Meet the HZD machines

Hello and welcome back. 

It’s tIme to see the rest of the Finished Horizon Zero Dawn board game machines by Steam Forged Games. These figures are fairly quick to paint but have really shallow details making them a bit of a challenge. We have already met the Watcher machines in the link below.

watcher machines here

The grazer is a smaller herd machine from the Horizon Zero Dawn universe. It grazes keeping grass & plant life down using two rotary blades on each antler. This action also turns & aerates soil to allow new seeds to take hold. Meanwhile the machine “digests” and processes some material to produce a highly flammable fluid which is stored in the canisters at the rear of the machine. 

The fluid is harvested somehow and used as a resource by the automated machine factories known as cauldrons. Tribal machine hunters want this fluid for starting fires, making bombs or traps.

Grazers are often seen in herds with watchers and the occasional saw tooth acting as a guardian. Hunters have problems with the rotary blades. 

Next up the Striders, one of my favourite machines from the game. The Strider is a herd machine and resemble horses. They give similar kick attacks as horses if provoked. The machines grazes keeping grass life down while  “digesting” and processing the grass to produce a highly flammable fluid which is stored in the canister at the rear of the machine. 

Like other resource gathering machines the fluid is harvested and used as a resource by the automated machine factories known as cauldrons. Tribal machine hunters want this fluid for starting fires, making bombs or traps. Certain hunters have the ability to over ride the programming of Striders and can use them as riding machines. 

The Scrappers are pack machines designed to recycle damaged or “dead” machines using grinders at their jaws. The scrappers are highly territorial and aggressive towards humans. Scrappers are equipped with a radar to detect movement and have a energy weapon in the mouth assembly making a pack quite a hazard if encountered.

Shell walkers are a crab like machine with a cargo pod on the back. They move resources generated by the machines to the cauldrons (automated machine factories).

Shell walkers are equipped with a powerful power claw, energy shield and a ballistic energy weapon. The shell walkers also charge and leap into combat. Like all machines in HZD the Shell Walkers are aggressive to humans and will attack on site. 

The Saw Tooth is a newer machine to the Horizon Zero Dawn world intended purely to hunt humans. It is a large armoured machine that prowls around the machine herds to protect them from human hunters. 

Equipped with fangs and claws the Saw Tooth makes similar attacks to a large cat. Despite its size the Saw Tooth is a agile combat machine.

While I come up with ideas to use the machines in my own game worlds I did run into this in the Zone Raider rule book (another hard Sci Fi post apocalyptic setting that really appeals to me).

“LIFEFORMS

Humans, Morlock and Intelligent Robot are not the only forms of life that frequent the numerous Megastrata. Variants of ancient timeless flora fill lush bio-domes, while part-flesh, part-machine beasts roam specialized sectors once dedicated to their creation and containment.

These creatures are at best a source of food, lubricants and other resources. At worst, they are predators to be carefully respected, such as great Technobeasts that stalk ancient overgrown biodomes. Well-established Survivor cultures may even cultivate their own plants, animals and mech-hybrids for their own uses.”

I am wondering if the HZD machines would serve as Technobeasts in the forgotten bio domes of the Zone Raider Matrioshka world (well not quite a world!) setting. 

I have read that there will be other machines from HZD released by Steam Forged Games in the future. So there is a chance there will be more machine posts. 

Thanks for looking, stay safe out there.