25mm Flea or "Classic" Locust?

[ColBosch]

I was poking around looking at 25mm minis, and ran across this thing. It's a "Kryomek Storm Strider." I recall Kryomek being mostly a weird mishmash of Aliens and Warhammer 40,000, but this machine looks neat, and scaled appropriately to be a small BattleMech. There are a few weapons variations, too. So is this a better Flea or redesigned Locust?

[Cache]

Tough call on that one.  The leg structure and overall shape speak of the AT-ST influence, same as the Flea. It also looks quite a bit like a Raptor or Strider. However, scaled up it appears to be roughly 7-8 meters tall, assuming that's a 25mm figure of an average height man. Personally I put the shortest 20-tonner at 9 meters, making that too short for the Flea, not to mention the omnis. You could maybe get a 15-ton Fire Ant out of it. Otherwise perhaps a 10-15 ton Industrial/SecurityMech?

[Scotty]

Better Flea, no question in my mind.  Leg placement seals the deal for me, but the general shape of the torso is just blocky enough that the Flea fits there, too, where the Locust has always had a sleeker fuselage regardless of design be it Unseen, Classic, or Phoenix.

[shadhawk]

Ya I also would say Flea

[ijewett]

Flea has my vote. Locust also tend to have spindly legs, which that does not.

How tall is that? I might look into picking one up to go with my 28mm Mech collection. Thanks in advance.

[smcwatt]

There is another version with a much boxier torso, which is very much the Flea. It is about 4.25" tall, or about waist high on the MWDA Legionaire. The legs and weapons are metal, while the torso is resin. They balance well without using a base.

http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=217_218_3_112_117&products_id=3449

SMc.

[smcwatt]

This is a better view.

http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2732

SMc.

[ijewett]

4.25" should clock in just about right. Thank you very much sir.

[Cache]

It is about 4.25" tall

That scales up to about 6.5 meters. Twice as tall as an Elemental or knee-high to an Atlas. Protomech size.

[ColBosch]

That scales up to about 6.5 meters. Twice as tall as an Elemental or knee-high to an Atlas. Protomech size.

I think I'm okay with that for the Flea, at least for now.

[ijewett]

The Atlas is 10.5" tall. That puts the Flea at a bit below the waist. It will be the same size roughly as my Crosscut mechs. Half the size of the heavies that range in height from 7.5" to 9.5".  The Mediums I have range from about 7" to  8".  The Flea will be the smallest, but it should not look out of place.

[ColBosch]

Not like there are many other options...

[ColBosch]

That scales up to about 6.5 meters. Twice as tall as an Elemental or knee-high to an Atlas. Protomech size.

Wait. But Elementals are half as tall as 'Mechs.

[Cache]

Wait. But Elementals are half as tall as 'Mechs.

http://i.imgur.com/40F8Zim.jpg

OW!  MY EYES!!   #P

[Black_Knyght]

The Atlas is 10.5" tall. That puts the Flea at a bit below the waist. It will be the same size roughly as my Crosscut mechs. Half the size of the heavies that range in height from 7.5" to 9.5".  The Mediums I have range from about 7" to  8".  The Flea will be the smallest, but it should not look out of place.

So for the sake of curiosity, how and where do you determine how large/tall any given mech is?

[ijewett]

So for the sake of curiosity, how and where do you determine how large/tall any given mech is?

There are no hard numbers for how tall 'Mechs are.

Most all 28mm Battlemechs are scaled against the Armorcast Atlas. The Armorcast Atlas stands 10.5" tall. Their Vulture and Mad Cat were both 8.25" tall. There are a fair few Garage kits around for other 'Mechs. There are also some very old models that scale quite well for some of the Unseen. A few years ago Yamato made some 1/60 scale Macross Destroids, that also scale very well with the Armorcast products. The 28mm Elemental currently for sale from IWM is the Armorcast version, the smaller 25mm Elemental is a Ral Partha model. Either works fine, but they don't look good next to each other.



Left to right Yamato 1/60 Tomahawk Destroid, Armorcast Atlas, 1/72 Glaug Officer's Pod Model, 1/48 Robotech Defenders Gartan Model.



So that Flea should be about, this size: (Excuse my weak photoshop skills)






I do know a few folks who use the Matchbox Exosquad Robotech toys, but they are IMO too small.

[Cache]

That last looks a lot like the proportions of MWO's rescaling, though their 18 m Atlas height is a lot more than the 15 m in BattleTech. Attached is what the MWO Atlas looks like next to the MWO Locust. I can't see that Locust being 1/5 the tonnage. No way, no how.

If you chop the Armorcast Atlas into pieces of similar volume, saying that each arm and each leg are roughly similar volume, the torso (with head) can be cut into roughly three of those pieces. That's 7 pieces for 100 tons, or 14.3 tons per. That Storm Strider appears to have the same or slightly less volume than one of those pieces.

[Cache]

On a lightly different note, while looking up references for this earlier I ran across the Bandai 1/48 AT-ST kit and I couldn't pass it up. It was delivered today. Upon opening I discovered the best part of it all: Chewbacca! He stands exactly as tall as an Armorcast Elemental without the missile pack. Aside from the coolness factor, Chewbacca is 7'6" tall. I measured the figure and verified he is accurate for a 1/48 kit. Using his height I measured out a part of the kit I could easily view on the left of the attached photo. Working out the proportions, the kit when built and posed as pictured will be 6.6" tall, which scales up to 8.05 meters. While the Star Wars databank lists it as 8.6 meters, the blueprint pictures I find show the legs stretched out a little taller than the picture in the kit instructions. That's good enough for me.

So, doing some mathemagics, the 1/48 scale kit, when scaled up as though it was a 1/60 scale kit, would be 10.06 meters tall. I want a Flea that is 9 meters tall. I can easily knock one (scaled) meter off of that by removing the lowest leg section and shortening the torso pivot. (See right of attached photo.  The legs will have to be straightened up slightly, but that's all the work I want to put into photoshopping tonight.) This being a plastic kit, it should be a fairly simple conversion when I sit down to do it many, many moons from now.

Aaaanyway. I'm not saying anyone's opinion is wrong. As always, go with what you like. I'm just explaining what I'd do to get a Flea that suits my opinion of its size.