Ben's Miniature Gallery

Cadian Shock Troopers (Blue Squad) added Sep 23, 2005
In preparation for my upcoming d20 Traveller campaign, I looked through my tiny selection of old Star Wars minis and decided I needed to expand my selection of sci-fi goodies. i originally went to the store looking for vehicles that I could convert into something useful, but I ended up seeing this nice little box set. At $30 for 20 total minis (not counting all the extra body parts), it's as good a deal as I could hope for. I was a little worried about the quality of the sculpts, since they're plastic, but I was very impressed with the detail. Even better was the fact that they are multi-part figures. I was worried about the durability of the finished product, but it turns out that superglue holds plastic together much stronger than metal. Even the figures that are attached to their bases by only the toe of one boot give no indication of weakness. I found the lightness of the plastic a little disconcerting while handling them, so I glued a penny inside the base of each one. With a wide variety of limbs, weapons, and accessories, it was easy to make dynamic and unique poses without worrying about duplication. In fact, I would guess that I could put together another box of them without having any obvious twins. Rather than starting with a simple pose, I wanted to try putting a female head on one of the minis' torsos. After a lot of clipping, filing, and cursing, I had to give up that project. In the process, however, I had trimmed away the collar of the flak jacket on the torso. Fortunately, the way the heads are sculpted makes it easy to orient them in a variety of ways, so I just tilted the head back and ended up with one of my favorite poses from the bunch (the center of the top row in these pictures). With plastic being so much easier to alter than metal, I was able to do sevaral quick mini-conversions to make interesting poses. For example, on the figure on the far laft in the bottom row, I was able to convert the left arm (which was supposed to be holding the second handle of the grenade launcher) by cutting off the hand and rotating it, then cutting up one of the belt accessory packs to build a first aid kit. i did a similar conversion with the figure holding his helmet in his left hand. All in all, building the minis was almost more fun than painting them.
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