Tiny Solitary Soldiers

The Scene goodies

2012-02-24T12:29:00.001Z

So Useful!

The postman brought me a delivery from The Scene this chilly morning. I ordered some wasteland bikers and zombie body bags.. But I also got this great collection of bits for making scenery and conversions.

Resin trash skips, busted up 44 gallon drums and lots of little boxes. Handy for all kinds of terrain and objective model ideas!

Lots of great stuff on the site, go check it out!

Vulk Missileman

2012-02-23T09:23:00.000Z

Vulk smash!

This is a Khurasan Vulk Missileman from the (still unreleased) Jasmine Throne Foreign Battalion range. He's huge (mounted on a 25mm base) and most certainly alien!

Full background details can be read here.

His big claws were slightly worrying from a modeling point of view so I tried to bend them both to approximately the same length and anchored one of them to his knee and the other to the base during assembly. I tried to do it in a way that looked natural. The claws also confused the heck out of my camera, so the shots are a little blurry.

Even though he's supposed to carry a missile weapon, it looked more like a beam cannon to me, so I painted the end of it as a lens.

My choice of white carapace armor is making these guys very slow, but I'm getting through them one at a time. Next is the female rifle trooper!

I am sorely in need of some dullcote.. I must remember to order some soon before my unvarnished minis outnumber the varnished.

Comparison with 20mm based troops

Long Live The Legion!

Throwdown Progress

2012-02-19T16:44:00.002Z

Old, printer-killing design

The fist change I've made to Throwdown is toning down the cards so they will be less stressful to the home printer. I liked how they looked, but they really would have ravished most people's ink cartridges.

New, less inky cards.

Other than that, I came up with a really slick (IMHO) solo mechanic that doesn't require the Automated opponent to draw a hand of cards. I've really enjoyed it in my test games.

In line with this, I've replaced using a snap-fire card on the figure of your choice with using it to "set overwatch" instead. This is a bit more limiting, but that is actually a good thing as it forces the player to plan ahead a little, and it most importantly it means that you don't need to randomize if the AI player has a snap fire card in hand. Now either side may or may not set up overwatch using the same (now renamed) card when available.

The next biggest change I made was to change the Assault card into a move+attack instead of just a close combat attack. It really helped make close combat more of an option and made beast-type figures actually dangerous.

I really stressed myself trying to think up a word that was different to Overwatch, but I caved in and just went with it in the end.

Finally, I added a game mechanic for one-liners. I'm not joking.

The game plays very smoothly and fast (IMHO again.. Lets see what the playtests reveal) and has quite a different feel to most systems.

I have sent out a very limited number of initial test copies, and will be sending a couple more in the next few days. If you have not received one, you are not forgotten, I just have to be careful how many I have on the go at this stage, more will be forthcoming.

Cheers!

Gutter Gophers

2012-02-16T17:37:00.001Z

From today's TMP preview announcement:

"Many strange creatures evolved in the End Times, but few were stranger than the hairless beasts that lived in tunnels in the ground, or in city sewers, breaking out enough concrete and asphalt so they could use gutter drains as access points. In the cities the scavengers called them gutter gophers, and the name stuck, even in the blasted wildernesses of the world.
They had evolved from something, but what? No one could say for sure. Were they giant rodents or, as some said, lions bred with the giant crickets of the desert? How was that even possible?
No matter what their origins the creatures were a terrifying menace to all, especially at night when they preferred to hunt, scrabbling up from their holes, creeping silently, then setting on the unwary victim in a pack, snapping at him. All it took was one bite and the venom did its job, immobilising the victim, slowly dissolving its muscle tissue.
Silent on the approach, when they finally did attack one pack member would rear up and loose a deep bass howl that froze even the stoutest heart in mortal terror."

I painted these soon to be released Khurasan minis very quickly. Basing them took longer than usual, as I cut up plasticard to simulate broken concrete... But the painting was super fast.

I basecoated them with Vallejo basic skintone, which is very pale.. Paler then Citadel Elf flesh. In fact I'm so used to Citadel foundation paints that I was a bit surprised at having to do 3 coats or so to get an even finish.

Next i washed the whole mini in Citadel Ogryn flesh wash. I went back and did some highlighting with the thinned original color after it was dry.

The teeth and eyes were painted in with yellow and bone respectively, then had Citadel Devlan mud wash applied over them with the tip of my brush to seep into the detail and "line" them. When dry, I did a dot of white to give them some pop. It worked well for the subject I think, and was easier than what I normally do (paint the item black and then dot on the color).

These are great minis for all my favorite genres: Sci fi, post-apoc and Cthulhu, they fit perfectly and disgustingly into any game I might run!

Guncrabs! New Painting Techniques!

2012-02-15T10:55:00.004Z

Guncrab on 20mm round base

Jon has previewed these figures on TMP, so I can unveil the mighty Khurasan Guncrabs here today!

I love these figures, which are a part of the Stikks faction and take the place of biological power-armor.

Painting these was interesting, as I tried some new approaches. First off, I chose a bone scheme, so I could use these alongside my Micropanzer aliens and my Khurasan Parachnids. The Guncrabs have 6 limbs, so fit better with the Micropanzer figs than GZG crusties.

Using inks to tint a monochrome shaded figure is a recent technique I wanted to give a try. It's not really a replacement for my usual style, but it's a great compliment to it and gets some very pleasing results with a lot less fuss.

I basecoated the figure in Citadel Denheb Stone, a pale buff color. Next I Citadel Devlan Mud washed the whole mini, then drybrshed Denheb Stone back on, doing some minor touch-ups while I was at it.

This is pretty normal for a bug mini, but Jon asked for a darker color in between the armor plates. On my test figure I painted bright red in and hoped the wash would tie it all together.. It didn't.

Instead I used Ogryn flesh wash painted in between the armor plates and slopped around major joints. I did another coat when dry, in places it was still too pale. I then used tiny dabs of Vallejo violet ink in the same areas to create a bit more contrast.

I picked out the eyes and weapons in black before painting them in last. The eyes were just painted white, then hit with a violet ink wash to tint the edges, which worked well and is a lot easier than dotting in highlights. I weathered the boltgun metal on the gun with Citadel Gryphonne Sepia wash.

I really like these minis and am really glad Jon has previewed them because I'm keen to feature them in some games! I'm busting to show you the other new figures I've done for Khurasan, but we will all just have to be patient.

Throwdown!

2012-02-13T11:30:00.001Z

I was in the midst of adapting and modifying various games when I decided to get back to working on my own. Naturally, the last 6 months of influences and other great games has significantly colored my ideas about solo gaming. Here are the core concepts that have survived:

1. Limited control
This sounds weird, but is something I picked up from the indispensable Solo Nexus blog. He uses simple systems of limting control over EACH force to increase solo enjoyment. playing Combat Cards and THW games both demonstrated to me the usefulness of this technique in solo gaming. It's not half bad in head to head play either, in games like Memoir 44, which I love.

2. Minimal list prep
Being able to get the stats sorted and bullets flying as quickly as possible makes me more likely to actually play a game.
Example: THW games
Counter-example: AE Bounty

3. Minimal clutter
My original Gut Check rules featured a ton of counters. I now find this messy and visually unappealing. Rules which use the minis themselves to indicate status are great. A few counters are OK, but they should not be all over the place and if they are model-able it is a bonus... I like modeling!
Example: Blood Bowl
Counter Example: Gut Check

4. Minimal Dice rolling
As a solo gamer, I don't like rolling huge buckets of dice, or long strings of dice. For a while I got quite attracted to the idea of using a few polyhedrals, but that's limiting the ease of use for some people.
Example: iTEN
Counter Example: Warhammer

5 Easy force construction using any figures
A key part of the Throwdown idea is just grabbing some of the minis you already have painted and getting to it. Keeping forces small helps this, the 5 figure pack as a starting point seemed great to me.
Example: Combat Cards
Counter Example: 40K

6. Cinematic
Huh? That's right, I'm interested in movie-like action games, not realistic simulations. I admit it. I want to make a game that actually encourages or includes action movie tropes.
Example: And One For All
Counter Example: Advanced Squad Leader

I started off prototyping with an ordinary deck of playing cards. (The idea was that everyone had access to these cheaply). In a couple of days, I had something that worked surprisingly well.

I have now made up a set of custom cards for it, as while the game is still currently playable with a standard deck, it requires a bit of looking at the reference chart that I'd like to eliminate. It's much nicer looking at a "shoot" card in your hand than having to remember what equals what. With the custom deck, your game options are written in plain english on the cards themselves:

The cards, ready for print

Feature list:
Modern to Sci-fi feel, meaning a focus on gunplay. Actual technologies are somewhat abstracted though.( It's John Woo rather than Arthur C. Clarke.)

Suggested force size of 3-10 models
Use any figures, any scale. (15mm on a 25mm grid is just the default.)
Fully customizable but simple force construction
Uses just 1 deck of cards and a 1 page QRS to resolve all action, no dice.
Play on a 1" square grid, no measuring. (Free-move traditional play also supported by replacing squares with inches)

The rules need some playtesting, and I will be emailing the usual Blogosphere suspects I think might like to help in the next week or so. Unlike Gut Check, I am going to try selling this set as a print 'n play PDF as a proper project in the hopes that it will force me to finish it. I'm confident I can create something that meets or exceeds the current standard of PDF rules in terms of quality and value for money. I'm thinking US $5 as a price point.

As well as the card deck, I'm thinking of including some printable gridded map boards.

The rules themselves are only 5 pages at the moment, but are free of fluff, examples (needed), or descriptions of the hobby. There is also a single page QRS that has all the info you need for a game on it.

More to come...

Fan Favorite?

2012-02-10T11:23:00.002Z

This is the 39th calling for extraction.. Is anybody out there?!

I did not win the Ambush Alley Strike Force competition as you may know. I'm very pleased to see the awesome 15mm Khurasan goodness of the Jasmine Throne battalion taking second place though, really cool.

The voting for Fan Favorite is still open via a poll at this address, so if you want me to win, CLICK HERE and vote for the 39th Gemini Orbital Rangers - Make me the people's champion!

As you can see, I'm not doing very well so far:

Desktop board mk2

2012-02-10T11:06:00.000Z

For solo gaming, it turns out that (in my current flat) the ideal place for a solo game is at my desk so I can read docs/type a report on my computer while I play, and more importantly the game will not get "tidied up" by my girlfriend.

Due to my recent burst of gaming enthusiasm for Combat Cards, I decided to build a gridded board that I could use my 3d terrain on. The results were cheap and easy, but I'm sure I will build a better one at some stage.

The ingredients are pretty simple. 16x16" square of Foam core, wallpaper, paint, sharpie marker and ruler.

