to get painted (and since I try not to start the next until the current one is finished, you can see why I produce so few a year). My problem is that I don’t really enjoy the painting part as much anymore, so it takes a bit to motivate me to start painting… Having said this, it might then surprise some to know that this mini has been pretty much finished for months, but still sat on my workbench. The reason for this is that when I built this one, I decided to have him walking down the gangplank of a dropship. What I wanted to do, was build a diorama of the dropship with a hole cut in the gangplank where I could just insert each member of the 3rd Lyran Guards for pictures. On the tabletop, each would have less of a dynamic action pose as they walked down their little piece of gangplank, but they would still be different from the normal “just standing here” pose that many seem to have… Well the diorama became problematic and while I haven’t abandon the project, I am certainly setting it aside for now. Maybe when I get tired of stumbling over the pieces-parts to this project, I’ll finish it. For now though, I’ll be posting any members of the 3rd that I manage to complete without it.
For those of you unfamiliar with the STK-3H Stalker, it has its roots all the way back to the original TRO:3025. This variant removes the Large Laser and replaces the LRM-10s with a set of LRM-20 racks and 2 tons of ammunition. I’m not sure how I feel about the variant, as in 6 short rounds the LRM-20s are empty and the pilot is then restricted to fighting only at medium range (9-hexs or less), but I don’t play often enough to really evaluate whether this is an issue or not.
As for the mini itself… Every mini I’ve ever completed always has that little twinge of regret when I’m done because something could have been done better. Sometimes it is an idea that comes too late, and other times it is a matter of someone making a suggestion once I’ve posted it saying “you know what would have looked cool”. And then there are other times where, like the torso of the 17th Galedon Regulars Charger I recently posted, you just have to say “this is good enough” and move on… This Stalker is one of those last cases… Putting aside the fact that the design is a snooze-fest to begin with (come on. It is a bullet shaped brick with legs. And that description is even more exciting than the mini is), I still ran into some problems with the execution of the bash. In this case, the problem was with the missile racks. First, I really would like the SRMs to be bigger than the LRMs, which was something that sort of came to me late. It makes sense. They do more damage per missile and the extra weight from the payload could make them bigger and the reason they don’t fly as far. But in this case a larger warhead wouldn’t have fit in the SRM spot, and I don’t have a smaller “tool” that I could have made the LRMs with. Even if I did, the LRMs would have been tiny then. The other problem was that I am still learning how to sculpt the green stuff. When I press the tool into the putty to make the warhead, it tends to shift and distort. This will cause the putty to build up on one side while you work across the area. What I realized, after I finished this mini of course, is that if I let the green stuff set for an hour or so then I don’t get this problem. Letting it get firm first really keeps this from happening. And while it isn’t a lesson I learned on this Stalker, I recently learned that if you let it set, then lay down a layer of water for your tool to work through, the putty doesn’t shift and the tool releases easier, giving you a much more defined missile… While I obviously am not going to scrap this one and go back and redo it, lesson learned for the next one I do.
Paint wise I am a little disappointed, as I never got the missile heads or the unit number quite the way I wanted it (the unit number is larger on one side than the other), but overall I like it. Granted, it could be that I love Reaper’s True Blue triad and obviously have an affection for white… But with the 23rd Arcturan Guards, and the recent addition of the 1st Davion Brigade of Guards, I will get my blue and white fix separately and that may impact the number of these that get done or how often I pump one out (which will in turn also affect the completion of the diorama I mentioned). But who knows…
Anyway… I hope you enjoy… And as always, comments, suggestions and steal-able ideas welcome.
Caz
