Behold, the Epicast Gobsmasha! I bought my first Gobsmasha directly from Epicast way back in the mid '90s . They were a mom and pop operation and it was fun to support them, and in return, get some funky new toys to bring to a 2nd edition era 40k game. I bought the Vindicator add-on kit for the Space Marines and the Ork Gobsmasha. The original model was a heavy, solid, brick of yellow resin. A friend of mine thought it was both crap and cool and convinced me to let him toy with it. He hollowed it out, molded it, and recast it in a better resin and gave me three copies back. The battle cannon was replaced with a piece of PVC to make it a little longer, deeper and well,, cooler. This is one of those.
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| Gobsmasha. |
If you look through my Ork battle reports from over the years you'll see that I have used this as a battlewaggon in many games. I recall that the 5th edition Ork Codex (which was valid until 7th ed) had a battlewaggon variant called Gobsmasha which I simply used this model to represent.
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| Scene from The Rise of Mad Dok Grotsnik-part-2. |
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| Scene from Challenge Made, Challenge Accepted. |
My Gobsmashas have't seen action for a few years, and that's kind of a shame.
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| 1st page of the White Dwarf article. |
As I look back on it, I wonder why GW never made a proper plastic kit for this model? Before Epicast made their licensed version, Games Workshop had a template in White Dwarf for players to build their own. There was even a datasheet for it in the 1st Edition Vehicle Manual. Here's a fun fact, this was the first appearance in Warhammer 40,000 of the Battle Cannon. A weapon the Orks seemed to have lost but is still a mainstay of the Imperial Guard.
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| 1st Edition vehicle manual template and rules. |
But they didn't even produce a Forgeworld version. It seems to me this would have been an easy kit for GW to produce and I bet it would've sold well for them. At one point it looked like it could happen; In the mid- '90s GW produced official datafaxes for 2nd edition in Citadel Journal #8, but not counting the 5th Codex stats, the Gobsmasha has since vanished.
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| Datafax from Citadel Journal #8. |
Well I won't let that get me down! In fact I have every intention of getting mine painted (finally). And back on the table and into the fight. It will still work as a hardtop, basic, battlewaggon. Keep your eye on this blog to see how this first one works out.
Did you have one? Either a custom creation or a resin cast version? Let us know in the comments.