During the Archipelago Wars in the far-distant Sunrise Sector, civilizations began a slow but inevitable slide out of civilization. This left a large number of mecha wranglers who had been very effective in combat less so in peace, struggling to survive. A large number of such drivers decided to pool their dwindling resources and take passage to one of the few Rimworlds that remained accessible, in hopes of using their skills either in combat or to preserve life and civilization.

Zoids are a hazy combination of toy and model kit from a Japanese company, Tomy. Originally released around 25 years back, they've gone out of production a couple of times but are currently enjoying a rennaissance (if the newest releases are getting decidedly odd). Most Zoids are 1/72 scale combat mecha (usually shaped like some animal, most real ones), and most move. The newest (and weird) line is called Blox, which are 1/72 Zoids, but (mostly) without motors; you simply assemble them to an interesting array of connectors, and pose them to taste.

(Zoids have had an elaborate backstory since their original release (although it's grown with the years), but I personally find it rather lame (Tomy employs excellent design engineers, but lousy imagineers), so when I build my Zoids I paint and equip them for my own backstory. Kind of like building a Saturn V, but then saying that it's a Confederate spaceship on the Earth-Venus route. Strange and a little unnerving when you don't realize that I've ignored the past.

Cannon Spider is one of the Blox that actually premiered in the U.S. first (it's only showed up in Japan a year and a half later). Out of the box it's pretty hideous (bright white and brighter red--nothing like being noticed on the battlefield!). But it's still the most intriguing design of all the Blox Zoids.

The first thing I decided was that Cannon Spider needed a paint job. It got a base of Testor's Desert Sand, with a backup of Dark Earth (one of my last to use rattle cans), and detailing with olive drab and silver. I figure his normal place of operations was the shallow desert or low foothills next to the desert.

Someone on the ZoidsFans list pointed out that a CP-15 (Gatling Cannon, generally intended for an Elephander) had its mount points in the perfect position to go on Cannon Spider's own cannon mount.

Since the gun that comes with Cannon Spider is fairly lame, I elected to try this. A little plastic surgery was necessary (the cannon didn't move correctly until some plastic was trimmed out of the way), and I filled in some open areas with stock styrene.

After this, I did paint touch-up, applied stickers (Zoids don't come with decals, but the stickers are very nice), weathered it some, renamed it Gatling Spider and counted it finished.

All in all, Gatling Spider OOB would take about an hour to assemble. This took me a couple of weekends, and most of that time was spent on painting (and watching paint dry). Quite fun, and it's an impressive addition to my _Festung Wüste_ squadron. And, ironically enough, I've now figured out a way to motorize this non-moving Zoid.

Image: Front view

Image: Closeup

Image: Unmodified