Small photoshoot for old models

Cracked out some models I have had painted for a little while but done very little with to get some new decent pictures of. The APCs are Antenociti's Workshop and the troops are Odzial Osmy New Vistula Infantry.

I need to go back to these eventually and finish the rest of the force, which consists of a reinforced platoon with attachments including a couple of very nice light grav tanks. After so long I'm concerned I won't get the same look but I have the 'recipe' written down so I should just get on with it at some point.

'Free Mars' Vehicles. Army complete!! (sort of)

OK! So I've got my basic 15mm rebel force finished for my 'Free Mars' project! Here are the vehicles!

 From this

To this. I'll get some pictures of the infantry and tanks together when I get a game soon.

Here is some low-fi macro camera action to show off the micro scratching and chipping I'm very proud of:

My method here was (unless otherwise noted its all vallejo) Model Air Hull Red over a AK Fine White prime, then a Humbrol gloss varnish layer, then Model Air Duck Egg Green. the DEGreen (with a drop of humbrol thinner) was applied when the varnish was still just a little bit wet in the corners, this meant in the wettest sections I got a very nice paint cracking effect that added to the weathered appearance. I then took a toothpick and while the paint was still tacky I started picking and rubbing off paint focussing most heavily on areas that would see the heaviest abbrasion. I wanted the vehicles to look prett battered and well used though so no surface was spared. This approach doesn't seem to work great on metal but was fantastic on the resin sections, for the metal i instead stippled the DEGreen over the Hull Red with a torn off bit of packing sponge. The rest was weathering and shading with Army Painter Strong Tone, and Mecha Rust Texture, being the main shading tools. Weathering was Games Workshop Ironcrust, (sparingly!) used to give some dirt texture to the underside and wheelguards and then Iron Oxide Earth pigment and some Tamiya Rust from a weathering pallete. That was it really apart from the final gloss and matte coats to protect them.


Of course I will be adding more. I have already got some Ikwen hardened fighters to paint, plus a squad or two more of regular ikwen, and I have one more combat car (with pintle weapon instead of the auto-turret) and three of the same model of tank but without the ERA and a less advanced main gun but with four anti tank missiles mounted on the turret.

Next on the table is some 30mm Infinity Ariadna!

Glasgow Games Gathering

Very late article to give a bit of a write-up on Glasgow Games Gathering (took place on 29th of June), Glasgow’s first gaming show for a little while ran by and organised primarily by G3 Glasgow Gaming Group, a weekly gaming club. The show filled up one large hall and had a nice turnout of traders and clubs and overall, I think it had a nice balance between shopping and actual gaming. I got to the show about lunchtime and managed to get two demo games in, a lot of good conversation, and even won something in the raffle! Another nice touch from the event was the ‘passport’ which was a little card with five spots for a sticker that once filled meant you were entered into a draw for 3 vouchers. 2 pots where for playing a game, 2 for spending £10 with one trader, and one left that could be filled with either.

 Obligatory loot shot

Standouts for me were Gydran Miniatures and CS1. Gydran for their very promising looking Breaching the Rift setting (http://www.gydran.com/). While I picked up a couple of their miniatures with the intention of using them for 15mm SF I am keeping an eye on the game’s development and I’m quite interested in seeing how it develops in its own right. It is a very unique and characterful line of miniatures that is worth a look. I’ll definitely be picking more up down the line.

Second stand out was S.L.A. Industries: Cannibal Sector One (https://nightfall.games/cs1). I enjoyed the demo game enough to dive in and get the rules and some models. Unfortunately the models are a bit challenging. They are caste in very soft resin and while its quite easy to work with (so long as you are careful not to carve off too much while cleaning them, and you will have to clean them a lot, loooads of flash and some slipping too. I’ve seen pictures of models with quite bad bubbles too. Mine are ok so I don’t know what customer service is like but they seemed very friendly) its maybe not up to the standard a lot of modern wargamers may be expecting. Hopefully as time goes by they will improve their casting skills/equipment (whatever it is that makes a good model cast) but right now I would recommend them with the caveat that you will need to put your modelling skills to work to get the best out of them. As far as sculpt quality goes I would put them at around the same level of the good early Infinity stuff, though more 90s edge than anime gloss in aesthetic and posing. The setting has really captured my imagination which I would say is probably the main selling point, other than the rules which seem quite robust at creating interesting and exciting tactical situations with a ‘Ratings’ system (ratings as in tv ratings; camera drones film the battles and skirmishes for the consumption of the general public!) that gives you access to special abilities the more popular your actions make you with the audience (kills and melee mostly!). A few people at the club play this too so I’m hoping to get a game of it soon. I went for the Scav and 9^th factions. Scav’s are big tough smart elite mutants with abilities that focus around their ability to fix and modify their equipment on the fly, and the 9^th is the renegade (The first troops into the zone who got mismanaged and left for dead) version of the ‘vanilla’ faction, the Shivers, who sacrifice a bit of tactical mobility and a medic trooper for tactical knowledge of the Sector and a serious vicious streak (one of the characters can scalp dead enemies for ratings). 

