Okay! Today's treat is a trip into my mind and why its so hard for me to concentrate on one thing, let alone on my Warhammer armies. I am very eclectic (more than anyone I have ever met), and easily distracted by new passions, as I have been over the last few weeks.
So I was all excited setting time aside for WFB when some models on eBay started showing up for prices I was looking for. The models in question were for this guy, the Epic Capital Imperialis from the Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine v1 era of Epic 40k:
Now, besides the Reaver Titan (which I am showing two examples below from the same era) which is probably my favorite miniature of all time, the Capital Imperialis was always the holy grail for me growing up.
Back in the day, I was a rabid Epic 40k fan (using that term loosely here as there have been 5 different versions of 'Epic'), and Reavers cost about $30 I think back in the day. Geez, maybe it was $15 I am not sure. Either way, it was a lot of money for me at the time since I was making minimum wage. The Capital Imperialis was $50 I think, and way beyond what I could pay for a single model. But I drooled over the idea of having one. They are essentially slow moving transports with a ton of heavy weapons. Pretty much a castle on wheels like you see.
Well, as I got older I still collected Epic and slowly bought up all the armies and miniatures I didn't have as a kid. The Capital Imperialis though, was always pretty pricey. Usually over $100 a piece complete on eBay. I held off getting them until a couple of years ago and managed to snag 4 of them in different sales and for pretty good prices. The problem though, was that they were either missing the tank tracks parts or they were just in terrible condition.
Back in the day, GW made the Capital Imperialis body out of lead, but the tracks were plastic. I had no idea at the time, but the track components were supplied by another English company called JB Models, who made a series of 1/76 armored vehicles, who eventually were bought out by Airfix. So I guess GW made a deal with JB to supply the track parts to their 1/76 M113 kits to be used with the Capital Imperialis kits.
So, I didn't want to drop a lot on just track parts, so it took a long time to hunt these kits down. Early on, I didn't know Airfix had bought out JB Models and it would have certainly helped to have known that. JB made two variants of the M113:
The tracks were the same for each kit, but for shits and giggles I bought both, and after looking them over, I really liked the idea of building these kits. There are much better 1/72 scale kits out there, but I am a sucker for old model kits from the 60s-80s. As a matter of fact, the very first model kit I every built was a 1/76 Panzer II from Matchbox:
This kit was amazing and still is. Like all Matchbox kits, it came with a diorama base as well as a couple of figures. Not my kit but here is a completed one:
I had many battles as a kid with this tank versus those two men. I just pretended they were different armies and the tank was attacking the fort with the men defending. The Panzer II is still one of my favorite all time tanks.
Anyway, I was familiar with the American M113 from Vietnam, but I didn't know anything about the Fire Support Vehicle, which turned out to be an Australian vehicle. Apparently the Aussies transferred the turrets off their older Saladin armored cars and mounted them on the newer M113s. I thought they were pretty cool. And of course, this led me to research more on the Saladin, which was a series of armored cars for the British army, and during that, discovered that the Saladin shared the same body with another vehicle I had seen before, the Saracen, which both by the way, were also made by JB Models in 1/76 scale.
Well, I am a sucker for Armored Cars, especially the kind of older and... not sure how to word this... wimpier looking kind. You see, in the US we go big. We add lots of big guns, and things look pretty terrifying. But even with WWII tanks, I am not interested in the Tiger or IS-IIs, I am interested in the 1939-1942 stuff. The fragile and failures especially (don't get me started on Italian tanks!). And I just loved these two armored cars.
So not knowing anything about either one, I read up on them and found that they were developed during the Malaya Emergency during the late 1940s-1950s. I had never even heard of the Malayan Emergency and I wish the US had paid a little attention to it as it probably would have helped during Vietnam. Anyway, so to make a long story short, I hunted down one of each, and these typically go for $20-30 but I managed to get them for pretty cheap.
In the process of assembling the M113s, I remembered I built an old M113 Hammerhead back in the day, by ESCI, which was actually 1/72 scale. I decided that I wanted to build the same thing but using the JB Model chasis. So I picked up one for cheap, and just used the parts for the Tow Missile Launcher. This took some customizing to mount it on the JB version but it worked out pretty good. Now at this point I had bought 7 JB M113 variants, 4 for Capital Imperialis, and three to build as tanks. As I was assembling the US Vietnam version, I thought it would be cool to make an earlier version of the M113, without all the extra M60 guns, so yes, I picked up another. I should add here that during the middle of this I was also picking up the Airfix version of these (as they had started reselling them under their brand, but were no where near as good as the JB quality). So that is how I ended up with so many kits.
Now, while researching all of these M113s, I saw a lot of the Vietnam era ones with all sorts of stowage on them. Like a ton. So I looked around and found a manufacturer in the UK that sold a pack of 1/76-1/72 random items to that could be put around vehicles. Interestingly, I didn't find many English or Australian vehicles in old pics that had the same level of stowage on their vehicles like the US ones.
It was almost like I could see an English sergeant saying, 'Right, let's tidy up this vehicle. This is her majesty's vehicle, not your bedroom."
"Yes, sergeant."
Whereas the Americans just didn't give a shit, and threw their crap all over the place.
So I bought the set and spread the parts around my kits, but went really light on the brits and aussie vehicles.
So this is what I got, waiting to be primed:
Australian M113 Fire Support Vehicle:
US M163 Hammerhead:
US M113 ACAV
Now the 1/72 ESCI Hammerhead kit came with interior detail parts which weren't an exact fit for the JB version, but I wanted the top hatch in-between the M60 guns to be open in case I ever find some guys to man the guns, so I did what I could to put the interior parts from the ESCI kit into the JB one.
No one really ever see most of what is inside, and I still might put some random stowage on the benches. But it still helps with the casual glance and not seeing a completely bare interior.
M113
I wanted all of my kits to be different, so for the basic M113, I put the driver (one of the extra M113 ACAV gunners) sticking his head out. I typically never do this, as I prefer all my tanks to be in combat mode, but I am glad I did this. He isn't actually sitting on a seat, I had to jerry-rig it to do this, but no one will ever see it.
Saracen
Love this thing. The tiny turret kills me.
Saladin
Now the Saladin has a pretty famous moment, and I knew when I saw this kit that I had seen this armored car before. It took me a bit, but I remembered it from the opening Iraq invasion of Kuwait. I had seen on the news a couple of Kuwaiti Saladins firing on Iraqi troops who had landed on the beach.
I remember watching these two on TV thinking, "Man, they better get the fuck out of there."
Anyway, there you have it. Chasing a childhood dream led to too many parts to models I didn't need, but then had to have, then bought even more and some $100 plus later I have these 6 models to work on. They will get primed this weekend, and then sit with the many others waiting to be painted.
So while you guys struggle with what unit for your army you are going to work on, or what other game you might work on, I have some dozen other things I can get highjacked by at a random moments notice.
Once these are primed I am back on Warhammer. I promise. My Stegadon just arrived in the mail and is waiting to be checked out.
EDIT: Oh, forgot to mention I have a 1/76 Scorpion and a 1/76 Scimitar to go with these.