I want my army to hang back and shell the ever loving snot out of my opponent so one tank I knew I wanted was a Manticore. It is one of my favorite tanks out of the new Imperial Guard Codex. About a year back I found a really neat rocket launcher bit Quantum Gothic. I held off and held off on ordering this piece but about a month back I finally pulled the trigger.
The piece that I ordered was the Catalyst Missile Launcher. My plan was to strap this into the back of a Basilisk and reign fiery blasts down upon my foes. This plan eventually chagned to mounting it on top of a converted Chimera chassis - the bit wasn't tall enough to fit in the bottom and still look right.
The quality on this piece is amazing. I had never ordered from this company before and wasn't sure what to expect. The resin that they use is a darker gray resin than what Forgeworld uses and it had a lot more residue on it so I had to actually wash them with a toothbrush to get it all off. Not a big deal.
There were virtually no mold lines on this piece - a big plus when working with resin. There was also no warpage and everything fit together just fine.
The general plan was to enclose the back part of the Chimera without using the actual Chimera top hatch part. I did this using a 'For Sale' sign from Wal-Mart (this is an excellent source of cheap plasticard that is reasonably thick.) I cut the pieces to shape by measuring with a set of digital calibers I picked up for about $12 off of Amazon - these have really been handy.
Once the top piece was cut out and in place I did a bit of measuring and cutting and got the rear door to fit in the sloping part on the rear of the Chimera - I didn't want to try to build out a box for the rear.
Once I had these two pieces done I could really get a good idea of how everything was going to fit. Here are a few shots I took of a test fit to see what the scale was going to look like.
In my next post on this conversion I will show you how I filled a few gaps and how the model looks all put together.