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What's that Ontos?

This is the USMC "ontos" (Greek for "thing". No, really. Idiomatically, this word could be used to say "that thingy-jigger over there".) And it looks quite a bit like the 40K Hydra Tank.

This guy.

And at $17 each, they are a bit cheaper than the FW/GW models.

The problem? Well two: (1) The ontos is a one-man self-propelled artillery, so it's smaller than the 40K Hydra anti-air (and occasionally anti-personnel) tank. and (2) The above model is 1:32, so it's too big to fit in with nominally 1:56 28mm models.

Wait ... doesn't too big and too small cancel each other out?

Not necessarily.

But in this case, it pretty much does. Otherwise, I was going to have to get even more creative.

Truth in advertising, I did some math with both sets of vehicle measurements and the scale ratios. And, it reduced down to 1:~1.01, real close to 1:1.

Of course, as we all know from modeling, scale math is great, but the proof is in the profile. I was very happy to see that the $34 for both vehicles would be put to good use as intended.

Then I just put them together. That takes, time, patience, skill, glue, and in my case occasional spates of profanity. As much as I complain about GW pricing (Which I totally support. It's their company, so it's their price point calculus, not mine. If you ever want to complain about a company's pricing, your first target should be the consumers in the market that sustain that price point.), GW models are waaaaaaay easier to put together. They are designed for someone who wants to put something good looking on the table, not someone who wants to agonize over faithful visual reproduction of something that is fictional in the first place.

I didn't realize this was a Guard unit at first. So even if I wanted it for my growing Iron Snakes legion, I am happy to put it in for the DKOK. In fact, I really liked Krieging it up. Haven't done that in a while.

In grey and gunmetal, they fit in well with the DKOK aesthetic. And I didn't capture a good pic, but there's my custom DKOK banner on the side, peeking out from behind the gun. It's basically their banner flag (A skull with a gas mask on some Imperial German WWI red, white, and black) at a smaller size.