Hercules CLEM from GZG
/Whilst I'm waiting for my company of 7TP tanks to arrive (well, I've actually ordered twenty-two of the things so that I can field a full jw company and a mixed jw/dw company!) I've been pottering around working on those odds and sods that always inhabit the outskirts of the painting table/lead mountain.
One such potter had me come across a couple of Hercules CLEM (Construction, Logistics & Engineering Mecha) from the great Ground Zero Games range.
These are large construction walkers that come in three varieties: A, B and C:
- A: a general purpose mecha with hands
- B: a loader much like the exo-skeleton worn by Ripley to fight the alient queen at the end of Aliens
- C: a site clearance version with chainsaw, flamer, and gripping hands options
The pictures on the GZG site (and the models I'd seen on their stand at shows) looked great, so all I had to do now was to build them.
Unlike a lot of mecha models, the GZG set come with one part per section of the body and limbs. So a leg consists of a toe, a heel, a shin, a thigh that connects to the hip piece. This allows you to pose and animate the mecha in a thousand different ways...but is, if I might say so, quite difficult to build. Emptying the little plastic bag that one mecha comes in literally gives you a pile of very similar one centimetre by one centimetre by one centimetre chunks of metal.
Worse, try as I might, I couldn't find any instructions on the GZG website. Only the helpful comment that "some modelling skills and experience of metal kit building are advised"! Well, as my East London friends would say, I should cocoa!
Yes, they are quite tricky to build...requiring superglue, accelerator spray (well, I use PVA glue as my accelerator!) and quite a lot of patience. That said, when I was working out how they went together (lots of reference to the pictures of the completed mecha on the GZG website required) I did manage to build one up to the hips and get it to stand up straight without using any glue, so when they do go together, they go together well.
Now that they are finished, however, I am very happy with them, very happy indeed. The pictures show the B and C variants with a Battlefront 15mm WW2 US infantryman as a size comparison.
As you can see, I painted mine in construction yellow with a brown wash and light dry-brush of GW's rust-colour from their Dry range. I then added warning patches on several of the flat panels. The windscreen I painted dark green, then scuffed with white. A couple of other bits of detail (lights and the spotlight) and done.
Site clearance
In all, I'm very happy with them. Tough to build, but they look good, and are ideal either for dressing a sci-fi battlefield or giving some of my militia/miners a bit of unexpected oomph!
