Krootox Repair Shop

 

After last week's great big Tau robot, I thought that I'd have another look at their friends, the Kroot. The Kroot are ferocious scaly monsters who fight as allies/mercenaries for the Tau, and fill a close-combat role that the Tau can't. 

The Kroot seem to have evolved from birds, and have a slightly parrot-like look (they also come from a planet called Pech, which I'm sure is pronounced "peck"). Actually, given that birds evolved from dinosaurs, it seems safe to say that the Kroot are dinosaur-people, but this probably isn't the place to go down the genuinely fascinating rabbit holes of avian intelligence and what might have happened if the asteroid had missed. 

Anyhow, there are now loads of different Kroot units, and very nice they are too. Back in the old days, though, there were three: Kroot carnivores (ie warriors), Kroot hounds (attack dogs) and Krootox (a bloke on a gorilla-bird thing with a heavy weapon). They also had leaders, one of which is one of my favourite models ever, but more of that some other time.

This is the metal Krootox and rider. At least, it's most of the metal Krootox: it was missing the rider's upper body and gun. We may carp about the over-designing of modern models, but this thing was a complete pig to assemble, and a lot of milliput was required to fill the many gaps. I used plastic Kroot warrior parts for the upper body, although I had to improvise the left arm out of Green Stuff and paperclips. The gun barrel comes from an Empire outrider, and seems to be a primitive rocket launcher. I've always had a liking for people riding weird alien beasts, although I suspect that as soon as this guy fires his gun, the recoil will knock him over, and the Krootox (whose head is directly under the barrel) will run off towards the horizon, possibly returning to gore its former rider.

I also took the chance to tidy up my old Kroot carnivores, and to add a few details. They're not perfect, but they look a lot better than they did. They're slightly converted for some more dynamic poses.

So that's the Kroot for now. See you next time!