At roughly 15 inches tall this MadCat from spaceart.de might be worth your hard earned €455 ($622). There’s “two left” so all you’d need is some 1/35 scale hills and you and a friend could make like the old men in the park with their outdoor chess games. If you’re not interested, perhaps the three foot long Enterprise will tickle your fancy.

This is might be old news for some, but a while back Lego had a collection of lego mecha that would make some great flair for your bookshelf or desk. I can’t bring myself to link to their site, so feel free to google exo-force.

"Acceptable Losses", Thomas Doyle, Mixed Media, 2008

I recently came across this and was so enchanted I had to re-post.  Doyle, with his encapsulated scenes, presents slices of imaginative – and occasionally dark – fragmentary dramas.

Artist’s statement from thomasdoyle.net:

My work mines the debris of memory through the creation of intricate worlds sculpted in 1:43 scale and smaller. Often sealed under glass, the works depict the remnants of things past—whether major, transformational experiences, or the quieter moments that resonate loudly throughout a life. In much the way the mind recalls events through the fog of time, the works distort reality through a warped and dreamlike lens.

The pieces’ radically reduced scales evoke feelings of omnipotence—as well as the visceral sensation of unbidden memory recall. Hovering above the glass, the viewer approaches these worlds as an all-seeing eye, looking down upon landscapes that dwarf and threaten the figures within.

Conversely, the private intensity of moments rendered in such a small scale draws the viewer in, allowing for the intimacy one might feel peering into a museum display case or dollhouse. Though surrounded by chaos, hazard, and longing, the figures’ faces betray little emotion, inviting viewers to lose themselves in these crucibles—and in the jumble of feelings and memories they elicit.

The glass itself contains and compresses the world within it, seeming to suspend time itself—with all its accompanying anguish, fear, and bliss. By sealing the works in this fashion, I hope to distill the debris of human experience down to single, fragile moments. Like blackboxes bobbing in the flotsam, these works wait for discovery, each an indelible record of human memory.

As I may not be able to attend this year’s Origins Gaming Expo in Columbus Ohio I thought I’d take a look back over last year’s diceapalooza… a year I had only a phone camera…

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Minikari. A Flash of genius.

Kevin Schreur, a professional architect and all around crafty friend of mine, started creating Battletech miniatures out of the non-sculpted table scraps from other miniature kits. Eventually his work began to include house hold items like buttons, zippers, and X-acto blades along with ready-made arms and legs from other miniatures. Some of his pieces, like the Minikari and the Saltine are reminiscent if not directly inspired by existing designs (The Masakari and perhaps the Catapult). Others like the Parrot-mech come from a more playful, if not twisted, place.

Kitbashing – using scavenged parts for the creation or detailing of existing models – has a long history among both hobbyist and professionals, particularly in the film industry. This process can transform the mundane into the exotic and (depending on the end goal/topic material) allows for the the quick prototyping of look and feel.

Xevoz Sledge Trooper. (Hasbro) The game component of Xevoz was built around the toy line’s swappable-parts.

Battletech has two qualities that are relevant here. While the game doesn’t require miniatures, part of its appeal is the age-old play of moving toy soldiers around a battlefield. Another is its meta-play supporting customization mechanics. These rules allow players to modify existing units in game-legal terms or create completely new designs. In a universe spanning countless worlds the amount of variation in military technology would be staggering. These machines were – at least at one point in the narrative – dwindling resources, the ones left existing had survived for generations. Small changes to their initial designs would be far from unexpected. Allowing for players to “fill in the gaps” is a great way (intentionally or no) of accommodating the narrative component in mechanic terms.

Unfortunately this dovetailing of narrative and mechanics isn’t accommodated aesthetically. Ironwind Metals (responsible for the miniature side of Battletech’s production) does include additional parts in a number of blisters for building specific variants, but aside from a little player ingenuity in the figure building process – like magnetic pinning – there’s no real “designed” method of supporting this kind of player-created content. Here you have two essential but separate game qualities. Trying to unify them – perhaps by taking a page from Stikfas and their configurable army men or better yet their sister toy/game Xevoz – would make a great exercise.

On the fringe edge of the Battletech’s meta-game context Kevin has created works not only are pleasing in of themselves, his non-kit materials compare delightfully to the clunck of Battletech’s western style mecha. Battletech games – at least in their original incarnation –  are crunchy grinds between jury-rigged machines passed down through generations. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these machines didn’t have zippers, coins, and other mementos hand crafted into them.