 

So a good day and a really well executed event. I’m really looking forward to next year’s, and, if everything goes to plan, I might run a demo table there next year.

Vehicles and Hardened Ikwen Fighters

So my current 15mm army project is nearly 'finished' which is to say finished until I get round to my planned expansions.

 Just some final chip and scratch fixing and then varnish to go.

I never actually intended this to be more than a small insurgent force supplementary to some of the other forces in the pipeline and I also never originally intended to combine the Ikwen and other aliens into the organisation but the project just kind of took off in my head once I started getting paint on metal and now I envision a few different elements and organisations. I plan on a 'regular' force with more up to date equipment and and a less adhoc OOB and I'm thinking of incorporating Loud Ninja's Neek aliens into that the same way the Ikwen are part of the insurgency alongside the humans. Maybe the Horgosi too. I'll have to see. One thing I want to try to make clear in my fluff and hopefully in moddeling and organisation is that these different sophonts/species/thinking sacks of goo are all genuinely working together and no one set of sophonts is dominant or seeking dominance over the others. This is a little hard to portray with just military units (while I have ideas for mixed special operations teams and the like the different aliens tend to be grouped into homogenous squads due to their similar physical abilities and to reduce problems with language etc.) so I may have a go at some civilian conversions some time in the future. I'm also considering iconography for my faction but essentially this will be a socialist/anarcho-communist faction (with your usual factions, but for the puposes of the army/setting/gaming they will broadly be working together). While 'space reds' are a pretty common theme in wargaming, especially 15mm, lots of Neo-Sovs! I have yet to come across a version that isn't a bit Command and Conquer Red Alert cartoon bad guy commies in space, maybe I've just missed them though. (I love Red Alert incidentally, especially Tim Curry's part ..... SpaAAYacE). So I'm going to try and bring a more 'realistic' (whatever that means when there is aliens and lasers) and less automatically the bad guys approach to the idea of a radical socialist faction in a science fiction wargame setting, as well as try and (let's be honest, probably fail hahaha) get away from cold war politics a bit.

SO, I'm starting prep on my vehicles and two squads of hardened Ikwen fighters, which are slightly rough in casting (I'll have to model a couple as having lost eyes but honestly that just makes them look even harder) but really impressive models otherwise.

Also I lost the hatches to the TheSceneUK not-BTR so I will have to put another order in for some vehicles and ask very nicely if they will send me some replacement hatches. I'll probably get more tanks and infantry while I'm at it.

I also have these guys I got from Ral Partha when I was ordering Earthdawn books from them, not sure what to do with them yet and whether to include them in this force, I'll see how I feel when I start painting them.

So that's all my news for now. thanks for reading!

Forge World, Ultramarines Legion Herald

I have had my eye on one of...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^these for ages for something to paint as a one off project. I always thought the Ultramarines were a frustratingly underdeveloped part of the 40K fiction. For all their 'vanillamarine' presentation and glory hogging (the Ward 'spiritual leige' era being the most obviously egregious) fluff there was some really intriguing stuff just waiting to be developed.

Ultramar being, effectively, the unnoficial capital of the Eastern Imperium. Ultramar being itself something of a sub nation within the Imperium. And their propensity for breaking codex tradition when it suited them, such as forming non codex tyrannic kill squads, refitting a battlebarge with increased firepower at the serious expense of Astartes carrying capacity etc etc. (I theorise this was largely an accidental by-product of unimaginative writers trying to keep the codex chapter interesting) Meant that, between the lines, you actually had an extremely divergent chapter, only instead of strictly doctrinal or genetic/gene seed divergence the Ultramarines were politically divergent. There was hints of Byzantiums succession over Rome in there. Really interesting. Apparently people in the Black Library thought similar things because we got 'Imperium Secundus' in the Horus Heresy, and now the Great Rift meaning Ultramar really is the Byzantium of the setting, 'Imperium Nihilus'. This has meant that the Ultramarines have become significantly more interesting and their more exciting elements haven't been left to implication and head canon amymore. Very nice.

So I'm looking forward to giving this model the best paint job I can manage and maybe a little vignet for it to sit on.

Some solid progress made on my 15mm SF stuff.

The idea behind these troops is that they are far left irregulars/guerillas (think republicans and the various left wing groups such as the international brigades involved in the Spanish Civil War) made up of diverse sophonts (humans and ikwen being the most numerous currently) fighting to overthrow a tyrannical regime. Currently these will represent the greener, less experienced and well trained elements of the resistence working with what they have/can liberate and operating with a pretty loose OOB. They are intended to look like they are used to operating in the field for long periods of time carrying everything they need with them, so the vehicles will be quite laden with supplies.

I have plans to do a more 'regular' irregular element with more uniform uniforms and a more set OOB (something like a mini motor rifle battalion) using the same miniatures but relying on the painting and modelling to show the difference in their setup and docrtine. I'm also hoping that the ikwen will get expanded so I can have a similarly developed force of those alongside the humans in the future.

Finished! (very nearly almost)