6mm Dr Who: Dalek Heavy Metal

Thoroughly inspired by my recent reading of the fantastic narrative and pictorial work over at Mechmaster's CG Lair, I thought I'd re-visit an old project, and add some new Heavy Units to my Dalek army.

http://www.cg-lair.co.uk/daleks/secemp-index.htm

The online graphic novel adventures of 'Daleks- Second Empire' are are an absolute creative tour de force, and cannot help but get fans like myself thinking of the various possibilities if you lay the traditional 'canon' story arcs to one side, and go wild with the inherent potential of those tin-pot dictators playing out their meglomaniac plans.

I heartily recommend reading the online novel from the very beginning; yes, the humour can be a bit off the wall, and purists may shudder at the interpretation, but I think it is highly entertaining and well worth a visit as it continues.

Having in the past added some flying saucers to offer an air capability, I thought it only fair that any expansion of the force should see some naval craft; we've seen on screen, at least, that the Daleks can move underwater - there is that iconic image of one emerging from the River Thames - but I don't think we've ever come across them speeding about in boats.

My starting point, as you can see above, was the slightly unusual candidate of the IKBO4 Monitor from Irregular Miniatures' 2mm 20th Century Boats range. The sculpts in this group are quite quirky and enigmatic, and perhaps are not that closely representative of actual vessels, but for some reason the shape of this particular craft has always caught my eye.

Perhaps it is the flat forward turret and its guns that are so suggestive of the mid body accoutrements of the Daleks, but after a bit of surgery on some of the NSF7 'attack robots', I couldn't resist popping some on top:

I envisage these as a form of fast patrol craft that enable the Daleks to conquer even watery worlds, speeding along hovercraft-like as scouts or interdictors.

You can see them above next door to a Germy-designed 'GMM-42' 18mm Mecha from Ground Zero Games, that I was contemplating working on, when the influence of 'Second Empire' really took a hold of me.

If the artist/creator there can come up with everything from special sniper units to pink-coloured TV Reporter Daleks, why couldn't I go the extra mile as well......the only downfall of the pepper-pot dictators has always been their inability to climb stairs, due to their obvious lack of lower limbs, so I thought, why not terrify the Universe out of its complacency, and give them legs?

So now nowhere is safe from their depredations:

The Mech head was left off, and replaced with a piece of plasti-card bridging, topped by a steel spacer from my bicycle brake pads (Hope these won't need replacing anytime soon...!), to give an invincible walking Dalek.

I may well add in some weapon packs for extra fire-power on these, as well as toying around with the idea of modelling hover cushions to go under the water-craft, but you can see the general theme emerging here; the Daleks are going to be an all-arms, all terrain force from now on...stay tuned for some updates as work on these and other insane creations progresses!