Building a Bearhunter
Miniature for Heavy Gear

The Bearhunter is a little known variant of the Hunter that is not much more expensive but vastly more powerful. Its only downside is the propensity of the overtaxed engine to shut down at inopportune times... Its main weapon is a standard Light Autocannon (LAC), backed up by rockets and an Anti-Personnel Mortar (APM) carried on the back.

	This modeling article shows you how to put together a Bearhunter based on existing miniatures. While a challenging conversion, it looks fantastic on the tabletop (not to mention being deadly)! This model was built and painted by Phillipe Leclerc, whose work you can see in Montreal-area game stores. Vehicle Name: Bearhunter Affiliation: Northern armies (NG 33rd Regiment "Roving Guns") Battlefield Role: close assault Background & Game Stats: Northern Vehicle Compendium 1, page 58 Required Components: Hunter, Grizzly Additional Material Required: sheet styrene and rod, epoxy putty Scale: 1/144 (12mm wargaming) Modeler: Phillipe Leclerc
Step 1: Assembly Carefully clean up all the pieces before assembly. Most of the conversion is based on the Hunter, with the Grizzly as a source of parts. Remove the Hunter's wheels and replace them with the Grizzly's threads; cut a bit short on the Hunter and a bit long on the threads, and file them until they fit properly (see pictures). Use the head unit of the Grizzly instead of the Hunter's. The armor plates are made of sheet styrene for the most part. Glue them on and trim away the excess. If necessary, add more than one sheet to get the desired thickness. The one exception is the chest plate, which was made with epoxy putty. Rollbars and handles were made with thin wire, while the rivets were cut from rod stock. Use the Grizzly's backpack and mortar. To represent the armored generator caps, make a small ball of putty with the diameter of the cylinder, cut it in half and put one on each generator.
	Step 2: Basing and Painting Place the Gear on the base in an interesting posture. Glue some sand or flock to the base to give it a ground texture. An old paintbrush and carpenter's glue make the work fairly easy: spread the glue around the figure, then sprinkle fine sand or flock evenly, shaking out the excess after a few minutes. Once this is thoroughly dry, a second coat of highly diluted glue can go on top to lock down any errant grain of sand. Glue on any additional accessories (spare parts, ammo clips, scenery items, ruins) and give the entire model a coat of primer paint. Paint the model using the same base color as the rest of your Heavy Gear forces. In this case, the Gear was painted in shades of brown; no camouflage was used, to make sure the shape and volumes would show well. The sensor and details were then added with a fine paintbrush. The ground was painted brown, then several sand tones were drybrushed over it. Though this was not done here, flock and lichen can be used to create more complex scenery for the base.

There are many gamers and modelers out there doing some very cool stuff with our miniatures, and we want them to share their work with others! If you have Web-sized (3-4", 72 pixels/inch) pictures of Dream Pod 9 infantry miniatures, send them to us!

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