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Mantic Firefight Tunnellers

06.15.2025

Oct 27, 2024. Miniature Market runs a "Bigger Than Black Friday" sale. One of the many things that caught my eye was a vehicle from Firefight 2E - a Tunneller. For $32, 2 caught my eye, as they have multiple versions with different add-ons I don't understand as I've never played the game, but a Tunneller looks just right for my ever evolving retro sci-fi base. Thus, 2 were ordered. They arrived, and promptly went on a shelf somewhere.

Jan 27, 2025. I get around to finally opening the box(es) of the above. While dry-fitting parts, I find one of the Tunnellers is missing 1 part. The hinged part that holds one of the swirly spinny diggy things.

Firefight is published by Mantic Games. For better or worse, I've got plenty of experience in contacting Mantic with missing/damaged parts - This will be time #3 or #4, which shouldn't sound like a lot, but for all the minis, games, toys, etc I've gotten over the decades, there's very few times I've had to contact anyone once with an issue. Luckily, I know the "I have a problem" routine and could cut out some back and forth steps when contacting Mantic. I took pics of all the parts I received. I took a pic of the directions and highlighted the part missing. (Most importantly) I included a copy of my original order from MM, showing that I legally purchased said kit. I got a reply that the missing part was on it's way.

Mar 7, 2025. Missing part arrives, from the UK. I was expecting 4-6 weeks, so it's not as long as it looks on paper. Plus, it's a piece of plastic. The world's not going to end if I have to wait a little while for a piece of plastic. As I secretly expected, the 1 part I was missing came with most of/the generic base of another Tunneller. It's easier for them to grab a bag that contains the part I need than to rip open a bag and pull out that 1 part - and then what would they do with the left over parts?

What would I do with the left over parts? Well I would make a battle damaged tunneller is exactly what I would do! And that's what I did.

Making tunnellers was going to be (1) me better learning how to build using sub-assemblies, and (2) how to better use my airbrush. The orange that I use for retro sci-fi needs multiple coats to cover + not show brush strokes. After the last airbrush class built my confidence a little more, and finally not being afraid of breaking the airbrush, I wanted to try spraying the orange this time. And that's what I did.

The thing I quickly learned after spraying orange is that I need to find the right eye-distance and angle(s) as I was guessing on where my spray would stop. I was wrong most of the time. With that, I ended up with a lot of orange-brush touch-up. I don't know if it was just as much time if I've just brushed it on to begin with. Maybe. Maybe not.

The whole time I was working on these things, I was oscillating on how much to weather things. Most of my retro sci-fi is pretty clean and devoid of real weathering. Then again, a "tunneller" should be going through some stuff and not be squeaky clean. After things were painted white and orange, and start adding a little silver-metallic drybrush, which became a little heavier and more all-over. I also used some AK Interactive paint markers. These worked really well for touching up off-white and orange, plus getting some good metallic highlights in. Speaking of metallics, I brushed on some Vallejo Air metallics - Rust works really well for dirty metal, too.

When it came time to work on the "battle damaged" tunneller, I had to think of how to cover up the missing digger hinge. I decided something needed to fill the hole - more like things were coming apart than making a hole. What ended up fitting well was the nose of a very small snap together Star Trek Defiant that didn't snap together very well. It worked out well for me though, as the end result as battle damage detritus turned out mostly how I wanted.

Now retro sci-fi base has 3-ish tunnellers to round out the scene. While next I plan on making a little more progress painting Heroscape minis, I also want to see if the 2001 1/55 Moon Bus model I picked up on a trip to Kennesaw is a close enough scale to fit into retro sci-fi base.

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