Robert earned £25
in eM-4 credit

 
  AN ONGOING NEWSLETTER October 2012

Building Gangs: Mass Production
by Robert Maxwell

After buying more or less every metal Dark Future figure and a ton of plastic Combat Zone miniatures I was ready to begin building them...

...starting with the gangs.

I put some thought into their creation and have planned a theme,a fighting style, and paint scheme for each Street Gang.

So far I’ve ended with 5 large gangs and a couple of smaller ones to fill up the points for games.

It’s a real mixture of plastics and metals for each with conversions a plenty. Here’s how I went about assembling the apocalyptic horde:

I had 60 of the plastic gangers in total to play with and several sets of metal heavy weapons/torsos.

Each gang frame has a total of 5 gangers to build fully armed.

As we all know with all miniatures, cutting carefully with a fine knife is always the way, but when you have so many figures to construct and make generic gangsters out of, you look for shortcuts if you can get away with it.

In the end I think the gangs were cleaned up and glued in around 4 hours which isn’t bad going for just over a hundred figures (if I do say so myself!).

Tools consisted of a sharp craft knife, a pair of clippers and a set of files. Also had some ‘Green Stuff’ putty on standby for filling base gaps, but this wasn’t needed in the end.

Legs & Bodies

Easy to deal with as a simple clip at the bases and a slice with a crafting knife at the top and they were ready for building.

I got away with clipping just one peg at the base for a few and twisting, although had to be very careful not to destroy any detail.

I also found clipping the top part and twisting from the base worked well, but some did require a clean up afterwards.

It is also worth mentioning all the plastic minis slot perfectly into their bases as is, which saves a lot of time indeed.

Torsos & Heads

Again I experimented with the best method to detach the components. Clipped from the bottom section, twist off - not bad results, just be careful not to cut into the detail at the clipping point.

Clipping from the top and twisting off is harder with the females, with slight flash left so not recommended.

Full twisting good results, slight damage, again harder with the female torsos.

Clipping the base, twisting off works about the best, cleaning up takes little time afterwards with a knife.

Guns & Arms

No choice but slow clipping – was like defusing a plastic bomb!

Take a knife to cut these, preserves the fine detail but takes time; a good knife makes short work of them and is worth the end results. Cutting from the back made it a whole lot easier. Beware of ‘pinging’ – flying weapons can go a long way!

Bag packs

I got away with twisting most of these, some needed a little help with the knife, trade off being more time to clean up afterwards. I will use them later as some will be going to Corporate Troopers too for mix n match purposes. No breaks or damage using care and effort!

Construction

Cleaned up all the plastic pieces with the craft knife and checked for ‘flash’ on the metal parts. Then sorted through gang supplies of legs, torsos, weapons and added bases to each to make gang members.

The mixture I sorted was from a premade list for each gang, so I got all components together and begun.

I also got to work on a few Mechs to support my Street Gangs: Cut and twist, was fun preparing them as it felt like a robotics factory line! By far the easiest of the plastic miniatures to prepare, due partly to their size.

With Super Glue gluing plastics was easy. I made some subtle conversions turning heads, adding custom weapons etc to make each generic ganger a little different. Mixing plastic and metal gang parts as one made for a wide range of figures.

All the metal figures needed were adjustments to slot in their bases, other than that are dead simple.

Mechs again are the easiest by far, put in their base and adding weapons takes under a minute.

Finishing touches include adding some small parts to figures like spare cut off feathers and shields.

I made some huge custom axes for a couple of the guys; being they are the most powerful melee weapon in the game I wanted them to look the part. I will keep adding bit and bobs as I find them to continue the variety of the gangs as I go.

Lastly I plan to spend quite a bit of time using Green Stuff to add to and enhance the more run-of-the-mill looking gang members to better fit their theme. Next to follow of course will be the gangs being fully painted…


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