'Geth' What Arrived in the Mail!; time for more Mass Effect!

It's been a quiet few days on the hobby front, though a few bits and pieces for different projects are on their way, as well as some major personal news I can't quite share yet.

Today's post, however, is devoted to one of the more exciting bits of news I have to share - Geth! Yes, those pesky AI enemies of organic life have left the Perseus Veil that is international shipping and finally arrived in Temora.
As the primary opponent of the first Mass Effect game, and major foes of the second and third games, the Geth are one of the more iconic images from Mass Effect universe. They're also remarkably interesting opponents. While at first they come across as little more than generic grunt-bots Saren can throw in your path for Shepard and co to slaughter, the second game introduces Legion as a squadmate, and with him the realisation that not all Geth 'worship' the Reapers, and in the third game you get a glimpse into the origins of the war between the Geth and their Quarian creators. Far from being a case of AIs spontaneously running rampant and attacking their creators, the Geth are shown to be naive and victimised, only taking up arms when their entire existence was being threatened. Gotta say, much as I love Tali, the Quarians were basically assholes in ME3.

So anyway, obviously any serious attempt at a Mass Effect tabletop game needs some kind of model to serve as the Geth. This is a pretty major challenge, since they can't be proxied with any old sci fi armoured trooper with a headswap. Luckily I was saved the perils of trying to convert whole models by Mantic, and their Dreadball Kickstarter last year. One of the early stretch goals for the game was for an MVP special character called 'Wyn Greth'ski', the accompanying concept art was basically a Geth, minus a gun. Thanks Mantic!
Well, I wasn't too interested in the game Dreadball, but I did back the Kickstarter - and ordered 21 Geth'skis! Ouch, quite a costly investment, but at the end of the day, money well spent. This should give me enough for my purposes. I certainly hope so, since the models were exclusive to the KSer, and it would be difficult to get hold of many more I suspect.
So with my 21 I plan to create the following:
- 8 Troopers
- 3 Rocket troopers (spammin' rockets for days)
- 3 Hunters
- 3 Pyros
- 3 Snipers (remember those?)
And Legion.
Depending on things, I may forgo one of the snipers in favour of converting a model to represent my Geth Trooper character from ME3 multiplayer. One of my favourite classes, his flamer ability is insanely overpowered. Just nuts.

So, that's a lot of words, time for some pics. The Wyn models are almost perfect right from the start. I'm happy to overlook minor deviation from the Geth, such as the different feet and slightly larger shoulder plates, but I am going to do some conversion work to their backs to create the 'spine' of wires they have, and to cover over the large blank 'numberplate' all Dreadball models have on their back.
Weapons are slightly more of a challenge. My sculpting skills are pretty crap. But Geth weapons aren't too complex, and I'm hoping I can create things that looks right even if they're not super detailed/polished.
With that in mind, let me present the first geth trooper I've cleaned, assembled and modified, as well as a horrible looking pulse rifle.

More news soon, thanks for reading.

~Alex/Magos