Entries tagged [scarecrow]
Model Spotlight: The Epirian Scarecrow
Posted on Tuesday Aug 23, 2022 at 05:00pm in Models
- by Iain Wilson
This week, we're taking a look at the multi-part, poseable plastic kit for the Epirian Foundation's feared security bot.
Scarecrows are area patrol units, designed to provide security to various types of property ranging from industrial perimeters to agricultural and terraforming facilities. Equipped with an advanced suite of thermal and motion tracking sensors, the Scarecrow is designed to detect and deter any non-authorized biological or technological intrusion into its designated patrol area.
The Scarecrow kit is designed to build a couple of different variants of this farming-bot-turned-military-asset, which lets you field the regular Scarecrow Sniper in a Hammer slot, or the Command Array-equipped Command Scarecrow leading an all-bot force. These can be armed with a shoulder mounted railrifle, and either a clingfire sprayer or chemtek sprayer on one arm.
If you 'borrow' a second clingfire sprayer (leftover from building a chemtek variant, obviously!) you can also build the twin-flaming Subjugator variant that often accompanies Contractor Suppression Teams.
The best part of the Scarecrow kit is its extreme flexibility. With separate ankle, knee, elbow and shoulder joints, the Scarecrow is our most poseable kit, and being plastic is a fantastic base for adding alternate parts and mixing things up even further.
To build your own implacable robot of avian-frightening Doom, pick up the plastic Scarecrows in a pack of two from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore!
While you're there, you can download the Maelstrom's Edge V2 rules from the Trial Rules section of the website here. The Beta rules documents contain all of the rules for playing V2 games, but keep in mind that these are just 'preview' documents - some rules may be revised based on feedback, and the final layout including background material for the factions and the Maelstrom's Edge universe, artwork and other 'flavor' material is missing.
For other modeling ideas, tutorials, army spotlights and conversion walkthroughs, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.
What are you working on? We would love to see your models and terrain in the Comm Guild Facebook group!
Converting a Robot Stargrave Crew
Posted on Monday Sep 13, 2021 at 09:52pm in Tutorials
When Stargrave arrived on the gaming scene, bringing the popular Frostgrave rules into a sci-fi setting, it sparked all sorts of interesting ideas amongst gamers for building crews. While there is an official model range for the game, it also encourages players to use whatever miniatures they like, which is a perfect excuse to break out some models and get creative! I was particularly interested in the rule allowing any crew members to be robots, and set to work building up a crew using (mostly) the Maelstrom's Edge Epirian Scarecrow plastic kit!
The bulk of the crew was made up of very slightly converted Scarecrows with different heads taken from the Remnant Militus battlesuit kit to denote different 'classes' of robot. Thanks to how wonderfully poseable the Scarecrow kit is, it's really easy to get a range of different looking models out of it! I also used a resin robo-dog from Artel W for a guard dog, added a (still to be painted) space dwarf from Victoria Miniatures as a first mate, and a converted Remnant Nimbus battlesuit for the Captain.
I wanted an easy paint scheme that I could get done quickly, and used Army Painter paints for the bulk of it. I started with a base coat of Uniform Grey spray, followed by a top-down (or 'zenithal') spray of white, so that the grey would stay visible in the creases and underneath surfaces to provide some shading. I then went over the joints and other exposed metal parts with a coat of Dark Tone, and gave the weapons three generous coats of the same. The final details were done with Citadel Contrast - Iyanden Yellow for the tanks on the robot's backs and Leviadon Blue highlighted with Army Painter Ice Storm and white for the eye lenses. The different classes of robot also received some shaded panels to tell them apart - yellow for techs, orange for soldiers and red for specialists.
I'm still deciding how to paint up the first mate, and how closely he will mimic the colour scheme, but here's the rest of the the crew all assembled:
Captain and Guard Dog:
The Captain was built from a Nimbus battlesuit with the head taken from the Karist Heavy Weapons kit. The energy blade is part of a trimmed down lightsaber from a Star Wars figure, left over from an old project. He represents a cyborg in combat armour.
Tech crew - Hacker and Chiseler:
Chiselers are normally equipped with lockpicks. I decided to go a more direct route and gave him a cutting torch using part of a weapon from the Broken Rabble kit.
Troopers
I gave the troopers bulkier left arms to house their combat knives using spare Scarecrow shin pieces. The knives are taken from the Faction Expansion Sprue.
Specialists - Burner and Sniper:
The Burner has a pistol and knife as well as the flamethrower, so I gave him the same knife arm as the regular troopers and mounted a mini grenade launcher taken from the Epirian Handler kit to his shoulder to represent the pistol. The sniper has a different head to the regular troopers, and his sniper rifle was a handy way to make use of the second set of arms that come with the Captain's Nimbus suit.
