6 July 2022

Season of Scenery: Sentry Turrets

I picked these up in the toy aisle at the Dollar Tree in Bennington for the grand total of — wait for it — $2.50. In British, that's just over two quid. Yep, these awesome turrets each cost about the same as a Snickers. Amazing. Dollar Tree has now become my happy place for buying cheap toys to use in scenery and conversions, and believe me there's more of this kind of stuff to come in future posts.

Here's one next to Betty. Holy crap, for $1.25 this thing is awesome, and let me take this opportunity to remind everyone that you can't get a Space Marine plasma pistol on Ebay for that amount. The turret part rotates (it is a tad loose but for this money who cares?) and the legs fold in or out.

The legs can be folded all the way back if you'd prefer your turret to be on more of a level with the soft pulpy humans you're shooting at. And if that wasn't enough... 

...they come with rockets that click in and can be fired at figures, coffee cups, dogs, girlfriends... the list is endless! Holy shit, can today get any better?

Without further ado, I glued their legs to 60mm bases and then used more superglue to stop the turrets rotating as they're so loose they have a tendency to spin around if breathed on.

I thought the missiles looked too toy-like so I stuck some nylon spacers to the fronts to simulate barrels. Once the superglue had dried I took them downstairs to prime them black.

They were blindingly easy to paint: just a quick drybrush with some Black Grey and a second one with a tiny amount of Plate Metal.

The circular bit between the barrels was painted Mutation and Scorpy greens to represent a laser sight.


To break up all the black, I painted their knees and the bit behind the barrels Neutral Grey and highlighted it with some Ghost Grey. 

Their bases are stupidly simple: just Iron Warriors washed with Nuln Oil. The crates are some I got ages ago, I think from RBJ Games, painted Khorne Red and drybrushed with some Mephiston Red.

Here's another photo with Betty. Honestly, considering these turrets cost the equivalent of a couple of chocolate bars, they look great. If I see more I'll pick them up.

More sci-fi scenery to come, so till next time, take care!

19 comments:

  1. Awesome find Matt, and painted up they look perfect, they remind me of the walking guns from "The Battle for Los Angeles" the barrel additions make them look better as well.

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    1. Thanks, Dave! They really are amazingly good for the price. And yes, I can see the resemblance to the turret thingies from "Battle for Los Angeles" which isn't too bad a movie.

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  2. Tremendous work, Matt. Great find, modifications and paint-job. They look awesome :-)

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  3. They look great! I didn't know about these sentry guns, but I bought a couple of the aliens from this line to use for Supers gaming. Dollar Tree is also where I picked up many of the cheap toys I used for my Superman vs. Toyman game a few years ago. They have good cheap hobby supplies too.

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    1. Thanks, Keith, and yes, Dollar Tree has some awesome cheap crap in the toy and craft aisles. I've picked up some more of this line and they'll be on the site soon!

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  4. John@justneedsvarnishWednesday, July 06, 2022

    Excellent buy, Matt, and they've painted up really well! :-)

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  5. Can't believe it, they look really neat! Wondrous discovery and work!!!

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  6. Now that's a bargain! (you are sure you are of Welsh decent not Scottish?). The painting has really elevated them to a new level mate!

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. Definitely a bargain, Roger, and yes I am 100% of Welsh descent LOL!

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  7. That find is going to make a lot of Brits very jealous !
    They do look good and I approve of fixing all the moving parts in place and the barrel additions too.
    The paint-job may have been fast , but it's very effective.

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    1. Thanks, Joe! Gluing the bits in place was the best way to go, and suddenly having the idea to use the nylon spacers as barrels was a stroke of genius as they look way better now.

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  8. This is an excellent find and I've seen people have great success turning toys into terrain (or really toys into another sort of toy!). It sounds like this was pretty easy to repurpose as well which is always ideal.

    I wholeheartedly agree that any toy that will shoot a plastic projectile is immediately better than all other options. I think concerns over safety made those harder to find when I was young, either that or I just wasn't allowed to buy them! :)

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    1. Cheers, Jeff! It really was a doddle to make them look good. I can't get over how cheap they were. And I agree 100% about toys that shoot missiles :-)

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  9. Nice job on those custom turrets. Paint turned out nice and the nylon spacers worked a treat on the barrels!

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    1. Thanks, Faust! The spacers worked better than I thought they would, I just wish I could have stuck them on a bit more evenly LOL!

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    2. I didn't even notice until I went back and looked at it, haha!

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