By VinceHoffman
Nov 30, 2015
After recently building game accurate Reach/H4 Scorpion and Halo Wars Grizzly tank customs, It seemed like a good time to revisit our ODST/Stealth Blue Scorpions from the Covenant Invasion set. While this pretty rare stock model was a major improvement over the v1 desert camo Scorpion, it was a little undersized, a little too simplified, and had a bit of an identity crisis right out of the box. While the tread bogey fenders and turret design were clearly modeled on a max tech level Halo Wars Scorpion, the nose was borrowed from a Halo 3 Scorpion. So I decided to go full on for the pimped variant of the Halo Wars Scorpion.
I widened the tank hull front to back by adding additional slopes which better reflect the sides of the in-game render. On top of the hull I reworked the nose all the way to the tail. While I would have preferred to have built a custom hatch for the operator, I simply didn't have sufficient appropriate colored bloks to get the job done. I did however manage to slope the front of the hull right past the driver's hatch, including the hatch itself, in game accurate fashion. I added the engine intake ducts immediately behind the driver's hatch and on the sides beneath the turret as well. The rear of the tank hull was completely reshaped to get as close to the in-game renders as possible with the somewhat limited selection of color code "ALG" blocs available.
I reworked the Turret, eliminating exposed studs where possible. I switched up the coaxial machine gun barrel for one that made more sense. The stock MG barrel design looked more like a small cannon barrel than the M247 MG it was supposed to be.
Finally I re-worked the tread bogeys. First internally to add limiter stops which prevent the bogeys from flopping downwards when the tank is picked up while still allowing about 15 degrees of rotational movement. Then the tops, again eliminating all visible exposed studs. In an act of artistic license, I added grab handles on top of the tread bogeys like the HCE Scorpions to facilitate figures riding on the fenders and head and tail lights.
I widened the tank hull front to back by adding additional slopes which better reflect the sides of the in-game render. On top of the hull I reworked the nose all the way to the tail. While I would have preferred to have built a custom hatch for the operator, I simply didn't have sufficient appropriate colored bloks to get the job done. I did however manage to slope the front of the hull right past the driver's hatch, including the hatch itself, in game accurate fashion. I added the engine intake ducts immediately behind the driver's hatch and on the sides beneath the turret as well. The rear of the tank hull was completely reshaped to get as close to the in-game renders as possible with the somewhat limited selection of color code "ALG" blocs available.
I reworked the Turret, eliminating exposed studs where possible. I switched up the coaxial machine gun barrel for one that made more sense. The stock MG barrel design looked more like a small cannon barrel than the M247 MG it was supposed to be.
Finally I re-worked the tread bogeys. First internally to add limiter stops which prevent the bogeys from flopping downwards when the tank is picked up while still allowing about 15 degrees of rotational movement. Then the tops, again eliminating all visible exposed studs. In an act of artistic license, I added grab handles on top of the tread bogeys like the HCE Scorpions to facilitate figures riding on the fenders and head and tail lights.