Time to get that mate painted up and send these bots out on into the black!
To build your own robot crew of clanking doom, you can pick up the Scarecrow kit along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range from the webstore here.
What are you working on? We would love to see your models and terrain in the Comm Guild Facebook group!
For other building ideas, modeling tutorials, army spotlights and conversion walkthroughs, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.
Tags: conversion epirian robot scarecrow spotlight stargrave
Spotlight: Epirian Scarecrow
Posted on Monday Feb 13, 2017 at 05:00pm in Models
- by Iain Wilson
Scarecrows are a mainstay of Foundation design, originally created to protect the wide-open swathes of agricultural assets on newly terraformed worlds, but since reimagined into a deadly military asset. Here, we take a look at the scarecrow kit, and some of the various ways that you can hack it up and get all creative on its shiny, robot posterior.
The Scarecrow sprue builds the regular Scarecrow, and also includes a variant head and command unit for the model's back to upgrade to the Scarecrow command variant, which lets you take an entire army of assorted Epirian robots.
Studio Scarecrow Models
This kit was designed specifically to allow as much poseability as possible, with joints at the elbows, knees and ankles.
This allows you to assemble the Scarecrow into anything from a stationary pose, to walking, running, or even kneeling down (for that extra sniper-y feeling!)
This model had some slight trimming done on the left elbow joint to allow it to bend a little further than normal, but the legs are completely unmodified
The maglock railrifle that makes up the Scarecrow's long-range firepower is designed to sit horizontally on the top of the shoulder pad. Thanks to the flat planes of the shoulder pad, however, it's easy to raise the railrifle up into a 'standby' position by simply gluing it onto the back of the pad instead of the top.
Alternatively, you can substitute the railrifle for the left forearm by cutting the elbow joint off the forearm and gluing it onto the back end of the railrifle.
For a slightly more complicated variant, the below model has the railrifle substituted in for the right arm weapon. The right shoulder was trimmed up slightly to allow the shoulder pad to swing around a little further than normal, the right elbow bent in slightly, and the left wrist sliced through and the hand rotated to support the rifle. The chemtech sprayer is on standby on the robot's back, where I would assume some handy mechanism allows him to swap out the two weapons as required.
A variant of the Scarecrow bot swaps out the railrifle in favour of two linked clingfire sprayers. Each sprue only comes with one of each weapon, so you'll need to steal the second from another Scarecrow sprue, but the weapons are designed to fit onto either arm.
This variant is also useable as a Subjugator bot, an assault mech used by Epirian Suppression squads. While there's no particular need to do anything to make a Subjugator visually different to a regular Scarecrow, why let that stop you?
The below model (which I'm calling a 'tiki-bot') is a stock standard Scarecrow with the command unit trimmed up a little and glued over the face.
If you prefer your crowd control to be more mobile, you can remove the legs entirely and replace them with a handy flight unit, made from scavenged turbines from a Firefly drone (which you'll have left over if you went with Spider drones instead).
For a slightly less out-of-the-box option, you can use a grenade launcher from the Bot Handler sprue and a force rod from the Faction Expansion sprue to make a closer-quarters version of the Subjugator.
And finally, the up-close-and-personal variant, made by swapping out the arms for legs taken from a second kit (this gives the shoulders a slightly wider range of movement) and adding some chainsaw blades taken from a Games Workshop Space Marine kit.
There are no rules for these last two options - I just thought they would be fun to build. I'd love to see what people come up with for them, though!
If you're feeling the urge to create some killer robots of your own, you can pick up the Scarecrow in a pack of two from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here. And as always, feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!
Tags: conversion epirian scarecrow
Artwork: Scarecrows Attack
Posted on Tuesday Oct 11, 2016 at 05:00pm in Artwork
Other than our box art, we were suffering from quite a lack of scenic artwork featuring Epirian robots in action. This piece was commissioned to show two Epirian Scarecrows in the middle of securing an area at full force. From the railrifle firing a magnetically focused shot into the distance, to the chemical haze in the air around them, biological opponents have little hope!
Community Spotlight: SexierThanYou13's Blog
Posted on Wednesday Sep 14, 2016 at 05:00pm in General
For our third week of converted Angel images in a row, here's a great lunging Angel from Dakka user SexierThanYou13
There's also a great Kaddar Nova that has massive presence when mounted on some cork
Along with some nicely posed Scarecrows
The Comm Guild's community spotlight focuses on sharing something from the Maelstrom's Edge community each week, if you have anything you'd like to get in to the queue, please get in touch with us via the Maelstrom's Edge website