Building Guide: Project Pandora - Veer-myn

One of the drawbacks to getting older is its often harder to get what you actually want for your birthday. At my age you are basically doomed to socks and other woolen goods unless you really really stamp your foot down and insist on toy soldiers. This year I got my wish. First present up: Project Pandora: Grim Cargo by Mantic.

This is a dungeon crawler, set in Mantic's Warpath universe and includes 10 Corporation Marines and 10 Veer-myn - ratmen. In spaaaace! I'm thinking of converting my marines up into zombie troopers, so here's a quick look at building the Veer-myn.

Here's all the parts you get for ratmen. The important points to note are:

• There are 8 bodies, four each of two types, that are tail-less. These are the bodies for the grunt troopers.
• There are two bodies with tails - these are your boss and the heavy weapons trooper.
• The boss and the heavy trooper's heads are in the little baggie, along with some more tails and the boss's weapons.
• The guns for the troopers come with hands as part of the cast. They look almost identical but there are two types. Ones with cloth on the fists and ones with studded plates. Separate them out.

Most of the parts for the grunts are interchangeable. The weapons, however, are not. The hands that have cloth wrappings belong to the bodies with cloth rags and cowls - the top set in the above picture. The studded hands go with the bodies that appear all armoured up - the bottom set in the picture.

When gluing your arms on the bodies, make sure to account for the extended jawlines the models will have. These guns cannot really be glued raised in a firing position. The models pretty much have to carry them low down, as if they're running with them. 

Top row: piggies. Bottom row: er, other ones

When it comes to heads, the ones that have gas masks on - piggies, as I like to think of them, generally go better on the cowled/ragged bodies. Conversely, the unmasked heads generally fit the armoured bodies best. You can mix them, as I have, for a bit of variety, just be aware this may lead to some gaps appearing around the necks. Nothing you can't, at the worst, fill with greenstuff though.

Tails you glues. Thankyou very much.

As with the guns, there are two sets of very similar looking tails. These are probably best described as a 'long' selection and four 'short' ones. The long tails are designed to fit into the backsides of the armoured bodies. So, of course, the shorter tails are supposed to go into a little hole below the right knee of the cowled models. I have found you can, again, mix them up for some variety in your models. Fitting the long tails on the cowled models is definitely the trickier job though. It will certainly require some trimming of the tail tabs to make them fit and may also require some greenstuff to get the piece looking really right though.

The above pic shows you the boss parts to attach to one of your tailed bodies. Nice and simple, although why the guy is carrying a gas cannister on his back, I don't know. Can't be very ergonomical when it comes to crawling along ducts. But hey ho. Its the future.

 And here are the parts for the heavy chem thrower rat. The pipe that runs from the tanks on his back to the grip was cast way out of line, but a few seconds under a hot tap put enough bendiness back into it, it was easily fixed.

Here's a nice blurry picture of my Veer-myn boss, whose name I have forgotten, all ready for washing and painting.

And here's the heavy weapon rat.


Once you have sorted out the heads and weapons and so on, these models are all really easy to put together. They are all sprueless, which speeds things up a lot, so apart from a few bits of trimming and a couple of mould lines being taken off, they're quick to do. One of the weapon sections was bent a fair bit, but, as with the aforementioned piping, this was easily fixed with a bit of hot water.

Project Pandora was basically put together on the cheap, as a way of getting Mantic mini's into people's hands quickly, without them having to commit to a whole Warpath army. As such its a pretty good advert for the quality of Mantic's models. I'm not sure choosing not to include a build guide for them was the right choice though as new gamers are possibly just as likely to swear never to buy another game without pre-assembled figures as to choose to invest heavily in Mantic toys. For gamers with a little more experience though, Project Pandora's Veer-myn fit well with Mantic's aim of producing high quality miniatures at very affordable prices.