Kroot Battlesuit

 The plan to spend less on miniatures continues. About ten years ago, I made a little walker for the Tau - or, rather, the Kroot. I thought it would be cool to have a mech suit that would be used by a particularly trusted Kroot warrior: perhaps with stealth capabilities, but definitely taking its look from the shape of Kroot soldiers.

Anyway, it was a bit basic, and had rubbish arms which then fell off and were lost. I gathered the rather knackered bits together, along with some other parts that I'd acquired along the way, and had a think about what to do with it next.

The main parts were there, but they needed to be put together into the right shape ("I'm playing the right notes, just not in the right order"). With a bit of trial and error, I came up with this:

And eventually this:

It uses:

- legs and lower body from a Space Crusade dreadnought (which was already trashed)

- body from a Gates of Antares Ghar warsuit

- shoulder armour from a Gates of Antares cannon

- Dark Eldar Talos armguards for the rear motors or whatever they are

- a space marine Rhino headlamp

- some random Zoid bits for the upper arms

- plasticard

- many Tau parts

- and a shoe from an ogre (for the lower jaw).

Things like this always look like a right mess until you spray the undercoat on. Painted entirely black, it looked surprisingly un-crap. I decided to go for a dark colour scheme, in imitation of the excellent mech suit from the film District 9. Here we go:

It also has an engine, or something like that:

Painting this thing was reasonably simple: dark grey for the whole model, with dirty metal (dark brown washed black and chipped with sponged-on Boltgun). I tried to copy the colours I'd used on the Tau battlesuits, and to use spot colors to draw the eye towards its head (otherwise it would be hard to tell which end is which). Some weathering powder was used on the lower legs, and a bit of crumpled carboard was painted to resemble corrugated metal.

Here then is the finished mech from Pech with his little friends. Fokkin' prawns!