Why 16x16? Because combat cards uses a system of measuring that is based on division by 2. Very long range is the longest board edge, Long range is half that, medium range is half that etc. A 16" long board means that the smallest increment is 1". Coincidentally, it's also the perfect size to fit on the side of my desk as you can see here.

The terrain is all my Proxie models walls and Ramshackle Games resin pieces. The walls fit very well along the grid lines, and most of the resin pieces sit well on the grid. A couple of them are a bit thin and I'm considering making bases for them. I know many folks prefer free measuring in a game, but it's something I endure as a necessary evil at best. Having a gridded board means I don't have to measure, which helps me feel immersed.

Armies Army Figures launch!

2012-02-06T13:33:00.002Z

Photo credit Armies Army

Armies Army are now taking pre-orders for the new range of near future/sci fi troopers I blogged about here.

At £3.50 per pack of 10, they are a steal. I ordered 2 packs already. Go get some!

Combat Cards: Solitaire scenario

2012-02-04T01:37:00.001Z

Tonight I debut a small board I made out of my Star Station Zero art (scaled up to 25mm squares this time), for playing Forlorn: Hope.. But I haven't got all my xenos painted for that, so I decided to bash together a game of Combat Cards.

The board is perfect for quick games because it fits on my desk, so no need to move anything around setting up a bigger game. I'm so pleased with it I'm going to make another one just for Combat Cards games, that will be similarly gridded but designed to set up 3d terrain on.

(Excuse the photos, I'm playing late at night and my lighting isn't the best.)

Just add minis!

The official scenario calls for a square map, but I just used my FH board instead. A quick count showed that the board was 14 squares long, which meant distances would be:
VL= 14
L= 7
M= 4
S=2
VS=1
I would allow 1 diagonal move per card activation per figure.

I grabbed my good 'ol Khurasan zombies and things from beyond for the attacking force:

12 zombies (Swarms)

5 horrors (Creatures)

=17pts

And my freshly painted Artcrime Productions mercs for my troops. I chose:

1 Sarge (Command) 2pts

1 heavy weapon 3pts

2 infantry 4pts

1 fire support 4pts

1 Armored 4pts

=17 pts

I set up as per the scenario, with 1/3 of my force separated off at one end of the board. The zombies would enter the board via the entry points on the map. I drew my first hand of 6 cards and started to play!

Turn 1
I played RAPID MOVE on the Valkyrie, CAUTIOUS MOVE on the sarge and hung onto 2 op fires and a recover card.

Zombies move, the Valk uses op fires and eliminates 1, shakes the other. (The Heavy firepower of the suit granting it a +1 shift against the smushy zombies and rendering the horror's light protection useless).

Turn 2

Bad hand.. I discard the whole thing. I still get no immediately usable situations (you get to play any new situation cards after you finish playing or discarding), but I got 2 op fires.

Zombies move.. 1 contacts a trooper who op fires with his shotgun, blasting it it back a space.

Turn 3
Tension mounts. The Valkyrie blasts apart another zombie, while the the shotgunner fires again into the staggering zombie, blowing off it's arm (Out Of Action)

Zombies move. The armless creature lurches to it's feet and stares blindly at it's tormentor. No further contacts, just a lot of groaning.

Turn 4
The AGL manages favorable drift and blows up 2 zombies, one is a mess and Out OfAction the other is blown off it's feet (shaken). Sarge's SMG patters off a creature's thick hide, forcing it to fall back.

The Zombies move closer, 2 make contact and fight a round of close combat.. the first takes down an infantryman (OOA), the heavy weapon wrestles with a Zombie, both are covered in blood and screaming (both shaken).

Turn 5
The Heavy gunner recovers, smashes loose a rack of barrels and rolls behind them (Dig In card). The Valkyrie accelerates into a creature (Assault move) and smashes it in a stupor, but is also knocked back by the collision.

Zombies move. The Sarge op fires, badly injuring a tentacled creature bearing down on him (OOA).

Turn 6
My men panic (My cards suck) I discard, but gain no useful situations.

Zombies move. At the back of the board, the shotgunner knocks out the legs of one Zombie (shaken), wriggles free on his back (falls back), but is grabbed by a third and feels the tearing bite of the monster... He pulls a pin on his own grenade, taking the zombie out with him (both eliminated).

In the central chamber a terrible melee ensues, leaving one of the troopers unconcious (OOA)

Turn 7
Bravely, the trooper goes BACK IN ACTION and eliminates the staggering Zombie that downed him in a close assault then moves over to the Sarge... Sarge cautious moves back into the room, the Valkyrie rapid moves back to cover his rear.

Zombies move. My AGL op-fires and shakes one of them, halting it in it's tracks but not harming it further, as the 40mm explosive fizzes harmlessly in it's ribcage.

Turn 8
The combo I have been waiting for is unleashed! My Heavy gunner recovers. The Valkyrie moves into room.. The Sarge uses ISSUE ORDERSand all units within 2 squares OPEN FIRE!

The Zombies are knocked back in a wave of pus and gunfire.. The deck is exhausted and I have hit my time limit.. Game over, I win!

At the end of the game, I only lost 1 Infantry unit, and eliminated 4 Zombies, 2 creatures. Did the layout help me? Yes, the zombies could not bring superior numbers to bear often, but equally, my fields of fire were very restricted.

I really enjoyed the game and am sold on the Combat Cards system. Once I was rolling, the game moved very fast and I managed to get through the whole game just looking at my cards and the QRS.

Zombies are not an especially tricky opponent, so I'm eager to try my own system of solo play against a shooting enemy. I'm going to try drawing 6 fresh cards for the enemy force each turn and using logic to play them out. During my turn, any time I move a figure in range of an enemy model, it will get a d6 roll of 6+ to play a "free" op-fire card, This is to simulate the uncertainty of how may op fire cards your opponent may have in his hand. This means the "AI" has a slight advantage over the player, but is more than compensated for by the lack of covering fire IMO.

Next report, we'll see how it goes!

Proxie Models Ruins

2012-02-02T10:26:00.001Z

2 bags were used to make what you see.

A while ago, I ordered some ruined building sprues from Proxie Models in the US.

Proxie models is a one man operation and he casts his own designs in plastic. The prices are very reasonable and are a boon to the 15mm gamer.

I have long thought of urban ruins as the best terrain for a small skirmish. My main influence here would be from early days playing Necromunda and realizing that we were having a lot more fun on a 4x4 table using vertical space than we ever did on a 6x4 table that looked like a farmstead crossed with a golf course...

The ruins sprues are made of a hard black plastic. The detail is not incredibly crisp, somewhat similar to plastic army men. Once I'd snipped them apart I decided to add some more detail while I was glueing them together.

The first thing I did was assemble them with superglue. It seems to be holding well. The second thing I did was to use PVA to glue sand on the exposed edges. The existing edges were kind of rounded off looking.

Some bits and pieces from GZG and The Scene got glued on, as well as some resin pipe works from Old crow. I filled in a few of the window holes with foamcore and coffee stirrers to add some tactical interest.

Walls 1-3

Walls 4-5

Due to the shapes I chose to build, I ended up with 2 short pieces that I glued to either end of a piece of foamcore. I hacked up the edge with a craft blade and am quite happy with how it turned out.

Wall 6

Paint-wise, they were heavily overbrushed with citadel foundation adeptus battlegrey, then washed with an ink/kleer mix of black and peat brown. They were then drybrushed with various greys and patches of knarloc green to ease the uniformity. It's a subtle effect, but make s a difference.

I used the same scheme for my resin pieces from Ramshackle Games, and the two sit together well on the table. The resulting battle-scape is closer to post-apocalyptic than hard sci-fi, but it will do well for both types of game.

Dealing with burnout.. Plus ORCS!

2012-01-27T12:54:00.002Z

There has a been a lack of updates lately, my apologies. As usual around here, I had a lot of stuff on that I couldn't post.. Some new sci-fi soldiers and alien crewmen from Khurasan. You will have to wait until Jon releases the photos to see them though.

So, today we have some Blood Dawn Orcs I ordered from Magister Militum. As you can see, they are pretty huge.. But I love them! For scale I have included an almost-finished Copplestone barbarian. I did these while waiting for my ACP Strike Force figures to dry.. As they have the same skin tone as the armor on those guys. I'm almost out of Knarloc green as a result ;)

I'm a bit burned out right now, so I am going to perform an ancient ritual that has served me well for decades:

Clean and reorganize my painting table
Organize and Store all my unpainted figures out of sight

Once this ritual has been observed I have a new list of projects to 2012, of course!

1. Paint my new Khurasan mutants and wastelanders. I buckled and ordered the whole post-apoc range recently, and they do not disappoint.. amazing minis.

2. Finish my Orcs, Goblins and Skeletons for my Barbarians to fight. I got a few packs a while ago, all Blood Dawn, all very nice. My first goal will be to just paint one of each variant.

3. Cthulhu! I have the gangster and police sets from Khurasan to paint up as investigators and villains. I am considering repainting my octo-cultists, but may just leave them as-is.

4. Kaiju! I finally have both the rules from Ganesha and some beautiful resin city terrain from Old Crow for my long planned Mighty Monsters project. I have even painted up a Monpoc Terra Khan and almost finished my Shark monster! I'm saving these for another post.

5. Finish my new city ruins board. I have already converted and painted up some Proxie Models ruins and made a 2x2' foamcore and wallpaper board. I need to fix the wallpaper down better and edge the board before showing it off in photos. It will look like my Strike Force comp entry photo backgrounds, but be big enough to game on properly.
When it's done, I plan to play a lot more games and will report on them here. (Mighty Monsters, Combat Cards and iTEN are top of the list for now)

6. Build a 6mm travel set. This should really be covered on my 6mm blog, but I'll post there when it's done. I will probably be moving to Australia this year, and I'd like to have some gaming supplies with me when I arrive and have to wait for my other stuff to be shipped over. This set will be very minimal, which will be a fun challenge in itself.

7. Stop spending on minis and fix up my beloved VRSCDX v-rod. It's been sorely neglected in the garage all winter and needs some attention.

Gruntz Imperator Mech

2012-01-20T12:28:00.004Z

Imperator with Khurasan Exterminator marine for scale

Robin from Gruntz very kindly sent me an Imperator Mech which arrived today. It's a beautiful kit, very clean and no bubbles. Some of the sprue is very thick so I will need to get hold of a razor saw before I start assembling it.
The style is perfect for my collection. It's clearly a humanoid robot shape, with a manipulator hand and head-like cockpit, and to my eyes has a little bit of my favorite battletech mech's soul in it.. The Battlemaster (nicked from the Dougram anime). The 85-tonner was not the most finely tuned mech in the classic game, but I sure wreaked a lot of havok with it's quad lasers, 6-pack and PPC back in the day.

