Forge World 1/6th Baneblade

From the Forge World newsletter.

The big news in this issue of our newsletter is all about a big tank. To be honest, Forge World has always been heavily involved with making big tanks but this time we outdid ourselves.

In the summer of 2003, Paul our website guy, was ‘working’ on the internet. He called a few of us across to see this Russian website that had photos and video clips of very large radio controlled tanks. ‘Wow, that’s cool’ seemed to be the overall opinion throughout the office. It was noted that the owners of this website, who make and sell these large models, said if you couldn’t see the tank you wanted they would be happy to build it for you. Well, we just had to ask them didn’t we?

Paul sent off an email to Alex in Volgograd asking if they would consider making a science fiction style tank? Yes, came the fairly swift reply. Talk to our partner in the UK, a chap called Mark. A few weeks later Paul, Tony and Warwick went to meet Mark at a large militaria show in the south of England and Alex happened to be there too. Everyone had a good chat and after seeing what we were getting more and more interested in making, Alex and Mark said they thought they could do it.

Do what? What are you going on about? A Baneblade of course. Forge World is the very proud owner of a 1/6th scale radio controlled Mars pattern Baneblade.

We first displayed our 1/6th scale Baneblade at Games Day UK at the beginning of October. We laid out a small arena for it to rumble around in, mocked up some fuel drums for it to run over and crush and a large ramp for it to clamber up and over. Each time we fired up the ‘engine’, a hugely loud sound processor, a massive crowd rushed over, completely surrounding the display area five or six people deep.

My photographs of the tank from GamesDay 2004.

Forge World 1/6th Baneblade

Forge World 1/6th Baneblade

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