Sometimes you just see something that perks the interest and for us here at The Ion Age such a moment happened a few weeks ago when hobbyist and painter Allison M stated that he thought the IAF041 Corbal Deployable Hardpoint would be better suited if it could MOVE! Yes move and he thought this could be done by giving it legs. Read on to see what madness ensued. GBS
While the Corbal Deployable Hardpoint provides ground troops with instant fortification and fire support, its static nature is unsuitable for a constantly-advancing planetary invasion force. The Corbal Mobile Hardpoint is hardly the fastest-moving vehicle on the battlefield, but it can at least advance into newly captured territory, and its monolithic 11m stature makes even disciplined opponents consider retreat or surrender. Once a permanent position is established, the Corbal tower unit can be mounted as base defense or loaded back on a dropship for further service.
I knew I wanted to do this conversion as soon as I saw the Corbal on The Ion Age blog. But I was stumped as to how to make the legs... my plasticard scratch-building skills are pretty sad and I'm too cheap to buy a whole other model just for its legs. Fortunately, there's a ready source of interesting plastic shapes... Lego!
I bought some promising-looking pieces off of eBay and started cutting:
I'll freely admit these legs don't make a lot of sense mechanically, but I think we're well into "rule of cool" territory here anyway. I also wanted the conversion to be "reversible" so the legs and belly details are mounted on an inverted 40 mm base that attaches to the Corbal's underside with a magnet and pins:
(The original blog post is HERE)