Heavy Artillery - Manticore and Charybdis, Part 1

With the release of the new Deathstrike/Manticore kit, I knew I had to have one for the Mordian 7th. The first step was to determine what I wanted to build. The kit is unfortunately designed in such a way that you can only assemble it as the Deathstrike OR the Manticore, though I give them credit for designing a kit that gives us the option, it's rather ingeniously designed! I'd built a Deathstike carrier a while back and as potentially devastating as it may be, I found it to be a bit too random for anything but the largest of battles. So, Manticore it is!

The new kit was a breeze to assemble, and with careful gluing the missile rack can be raised and lowered, which I thought was a nice touch. I left the Storm Eagle rockets separate to facilitate painting, and am somewhat regretting not leaving the launch ramps separate as well, but I'll muddle though.

While I was at it I'd picked up a Whirlwind model for the launcher, as I regretted selling my previous Charybdis Assault Launcher (which I use as a proxy Griffon) and have been itching to build another one. I decided I wanted something a bit more animated with this one however, and decided to use a pair of missiles scrounged from the new Sentinel kit to represent it in the process of firing. I tried to sculpt a bit of flame from greenstuff, and will be using some orange or red clump foilage to represent some smoke billowing from the rear of the weapon system. I still need to build a hull for it, but while I was fiddling around with it I was pleased to note that the collar ring on the base fits the various Planetstrike weapon platforms. I may have to build a few more of these to build an ersatz Hyperios Air Defense system!