Soltic/Bigfoot from Dougram

Robin began the Gruntz project right about the time I was starting this blog. It has been both a pleasure and an inspiration to watch the project go from some homebrewed rules, to a platinum selling PDF rulebook, to a whole product range including counters and miniatures. This mech represents the fruit of all of Robin's hard work and I'm honored to own one.

Brilliant new rules

2012-01-14T00:14:00.000Z

Awesome!

This morning I read on Just Another Wargames Blog that the author had tried out Combat Cards by Tactical Assault Games

I'd been curious about these rules in the past, but when I first looked into them they were a bit mysterious on the website and I didn't probe further. Today though, the site was filled with helpful downloads and explanations, and I couldn't resist taking the plunge.

Available free from the site are 3 scenarios, 2 of which are solitaire! One os Zombies and the other is Space bugs. After printing out one set of the cards I was ready to go.

The first cool thing about these rules is that aside from your minis and terrain, they use just one deck of special cards for each player and your choice of measuring device. That's right, no dice.
The actual rules may be downloaded at the site for free, what you pay for is the card deck PDF.. So I won't go into exhaustive detail, but my highlights are:

Modern to Sci-fi era. (There is a Fantasy set available separately)
Use any scale minis. Game automatically scales to size of play area!

Only uses the card decks and a one-page QRS to govern play. No dice!
Uses Narrative terms to express combat stats and results.. No numbers!
Skirmish or company level, doesn't matter.

"Easy to learn, hard to master" design philosophy. Pretty much my favorite one.
Broadly classed units, much like HOTT, and simple points system
Opportunity fire cards can be played in your opponent's turn, and covering fire cancels it. Neat!

The game is great for solo play against non-shooty enemies (zombies and bugs in the 2 solo scenarios) but I'm keen to figure out an easy way to play solo against a mixed force.

I will blog more about my games as I play them, but I tried the zombie scenario with only 12 point sides (The standard game is 36 pts) and it was a hoot. I lost, but partially because I statted up my DPLS crew (had them handy) and while the Big Blue guy with the auto-grenade launcher came in very handy (Counted as a Fire Support unit and blew up a lot of Z's) my engineer and robot (Engineer and civilian) were pretty useless.

The system is VERY generalized, but there are expansions available that allow you to add "personality" cards and "Experience" cards to further detail your models. If you are playing a company level game, you could probably get along with the basic rules just fine.. But if my next few games prove as much fun as my first, I will probably pick them up too. My Jasmine Throne Battalion figures are going to need some special rules to reflect their motley biology!

If the system has a weakness at all, it may be that a mixed force is more effective than a mass of same troops. If one army was composed entirely of infantry for example, the artillery, aerial and fire support cards would be pretty useless when drawn. Then again, the infantry would dominate in close combat.. So maybe it's OK. The authors put a lot of emphasis on the system being very balanced.

I encourage the rules-hounds among you to go check out the website and read the free material available to see what you think. I'm hooked.

Strike Force Entry finished!

2012-01-11T14:08:00.001Z

I have updated my entry page, and replaced the photos with some new ones.. Go take a look!

As I seriously over-painted these figures (OSL on 15mm? 4-6 stage highlights? Lunacy!) I didn't get as many painted as I would have liked, but I ended up with a lot less free time than I expected for this project around the holiday break. I still have a few goodies left (A mortar, APC, and a sitting HMG gunner) which I will get to later and post here.

Art Crime Productions sponsored me for this event, and I'm both honored and grateful that they did. The figures and casting are top-notch and Jimbo is a great guy. I hope these photos push you to make an order if you were on the fence about these figures, they deserve the support.

I was sent 3 of each of the Valkyrie suits, so made sure I painted one of each to show off the differences. The bodies are all one of 2 poses, but the arms and weapons are completely interchangeable and a llow good variety of pose. The anti-tank and flamer units both have Khurasan Stowage on their backs.

The scenery in the photos is a mix of Ramshackle truck parts, and Proxie models plastic ruins. Two great sources of inexpensive 15mm scenery. Ramshackle might be a bit pricey shipping to the US, but for a UK guy like me, they proved really good value. Proxie models is based in the US, but is still very affordable for what you get, even with shipping to the UK.

Thanks for looking, and if you have some time or frequent the AA forums, please vote Spacejacker! ;)

Please encourage this sculptor!

2012-01-06T22:38:00.001Z

I'm too busy to post much at the moment, but I saw this blog today, and was really excited about these figures:

They are new greens from a blog called "Armie's Army" and are as yet without a manufacturer. I would snap these up straight away were they available. The style is nice and chunky with eminently paintable detail, and the equipment is modern but would very easily be paintable to look like excellent near-future or sci fi figures.
I don't usually re-post, but I would love to see these figures released, so am doing my bit for supporting the cause ;)
Needless to say I'll be following Armie's Army closely in future.

Back to work on my ACP figures!

Art Crime Strike Force Project Progress

2011-12-29T19:09:00.000Z

Well, the Christmas season left little time for painting unfortunately, and my Art Crime Productions troops didn't arrive until Christmas Day... But here are the first 2 fire-teams fully painted. (You can see individual paintjobs on my new Competition Page)

Fire Team Alpha

Fire Team Bravo

Doing the visors in a glowing OSL style was quite a challenge, and in retrospect I think reading some tutorials before I started may have helped (I didn't even know it was called OSL while I was doing it) ... But I did it more or less from looking at a couple of finished examples and just trying it out.

I'm happy with the results for 15mm scale figures. If you do it exactly like a 28mm fig, you lose most of the effect at table distance. As always, I've painted in a quite exaggerated style to compensate for the miniature's tiny size.

The Theme of the force was originally going to be Urban Camo with Blue lights, but the prospect of doing grey figures held me back, plus as this is a Tomorrow's War Competition, I thought it would be fitting to try to match the scheme from the front cover of Tomorrow's War.

The figures themselves are the Port Reliant Mercs pack. Joining them soon will be a grenadier figure, which I believe is so far unreleased, but will be a welcome addition to the team.

Mercenary Grenadier based and ready for paint

I spent this afternoon assembling and basing the Heart of the Strike Force, the Valkyries.

These models have been seen around the web a fair bit, and they do not disappoint in person. In this Strike Force, they will be operating in fire teams of 2. One tactical and one support.

Anti-Tank Fireteam (Front View)

Anti-Tank Fireteam (Back View)

I added some Stowage from Khurasan to all these guys to make them a bit more personalized.

Next up is the Close Assault team, which I believe is also unreleased as yet, but is a perfect unit for my Strike Force's backstory, that of a crack unit of Urban Combat Veterans.

Close Assault Team (Front View)

Close Assault Team (Back View)

Rounding out the force, a recon element of jet bikes. I was considering basing these in a very dynamic way, but I don't have the right tools at the moment and the deadline is looming, so I've just put them on 25mm bases to match the Valks. I'll probably sculpt some bricks or other junk to try to disguise the support pillar a bit better once they are painted.

Jet Bike Recon

An urban strike team needs one more thing: Snipers! I was going to build him an elaborate base, but I think for maximum gaming flexibility I will leave it as-is and maybe build a mini diorama base that it can slot into.

A sniper

Jimbo included a good few more goodies in the package, but that will be for another post. For now, lets all just hope I can get this lot done before the deadline (15th of January) Gulp!

Barbarian And Wolfman

2011-12-17T14:08:00.001Z

Copplestone Barbarian

Khurasan Werewolf

Quick post: Just a couple of figures I did a while ago in between other jobs, thought I'd post them before I forget. My camera setup is terrible at the moment, I need to sort out a better lamp and new box.

I'm really suffering from too many projects again, but will have to concentrate on my TW Strike force entry to make the deadline. I usually work of a few other things here and there while waiting for stuff to dry though, so hopefully a nice variety as we lead up to Christmas. I'm on holidays until 2012, so look forward to plenty of nerdy goodness in the coming weeks!

Tough as Tungsten and loyal to the dirty end

2011-12-14T11:31:00.001Z

Some beautiful figures from Khurasan, not yet available but hopefully soon. They have been previewed on TMP as the Jasmine Throne Foreign Battalion, but I chose a more classic paint scheme for mine...

They paint up very nicely, and would have been a lot easier if I hadn't decided on a monochrome uniform scheme. But I HAD to!

Jon sent me these as a very kind gift and I'm looking forward to completing them over the holidays. I'm finishing work for the year this week, which should leave ample time to do my Strike Force entry (Still waiting for minis in the post) these fellas, and get started on my Mighty Monsters project. Hooray for holidays!

Harook by Mad Robot Miniatures

2011-12-04T13:16:00.001Z

A while ago, Steve from Mad Robot Miniatures contacted me about painting the Harook which were being sculpted at the time by the awesome Pedro Navarro AKA Mr. Bug man.

Steve was shooting for a Dec 1 release, but with postage from Chicago, I only got them in hand with a couple of days to spare. I did them as fast as I could, which wasn't too hard because these are great minis to paint. They pack in a ton of detail but are sculpted with those details fairly easy to to hit with a brush, and the models themselves are quite large, most of them around 20mm tall. Each model in the set of 10 is a unique sculpt, which helps keep it interesting. They have a really nice set of combat poses too.

Dropship Horizon has already scooped me on this post, but here are the full front and back photos of my paint jobs:

Armor: Vallejo Dark sand with GW Devlan mud wash. Highlighted with original color.
Skin: GW Dwarf flesh, washed with GW Ogryn flesh wash and highlighted with GW Bronzed flesh.
Feathers: Base coated with GW Iyanden Darksun, washed a little along with the skin, highlighted with Vallejo flat yellow, then again with some white mixed in.
Grey areas were done with GW Codex grey with a Badab black wash, then again with the codex grey.
The guns were Black, highlighted up with Adeptus battlegrey and eventually codex grey.
The gun lights were done with Vallejo Lime green, washed with Vallego green ink and highlighted again with Lime green.
The orange suit lights were Vallejo Orange Red, highlighted with a bit of yellow mixed into the base color.

I was going to do their heads white with blackish beaks to more resemble a Sulphur crested Cockatoo

(a particularly smart, rowdy and destructive Australian native bird) but was worried that the beak would get lost in the gun. I did the flesh tone instead to make the alien features more visible and to help the body parts stand out from the weapon and suit.

Long time readers of the blog will also notice I have gone for a grey base texture, instead of my usual Calthan brown and static grass! This was firstly to make sure the suit did not get lost in the base color, and secondly because I want to start playing a lot more interior/starship corridor games, and while not strictly correct for this, it blends in better than brown dirt and clumps of grass. I may add some further details to the bitz modeled into the bases like rust etc.. But I think they look pretty good for now.

Tomorrow's War Strike Force Project: Test Paint

2011-11-29T17:51:00.001Z

Test color scheme

Here is my first stab at the color scheme I'll be using for the Strike Force competition. The model is an Art Crime Productions Rim Mercenary.

