Back in April Squirmydad from Mayhem in Paper released the Steam Ram. At the time I picked up the model with the plan to build a Steampunk army around a couple of them. I’ve finally got around to building two and thought I’d do a review/build post about the Steam Ram.
Once you have purchased the Steam Ram for the very reasonable price of $3.95, you’ll receive a zip which contains:
- A single layered version of each colour (brown, dark grey, light grey and green) at 28/30mm scale
- A layered version of the above so you can turn guides and other bits off which is great for customizing
- A single layered version of each colour (brown, dark grey, light grey and green) at 15mm scale
- A single layered version of each colour (brown, dark grey, light grey and green) at 15mm scale with all guides off
- Assembly Instructions and a Card modelling basics file.
On top of this if you own a craftrobo/silhouete/cameo you can slip over to the Mayhem in Paper website and pickup the GSD files for the cutter. All round this is an absolute pile of stuff for the purchase price but as you look through the Instructions and files you’ll notice that Squirmydad has also included parts not just for one model but for at least four different versions. Although with the parts this actually equates to a lot more options, here are the four basic ones easily constructed from the instructions:
- Wheeled with Main Gun
- Tracked with Main Gun
- Wheeled with Top Machine Guns
- Tracked with Top machine Guns.
I’ve borrowed the above images from the Instructions (copyright Mayhem in Paper)
The model itself is well laid out and all the parts are easy to identify. If you are hand cutting the model do be aware that not all the parts are used when assembling a Steam Ram so make sure you check the instructions and see what parts are needed for the version your planning to build before just cutting everything out. The 30mm sized Steam Ram is spread across 4 pages but for a single tank build you’ll only need to use about 3 pages of parts. I found the colouring of the ram to be perfect not to dark and not to light scaling wise the ram should be perfect to use with 28mm miniatures. It did take me around 4-5 hours to finish each Ram, they mainly took this long as I was building very carefully and ensuring every join and part was edged, I even sanded a couple of parts to ensure they were perfectly perpendicular. So if your used to assembling card models you should be able to pull a Ram together much more quickly.
I did make some slight modifications to the two tanks I constructed. Firstly I centralized the gun box on the front but then cut out the driver window and glued this to the left of the gun box. I then added both machine guns to the top but set these towards the rear and facing left and right to provide some flanking protection to the tank. Naturally I had to build the tracked version and later on I might add some unit markings when I have more of a feel/theme for the army.
You can see in the above picture how I made use of some of the extra hatches that were included with the Steam Ram to add hatches to the top of the machine gun turrets. I am really happy with how the Steam Ram looks on the table and a pair of them really do look intimidating when I was in no way pretending to push them across a table in formation 🙂 .
I actual had the urge to create some fan art for the Steam Ram, this ended up being some desktop wallpapers and a Kindle screensaver image. First up the wallpapers I did two versions a widescreen 1920×1080 and a 4:3 aspect ratio 1600×1200 version. I am happy with how the wallpapers came out although I’m not sure anyone would actual use them as wallpaper. However they were fun to make and have a Steampunk/Victorian era feel. For want of a better name I’ve called my Steam Ram “Variant F”, Lord Hamilton Squirmydad had already written into the short back story for the model.
1600×1200 version – Link to Full Size
1920×1080 version – Link to Full Size
Lastly I pulled together a quick version for a Kindle Screensaver. The image below will appear slightly washed out but it has been colour balanced to look okay on an e-ink Kindle not a computer monitor :). I’ve uploaded the below on my kindle and it now cycles through in my screensavers and if anything still appears a little dark (note you do need to jailbreak your kindle to use custom screensavers).
Click the above and then right click save as
As you can probably tell I really enjoyed building the Steam Rams and the customization options available in the PDF’s is huge with a large variaty of models achievable from just the base included parts. As I mentioned above I plan on building an entire Steam punk army around these two models and then using either Defiance VG or No Limits to spec the army out so watch out for more models/miniatures and eventually army lists in the coming months. If you haven’t already done so this model is well worth the money so head over to RPGNOW and grab a copy you wont be disappointed.
Hope you enjoy your Steam Ram, I’m going to go back to not pushing mine around a table in formation 🙂 .
Sirrob01 