Thursday 14 August 2014

The Robots from Combat Zone

Introduction

I've just realised that I missed my normal Wednesday post.  There's no excuse for this, save perhaps that the household is a little more chaotic than usual because the kids had their first day back at school.  These days, everything just seems like a blur; I wonder how I ever manage to get anything done...

Anyway, here's a quick post about some mechs!

The Mechs


So, does this mean that I've suddenly become interested in yet another new genre of gaming?  No, not really.  These 3 models are all plastic robots which came from the Combat Zone boxed set.  Incidentally, although I bought my set many years ago, the same product is still available from EM-4 Miniatures.  At a little over £15, I think it must be the cheapest introductory wargame set available!

It's obvious to anyone who looks closely that these 28mm "robots" were originally Battletech-style mechs and therefore must be in a much smaller scale (1:300?).  However if you're not too fussy then they can be used alongside larger human figures.  I rationalise this by thinking of the models' windows as being sensor housings rather than human-sized cockpit canopies.

The Combat Zone world is really classic Cyberpunk, with high tech and lowlives.  Gangs roam those parts of the cities which aren't patrolled by corporate police forces and all sides have access to a lot of fairly traditional firearms.  In addition, robots are widely used and can be heavily armed.

I've painted 2 of these 3 robots (Street Tiger II and Avenger 500) in opposing gang colours, whilst Sentinel Type 37 is a police machine.

So, how do these models look alongside 28mm humans?  The picture above shows the trio of mechs next to a pair of troopers (also from the EM-4 Combat Zone set).  The robots are clearly a little bigger, but not so much as to overwhelm the people.  These aren't Transformers or city-eating monster machines!  However they are nice little models and they're incredibly cheap!

18 comments:

  1. Great to see some of the older models in your collection. They don't look too bad next to the humans.

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    1. Thanks, Bob. It would probably have helped if I'd used the same basing style for all of them.

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  2. I see no reason not to use them with 28mm scale figures. I love your paint schemes, Hugh.

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    1. I'm especially pleased with the beat-up appearance of the gang robots. Not quite so sure about the police machine.

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  3. Surely a Sci fi Robot can be any size/scale. I can see no reason these could not be for 28mm troops or smaller all the way up to life size. Nicely done mate.

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    1. It could indeed. Mind you, if these models were used in a 1:300 game then the cannons on them would be truly enormous!

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  4. They look great and as others have said, kind work well with a few scales

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    1. Again, thanks, Z.A. There's really nothing on the models themselves to mandate any one scale.

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  5. Look good to me! You can get them seperately from the eM4 website as well - I have a bunch that I intend to use for a mech game ... someday ....

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    1. You can indeed buy them separately. £2.55 for a sprue of 5 mechs is very cheap. Plus postage, of course.

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  6. Nicely done they all great dude. They make great robots just the right size

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    1. Thanks, Simon. I'm not totally convinced by the shape of the "police" robot, but I do like the other two.

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  7. Not my cup of tea, but the paint job isn't bad at all. What's to be sure about the police one, it even has checked stripes!

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    1. Well, mechs aren't really my cup of tea either - but I just happened to have these ones and it was fun to paint them. There must be another 2 lying around somewhere unpainted, since there are 5 robots on each sprue.

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  8. I never understood the whole 'walking' robot thing, but these look great and can obvioulsy fit in with any scale of figure.

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    1. Human-shaped machines have been a dream (or nightmare!) at least since the ancient Greeks. Remember Talos, the man of bronze? How practical they are (with a slightly higher tech level than currently) remains to be seen...

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  9. The greatest ideas seem obvious once they are explained to the laity. The idea that there's no implied scale to a mechanical unit (provided there are no obvious "human size hints" like ladders or doors) is an excellent one. It probably applies equally to spacecraft.

    My own thoughts is that our fantasy robots tend to be excessively humanoid - A difficult geometry to control. Contrast the rather primitive humanoid robotics available now with the currently active air-drones, all-terrain transports and that quadruped that bounds like a cheetah.

    I suspect the first land fighting robots will look a lot like tanks,scaled free form the constraint of human occupants.

    However, add 200 years, and practical for today" ceases to be an issue.

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    1. It might not have to be 200 years into the future: have you seen any of the stuff about the US army's LS3 "mule" robot? I could just about imagine humanoid robots being relatively practical in 20 years, though it's still hard to see what the drivers would be to fund the probably high development cost.

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