Lego Clone Army – TX-130 Saber Class Fighter Tank

No Clone army is complete without some form of tank. Lego set 7679 is of the TX-130 Saber Tank, it’s not a bad set and from a wargamming viewpoint not to oversized compared to some of the other sets which if you fielded them would simply fill up the tabletop. However when I set the tank up on a tabletop is was a little on the big size just over 18cm square (7inchs). I decided to put my tank on a diet  but I didn’t want to destroy the overall look as I feel lego did a fairly good job replicating the TX-130.

Original left , Mine Right

First up was the chassis looking at it I could see there appeared to be a wasted row of studs around the outside of the cockpit area (blue arrow above) and some opportunity to shorten the length of the tank. As it turned out it was very easy to thin everything down by 2 rows of studs, as the central cockpit area fit easily in the new narrow space. Next  up was to shorten the length a little so the tank didn’t appear to long and thin. I removed the flip up engine area and simply streamlined the front slope, saving a few studs in length. The basic construction and appearance of my tanks central area appears the same as the stock tank unless you compare the two side by side then it’s noticeable narrow and shorter. I also added a hinge to the upper gun so the little shield is angled but the guns can articulate up and down independently, my antenna are in storage position. Next up are the sponsons.

Original Left, Mine Right

I’m not a big fan of the red bricks mixed with the dark red so one of the first things I decided to do was replace all the red components with dark red. I also prefer no sticker so I left it off on one of my tanks (the other came pre-stuck on, thats 2nd hand for you ).  Looking at the sizing and how much I thinned the main chassis down I decided to take 1 stud of width out and drop the length by 3-4 studs. This meant I lost the little front compartment (no big lose), I did however retain the swivel under rocket pods at the rear. After a fair amount of messing around I ended up with a very nice sponson.  I happen to like it more than the original but that might be because I built it . Not much else to add except you can see I added a few extra smooth tiles to the top.

Putting it all together I ended up with a rather nice TX-130 tank that fits nicely within a 17cm square and should serve me well for wargamming:

No mock up on this one as it’s very much just a mod of an existing set. I’ll continue working on this lego clone army and my other projects.

Lego Clone Army – AT-PT

Continuing on with my clone army next up is my version of an AT-PT . I basically needed a small light walker, all the existing Lego sets are quiet big, bulky and tall at least for wargamming. Due to line of sight rules in most games and the bulkiness of lego I try to keep my models thinned down so I suffer as smaller a disadvantage as possible when playing against a regular lead/pewter/paper army. After checking through Wookepedia under AT’s it seemed the AT-PT would fit the bill nicely. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel I had a look around at what other Lego AT-PT’s had been created. Saber-Scorpion had created  a rather nice AT-PT and after looking at the pictures of his design and comparing it to the wookepedia article I designed my own AT-PT, incorporating some elements from saber’s design and some of my own:

Saber uses a large lift able square lid part which seems to be ultra-rare not something you want when you need 3-4 of the unit for wargamming. Neither of my two designs allow the lego minifig to be removed either way it’s trapped in there:

The first design (detailed in the instructions below) makes use of only very standard and common parts and should be fairly cheap to build up from a stockpile of bricks and order anything missing from ebay/bricklink very cheaply . The second design (The ones in my photo) make use of a flip lid (part no 4857) although not expensive it can be difficult to track down and only comes in light grey  not the new light bluish grey (see photos for colour difference), you also need a few tiles so it doesn’t seal closed . Other than that minor difference the two designs are identical. You can fit a clone trooper into both with a helmet on although the arms do need to be place down by his sides. However it looks good when you look through the windshield to see a minifig in there:

I had enough parts to build 3 and I’m a few bits short for a 4th. At this stage they all have different coloured windshields I wanted all red ones but that part in red seems to be another rarity so I have a blue trans and grey trans version. When gaming I just stick a different colored tile to the top to help id each one. As with the Speeder Bikes I did an action shot in GIMP:

I assembled the instructions using Ldraw/Mlcad and a set of PDF instructions are below, I didn’t quiet get the legs at the correct angle but they are very close:

Instructions Lego Star Wars AT-PT

Got to get back to cleaning up the house .

Lego Clone Army – Combat Speederbikes

Since last year I have been working on a star wars lego clone army for use during wargamming.  I always planned for this to be a long term project due to the costs involved, basically you don’t save any money by assembling an army in lego but it does let me combine two of the hobbies I enjoy. The clone army is now getting close to completion so I’ll start some posts on this little side project, Starting of with the speeder bikes.

So I purchased two packs of set 7655 from bricklink they came with no lego minifigs which suited me and were hence very very cheap. I disliked the stock lego design:

However I had some ideas on how to combine all the parts from the set plus a few additions into something more interesting. I wanted a more heavy looking build to indicate the speeders are designed less for scouting and reconnaissance and more for a support/anti-infantry role during a frontal assault battle. The speeders would also be a single seater but appear to be highly maneuverable. After a few hours playing around with bricks and build combinations I settled on the below to fill the role as Combat speederbike.

As it turned out I didn’t have enough of the correct colors to completely outfit two in the correct colours but did have enough bricks to at least have two I could use during gaming. Next time I order up some bricks I’ll get some correct coloured bricks/tiles. The flags are used during gaming for tracking which unit is which:

from the pictures you can see the minifig has some protection along the side rear and front, although I’m not sure id want to ride one into battle it’s  a significant improvement over the stock lego version.  I played around in GIMP for 5mins a pulled the below together, racing across the deserts of Tatooine into battle or possibly some other desert world:

In case I lose the above or someone wants more detailed assembly instructions, I’ve put some quick instructions together on how to assemble:

Instructions Combat Speeder

I have been working on the last few troop types of my fox army as well so I’ll be posting an update to those hopefully in the next few weeks as well as some more lego stuff, well back to the projects for me