Missile Gap!
As I've been playing with my Crisis suits, I've noticed a few issues with them. Namely, sometimes their range leaves something to be desired. Sure, the Plasma Rifle goes out to 24", but sometimes that's just not enough. When I want to really be able to reach out and touch something without getting tagged back, I don't really have any options at the moment (well, aside from Railguns on my Broadsides!) Frankly, I've gotten a bit of Fireknife envy. :) While the Bladestorm configuration that I chose (after a lot of math-hammering) _is_ more efficient in it's range at taking out those pesky Space Marines, that extra range makes a huge difference that doesn't show up very well in the numbers. In addition, I've become rather enamored of my Rain army type that includes a large number of Deathrains. That means I need two missile pods per Crisis suit. Looking at my current stocks of missile pods, I find that I have precisely zero.

Part of the reason that I have no Missile Pods is the afore-mentioned Math-hammering. I decided as I was ordering and building my Tau, that Burst Cannons were more efficient, and they are. However, simple efficiency isn't the only game in town. Having a versatile weapon that can take on light-medium vehicles as well as light or heavy infantry is certainly not a bad thing. In addition, having _twice_ the range gives you a lot more options, particularly with a tactic like JSJ. All this was not readily apparent to me when I first started buying my units and weapons, so I left out the missile pods. There was also another reason that I left them out, however.

Frankly, the Missile Pod bitz don't look very good. Much like the Crisis Suits compared to the rest of the army, Missile Pods (compared to other Crisis weaponry) are much boxier and have fewer curves. It was this aesthetic trouble that lead me to modifying XV25 Stealth Suits into Crisis Suits, since they fit better (in my opinion of course) with the look of the rest of the army. Similarly, the Missile Pods (which resemble a child's lego toy) are very boxy, without the curves and lines that complement the rest of the Crisis Weaponry. I'm usually pretty relaxed about the looks of my toy soldiers, but these just don't work for me. (This may well be due to the fact that I'm trying to make the Tau my best-painted army yet, so I won't settle for "Good Enough.")

How Many Missiles?
So I realized that I'd need Missile Pods for my Crisis Suits. When I totalled it up, I realized that I'd need 30 of the things! That's a lot of Missile Pods. While I could simply order some Missile Pod Bitz or try to pick them up on Ebay, since I don't like their look, I needed to turn somewhere else. Eventually I decided that I wanted to sculpt my own. I wanted a simple design and I didn't want them to be quite as tiny as the standard ones. (How can they possibly fit 2 missiles per turn for 6 turns in that launcher?) On the other hand, I had to be careful not to make them too big, either. I played around with different design ideas, including a couple of ones that looked more like a standard gun and one that looked like a multibarrel gatling missile launcher, plus a box system based around an anti-missile system mounted on a Navy Destroyer. I eventually came back to a simplified version of my original idea, which was a tapered box with a rounded back end. To make sure I had the size right, I ended up using a Fusion Blaster for reference. While I made it a bit shorter than the Fusion Blaster, I also made it wider, and I gave the back end that rounded look that most Tau equipment has. The launcher still doesn't have much in the way of details, but I think I'm going to have to just paint those on.

So, I sculpted a couple of launchers (the first ones didn't turn out quite right, so I had to play around with the design a bit.) The sculpting medium that I used is called Apoxie Sculpt and you can get it from Aves studios online. It's a two-part epoxy somewhat like Greenstuff. Combine the two parts and mix them thoroughly, then you can model with them. Initially, they are very pliable (a little too pliable to work with for more than basic shapes.) They start hardening within a few minutes or so, but remain workable for about an hour. After several hours (depending on the thickness of the material) they will be very hard and can be cut, chipped or drilled with tools. Apoxie Sculpt can hold a good amount of detail (certainly more detail than I am really capable of sculpting!) It is pretty easy to work with. The only drawback to working with it this time was that I didn't have a lot of time in a single chunk to work with it, so I had to work a little, then let it dry, then rush back to it to work more before it hardened. This, as you might imagine, didn't always work terribly well. It also made it very hard to get a decent number of pieces made.

Breaking the Mold
While I could have eventually produced enough Missile Pods for my army by sculpting each one individually, I wanted to try a technique that I haven't used with Apoxie Sculpt before: the two-part mold. While there are a number of different ways to achieve a mold, I took one of the simplest and most direct routes. I started out by sculpting my original piece and letting it harden completely.

The next step was to coat the original in something (I used cooking oil) to keep it from sticking, and then press it into a freshly mixed piece of Apoxie Sculpt. This formed the back and sides of the Missile Pod. Once it had started to set, I carefully separated the original piece from the first half of the mold and let that half completely harden.

I initially tried to make a press for the other end of the mold. My idea was to form the main part of the weapon in the mold, then just press something against the end of it to form the missile end of the weapon. While this might have worked if I let the newly pressed piece harden longer first, I ended up mostly just squishing it out of shape.

Once the first half was completely hardened, I fit the original back in the now-hardened half of the mold. Then I coated it with more cooking oil and "mushed" (it's a technical term ;) ) a piece of freshly mixed Apoxie Sculpt onto the top of it. Once I had achieved a close fit and it started to harden a little, I made a little impression on one side so that I could make sure the mold was pressed together at the same point each time. Then I removed it and set it aside to dry. (It did seem to take an extra long time to dry, which might be due to the thickness of the pieces and it might also be due to using the cooking oil on it.

Once I had the two parts of the mold completely dry, it was time to start using them! I mixed up some fresh Apoxie Sculpt, coated both sides of the mold in oil and got to work. Unfortunately, the pieces were too soft initially, so I had to let them harden a little while before pressing them into the mold. I pulled off pieces that were close to the size and shape so they'd fit properly inside the mold. (If the piece was too wide, it might not fill up the mold all the way, leaving a gap or hole at the bottom.) I pressed them into one half of the mold, then pressed the other half on top. I pressed the halves together firmly, squishing excess material out the sides.

It was important to let each one harden a bit inside the mold so that it didn't deform as I pulled it from the mold. As I removed each one, I checked it for problems (deformation, gaps or holes, etc.) Then I set that piece aside and started on the next one. In this way, I made quite a few in one session, then left them to dry.

After they had dried, I took a hobby knife and slowly carved off the flange that had formed when the excess material was squished out between the halves of the mold. (Safety note: it is important to _slowly_ carve because it's easy to suddenly break through a small piece before you realize it. If this happens, it is easy to cut into your finished piece or your hand. Slow and steady is very important, or as I like to say, "I like my fingers.")

Finally, we have the final product. These are ready to get magnets and be painted. One thing that I learned was that it's better to do them in several batches. Given the drying time between each one, mixing up a small batch of Apoxie Sculpt and doing a smaller batch makes the final product a lot better. There were several pieces that ended up deformed and not usable because I took them out before they had hardened enough or because they were too hard when I put them into the mold.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

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