Quote:
Originally Posted by Mack_JB
I may be remembering this wrong as well, but wasn't the Mk. IV Ogre only used by NAC (and aligned) forces?
My age-old question is why does everything look like a "tank" except the NAC "Raptor" GEV? That thing looks like a bad scifi version of a space fighter.
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Because in 1982, when SJGames put out their own version of GEV, they commissioned new cover art (either because they didn't own the rights to the Metagaming art or because the Metagaming cover art, especially the 2nd edition, was kinda sucky) and David R. Deitrick, Dave Martin, and ultimately Steve Jackson, thought this looked cool (not that looking cooler than the Metagaming 2nd edition "art" was terribly difficult, see the goingfaster link below).
Also, Star Wars was at the height of it's popularity, and that may have played a role.
[I don't know when the rest of the distinctive Combine armor designs originated. I haven't seen any paintings or sketches of them, so it might have been as late as Ogre Miniatures, in 1992. As you point out, they appear quite different in lineage from the Combine GEV, but quite similar to each other, suggesting a separate common design phase somewhat later. But the Combine GEV is definitely from 1982, 5 years after the PE armor designs, which are Winchell Chung's (except for the Howitzer and the PE CP) from the late 70's.]
[EDIT: This
http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/miniatures/checklist.html confirms that the Combine armor units other than the GEV originated in 1993, and were designed by Mike Naylor, as miniatures. [He's the one who originated the common pointy "prow" design element you can see on Combine armor from the LTNK through the Ogre Mk II. Nice touch, that.] The Combine GEV was designed by Dave Martin a full decade earlier, as noted above.]
http://www.goingfaster.com/ogre/historicart.html
http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/resources/ludo.html