The base is unpainted, and the photo has come out very dark... I think I need to build a softbox and get a decent lamp if I'm going to try photography at night again.It was done like so:

Armor:
Base coat of Vallejo Russian Green
Badab Black ink wash
Repaint large areas with original color
Highlight with 50/50 GW Knarloc green/Russian green
Highlight with Knarloc green
Highlight with 50/50 Knarloc green/Gretchin green
Highlight Gretchin green

Packs and weapon:
Basecoat Adeptus Battlegrey
Badab Black ink wash
Paint surfaces with Adeptus Battlegrey
Highlight with 50/50 Adeptus battlegrey/Codex grey
Highlight edges with Codex grey
Pick out buttons and grenade pins with boltgun metal

Visor:
Vallejo Flat Blue
highlight up to white in blobs
paint some mid blue/white onto surrounding edges to try and simulate light.

This is a level of highlighting I do not normally do. In fact 2 highlights is pretty much my rule most of the time. However, the work I put into my Garn Flesheater was at a similar level and while it's probably unnecessary effort, I can tell the difference. If I'm going to do this I may as well do it was well as I can.

I found the trick with the OSL effect was to keep it small. I originally had it spilling out down his left arm, but it looked better when more understated. If the figure doesn't have a gun near it's face I don't think there will be much to do with this effect on other models.

Khurasan Pit Fiends Preview

2011-11-28T09:31:00.001Z

Here are 2 interesting models for Khurasan. Pit fiends or "Jersey Devils"intended for eldritch horror games. In my house they will also find use as summoned monsters for my barbarian heroes to face in Crom.

I tried doing some source lighting from the eyes on these minis.. It worked OK, not great IMO. I obviously need practice.

These guys are BIG, the base pictured is a 25mm, below is a comparison picture with a standard 15mm mini on a 20mm round slotta base.

I don't think these are available yet, but I'd guess they are in Jon's rather long queue at the caster's.

Thanks for looking!

Tomorrow's War: Strike Force competition

2011-11-24T10:12:00.001Z

Osprey/Ambush Alley games are running a compettion:

Ambush Alley Games and Osprey Publishing are looking for the best Tomorrow's War painted sci-fi forces (any figures of any scale) in the world!

Grand Prize for Best army wins $200.00 USD (or the UK£ equivalent) SRP of Osprey books
First Prize and Fan Favorite win $100.00 USD SRP each of Osprey books

...And I'm going to enter! I'm not normally into competitions because I don't like to think of painting minis as competitive, but a competition can also be a great motivational push for both productivity and creativity. It also helps if you are sponsored.

That's right, Jimbo from ACP games recently contacted me , proposing that ACP would provide the models if I wanted to have a stab at this event. An incredibly generous offer! I agreed (of course) And I really want to do the guys proud, so will be covering my progress as in-depth as I can. What does this mean for you?

Some of the figures I will be painting

More tutorials!
I hardly ever do them because it slows me down, but for a project like this I'd like to share the goodwill. I'll try to do as much additional detail and small converting as I can.. In fact my initial plan is for every piece to have a small conversion or basing element added.

Exclusives?
I am very lucky to occasionally paint unreleased models, but am usually prohibited from showing them until they are "in the wild". This makes perfect sense of course. This time around though, ACP have let me off the leash and are sending some unreleased models that I may actually blog about for a change. This is fun for me, as I get to blog about what I'm doing day to day instead of weeks after I finished painting something.

The Plan
My initial idea is to paint the strike force in a scheme very similar to the Tomwar cover. Green plating over black suits, with glowing blue visors and bits. I will do very heavy Urban rubble basing on all models.

The force is a Valkyrie supported Urban Interdiction team with an AFV command vehicle. They are conceptually veterans that specialize in city fighting. I already have some ACP infantry that I am going to do a test-paint of while I wait for the extras to arrive in the post.

My Chances
Well, I don't know. Winning isn't my main goal here though, it's a fun blogging and painting project first and foremost. I'm expecting fierce opposition.
If I do win, I will either donate or distribute the bulk of the prize, minus one copy of tomorrow's war of course, as I don't have one yet. ;)

Vote Spacejacker!

Solopalooza Day 5: Mini Board with Zombies!

2011-11-22T22:55:00.001Z

SO last night I worked on modifying a "7 in 1" classic game box into a mini skirmish board and storage solution.. Otherwise known as arm's reach desktop gaming table.

My new 12"x12" game box

The gaming surface is some textured wallpaper stuck to the original lid with 3m spray adhesive. There is another sheet on the reverse side that I plan to paint in earth and grass tones, but it's white for now.

With Khurasan Containment Protocol minis

The scenery is all resin vehicle parts from Ramshackle games. Most were less than £2 each and were simply painted without any further modeling. The exceptions are the Hexagon (Imex leftover and foamcore) and the building in the top left corner, which is a Ramshackle thin plate glued on top of a foamcore box with GZG vents glued on the outside.

As all the pieces are rectangular and not fixed to the surface, it is easy to make complex layouts like re-arranging building blocks. The board is so small that it absolutely requires a lot of LOS blocking obstacles.

Tonight I had a lot to do (flat inspection tomorrow) so only had time for a quick game. Here is the scenario I made up for the rules I'm now calling "Space Guns", which is TRWNN more or less re-written by yours truly. PDF almost ready to share too, plus a fancy shooting chart and damage tracking data cards (!)

Zombie Survival

Zombies all activate on a zombie activation chit. They can only shuffle around (relocate 2"). In combat they count as using fists. They count as fighters. They don't take Nerve tests.

The Zombie hound has it's own activation chit, counts a fighter with a knife in CQC, and moves 2d6.

If a human is wounded by a zombie, it must roll above it's total wounds every time it activates to see if it succumbs to Zombie plague and "turns", becoming a zombie. Killed humans become zombies but still activate on their original chit.

Setup: Set an entry and exit point. The player wins if he can get 50% of the team off the board.

Place 6 spawn points on the board. When an enemy has it's first activation, roll a d6 to see which point it emerges from, out of LOS of the player's forces.

Okay ramblers, lets get rambling..

Setup

Spoiler alert. I had to cut the game short. Normally I wouldn't even bother posting it, but this is part of solo gaming so here you go.

The very first thing I realized was that having all zombies activate on the same counter was good, except I shouldn't have put a counter in for each one of them. This meant that they basically moved too fast and swarmed my men before I got more than 2 out of the entry point! This wasn't right at all.

Uh-oh...

The other rules are fine, but I think I will put split the z's into mobs of 3 and activate each mob with it's own counter. Sadly I have to stop for tonight, so goodnight and thanks for reading about my week of solo gaming... My girlfriend is home tomorrow so I'm back to my regular schedule...

Solopalooza Night 4: Death Angel!

2011-11-20T18:04:00.001Z

I figured it out!

Well, after a morning walk and delicious fry-up, I read back over the Death Angel rules and started playing. Like all card/board games I try to play solo, it's difficult to get going at first as there's nobody else around to help remember everything.. But still, once I'd played a few turns the game is actually very easy to understand and run.

I played a lot of the original Space Hulk board game and loved it. The key thing about Space Hulk was/is the tension. As the marine player you knew you were only ever a hair's breadth from your bolter jamming and meeting your death under an avalanche of Genestealer claws. I have been meaning to get back into this realm with VPG's Forlorn Hope, but haven't got around to it. Mainly because I tried to recreate the whole thing in miniature and to be honest, it was too big a job.

But I digress. Death Angel does an admirable job of re-creating the atmosphere of tension that the board game did , with just a few columns of cards.

Each turn you choose which actions your terminators will perform, Attack, Move or support. Each option has additional strategic benefits depending on what combat teams you have chosen. The Assault cannon gets to shoot 3 times with an attack instead of 1 for example.

Then the Genestealers get a swipe at your troops. Like in the board game, they are fairly ineffective singly, but once a few build up, you are in serious danger of losing some men.

Then you resolve an event cards and the dirty Genestealers scuttle about.. That's it, start a new turn.

The game is set up into several locations, each one requiring you to exhaust or destroy one of the blip decks set up when you enter it. In all the games I played there were 3 locations. I lost all 3 of the games I played.

Game 1: Messed up what happens when a marine dies and had to start over.

Game 2: Got positively slaughtered in the second and third turns by some really nasty Genestealer attacks. I limped on but was quickly overwhelmed.

Game 3: I made it to the Toxicarium (Toxic-something or other anyway) and was 1 roll of the dice from victory, but with only 1 marine left, I got overwhelmed at the last second. Epic stuff!

Brilliant little game, if you like the Space hulk theme and enjoy a good card game this will not disappoint. I think it would be pretty good fun with more people as well.

I'm going to spend the rest of the evening painting minis, as I haven't done any of that yet and I have a lot to get going on. Some really big news regarding the AAG Tomorrow's War Strike force competition, but that will have to wait for the moment.

I am so excited about TRWNN/Street Violence that I'm going to work on V2.0 cards and chits then play some more games tomorrow on my modular terrain that I've just realized I've never actually used.

Solopalooza Interlude

2011-11-20T00:22:00.000Z

Well, I did a lot of riding my motorcycle today and not a lot of Solo gaming. I spent some time working on cards for Street Violence/TRWNN, but all that did was make me think about the best way to track damage... My goal being zero use of pencil and paper during a game.

On the painting front, I finally got my Ramshackle Games "buildings" undercoated, and began building a 12"x12" game board/box out of a £10 chess/backgammon set I saw at the local DIY shop. A bit unscheduled, but thats how I roll. It came out quite nice, but the surface needs more paint and I think I need to get hold of some MDF instead of using foamcore for the gaming surface. It warps too much when I try to paint the textured wallpaper I am using stuck to the top. Intrigued? More on this tomorrow.

Here are the PDFs of the chits I made for last night's game, in case you want to have a quick go. If you have some minis and some D6 I really recommend it!

Click HERE to download PDF from Google Docs

Tonight I broke out Lego Heroica, Draida bay.

(Sneak peek of undercoated game box I converted today)

It was fun assembling the pieces, but the game is too simplistic to enjoy alone. I tried normal mode solo (boring) and battle mode after that (still boring) and came to the conclusion that I will possibly need to write my own rules altogether. I want to stick to the actual game components though, so this might not take long. I have all the other sets, so I think there is a lot of scope for a fun game here.

So for tonight's second game, I set out to play Space Hulk: Death Angel... The small boxed Space Hulk card game.

The rulebook is fairly difficult to understand on first read, as it doesn't seem to explain concepts in any kind of order. Or maybe it's just too late at night. I am giving up in the name of sleep tonight, I will return to the game (all set up now) tomorrow morning and hopefully get a game in before I try to paint some bad guys for Crom.

Solopalooza Night 3: TRWNN in Space!

2011-11-19T01:24:00.001Z

I have pieced together an old version of "The Rules With No Name" from a 1996 free version on the web. The game is now a full color Foundry hardback set of rules for shootouts in the old west.

