The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

P.S. – It’s shorter

Bit of an addendum - this is about as low as I can easily take the chassis without having problems with the deathroller's size and having to hack up the entire front end.

I think I was trying to overcompensate a bit - Orchead's is built up significantly at the top which is what makes it so large, but since mine hasn't been topped yet I still had the urge to get the same kind of height out of it.

Lining up the tread links

I'm still not sure how the best way to assemble this is, given all the changes I have planned - it seems like one modification would get in the way of me adding another, leaving me scratching my head while the model doesn't get done. I'm trying to fight off the complications in the project by pinning the track links together - I ran some wire through the treads so they're connected, but not glued, and pinned a couple of my cast wheels onto the thing just to figure out their spacing and placement. I'm not going to lie to you, it looks pretty stupid right now, but I'm going to say that it's simply because all of the things that will be covered with armor plating are just open space right now.

 

I think the body is actually sitting a tiny bit higher than I'll want it finalized at right now - I'll lower it a couple mm or so. I'm trying to get the front wheel to stick out a decent amount so it will line up with the central hub on the deathroller - that way, the roller is powered by the track wheel mechanism to spin. It's all still very rough right now, I just thought I'd get some feedback on general form. The front section of the track guard will be covered up similar to Orchead's baneblade so the tracks don't end up looking quite so silly.

Rolling details

I felt like detailing the deathroller a bit, so I spent some time cutting and drilling and gluing all the tedious, tiny little pieces. It's not hard work, just time-consuming, but I can do it while I watch TV at least.

 

I have the wheels I need for the tracks all ready and done, but I'm having a hard time of sorting out the order I need to work on things in. Part of me wants to put the tracks on so I have a fixed height for the model, but the other part wants the open space in the track guards so I can do things like wire lighting through easily or add ramps. Not to mention I've no idea yet how I'm going to be putting the track wheels and treads together! Really not sure what to attack next. I might make the barrel for the main gun when I next have free time while I consider it all.

Deathroller 101… sort of.

I love the Forgeworld Deathroller, but it's a pricy piece of kit and I kind've wanted to challenge myself with making one. I've never built one before, and the curved surfaces are hell to make, but I think what I've produced so far is reasonably good. I documented my process so that you guys might have some idea what went on in the hours I had free today.

I started with a medicine bottle of appropriate size and dimensions to create the massive deathroller I wanted. I also obtained 'cake shapers' from a craft store near me, JoAnns, when they were having their going out of business sale. I have no idea what these things are actually supposed to be used for, but to me they look like they would make mighty fine roller plating.

This saved me the massive headache of trying to heat and bend the styrene to armor-plate the deathroller, or using brute force like rubber bands to try and keep it stuck down - I've tried stuff like that in the past and it always tends to peel up at the edges.

I figured I'd make three evenly spaced armor strips on the roller, with a wider gap on the sides of the middle plate strip so that I could put spikes around the roller like the forgeworld design has. The first thing I had to do was set up my mitre box so that I could get straight and similarly-sized strips of curved plastic.

I put a pair of clamps onto the mitre box to make sure I would get strips of styrene of identical widths for the plating.

I cut a number of strips up and started fitting them onto the bottle. The outer strips were much easier to line up than the middle one - I could just stand the bottle up flush against my worksurface to make sure the plates were glued on evenly. I think I did decently well, though.

I marked off dots for where I wanted to put some rivets, and stuck the plastic rod I have around into holes I drilled out with a pin vice, then snipped the excess rod. I also whipped out a sheet of thick styrene and a heavy-duty knife and started cutting the little 'teeth' I needed for the roller - after about an hour of hacking and gluing, I had a basic deathroller!

I only put the spiked teeth around the front 1/3 or so of the deathroller, as the rest will be concealed by the tank itself - no sense troubling myself over detailing stuff nobody will see.

Here's what it looks like 'fitted' (positioned) onto the baneblade:

I understand this isn't exactly a proper tutorial on building the roller - after all, it requires some fairly specific pieces (cake shapers?) and is not too thorough, but I'm trying to properly document the creation of this thing, so there you go.

The roller's not actually done yet - I need to cut a styrene disc out to cap the open end of the medicine bottle off, add some more details to the large flat curved plates, and add some details to the sides where it will connect onto the tank. Still, not bad for today's free time.

Chassis and a plan

I assembled the general top chassis a little while ago after dremelling the wheels molded onto the interior sides.

This is an understandably early step to be posting stuff up about, but I want to make sure my foray into possibly mangling a baneblade is well-documented.   It seemed like with a general chassis to build upon, a proper plan was needed. This is the general concept I came up with:

The medicine bottle is there to stand in for a death roller. I'm really not sure what I want to do with the top aside from a really big gun, but a modified turret doesn't look so bad. The grot bomb launcher ramp is on the top of the baneblade, but I think it's probably a bad spot for it as it would block the gun's rotation... depends on how I end up building it, honestly, because I may be able to make it so the barrel is able to clear the ramp. Then again, the gun doesn't necessarily have to rotate, either. I want to cut boarding ramps into the side of the thing - I'm thinking maybe a pair on either side. I'd love to get some ideas on this.

I'd love to get some ideas on this.