The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Snotling ammo feed

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, but I had a pretty sizable paper to work on in one of my classes and I've been neck-deep in research.

I went with the vertical drop-feed design after enough people convinced me. I'm using some chain mesh on the sides to hold the shells in, since I figured It'd match what I did on my Stompa's kannon arm. It visibly houses three snotling ammunition shells, and I'll be able to use the rest around the model. I seem to have lost one, but hopefully it'll resurface!

 

The orange bit is a shell from this dart gun, which I bought because it was awesome and promptly broke by accident. The only reason I really used it was because I couldn't find PVC pipe the right diameter, and it's too big for most of my styrene tubing... it was the first thing I found that was roughly the right size, so I went with it.

I've got a fair bit of sprucing up to do to that back end, don't worry - it's just a chassis for me to add armor plating and worky gubbinz over.

I've been giving some thought to flipping the tread assembly over and mounting the gun down like that, as you can see below:

 

I think it gives the gun a better profile. The effect of it is that it angles the gun up and away from the ground, but nothing necessarily says SAG shots don't arc. I'm probably going to go with this, but I haven't made my mind up yet. If I do I have to remove the battery holder and flip it upside-down, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

More Mega-SAG design

So I gave it some more thought during the week, while I was at school, and I had a bit of an idea.

The main reason I didn't like the back-loading, artillery-esque concept for the Mega-SAG was that it seemed to suggest a tremendously low rate of fire in my mind; you'd have to put a shell in, close the hatch, fire, open the hatch, and repeat. Not very effective for a model that's supposed to stand in for three Big Meks with SAGs, but then again I'm probably the only one who'd ever really worry about the logistics of the model's fictional firing speed like that in the first place.

However, I was playing Left 4 Dead the other day, and while I had the Automatic Shotgun I remembered something. Combat shotguns can chamber multiple shells while being loaded, and then fire them off in series.

Basically, each shot ejects the spent shell and chambers the next one from the internal magazine. I figure, why can't the same mechanism apply to the Mega-SAG? The rear hatch is opened, and multiple snotling shells are loaded into the machine. Hatch is closed, and then the weapon is fired in rapid succession, ejecting spent 'cages' and chambering new ones until the internal magazine's depleted.

I did have time to make one quick conceptual doodle, which I figure I'll share:

In my previous post's comments for this project, Don pitched a decent idea of having a top-loading ammunition rail for the snotling shells. I have yet to draw that concept out, and it's definitely a good one, but truthfully I think having some sort of ammo-rail projection out the top rear of the gun ruins it's lines. Silly to be concerned with aesthetics on an orky warmachine, I know, but right now I'm sort've digging on the straight cannon-esque form in the above concept. I'll doodle up the alternative Don suggested when I have the time tomorrow. In the mean time, I feel slightly more comfortable knowing that I've come up with an overly elaborate, shotgun-magazine based explaination for the above design's rate of fire. I think I have some sort of mental disorder, because I am spending so much time thinking about the gun's method of firing, something most players would never consider in the first place.

Edit: You know what? Before I go to sleep, I may as well do this, quick and dirty.

This way I have something to work from for comparison. It's not terrible, certainly, but I'm not sure how to design rails for the shells to slide in on that won't obscure at least something. The back-loading artillery design would let me have a whole shell visible being loaded into the gun, and a pile of the remaining shells waiting to be lifted up and chambered somewhere on the base nearby... However, this one could be interesting as well. Maybe if I looted the shell-loading winch off a Vindicator I could add in a way of getting the snotling cages from the ground up to the loading grot on top...

Let me know what you guys think.

Ammo and design help

So I had a couple hours yesterday, and I'm sad to say they weren't very productive ones. I intended on mounting the cannon down onto the treads, but I realized very early on that without a finished back end to the cannon I didn't quite know how it would sit on the treads. This led me around to trying to work on the back end of the gun, which proved largely unproductive for lack of creative ideas. So, I am looking for help.

I figure that first and foremost, I should unveil my until-now secret 'ammunition' for the Shokk Attack Gun.

Yes, these are snotlings in small, metal, bullet-shaped cages. Or, well, at least they look like it. They are from a now-OOP model from Rackham's Confrontation line called "Master Sulfur". Basically, these cages hang off a large minotaur-looking dude on their source model. The moment I saw them, though, I knew they had to be Shokk Attack Gun ammunition.

You can get a look at a model that has these added to it on CMON here - it's the only decent, painted picture I've been able to find of the blighters.

As far as I'm concerned, they're perfect for the job. They're projectile-shaped to begin with, which lends to clear interpretation as to their purpose. It saves the Big Mek from the trouble of trying to wrangle up a horde of snotlings into your typical SAG-vacuum, so from an orky standpoint it's convenient. Plus, think of how satisfying it would be to take a screaming, thrashing snotling in a cage and slam it into the breech of a gun to fire off!

