This model started at the swap table at an IPMS meeting. Someone had this cute little Panzerbeobachtenwagen 38H for sale for a ridiculously low price, and its clean, sloping form just said, "giant tank" to me.

So, hey, a land ironclad it is. And a French one, to boot; as the foremost engineers on ther Continent, I figured the French would never take their ignominious defeat in the Franco-Prussian War lying down. Besides, who likes Prussians, anyway?

Seven years later, it's payback time.

I needed hemispherical, 1880s-style turrets, and after some dead ends I settled on a couple Space Coupe magnetic effectors. After I mounted the turrets, I realized that the ironclad looked a bit like the Sphinx, so I decided to run with that, and when I built a pilothouse, its shape was intended to echo the Sphinx's head.

A couple plastic-tube smokestacks and some photoetch railings, ladders, and doors left over from the Imperial Aeronef, and I was halfway there. The suspension was radically lowered to add to the massive appearance, and assorted gangways and platforms added to make it a bit nautical-looking. (The doors on the sides, flanked by cranes, are coaling chutes.)

I had in mind a scene in which a huge French ironclad scatters a troop of Prussian cavalry. The base was easy enough, plywood and drywall mud, but surprisingly, 1/350 cavalrymen are in short supply.

One of the guys in the sci-fi club had been playing around with MicroMark's home photoetch system, and I figured if he could do it so could I; and a few nights and one snowbound Saturday later I had nine Prussian cavalrymen and their horses.

Paint is oils over enamels; the smoke is cotton sprayed with a bit of brown and black, and by gum, there she is, all finished. Not a quick project, but a lot of fun. I took it to Wonderfest and it got a Silver.

PE Horses

Calvary

Left

Right Rear