Iron Dome

Models of vehicles that make up Israel's Iron Dome air defense system have been produced by Panzerkampf which is ostensibly a Chinese company, but seems to be based out of Spain.

I've seen references to these models announced as far back as 2015, but it's possible that they may have only been available in Israel until this month. Some background on how the models came into being can be found at ISRAEL21c.

I wasn't sure what to expect of the models, since I've seen some pictures where the entire models were fully painted, while others looked more toy-like because it looked like only the metal parts were painted.

In any event, the models I received seem to be of the fully painted type. The truck cab and some of the body are made of metal, the tires are made of vinyl, and the mounted units and remaining parts are made of different types of plastic.

The radar unit, control unit, and missile launcher are all mounted on identical RMMV trucks of some type. Translucent plastic is used for the colored dome lights on the trucks, but I think that they should actually be amber colored instead of red.

The radar unit is attached to the body of the truck, but is capable of elevating and rotating.

I'm not sure if the color of the radar unit is accurate though, since from what I've seen in pictures, it seems to usually be the same color as the trucks.

The control unit is fairly unremarkable. It has the Rafael logo on the side, which I'm guessing only appeared on demonstration units.

The launcher is of course the centerpiece of the set. The unit can elevate, but is firmly attached to the body of the truck.

The lights on the launcher are painted red, but should probably be one amber, and one red.

The launchers are sometimes described as having fixed or mobile capabilities, but it's not clear if mobile means that the launchers can be fired from the back of the truck. I have only seen video of the rockets being fired from a fixed position at any rate.

It would have been nice if the launchers were available separately or at least removable so that a battery of 3–4 units could be put together.

The following promotional video from Rafael shows how the system is deployed.

Dungeon Meshi & Walktapodes

I don't remember food (or lack thereof) ever being a particular issue when playing tabletop RPGs, but it was often a mechanic used in computer RPGs (e.g., Rogue, NetHack, Ultima).

One of the methods of preventing death by starvation in the dungeon in rogue-like games was to eat the corpses of monsters that you had killed in the dungeon.

The manga Dungeon Meshi by Ryōko Kui is a humorous take on this concept.

The English language version of the manga is published by Yen Press, and I believe that two volumes have been released so far.

The translated version uses the original subtitle of the manga, "Delicious in Dungeon" as the title, but I would have personally used something like "Dungeons and Dining" as a play off of D&D, or "Dungeon Eats" which is closer to what "Dungeon Meshi" would translate as.

Some of the monsters cooked up by the adventurers include giant bats, giant scorpions, myconids, slimes, living armor, carnivorous plants, and basilisks.


In one episode, they kill a kraken, but unfortunately it didn't taste as good as Marcille envisioned.

The episode reminded me of an article by Bill Johnson printed in the Wyrm's Footnotes about cooking walktapus.

Walktapus is also an ingredient of the Everlast biscuits used as rations by the troops of the Broo King of Dorastor.

The walktapus of course, is a tainted chaos creature from Glorantha with a head like a giant octopus, and a man-like body. It has the ability to regenerate, and can release poison gas in the manner that a normal octopus would release ink.

I recently was able to complete my collection of walktapodes when I picked up an Archive Giant Octopus (Fantasy 5038) which was originally used as the head of the Archive Walktapus (RuneQuest 819).

I've had the body (which is the same as that of the Arduin Shadow Golem) for years, but was missing the head.

The following image is of the Archive Walktapus, the Martian Metals Walktapus (RuneQuest 7002), and the Ral Partha Walktapus (RuneQuest 18-402).

The Martian Metals miniature comes in two pieces like the Archive miniature, while the Ral Partha miniature is a single piece casting.

Lance & Laser also made a walktapus, but at ~2.5" in height it would have towered over my other octopodes, so I had no use for it. The Lance & Laser walktapus suffered the fate of the Archive walktapus, and now only exists as a [giant] octopus from Armorcast.