Low figure count, random draw activation.. Sounded perfect for the basis of a "Throwdown" game. Our old Necromunda games were very old-west flavored back in the day, and western style gunfights are more my speed than army actions so I had high hopes.

I also made my own damage chits for the game. TRWNN's downloads page has a nice western flavored set, but for sci fi I wanted something a little more thematic. Plus mine have blood explosions.

Custom Fate Chits

I chose 4 characters, co-responding fate chits for them and ranked them:

Blak's Crew, figures are GZG and Khurasan

"Ace" Black, Legend with Pistol.

"Bruiser" Grakk, Veteran with 2 pistols.

"Lady" Alice, Fighter with 2 Pistols

"Sniper" Mc Gillicutty with a rifle.

Wasteland Raiders, figures are all post-apoc raiders from Khurasan

"Boss" Sixkiller, Legend with Pistol

"Pistol" Eevan, Veteran with 2 pistols

"Blaster" Skedge, Fighter with Shotgun

"Rifle" Sal, Fighter with rifle.

I set up a run down colony mining outpost, with mostly the same terrain as last night's game and quickly came up with a scenario.

Blak and his crew had got wind of an outpost that had been abandoned due to dangerous wildlife. The inhabitants had reportedly left some large deposits of Solonium throughout the place. Blak's team dusted down nearby and walked into town trying to keep a low profile.

I chose an approach edge and then placed 6 entry points out of my model's LOS. When an enemy fate chit was drawn, it would appear at a random one of these spots. These spots could also be used to exit from if out of LOS of my models, representing the raiders superior local knowledge.

The board before the first fate chit was turned

Additionally, I scribbled down some simple AI rules. After activating, an enemy model rolls a d6. on a 1-3 it would put all it's efforts into getting to the objective (in this case, the Blue Solonium deposits) on a 4-6 it would instead attack the nearest enemy model.

One piece of Solonium was on the roof of the bar, and the other two were locked in shacks. It would take 1 full turn to break into a shack and another to enter, grab the Solonium and then be placed back outside the door that was entered through.

Once in possession of Solonium, the same rule applied (1-3 pursue objective, 4-6 kill nearest) except instead of moving to get it, the enemy would move to escape via an available exit point.

Blak's crew walk into town...

I turned the first chit...

Ace Blak activated first and moved up to the bar. Then Boss Sixkiller activated (then rolled a 1 for deployment) appearing in the ruins right next to my crew, and took a Move+Fire action.

The Legendary bandit blazed away and hit McGillicutty twice with a big-bore pistol at close range.. I drew two kill shots to the chest. McGillicutty hit the dirt gushing blood, stone dead. Before anyone could react, the turn ended! Reshuffle the Fate chits and start again.

Lady Alice, splattered with McGillicutty's blood, spun in place and blazed at Sixkiller, but missed and emptied her clip. Bruiser Grakk went next and ran for cover.

The black chits are extra action cards that have been claimed and used up

The coolest thing about the fate chits is that as a solo player you can lay them out in a row as they are drawn, so you always know what's going on.

Both sides scrambled through the shanty town trying to get a good angle to attack or grab some loot. Bruiser emptied his guns at Sixkiller to no avail. Blaster Skedge let rip at Alice with his Shotgun.

Shotgun spread represented by 2 blast markers

His shot went a little wide though, and while he managed to catch Alice with both barrels, he also caught Eevan in the blast.

Aggh.. You idiot!

Alice got off lightly..

Eevan was not so lucky. Friendly fire is a bitch.

The raiders got some good fate chits and were greedily breaking into shacks and running off with Solonium while Alice lost her nerve and slipped away from the battle.

Bruiser managed to dash around and blow Skedge away

Bruiser takes out the shotgunner

Splat!

Oof! Ace rolls triple 1's and falls over. What a guy.

"So long, suckers!" Yelled Sixkiller as he escaped down an allley, arms full of Solonium.

Ace and Bruiser dusted themselves off sheepishly and took stock of the situation. "Well, at least one of us didn't fall over, Ace." Said Grakk.

With all the raiders off the board, it was time for the butcher's bill.

Blak's crew loses,7 pts to 8.

With a Solonium shard worth 3 VPs and a kill worth 2, Blak's crew came up short.

What a riot! These rules are exactly what I look for in a solo game.. Suspenseful and fun, yet you can keep the main rule mechanics in your head because they are so simple, meaning very little referring to the rules during play. Using skills for the models would increase the complexity somewhat, but using data cards for the models would fix that too.

TRWNN are a blast in my book, and I'm looking forward to tinkering with it some more. My simple "50-50" AI rolls worked a treat. Easy enough to remember without any trouble, and providing uncertain yet sensible enemy behavior.

Next game I'm going to use playing cards for the fate deck and simply mark a card ID on each character card.. eg: Grakk=Jack, Alice =Queen. Diamonds for enemy and Spades for me (Hearts will be used for the extra action cards that make the game so much fun). I loved my damage chits, much more fun than reading text.

All in all, a very successful game. But t's 2:20 am.. I'm off to bed!

Solopalooza Day 2: 5150 Star Army

2011-11-17T22:33:00.001Z

Main Stage: 5150: Star Army

Lt. Duke and 1st squad head out on patrol against the ruthless Zeig

With handy card sized QRS charts in hand, I set off on another 5150 adventure. After a lot of intel and weather rolls, I set up the terrain for a Patrol mission. I used my new CD based shacks and rocks.

Handy Cards I made earlier

The lay of the land

Our Intel was " Bad" which means a different chart to roll on when the first PEF (the counters with tiny orange dice embedded in them) are spotted.

Although the mission didn't "go bad" as a result, once my men deployed onto the table edge in sector 9, 2x PEFs were immediately visible. This actually kind of annoys me about the terrain system in 5150. In future games I'm going to change the way I do this.. It's nice not knowing what you'll be heading into, but there is a strong possibility you will also get some pretty dull terrain as a result.

Anyway, I rolled a lot of dice to see what the first two PEFs were. One was a false alarm, the other was 2 squads, with an asset in a defensive position. Talk about almost walking right into them!

Those guys managed to keep pretty quiet.. Gulp.

I had split my squad. The Rapid Fire Laser was with my Star, Lt. Duke, and the grenade launcher and medic were with Sgt. Lewis on the other side.

I included a medic just to see how they worked, as I had a new one painted. In fact every model and piece of terrain was non-proxy and fully painted.. Solopalooza Sub-goal achieved!

Not sure if splitting up was such a great idea now...

As Duke and his 1/2 squad hurried to cover, the Zeig squads (counted as PDF in hard armor) and their robot SAW operator (counted as exo armor) made their in-sight rolls and poured a hail of fire into them. Their assault rifles got 3 dice each, but as Duke's men were all in cover the Zeig with Rep 4 needed 6's to hit them. They didn't, but the Robo-SAW took out the Rapid Fire Laser trooper. Uh oh.

Duke and his remaining 2 men active fired, Duke blowing the head off the Robot, raising a cheer from the unit. A cheer that was cut short when the Zeig passed their received fire/man down tests and shot back, Obviously-deading another Star army soldier. The medic was unfortunately on the other side of the table.

Ow, ow, ow!

Over on the other side, the other 1/2 squad led by Sgt. Lewis tried to suppress the Zeig enough to get a grenade launcher shot into their position. The Zeig reaction fire took down the pointman, and no other Star Army fire was effective. Things looked grim.

A new activation roll put the Star Army on the offensive.

The Grenade launcher operator stepped out into the street to get a clear shot into the Zeig position. A Zeig trooper reacted, snap fired and missed. The GL trooper passed his received fire test and fired back.. With a 6. With his grenade launcher.

Ka-Boom!

It turns out that an impact 5 weapon (grenade launcher vs hard armor) is pretty nasty. A hit model will only even get a chance at survival if I roll a 6 on the damage test. A big chunk of the Zeig force was blown in all directions. It was still his activation, so he active fired into the red mist.

Hey man, nice shot.

Well that was unexpected. The second grenade did just as much damage as the first.

Somebody get a mop.

The medic quickly attended to the Pointman, managing 2 passes and getting him back in the fight.

Get up... You're fine!

Only the Zeig Elite squad was left. Their REP of 5 made their fire a lot deadlier than the Zeig regulars

(muffled breathing)

Rep 5 troops are really dangerous.

They took down the GL trooper, and only Duke's laser fire forcing them back stopped the slaughter...

I have 1 figure left on each flank. Uh.. Oops.

The Zeig fell back firing and shot up every member of the squad except for Lt. Duke and Sgt. Lewis. It was at this point I called it quits and narrated a speedy withdrawal.

Overall, a good game that took less than 2 hours to finish. It had thrills and spills, but I did get the feeling that the whole thing boiled down to a lot of dice rolling from the get-go.

This brings me back to my original niggling complaint.. The terrain setup. I think any further games I play of 5150 will have terrain setup work like this:

Set up the terrain in a dense and well distributed way as I like.
Roll randomly to determine which side I get to deploy from.
Set up PEFs normally.

I think this will be not only more fun, but a lot faster.

I'm too tired for any more cards or rules.. I'm going to play Batman: Arkham City for the after-party. My girlfriend loved watching me play Uncharted 2 (Which is awesome if you haven't played it, and cheap nowdays!) but doesn't enjoy the Batman so much. But that's what Solopalooza is all about.

See you tomorrow folks!

Solopalooza Night 1

2011-11-16T19:50:00.001Z

Here I am at the Solopalooza pre-party. My girlfriend is off to the airport and I'm finishing up work for the evening.

Homebrewed game: Plastic Slam, Pro wrestling action figure rules

Kicking things off, some bodyslamming action featuring Minis acquired via the power of the blog barter. Thanks again Harry!

These rules have been through 3 distinct versions. The first one was Dice pool based, it was good, but quite complex. The second one was a custom card based system where you made up your own cards inspired by 1000 White Cards.. It wasn't great solo and required a lot of work to play. The final version of the rules which will be tearing it up here at Solopalooza tonight are based on ordinary blackjack.

The basic mechanics are based on the risk mechanics of blackjack. On your wrestler's turn, you declare an action (selected from a chart) then draw a playing card. If the card beats your wrestler's stat in that area, it works. If it is too low, it does not. You may keep trying actions and drawing cards until you either rest (stay), allowing you to heal one step of damage, or Bust when your card total exceeds 21.

If you bust, you don't get to recover and it is immediately your opponent's turn.

Apart from a deck of cards, all you need is wrestling toys. The figure's arms pose is used in place of counters to indicate damage states and the movement requires no measuring.

I completed a game after a couple of false-starts and hastily re-written rules and am pretty pleased with it. You will be seeing a lot more of this as I refine it, but it's already fun!

