Small Scale Sci-Fi: Walkers and an APC

Some more small-scale Sci-Fi ruminations now, and a look at a few more miniatures that might feature in the final line-up! First off, I've been toying with the idea of expanding the use of 'Walkers' within the various forces, beyond the current use of the 2mm bi- and quadra-ped types from Irregular in 2mm.

Obviously scale/size becomes somewhat of an issue here, in that I want to avoid going into Japanese Anime territory with 5oo foot high Megazoids storming about the battlefield, and rather keep them to more modest proportions.

Having bought some of their excellent 6mm scale Vikings, I was tempted by the Graviton range from Kremlin Miniatures, and invested in some of their walkers, as you see in the photo above.

http://www.kremlinminiatures.co.uk/gravitonwarrior.htm

These consist of a very bulky looking type with somewhat human proportions, bulging with various protrusions and weapons, and a more insectoid looking one, with numerous sensor/weapon items concentrated around its 'head'. In spite of appearances in the not-so-great photo, the castings are nicely detailed and clean, and I think will work well up against the 2mm Sci-Fi, being definitely b-i-g, but not unfeasibly enormous!

For comparison, here's one next to another entry in the possibles list, the GMM42 Medium Mecha unit from Germy's range over at GZG, which stands 18mm tall:

The Germy Mech is very RoboCop ED209 in style, and like the rest of his range, nice and crisply clean in both design and sculpt. Looking at the website photos of the Kremlin Miniature's range, I feel the majority of their items look a tad expensive, when compared to other manufacturers, but the walkers are definitely good value at 0.60 pence for the two.

Next up a pic of the Germy walker against the 2mm version from Irregular:

and then against the Alien APC/SPGs:

So I think the walker/warbot/mecha units above should merge pretty nicely with the smaller scale vehicles; I think the only problem is that the variety available has me hankering to depict more factions on the table top, some entirely Robot armies perhaps? :-).

Next, I wanted to have some alternative vehicles that might serve as Assault or Infantry Support for a Human faction, that would look bulkier than a standard APC, yet would still suggest that troops could be carried inside.

For this I picked the DSM 123 Virnazh Medium Grav APC from GZG's Dirtside Range. This has a nice APC style body topped by a business-like support weapon turret that has a flavour of WWII-era French tanks about it; seen here alongside Brigade's Baldur Light Tank:

The casting and detail on this vehicle rates as excellent, and I mean excellent, given it's size, and far exceeds the small monochromatic photo available on the company's own website; these really are much better in the flesh! The only caveat is a bit of flash to the rear, I guess from the mold, and this does detract somewhat from the otherwise great quality, but would clean up easily enough:

What is interesting about this model, if not unique, is the level of detail underneath the mini; of course this is hover/grav, but even so, it is unlikely that you would see the bottom, even 'in flight', so hats off to the sculptor here, as it gives the option of fielding a completely different vehicle:

Finally, and probably somewhat dangerously, this got me thinking! The more I looked at this undersurface, the more it seemed to resemble a larger-scale starship; putting it alongside a fleet-scale Folgore fighter from Brigade Models:

Wouldn't make a bad spacecraft, would it? That's all I need, the temptation to go into a whole new arena of Spaceship gaming.....(groans)......

Anyway, more ideas to throw around; we've got the Alien races of the Venusians and the Telosians seen in previous posts on this subject - alongside the Human forces, let's call them the Terran Federation; but now also the possibility of enhancing their capabilities with walker/mecha units, or even going down the route of a Robot faction of its own, not to mention some ideas I have to make use of the Germy 'Bug' ranges for a whole new team.....lots more to come on all this, I fear......