Miniature giants, part two: Spider drone

In my ongoing quest to fill the streets of Kru with all manner of weird and wonderful things, this next model is a giant robotic spider from Curtis Fell's Ramshackle Games. I love the original model so much I've done something with it that I rarely ever do.

Nothing.

Not only have I done absolutely no conversion work whatsoever, but I've also ripped off Ramshackle's original paint job. I used their work as the basis for my own, but tweaked the colours a bit and went on to incorporate some of the weathering I discussed in my last post.

I'm quite happy with the finished result, especially as it was a fairly quick process (compared to my normal sloth-like pace) – just a matter of hours (spaced over several days) from start to finish. If I could paint more like this, I'd be a very happy man. And one with far fewer unopened boxes lying around.

I imagine there could be a number of reasons why a strange, four-legged, robotic contraption might be found creeping through an Imperial hive city:

1) Perhaps it's simply some kind of drone, tasked on behalf of the municipal authorities to perform routine maintenance on the city's infrastructure.

2) Or maybe it's a servitor – similar to what I described in an earlier post as a hazard-zone sealed-servitor – a model for dangerous environments, with no organic parts left open to the elements.

3) Then again, what if it's a Mechanicus experiment that's escaped its testing ground, proving far more effective than they'd imagined, and not yet fully programmed to live peacefully alongside the other inhabitants of the city?

4) Or maybe that was the plan? It's some kind of awful Dark Mechanicus weapon that's recently clambered out from a heretical laboratory, hidden in the depths of the city, with murder and mayhem in its mind, sowing confusion before a larger invasion comes from the skies.

Whatever it is, I can see it fitting right in with the look of the city, maybe even providing a bit of inspiration for Inquisimunda style games: A hive gang has to stop it mapping their territory; or the Arbites have to hunt it down before it returns to its secret lair; or a member of an Inquisitorial strike team must make contact with it to download information about a terrible atrocity before it happens.

But it's not just about provoking fresh waves of thinking and inspiring new narrative. At their most basic level, one-off models like this will still add interesting and unusual texture to games – enriching the tabletop experience for not just players, but spectators too.