Main stage: The Gears of War Board Game.

The Box

The big beast from Fantasy Flight Games finally saw action tonight. There's a lot in the box and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the figures. They would certainly look nicer painted, but for now I don't have the time.

The non-figure bits on my new game surface

I played on an office pin-board with some kind of neoprene-like surface that is completely non-stick... Good for keeping cards still, not as good for trying to pick them up. Still, it puts my mind at rest about damage to components and looks nice to play on. It even has a nice wooden frame.

I started playing much too late tonight.. About 10:30 pm. This meant I was a bit tired and found it more stressful than normal to learn a new rules system. The good news is that the game employs a great deal of regular miniature wargame concepts, like Line Of Sight... So I knew what to do very quickly.

Set up took a while mainly because I had to learn what all the components meant and there are a lot. I played "Emergence" the suggested introductory mission.

The gameplay is basically this: Draw up to 2 cards into your hand. Play 1 card and follow the directions on it or discard more cards for additional effects like saving a wounded buddy. The gimmick is that your hand is also your health, so the more you do the more dangerous it becomes. I like it.

Then the locust (alien enemy) side takes it's turn by flipping an AI card. This has simple instructions on it that can do anything from make all wretches on the board move toward you, to spawning Drones and more. I really like this system.

And that's the basic game. You roll dice to attack, with bonus dice for full or hard cover. Cover spaces are clearly marked on the board and movement is a breeze. The ruler you see is only for determining line of sight. Everything else is handles by counting "areas".

My game started well. I used the "Forced entry" card to leap into cover, dislodging the wretch hiding there, then blast him with my Lancer rifle. As the game proceeded, I advanced and blasted apart two Drones and another wretch.

All that stood between me and victory were two Drones...

The AI cards were not kind however. A Drone spawned right out of the emergence hole in front of me and his buddy ran in behind me, spraying with his blaster. He rolled 3 hits and I got Zip in defense. Leaving that cover may have been a big mistake, considering it turns out I could have thrown the grenade in from where I was... Oh well, live and learn.

..Just. The backshooting Drone took me to 0 cards in my hand.. Which I thought would end the game.. But no! A Cog is only bleeding out when he goes below zero cards.. I was still in by a hair!

I drew my two cards and managed to blast the emergence hole shut, kill the drone and empty my clip into the other Drone, killing it. I flipped the mission card as the emergence hole was sealed.

No way.

Unfortunately, this is the bit where the mission card tells me that a Boomer and a wretch spawn in the exit. The Boomer rolled his 4 attack dice..

Game Over

BOOM. I was bleeding out and with no other Cogs to revive me, that wrapped up the game.

That's it for opening night of Solopalooza, plenty more to come tomorrow night. What game will be on the main stage? You'll have to wait and see!

Blood Dawn Orcs and other foes

2011-11-11T15:28:00.001Z

Blood Dawn Orc, Cooplestone barbarian hero, Blood dawn goblin and skeleton

I have been quiet this week, but that's mainly due to Khurasan secrecy. I have a few nice new painted models to show when I get the nod from Jon.

Amongst my Solopalooza supplies arriving by post this week (Lego Heroica and Forbidden Island are in hand) I received the Blood Dawn 15mm fantasy figures I ordered a while ago from Magister Militum.

They sure don't disappoint.. The orcs are magnificent beasts, the goblins goblinesque and the skeletons menacing. People warn they are on the large side, but the Copplestone figures are about 18mm, so I think they scale very well with them.

As you can see, I've made a bit of progress with another barbarian. As Scott Pyle said, these figures "practically paint themselves". The surfaces and details are so brush-friendly and easy to hit that it's a pleasure to paint them. I'm looking forward to some games of Crom against these foes soon.

More posts during Solopalooza.. In fact I'll probably be doing a daily update!

Coming up...November 15th- Solopalooza

2011-11-04T11:31:00.001Z

According to JF on Solo Nexus , November is the month to appreciate Solo gaming. Here at TSS, I'm all about the solo gaming.. Although I tend to spend a great deal of time painting and building an writing than actually playing.

But the dice gods have clearly glared at me this month, as my girlfriend is going on a trip on the 15th and I will have the house to myself.. Time for a solo buffet all night, every night, all week.

What's on the menu? A lot!

Elder Sign is a game I've had for a while and enjoy playing. I got my ass kicked the first few times, but after my first win, it's been pretty smooth sailing. I am gradually getting through all the investigators and Ancient ones.

Gears of War: The board game has been on the shelf un-played since I bought it due to lack of time and space. I can set up Elder sign on my desk, but I think I need to use a table for this one and there just hasn't been a time I could do this. I have high hopes for this one.. If it's especially good I think it would be cool to clone it for 15mm figures in a generic sci-fi setting.

5150: Star Army is IMHO the best game THW has ever released. I've got new Zieg troops (riflethings) APC's and walkers to try. Not to mention my spiffy new QRS cards.

Homebrew Games: Gut check 2.0 , The rules with no name -in spaaace, and PLASTIC SLAM, an attempt at pro wrestling minis solo (with my new figures that arrived yesterday from Harry in the USA.. Thanks Harry!) are all waiting.

Forbidden Island I got this inbound to play with the GF, but will run it solo to get the rules down. Looks like a fun game.

Lego Heroica isn't strictly speaking a solo game, but I have 3 sets (the castle, the forest and the underground) on their way in from Amazon and I'll be spending at least one evening tinkering with it. I hear the rules are OK at best so I'll maybe try to whip up some of my own. I love the 3d character sheets and micro scale scenery and how bringing any piece in from the Lego range will be visually seamless. If anyone has a good suggestion for rules that would be good for tile based solo dungeoneering, I'd love to hear about it!

Gut Check 2.0 ?

2011-10-31T21:49:00.000Z

What's going on here?

The photo is of some Heroscape dice repurposed into Blood Bowl style dice to use in a new combat resolution system. Exciting huh? Well, it is to me at least.

Inspired by Chris K of the Basement Gaming Bunker's recent rediscovery of my Gut Check! rules, I have been thinking about how to progress them to V2.0 and also re-ignite my interest.
I think they were a fun set, but required a lot of additional work on my part and I ran out of steam. I'd like to take some of the ideas that worked well (the titular Gut check, a 1d6 system originally similar to THW rules, and the action choices) but replacing all the clunky bits... Especially the hexes, which put a lot of people off I imagine.

I am tentatively naming this new version "Throwdown" to keep me focussed on the new objective... That being you should be able to grab a bunch of minis you already have and throw them down on the board with as little prep as possible. I want to have enough gambling and tactical decisions to be fun, but an absolute minimum of bookkeeping, chart lookups and needless complexity. The game is more solo centric, based on the player taking a 5 man team. It is no longer a game trying to cover platoon sized actions. I made a harsh review of any rule that seemed "clever" but had limited real-world effect on the battle.

Here's what I've got worked out already:

Action point system. Heavily armored figures get less actions and and high survivability (1 action, 3 wounds, 3+ save) , Lightly armored figures get the opposite (3 actions, 1 wound, 5+ save)
Models that fail activation go on guard.. A feature inspired by later editions of FUBAR.
New combat mechanic. Total up factors like shock counters, range, target speed, cover etc, then resolve an exchange of fire with a single Blood-bowl like roll. This models both parties firing at each other and the final result, rather than individual shots. It's a partial replacement for a more detailed reaction system.
A streamlined reaction system. Only models with "guard" actions get to react by passing a gut check.
Replaced hex movement and weapon ranges with SOBH styled " Short Medium and Long" distance measuring.
Removed the "Choked" condition. Shock markers model suppression as much as I want to without an extra condition that needed a counter on the table.
Stopped all figures reacting all the time. Too much headache, too much dice rolling.
Removed my (brilliant!) chit activation system. The concept was good, but there are much less complex ways to govern enemy actions. Having proper scenario goals for the AI makes a big difference here.

I have the new combat rules done in a bare-bones form, and team construction rules mostly done ( I will need help to fine tune here, I'm not great at math.) so apart from some playtesting, I have to get some scenarios done... Straight out "kill each other" battles have a tough time holding my interest these days.

PS- Special thanks to all the folks who wrote in with playtest observations, your notes really helped shape the newer version.

Mark 1 Armor

2011-10-30T18:03:00.002Z

Entirely scratchbuilt in 3 hours

I'm not sure how big I am in 15mm scale, but here's the costume I wore into town last night to a gig and then drinks..

The lighting is a cheap set of Christmas lights that are LEDS with a 2xAA power supply. With the helmet off, the chin lighting made me look like a bearded Chuck DeNomolos.
I'm especially proud of the 2-part torso design that allowed comfortable freedom of movement and a telescoping action that allowed me to sit down without the thing smacking me in the chin. I decided against legs , settling for silver glitter converse all-stars and black jeans.

In retrospect I wish I'd gone with an Iron Giant design with articulated jaw for drinking.. Oh well, next year.

Happy Halloween from Tiny Solitary Soldiers!

Cane Toad APC

2011-10-30T11:15:00.001Z

Jon at Khurasan recently sent me this Cane Toad APC. I was going to paint it up for my Star Army forces, but the first two attempts at undercoating it failed due to me not cleaning it enough and release agent messing things up. So a heavy black spray undercoat was called for and the vehicle switched sides to Zeig.

Once I got going, a pretty easy paint job. Freehanding all the markings was the hardest bit, but I don't have any decals and a black tank looks pretty bland without some detail like this. Apart from that it is 100% drybrushing grey over the black basecoat, then painting on the metal chips with plain old GW Mithril silver. A quick dirty wash to unify it, then the same colors I use on my bases drybrushed up in stages for the dirt. The window slit os green to match my Zeig eyepieces.

These photos were already released on TMP, sorry if you've already seen them ;)

Riflethings

2011-10-29T12:53:00.004+01:00

Exo armor, REP 5, Assault rifles.

Here's my initial squad of Khurasan Riflethings. I did these alongside a Cane Toad APC, which I have just photographed and sent off to Jon, so it will be up on the blog soon I hope. Intentionally simple colors for fast painting and maximum menace. After a black undercoat there wasn't much at all to these guys, I did them in one go.

They represent elite or heavy troopers for my old Zeig forces. I have added some detail to these to bring them into line.

Hardsuit armor, REP 4, Assault rifles.

I repainted their fatigues Russian green and the officer's red. I know it's unrealistic but it's for the benefit of my eyes during a game!

I'm also doing some Jersey Devils for Khurasan (3 out of 4 painted) and other surprises that have reduced my blog output somewhat due to secrecy.. But it's a small price to pay for the excitement of getting unreleased figures to paint.

Mighty Monsters!

2011-10-26T11:44:00.002+01:00

Ganesha Games has released the PDF rules for Mighty Monsters, a Kaiju (Godzilla movie) minis rule set. There is one problem.. They are not yet available in English. Gah!
However they are set for English Release on November 10th, so I'm pretty excited.

