My friend, Tim, has taken a liking to the CAV Strike Operations game and has been working very hard to get me involved. Part of his plan is the provide me with models and rules so I can't make excuses for not playing. It just might be working.
This is my first CAV model - a Rach Dictator. Rach is one of the factions and I really don't know anything about the faction or this CAV. I painted it to enter into the painting competition on the CAV:SO Facebook group. Needless to say I didn't win, but I didn't really expect too.
This model is made of the Reaper Bones material. This means it is a soft plastic. This is an interesting material for miniatures. The softness makes this seem more like a game piece rather than a scale model. The main advantage is these are very cheap.
The material is not too hard to work with. The detail is not great and there were some mold lines. A sharp knife is a must for removing the mold lines. There is some talk about this material being finicky when painting. Some people have reported issues with different types of spray paints or primers. I avoided any of that by using brush on acrylic paint as a primer.
The bases provided with the models are 25mm hexes and are just too small to do the job. I based this model on a 40mm hex also provided by Tim.
This model turned out to be more fun to paint up than I was expecting. The material was easy to work with and it took paint just fine. Warpage can be corrected, theoretically, with boiling water but I didn't have much luck with that. These are easy to assemble and did I mention they are cheap? I think this model retails for less than $8. Seem like a very cost effective way to play some stompy robot games.
I will continue to build and paint my Rach force and I will hopefully have enough stuff to get in a game soon.