The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

The 'Lightyear' movie from Pixar was accompanied by a 'Hyperspeed' range of rather cool vehicle and ship toys. While the 1" figures are too small to be useful, some of the vehicles actually wind up looking just about perfect alongside gaming miniatures. The truck, in particular, was just too good to not put on the table. So after grabbing some on special from a local department store, I pulled one apart and painted it up, to see how it would look!




The truck is reasonably well detailed, and so to get the best results I decided to take it apart rather than trying to paint the fully assembled model. This turned out to be more difficult than expected, as two of the screws holding the back of the truck together are hidden behind the rear wheels, and the axles have textured ends that don't just pull out of the wheels - I wound up having to cut them and make a new rear axle. If I do any more of these, I'll probably just go the easy route and paint them assembled.

The truck in question before any modification:



I sprayed the chassis and wheels with Army Painter Matte Black, and the rest of the truck with Uniform Grey and then a zenithal spray of Matte White, so the grey stayed in the creases.

I didn't sand the vehicle before painting, as I was feeling lazy. The paint stuck fine to the plastic, although the printing on the sides of the truck back is slightly raised, which left a noticable shape under the paint. So I decided to just use that existing shape as a template for my own coloured decoration.



I kept the painting fairly simple, painting the seats with Army Painter Hardened Leather Speedpaint, and drybrushing the chassis with Citadel Boltgun Metal. The tyres were painted with Army Painter Uniform Grey, and then the chassis and wheels given a coat of Speedpaint Gravelord Grey. I wanted the truck to look a bit used, so after reassembling everything I weathered the white with some Vallejo Heavy Charcoal applied with a sponge, and drybrushed on some Vallejo Beasty Brown in the crevasses. The various lights were picked out with white and then various appropriate Speedpaints.

The finished truck, with the original for comparison:



I'm calling it the 'ParSec 12 Medium Transport'. You'll get there in a ParSec!





Once you've built your own fleet of cargo-carrying doom, head to the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here, to pick up some miniatures to attack it with!

We would love to see your models and terrain in the Comm Guild Facebook group. Pop in over there and share what you're working on!

For other building ideas, modeling tutorials, army spotlights and conversion walkthroughs, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here. And while you're there, grab a copy of the Maelstrom's Edge V2 Beta rules!