I have a bunch of Monpoc figures I got off eBay over a year ago that are waiting to get into the paint queue. As some of the paint jobs are actually pretty passable, I might try just adding some detail and cleaning them up rather than fully repainting. Now I need buildings...

Custom Counters for Crom

2011-10-20T20:38:00.000+01:00

A pile of Crom counters all sculpted and made by me.

I have Litko tokens, I have the ability to make card printed counters... But there's nothing quite like a proper 3d item to use as a counter.. And nothing beats 100% custom now does it?

I sculpted the master onto a UK penny. It was harder than I thought it might be so I went for a very beat-up looking coin.

The master sculpt

The next stage was making a few press-molds out of Oyumaru. This is what "Instant mold" really is at a significant markup. I got mine on Amazon for cheap. It's good stuff.

Press molds

After that it was just a matter of filling up the molds with ProCreate and waiting until they were cured enough to pop out and do another set of 3. It took all day to make 12, but not bad considering.

Painting was a snap. Black undercoat, metallic drybrush, wash of my deep brown Kleer/ink mix. Done. Hopefully the Kleer (Future Wax) will make a good solid coating so they don't get too chipped when mixed up in a bag.

What am I using them for? Initiative counters. Making my Initiative card deck kinda redundant. Glad I didn't make them too colorful.

HAZMAT!

2011-10-20T11:01:00.002+01:00

Nice selection of poses

I've been quiet about these until today, but I just saw them up on the Khurasan store after reading about them on daddyslittlemen.blogspot.com.
These are fantastic figures! I hate to say it but I think they are actually cute. Especially the female scientist (in red) who is walking in what looks like a fairly cumbersome way.

Not much to the painting. Jon asked for yellow suits in the classic Hazmat style. I did the gloves in a military/surgical green instead of black, because I didn't want the hands to vanish into the guns, which are also black/grey.

I did the faceplates in the gem style I did my UNSC troops that has proved so popular. It worked pretty well. I have to say again that 15mm scale figures really rely heavily on contrast and exaggerated details.

Hot stuff, coming through

While I was painting these, I got excited and ordered the exterminator squad, the riflethings and the navy seals.. I know, I don't need them but I've been trying to resist them for so long I broke down. Jon slipped some very interesting extras in with my order which are unreleased and secret again, but I think regular readers will think they are pretty cool when they come out.

Crom Skills

2011-10-18T13:11:00.003+01:00

Eli over at I see lead people posted today about this topic:

"...there wasn't much to set one apart from the other. All 12 Dice characters would essentially be the same figure. To combat this we started looking into alternatives."

This is exactly what I was trying to address with my weapon and armor stats and musings on skill cards. After another think, a good solution that's streamlined (my favorite type of solution) is to combine all these ideas into one mechanic.
For me the best thing about Crom for a solo player is the suspense. You don't know exactly how an action will play out before you roll the dice. Therefore persistent skills are less interesting (to me).
Today's idea is that rather than skills, player characters are capable of Stunts. These are one off cool moves that you would see in a movie as a high point of a battle.

Example: Legolas in the LOTR movie skates down some stairs on a shield and shoots a goblin. This is a stunt. If Legolas always skated around on a shield it would be a persistant ability. It doesn't have to make a lot of sense, it's about a cool moment that demonstrates something about the character.

In this vein, I'm working on a set of Stunts that are either a cool maneuver or require specific equipment, but are still only one-shot abilities.
This way, the cards can be used in a tight spot, or to change the odds rather than simply making the character better all the time.

Twin blades
Play after combat dice are rolled, either in attack or defence. Discard one enemy die of your choice.

Huge Weapon
Discard to add 1 hit to a successful attack

Steely Armor
Discard to stop one hit

Acrobatics
Discard to change any 1 of your rolled move dice to a 6

Trick Shot
Discard to shoot at target out of your LOS

Sprint
Discard to gain 2 movement dice for this turn

Battle cry
Discard to force enemies in contact to recoil

Mighty Thews
Discard to regain 1 burned dice

Stealthy
Discard to hide. If in rough terrain or next to blocking terrain, cannot be charged this turn

Cunning
Discard to change a die rolled for initiative to a 6

Fight Dirty
Discard to force one foe in contact to lose all it's dice for the turn immediately

Nine Lives
Discard to recoil once, avoiding all damage from one attack

Taunt
Discard to force one enemy group or figure to focus it's attacks on you

Poisonous
Discard after scoring a hit, target is subject to the poison rules

Tactician
Discard to change any flipped activation card to that of one of your figures

That's all for now.. But I like where this is heading.

Crom Initiative Deck

2011-10-17T20:57:00.000+01:00

Some simple cards

When I played Crom last, I was using color coded counters for the initiative deck. White for my guys, red for minions, yellow for the High priest, and black for the Twanax. This worked fine, but if I wanted to use any more types of figure I'd need cards as that's all the colors I have ;)

To make sure that I coud re-use them for different figures, I tried to use terms on the cards that would easily distinguish one figure from another, but were still kind of generic. Here's the list I came up with for my first 3 sheets of cards (9 to a card)

Player forces:

The Hero

The Thief

The Sage

The Merc

The Brute

The Dandy

The Beast

The Scout

The Hunter

The Fool

The Knight

The She Wolf

Evil forces:

Lurker

Demon

Fiend

Wretch

Hulk

Wyrm

Serpent

She Devil

Hag

Evil Mage

Minion -1-3

Dark Master

High Priest

They are black and white and sparse to try to save on printer ink. I still might make counters and write the same names on them somehow, as counters or poker chips in a bag are actually quicker to "shuffle" than cards, but I thought of this just now. I like the terms at least.

Crom Rules Playtest

2011-10-16T00:41:00.003+01:00

Mini Crom setup

Okay, so I just played a 1.5 games of Crom Solo. Here's a quick report.

1. Played the original Conan Movie soundtrack. It was ace.

2. Set up a small board using Heroscape terrain.

3. Used the stats on the main Crom page for 3 cultist Minions (KM Octo cultists with tridents), a wizard priest (KM Octo high priest) and a shaggy beast (Blue moon Twanax) pitted against 3 heroes.
Krugg the Hacker (10, 2h sword),
Wulfgar Graytrousers (6, sword and shield)
Shevra (7, 2 swords)

4. no scenario. Used full rules plus my add-ons. Didn't bother with summoning, just let the priest use his magic dice to throw ranged attacks. Used colored chits drawn from a bag to determine initiative.

Results: Gave up halfway cause I lost track of what I was doing. The measuring was quite annoying, but the ranged combat (which requires it) was cool.

I started again, this time placing a gem objective on top of the hill. To achieve a major victory, Krugg and his companions had to grab the Gem and get off the table. Just getting the Gem off the table counted as a minor victory. This is what you see in the photo

Enemy actions:
On activation, an enemy model rolled a d6 to determine it's target. 1-3 the objective, 4-6 kill nearest Player figure.

Despite my last post on the matter, I quickly re-adopted my hex movement rules. They worked absolutely fine and I definitely prefer them now. Who'da thunk it.

Movement: declare your target hex. Roll your move dice. 3+ is required to enter an empty hex, 4+ is required to enter a rough terrain hex or climb up a ledge hex. Dice that do not meet the required target for the hex are used up.

In practice I found that the movement was still uncertain (and therefore suspenseful) but much easier and faster than measuring. The weapon ranges were no problem either.

Long reach weapons can attack an adjacent hex, short reach weapons can attack a figure in the same hex as the attacker.

I counted the tridents and Krugg's 2h sword as long reach weapons.

The +1 advantage for elevation proved fun. The push-back rules were good, but slightly modified:

Player figures: May convert as many hits as they like into push back results. A Push back is one hex, directly away from the hex-side that the attacker entered through (effectively away from the attacker) the attacker follows up.

Enemy figures: Will convert the first hit into a push back if possible, but must take the rest as hits. Monsters are never pushed back.

Solid scenery or sheer drops may not be pushed back into, take a hit instead. Difficult terrain or ledges can be pushed back into, but the defender will fall if the attacker rolled any 6's in their attack. Fallen figures lose all their remaining dice for the turn, but hop up at the start of their next turn.

It worked out really well! I definitely need to make a deck of cards or chits for initiative purposes, but that won't be hard.

My weapon rules were okay, but I think they need to be less granular. for example:

1h weapons- as normal rules. Reach= same hex
2h weapons- +1 hit (!) can't use initiative dice. Reach = adjacent hex
Spears- as normal rules. Reach = adjacent hex

Light armor or shield- absorbs 1 hit*
Heavy armor or light armor+shield- absorbs 2 hits*

*Not tested

Scenarios are going to be key here. I think the next step is to write a couple of simple scenarios. And maybe some more interesting magic spells.

Great fun!

Copplestone Troll and Barbarian

2011-10-15T20:59:00.001+01:00

More of these amazing figures painted. The secret really is doing one at a time.

Troll front and back

Scale comparison

Faked some pants!

The blonde guy got some gray pants to try to stop all these figures looking like Conan in different poses.
This pack could easily be used for one barbarian with different equipment and at different levels in an RPG game.

MOAR CROMMMM!

2011-10-15T18:58:00.001+01:00

It's notta tureen, it's a halmat! Guarrrrrr!

I mentioned in my last post that I had come up with some major modifications to the very clever Crom rules. The biggest part of these were the use of hexes instead of measuring. Largely because I've got some and I hate measuring. However the more I tested it, the less flexible it became. In a 1 on 1 fight they were great, but once I introduced more figures and special rules, they kind of broke down. here is what I was left with, admittedly not much, but I think this adds a little more barbarian fun without significantly changing the great system already written.

Weapons And Armor

These are just small bonuses to your dice totals to add a bit of flavor to differently armed models.

Unarmed -1 attack total. Range: Base contact
Sword/axe +0 attack total. Range: Base contact
Spear +0 attack total. Range: 1 base width
2h sword +1 attack total, -1 initiative total. Range: Range: 1 base width
2h Axe/hammer +2 attack total -1 defence total Range: Range: 1 base width
Dual swords/axes +1 attack or defence (choose when making forst attack or defence roll for the turn)
Shield +1 to defence total

Light armour 6+ save vs all hits -1d6 to initiative rolls
Heavy armour 5+ save vs all hits, -2d6 to initiative rolls

Combat modifiers:
Charged into combat +1 attack total
Each additional attacker +1d6 to total.
Attacker on higher elevation +1 attack total

(Seeing as a lot of the figures I have are almost naked, I decided that armor was a bit of a trade-off in a barbarian game, hence the initiative penalty.)

Push-backs (giving ground)

To add a more swashbuckling element to the swordplay, I devised this rule. It favours a terrain setup with a lot of perilous features like ledges, lava pits, rope bridges etc.

