Who Wants a Loth?

Last November I picked up a copy of the new Dust Tactics board game distributed Fantasy Flight Games and produced by Dust Studios.  It is a hybrid game with classic board game elements mixed with 30mm tabletop style miniatures.  It takes place in a Weird WWII setting created by Paolo Parente.  It has both infantry and large mecha/tank hybrids referred to as robots in the game.

In the fall of 2010, Dust Studios produced an exclusive robot called a “Loth”.  It was a modification of the “Luther” model from the game box.  Both robots are for the Axis Faction.  The game box Luther had a claw (kampfzange) on the right arm and a 5cm flak 43 on the left arm.  The exclusive Loth had a claw on both arms.  The Loth was handed out as prizes at Gencon and to certain local gaming stores.  

As with any exclusive model, it’s tough to find and expensive when you do.  There was a flurry of ones up for auction a couple of months ago, but now you’re lucky to see one every other week.  If that wasn’t enough, it was later announced by FFG that the Dust studio extra models like the Loth would not be “game legal”.  OK, now I had to have one.  Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like paying the prices that these things were fetching on ebay.  

Fast forward to Christmas and my wife buys me a second copy of the Dust game.  As I’m assembling the second copy of the Luther robot I notice that the joints on the arm pieces weren’t as solid as on the Luther from my original copy of the game.   After Messing around and fiddling with the parts, I figured I could make a shot at changing around the left and right arms one of the Luthers to create my own Loth.

Essentially, what you need to do is get the cover off of the upper arm joint and put it aside.  Then, you can remove the upper arm from the lower arm and turn it around.  Once you do, you can then put the cover piece right back into place.  Once you do that for both arms, you can get the claw on the left and the flack cannon back on the right.  You can’t even tell it was changed.

I printed off a copy of the stat card that someone had thankfully posted over on boardgamegeek.com:

 http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/833646/dust-tactics

Now I can either field two Luthers or a Loth.  If I ever get up the gumption to fire up photoshop, I might try to create some stats for a robot with two of the 5cm flack cannon .  I think I’ll keep with the “L” names and call it “Lothar”