Imperial AT-TS (All Terrain Tracked Scout)

[Weaver]

Captain Harl of the Rebel 91st Battalion's anti-walker platoon was quietly confident, despite the panicky comms traffic they'd picked up earlier. With mountains to their left and soft ground to their right, the Imperial walkers would have to come through the trees dead ahead, and by the time they cleared them, they'd be well within range. He looked around his position, checking the tangler teams again. Each team had two remote-control missiles on tripod launch rails, connected to each end of 100 metre spool of mono-filament cable. In front of him, the command-mine control box was all wired up and armed, and the kill teams with their mag-bombs were ready to go. They'd learnt a lot since Hoth.



Suddenly,  a heavy explosion to his right showered him with earth. More plasma bolts were screeching overhead, and he sought desperately for the source of the fire. It took him a moment to re-calibrate his brain, because the fire was coming from across the soft ground, and from a very long range.

"What the Hell...."



Harl scrabbled about for his macro-binoculars. Unbelievably, grey Imperial vehicles were advancing across the marshland, showers of spray and mud obscuring his view of how they were doing it. He was completely wrong-footed: all the mines were between his position and the woods and the tangler teams arcs wern't good.

"Target right flank! Re-deploy! Re-deploy!"



His men scrambled to point their equipment at the new threat. A corporal shouted something he didn't catch, pulled some plugs out of the command-mine box and ran off towards the trees before he could question it. The fire was coming in thick and fast now and they were taking serious casualties. Eventually, tanglers lept from their rails and sped off towards the mystery vehicles. Rudders hard over once past them, they spun round and round the target until it's legs would be wrapped in cable and unable to move. it was foolproof and tested in battle many times, but today, it made no difference. He watched in horror as the vehicles simply ploughed on, dragging the spent tangler rockets behind them like discarded toys.



He was still frozen, watching the advancing vehicles, when a blurred sillouette appeared in his view finder. He put the focus cues on it, and it resolved into the shape of the corporal. He was running towards the Imperial attack, from cover to cover, and he was carrying something: one of the command mines. Eventually, he got himself in front of the lead vehicle, stood up, and threw the mine like a discus. It cost him his life as a shower of blaster bolts blew him to pieces a second later, but his aim had been true and the mine had gone under the vehicle. As it advanced, it suddenly vanished in a heavy explosion of mud and earth, and then shuddered to a halt.



Harl's men began to cheer at the sight of this, but their cheers were cut short as, to their amazement, the Imperial vehicle didn't fall over: it just sat there, pouring fire at them. Harl couldn't understand it: how the hell were they doing this? Watching though his binoculars again, he got his answer. Another vehicle turned sharply sideways to go around the disabled one, and he could see that it was rolling on multiple wheels, with a mechanism that laid a kind of articulated "carpet" under them and then picked it up once they'd rolled over it. In the back of his mind, he knew he'd seen something like this in a history book, but it wouldn't come, and this was no time for reverie.



Harl looked around at their piles of kit. It was all useless: these things rolled over the tangler cable, they were too fast for the kill teams to approach with mag-bombs, the grav-field disrupters were irrelevant, there was nothing they could do. He made a decision.

"Retreat! Fall back! Every man for himself!"

They didn't need telling twice. The Imperials gave no quarter, blizzards of blaster bolts cutting through the men as they ran, felling many. In his fear and frustration, Harl wanted desperately to turn and shake his fist a them, make some sort of defiant gesture, but he didn't. He just ran, like the rest.



At the command post, General Timpu was seething with frustration and his staff were taking the brunt of it.

"How in the gods' names can they be there man? They'd have to be walking at 40kmh to do that and no walker's that fast, not even an AT-ST! Are all our scouts drunk?  These reports don't make any sense at all!"

"It's all true Sir."

The General spun around to see Captain Harl in the doorway. He was panting and dishevelled, and nursing an ugly blaster burn on his arm. Despite this, he'd had time to dredge his memory.

"They're not walking General, they're using tracks...."

"Tracks!" Timpu was thunderstruck.

"Well the devious Imperial bastards....."





(Note that the AT-TS obeys Imperial design rule 1a: "All vehicles shall be painted grey irrespective of operational enviroment" and rule 2b "All vehicles, no matter how formidable, shall incorporate a critical weakness that can be exploited by some reckless hero with more bollocks than brain cells". In this case, one of the vulnerable umbilicals at the back has saved him the trouble by disconnecting itself.... )

[Weaver]

Thought I'd post this here for all the people who don't look at the GBs.

The idea was to express my dislike for walking machines by taking an AT-ST and putting it on a tracked chassis. The original intention was to just dump the AT-ST bits rigidly on a widenened Leo II chassis, but when I'd cut the latter in half, this more articulated version occured to me.


Components:

AMT Snap-tite clockwork AT-ST walker (scale uncertain)
C.C.Lee 1/72nd Leopard 1A5
Airfix HO-OO modern flat and shop (various grill and panels)
Two Airfix 1/76th Bloodhound SAM launchers (turntables, satcom body,various details)
Airfix 1/72nd Bristol Blenheim engine fronts (turret elevation pivots)
Matchbox 1/76th Panther tank wheel (targeting radar and hull hatch detail)
Airfix 1/600th HMS Daring (various bits of detail)
Airfix Fiat G.91 landing gear leg (satcom strut)
Wills HO-OO chequer plate decking and rivet strips (display base and bits of detail)
Spencer's 6mm injection moulded white lettering (Lettering on base)
Roco 1/87th Minitanks accessory sprues (various details)
Frosted pearl cabouchons (domes on hulls)
DIY screw head covers (satcom dish and turret front plate)
Pop bottle (brand unknown) top (turret base)
Plastic vac-form packaging (windows)
Hydraulic pipe blanks (various spacers and collars)
Evergreen plastic sections ( hull inner sides, cockpit bottom central arm, pivot tubes, various axles, chin radiator, surface detail)
Brass and alloy tube and rod (various axles, pivots and braces)
15 and 5 gauge fuse wire (cables and umbilicals)

Full build thread here: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,29096.30.html

[Atlantis]

That is excellence smothered in Awesome sauce right there.

[chrisonord]

This is well cool H 
It certainly looks the part for sure, marvellous!!
Chris.

[Doc Yo]

 I love walking machines, but this is the bomb-diggiity, Weaver. Well done-especially the last lines about
Imperial design standards.

[Captain Canada]

This is just awesome. I seem to recall seeing it before, but it appears I didn't comment on it ? Was it in another thread ?

Love the articulated tracks...and the 'graffiti' !

[Weaver]

This is just awesome. I seem to recall seeing it before, but it appears I didn't comment on it ? Was it in another thread ?

Love the articulated tracks...and the 'graffiti' !

Cheers!

It had two threads (one in the GB, one in Sci-Fi) and a front page article too, so it's entirely likely.