Here's a shot of the 'ammunition' with the gun for scale:

Now, here's where my problem comes up. Let me throw these in here just for reference; they're pictures of the back end of the gun and a side profile.

 

The shadowsword cannon has to sit a little forward on the thunderfire treads so that the spinny bit on the front of the SAG has a comfortable amount of clearance to actually, well, spin. Because of that, any additions I make to the SAG have to extend it backwards a bit.

Now, I'm trying to figure out what it is that I could do as far as a loading mechanism for the Shokk Attack Gun goes. My primary goal is to have the ammunition [caged snotling shells] be visible and obvious, so that any observer who picks the model up could spot it and decipher what's going on. This basically means that I don't want to cover the shells up too much in whatever ammo feed I decide to go with. I dug through some Forgeworld and Armorcast artillery pictures for ideas, and three jumped out at me.

Idea 1 is probably the most straightforward. Similar to what you might see on the back of an Earthshaker cannon, there'd be a single hatch door and a sort of tray that slides out. The loader places the snotling shell onto the slide, pushes it up into the breech of the gun, closes the back hatch, and pulls the lever, and off the screaming blighter goes through the warp. While this has the added benefit of allowing me to pretty much show the snot-in-a-cage on the loading tray, from a design standpoint it seems pretty flawed in that it'd limit the gun's perceived rate of fire quite a bit; you'd be firing one snotling at a time, and each shot would require you to close the back of the gun up again. That hardly seems impressive for a gun this size, since it's not really artillery in the strictest sense. The other big problem I have with this idea is that the shells are relatively small compared to the back of the gun, so the chamber they go into would be sort've narrow compared to the cannon itself.

Idea 2 came from an Armorcast Cannon. Basically I'd try and work in some sort of 'clip' that fed the snotling shells around into the chamber. The particular example illustrated in the picture has the advantage of showing the snotlings off, but covers the shell design up a bit, and could prove to be a bit difficult to incorporate into the Mega-SAG since it'd basically need to be off on one side of the weapon.

Idea 3 borrows from the Thudd Gun concept. I'd basically have 4 breeches on the back of the cannon, instead of just the one in Idea 1. Three could probably be sealed up and closed, and one of them could have it's hatch swung open with a loader (possibly a grot or lesser mek) about to insert the snotling shells into the chamber.

I'm giving a bit of thought to having a separate loading platform behind the shadowsword cannon, similar to what a Basilisk has, so that the loaders would move with the gun. It'd give me a chance to put a couple of the extra shells propped up against a railing or what have you, too. That sort of detail depends on what I end up doing with the back end of the Mega SAG, though.

Normally I'd just break out my tablet and start sketching ideas out on the reference images, but I'm finding myself at a bit of a creative impasse and my tablet is unavailable in any case. I'm hoping to get some ideas and input as to what might work well for the back end of the cannon and it's loading mechanism for the snotling shells... after that, the rest of the model may well sort itself out.

The power is yours!

So I sat down and scratched my head for a minute while I tried to figure out where I was going to end up hiding the power source on this model. The battery pack that was pictured in my last video for this project was my original plan, but it just seemed impractical due to its size; I couldn't figure out how I was going to hide the dang thing.

After pondering it over a while longer, I remembered that I had coin cell battery holders that might work better: BAT1013 from B.G. Micro. I've used these on a couple other projects, but it never occurred to me to try and fit them in on this one for some reason. As luck would have it, these battery holders are the exact same diameter as the hole in the middle of the Thunderfire Cannon chassis. The only problem is that they have a bit of a square 'tab' on one side that houses the clip that holds the batteries in. I grabbed my jeweller's saw and went at the Thunderfire chassis and removed a section of the back so that the battery holder would fit properly. The results?

 

A perfect fit! This holder can comfortably seat two 3v coin cell batteries back to back, giving me the desired 6 volts to power the motor with. Even better, it should be very simple to actually change the batteries if they ever die.

My next challenge is probably going to be figuring out how to mount the cannon itself onto the treads.

Also, an additional note that I need to follow up with:

There's been a really, really strange demand for the bitz I used to make the spinny bit on this Shokk Attack Gun. I would have figured 'slightly larger than normal Shokk Attack Gun' was a bit of a niche product, but judging just from the number of people who have e-mailed me and PM'ed me since I first showed the mold off, I guess some of you want it. With that said, I've shipped the parts off to the folks at D6 Hobbies for proper casting, sale, and distribution, because I don't have the time or resources available to be selling stuff out of my basement right now. Expect it to be up under the Warforged Miniatures listing shortly.