Le Vaisseau-mère (The Mother Ship)

Le Vaisseau-mère is the most recent addition to my French GASLIGHT force. It is a large steam powered beast with twin landing platforms for transporting a squadron of killer Clockwork Wasps (I still need to make another 2 wasps for the full squadron of 8). These nasty little mechanical creatures are fast, armoured and boast a lethal 12" sting in the rear and a sub-machine gun mounted in the nose.The vessel itself has a control turret armed with twin defensive flamethrowers.

The model is kit-bashed from several kits: Airfix Steam Engine, Airfix Pontoon bridge (two kits), a 1/48 scale (brand unknown) KVII and and Airfix MkI Male tank. I think most folks should be able to see where the various bits are joined together. There are also a few scrap odds and ends thrown into the mix too.

This thing took me about 3 months to make. It wasn't that it was difficult it just took a fair bit of working out how to configure the damned thing! The real challenge was painting it. Painting took about a week in itself and required much twisting and turning and getting into hundreds of little nooks and crannies (in case you wonder, I am one of these folks who build something completely and worry about the painting when it's finished).

As far as gaming is concerned, I expect it to be a major disappointment. I didn't build it to be a lethal killing machine. I built it for the the purpose of having big, bombastic monster to move around the table and look impressive.

Anyway, here are some more pics: