Refurbishing 'Old' Models Part 1

If you're anything like me, you're a collector. And with the infinite variety of the cool toys we now have available at our finger tips thru the web it's a real challenge not going overboard. Oops! Too late.

A smattering sample of my collection posted on my Christmas 2010 blog. 

A great example is AT-43. They've been discontinued for some time now but there's stores out there that carry stock and would gladly sell them for the right price (usually reduced). I love these pre-painted minis. I've been lusting after them for a few years since they were released and have finally acquired a few. There really is a great reason for restraint b/c waiting for the price to go down really helps my budget. I've kept my collection to just the human factions (U.N.A. and Red Blok). 

I gravited initially to the Red Blok whose reminiscent Soviet theme had me hooked.

Actually to be honest, I also have a weakness for Mechs. Growing up watching all kinds of giant robots in anime will have that effect on you. And AT-43 has some good ones. Check out this beauty from my Red Blok collection. All I did was to dip all the minis in Army Painter to give it better shading and 'presto!'

Red Blok Molot

Inevitably, I'll be collecting the Dust minis but I can wait. I'm just a sucker for the ever increasing Weird War II genre that's creating a great variety for collecting and gaming. For now they're cost prohibitive but I'm confident that their prices will go down eventually. 

FCC Housemaster

Same goes for those MERCS figures. Have you seen em? Beautiful, drool-worthy stuff and a must have for any sci-fi mini collector but hard to justify the cost since you're paying almost *GASP* $10 per UNPAINTED lead (I've checked alternate sites and they've gone done considerably since, i.e. $7.50)! For now they're confined to my ever growing wish list. Sigh...

Size comparison of MERCS and AT-43 Steel Trooper straight from the MERCS site.

I digress because I want to feature my latest project of repainting a recently acquired mech from the Operation Damocles Initiation Set (now discontinued). I got this idea and was inspired by a link on a TMP blog post: http://firebase-spartan.blogspot.com/2011/03/workbench-pig-iron-for-5150.html.

Fire Toad in its original paint scheme straight outta the box. The 'Before' picture.

At any rate, I liked what this guy did so much that I decided to do the same. At first, I vaguely recognized the mech by its shape though was different. Then it struck me that he repainted it a monochrome color to match his infantry. Brilliant! It look so good that I had to give it a try. Making it monochrome got rid of the visual noise that made it a less believable mech (an oxymoron). For my version I gave it a different twist and made it more compatible for using on my WWW2 universe and Incursion board.

I snuck in the unfinished and repainted mech in an earlier post that you guys might remember.

Here's the 'After' picture. A few decals and what do you get? A new model!

I know I'm mixing German crosses, Mr. Grognard (Willy aka LTL Dad!). Who cares! It looks fine to me. Not to mention that this is sci-fi and WWW2 all rolled into one.

Performing support role with some of my Waffen SS (Black Tree Design).

Then picked these up at my local Toys R Us for about $2 a package. That's roughly $1 a model. My sole purpose for acquiring and repainting them and is using them as terrain for our game groups Sci-fi games.

  

Here are the 'soon to be' Maintenance Bots next to some AT-43 minis.

Coming up, the 'after' shots...