The Evil Martian Tripod Attacks! – A 1/56 Tripod Build

It was a battle for all mankind to remember as on the first day of the Martians second invasion of Earth the brave men of the Upper Knob Hill Artillery Company fought valiantly to the last against the mighty Martian fighting machines. In defeat these men symbolised the human ‘spunk’ these evil Green Creatures from the even more evil Red Planet could expect! These new 60 foot tall tripods whose eerie red glowing eye like vision port seemed indestructible as they glided about effortlessly on their three sleek metal legs their fighting compartments bristling with armaments! It was the infamous heat ray that put paid to the heroic fighting men of the Royal Artillery who maned their weapons until overrun. They even damaged one of the Martian machines in the process. They Scored a hit with a 7 pound projectile on one of the legs of the lead Machine causing it to buckle bringing the whole tripod to the ground with a tremendous crash. Those who witnessed the horrific action between man and alien said that the damaged Tripod was later recovered by others and carried away!

A photograph taken of the action between the Upper Knob Hill Artillery Company and the Martians:

Okay in my version of the Martian Invasions of the Earth their first foray in 1872 to England followed H G Welles storyline and was over in no time thanks to germs! But these pesky aliens weren’t done with us yet now fortified with the knowledge Earth would have to be acclimatised too slowly a second attack was launched in 1874 with new bigger tripods and resulted in a two year war that stretched across the globe as the Martian fighting machines attempted to quell mankind while they landed scientific pods to work in the conquered lands on adapting their kind to the earth’s environment…anyway I’ll write more on this later!

Okay so first up I need a grand 1/56 scale Martian Tripod for use at Little Wars, now I have several of the Alien Dungeons ones (excellent kits they are too!) for general gaming against my 28mm figures and vehicles but something special (read BIG) is required me thinks for Little Wars! So “begineth” another project!

Building A Big Martian Tripod

Parts required:

Two hard plastic cups, one goblet style and one martini glass style

Glues

Styrene tubing

Sheet styrene

Milliput

A big button

A few miscellaneous lids

Lego bits

Wire

&

Some Goggles eyes!

Initial construction was pretty simple. After cutting the stems of the glasses off I had a body. The leg joints are large styrene tube with the ends sealed with sheet styrene and goggle eyes added to be sort of bolts. The feet are lids off pill containers and the joint where the leg meet the body are lids off pet flea treatment tubes:

The rocket launchers are styrene tube capped at one end with and a goggle eye added and some Lego space line bits added. The black smoke projectors are Lego ‘loud speaker bits (they each had three horns the others have been rimmed off they’ll probably make good gun barrel ends!) and the heat ray is a screw on lid, piece of wire and a plastic spike from a solar light setup that wasn’t needed. At this point I was going to add tentacle arms which I made with thick copper wire but I haven’t added them as I’m not sure the model needs them they sort of made the front look too busy…anyway I can add them later if I change my mind!:

The mount for the vision port (read big button) was made with Milliput. The whole thing was undercoated in cheap spray can black for a uniform base colour and then sprayed with Humbrol Polished Steel, this is a picture of the finished Humbrol paint job before a buff up:

  

Here it all is buffed up with big button added!

I can now test a short game for Little Wars using it. It’ll be based on the Cruise of the Borodino one Martian Tripod crossing the board and humanity trying to stop it nice and easy and quick!

Thanks for looking! Next time even more hopefully better stuff!