When a figure takes a hit, it may elect to instead be Pushed back. First, the defender decides how many hits it will convert into push-backs. The attacker then chooses a direction (must be in the attacker's front 180' arc) and rolls a number of D6 equal to the number of push-backs and adds them together into a total. The defender is pushed back this distance. The attacker may choose to follow up and remain in contact, or remain where they are.

If the attacker rolls any 6's when making the push-back roll, he may instead of pushing the defender back, elect to switch places with the defender! Handy if the attacker has his back to a cliff.

If the pushed-back figure contacts a terrain feature (fallen log, large rock, tavern bar, etc.) It will take 1 hit.

If the pushed-back figure enters difficult terrain, it may fall. If the attacker rolled any 6's in the push-back roll, the defender is knocked over and suffers a -1d6 penalty to any attack or defence rolls until it gets up, a difficulty 4 special action (not sure about what number to set for this actually). Otherwise be pushed back through the difficult ground normally.

Blood and Guts

(Taking a leaf out of the SOBH book) If a figure loses all it's dice as the result of a a single attack roll, it is decapitated, burst or otherwise horribly killed in a manner that terrifies it's allies. When this occurs, all allied models with LOS to the death lose a dice from their pool for the rest of the turn. The dice are replenished at the start of their next activation.

Special Abilities

Make a deck of stunt-like special attacks. Before the battle, randomly draw one per hero. may be played and then discarded at any time during a figure's activation.

Eg:

Noggin knocker: If you have 2 enemies in base contact, you clonk their heads together. Each one takes a hit.

Mighty blow: You strike a mighty blow. Use when an attack has been successful. Armor is ignored, and push backs are not allowed against any hits caused by the attack.

Right in the nuggets: You kick your opponent in a sensitive area. It immediately loses all it's dice until it's next activation.

Oath of fury: Veins standing out, you bellow a blood curdling speech, shrugging off your injuries and hurling yourself back into the fray! Regain d6 lost dice.

(Solo rule: If at any time an enemy figure rolls 3 sixes, immediately draw and play a special action card for it.)

With all of this stuff, the battles will hopefully take on more of a crazy cinematic brawl. Special thanks to Matakishi for writing the Crom rules and making them available on his site.

Female Barbarian

2011-10-14T11:06:00.000+01:00

I went with a lighter skin tone this time as I'd like to see some variety in the warband. I almost did her hair red, but I'm going to save that for the one with the chain-mail bikini.

I'm developing a barbarian addiction. Last night I basically re-wrote the Crom rules to suit me better (more combat options, different dice pool, uses hexes.. Not really the same game anymore) after painting this little beauty.

Next, a Troll!

Spacejacker needs help from the USA

2011-10-13T23:08:00.000+01:00

I recently saw this post on Mongo's Wafflehouse. It is about how he made some great conversions using 2" Generic wrestler toys. I freakin' love wrestling games (I don't follow TV wrestling anymore) and have long wanted to try making a wrestling minis game. Enter the perfect product:

I want these!

I really want to have a go! Here's the catch: You can't get this pack in Europe. In fact the only place you can get it is at Boscov's in the USA. They have an online store but do not ship overseas. So frustrating!

This is where you come in. Do you like the looks of the Orion Heavy Infantry (power armor) that Blue Moon Manufacturing sells? Do you like the paint job that you can see on the website? I hope so, because I did it... Do you see where this is going?

I have these...

..And this...

I'm looking for a swap here, US citizens. If some kind American reader lives near a Boscov's or can order online from this link , then I will trade you my painted Orion heavy infantry pack (all 10 figs) and a Khurasan Gun carrier in exchange for 2 of the pictured 20-pack of toy wrestlers. I will also pay for the shipping from your place to mine!

So that's the deal.. Grab 2 packs of toy wrestlers (currently for a total of $30 USD) and I will paypal you the shipping to the UK and you get some badass 15mm goodness.

How does that sound to you guys?

Cheap Resin terrain source

2011-10-13T11:31:00.002+01:00

UNSC Lt. in the middle for scale. Can you see him?

Ramshackle games make a great range of inexpensive resin models for 28mm post-apocalyptic gaming in 28mm. A big part of their range is a set of modular vehicle parts. I had the idea while looking at these online, that some of the parts would make excellent sci-fi buildings and bunkers. And the price is very affordable.

Here's what I ordered:

1 x Bonyard Truck engine stack = £0.60

2 x PU Cab = £4.00

2 x Bonyard Truck cab = £1.60

1 x Liger Body = £3.00

1 x Engine block #3 = £1.50

1 x HST main body = £3.00

1 x Filler Block 2 long box = £2.00

1 x Degu Body and Exhaust = £2.50

1 x Bonyard Truck chasis = £0.75

1 x IG_engine = £2.00

The pieces took a week or so to arrive as I imagine they were cast to order, but once I had them in hand I was impressed with the detail and quality. These will make a great addition to my rough colony shacks and will of curse be perfect for Post-Apoc gaming as well.

My best find of the lot is the PU cab at £2, which makes a great bunker for 5150.

Bunker on the left

Copplestone Barbarian Painted

2011-10-12T22:55:00.001+01:00

Click for larger image

I finished this guy tonight and had to post a picture. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it was really not hard to achieve.
As most of the figure is a flesh area, it paints up really fast. I tried a NMM version of the sword, but it looked terrible. I think I did it properly, but it's not a technique that really shines in 15mm. So good old Mithril Silver with a Badab black wash replaced my fancy attempt.

I enjoyed painting this so much that I immediately started one of the females in the set, and a Troll.

Scott Pyle over at Four Color Figures is painting these right now too, and very nicely too. He has suggested he might try his hand at a "solo system"for small encounters based on his (excellent) Goalsystem rules. Needless to say, this is very exciting to hear!

I've got the Barbarian bug now.. Expect a fair bit of this stuff coming up.

Copplestone Barbarian WIP

2011-10-12T10:45:00.002+01:00

Incredible 15mm sculpting

Based on a news story from Dropship Horizon this week, I went over to the Copplestone Castings website to order some Snow Trolls. Somehow, nobody had alerted me to the fact that CC had also relased several other packs of Barbarians and "Northerners" which are Barbarians with beards.

I picked up the Northern Heroes pack and the Trolls, as I was already feeling very guilty for not starting the ones I had.

These minis are very very special. The sculpting is just ridiculously good. At first I was a bit scared of being able to do them justice with paint, but now that I've started one, it turns out that Mark Copplestone's 15mm sculpting style is very forgiving to the squinting 15mm painter. Clear areas of detail and good simple shapes that are easy to hit. Even the incredibly detailed face is a snap to paint as the detail is very deep with decent flat areas (like the forehead/brows and cheekbones) to catch your brush.

I thought the flesh was going to be difficult but it turned out not to be. Here's my simple recipe:

1. Black undercoat. Sounds crazy but will pay off getting the right amount of deep shadow.
2. GW Dwarf flesh base coat
3. GW Ogryn flesh wash. Applied with a brush, fairly heavy, not to the point of big pools though.

*At this point the flesh actually looked pretty good. If you used a slightly lightened base tone, you could easily stop for "rank and file" troops.

4. Highlight with thinned Dwarf flesh.

That's where I am for now. I'm going to do one more highlight with some Vallejo Basic Skintone mixed 30/70 with the Dwarf flesh to lighten it.

The rest of the figure is pretty simple and I'll do in browns. The sword will be interesting because I'm going to try NMM technique on these figures. Am I crazy? Lets find out.

BTA Armor unit

2011-10-07T17:56:00.001+01:00

Here's a few shots of a GZG walker I have painted up to use as a BTA in 5150SA.

With Medic for scale

I filled in his faceplate with putty and smoothed it off to bring it more toward the MaK look I enjoy. Detail is a little soft, but not unbearably so. I got this guy and a friend when I ordered the new Crusty walkers. I thought Star Army used BTA suits but I think it's actually the ISS faction. Doesn't matter, 5150 is pretty freeform and takes modding very well. I'm cooking up an alternate Asset system that uses the models I actually have anyway. A 2 man BTA team will count as an asset for my Star Army campaigns.

UNSC Medic

2011-10-07T14:23:00.001+01:00

As I fill out the empty spots in my force for 5150SA, I needed a medic option. This is a figure from the UNSC Command and coms pack from GZG. I chose him because he looks different enough from other troopers with his medical kit and kneeling pose. His gun is on the ground too, which is a nice visual reminder that medics in 5150SA do not shoot at the enemy.

I did the top of his helmet casing white and did his backpack green with a badge to try to help pick him out further. I have also started using little fragments of clump foliage instead of static grass on the bases of my figures. I'm not abandoning the static grass altogether, but superglueing a lump of this stuff on is a lot faster and less messy that the static grass. I think it looks pretty good too.

How did I paint the red crosses onto areas that were mostly smaller than 2mm? To quote Egg Chan from Big Trouble In Little China: "Wasn't easy." A double-0 brush (I normally prefer a 0) and a lot of holding my breath were the key ingredients.

I've finished most of my custom card-sized QRS sheets, so battle 3 should be coming up soon, featuring all new terrain, fancy PEF counters and QRS cards, I can't wait ;)

This guy was actually done while waiting for other things to dry. I'm working on several brand new figures for Khurasan, which as usual are secret. They are looking good though, so hopefully I can show them soon.

CD based terrain tour

2011-10-06T09:33:00.001+01:00

UNSC Command figure by GZG

"Good morning ladies, welcome to orienteering on your new home, the planet Brown. Now listen up, we have a lot to cover!"

Low cover

"You will notice that all the terrain on this new world is based on CD's.. That's right, ordinary CD's. Why you ask? Because, they are uniform in shape, made of a sturdy plastic, a good size for a 15mm scale terrain feature. Most of all, they are cheap or free. Just tape over the hole in the middle and you are good to go soldier."

GZG colony shacks and container

reverse angle

"Here are some metal cast shacks from GZG. Also note the large metal container. These products are packed with detail and assemble fairly easily with superglue. Mounting them on a CD makes them easy to deploy and to store... Although they are damn heavy so 2 CDs glued together were needed to stop the base flexing. Spin the CD for a different battlefield orientation. The colors are bright so they are not boring, but follow a limited palette so they all go together well."

More colony shacks and an air vent

reverse angle

"You will see these shacks are painted in less bright colors but have a lot of beat-up exposed metal. Apart from some Lego tires, this base is more open for variety, or loose object placement."

Aquarium plants and rocks

Different Aquarium plants and rocks

"These are new improved forest sections. Hot glue was used to fix the flexible plastic plants to the CDs. The ugly transparent look was defeated by using Citadel Foundation paint mixed 50/50 with PVA, then heavily stippled onto the plants. The PVA stops the paint flaking off. That's right, it's fine! Yes there is another one, but they look basically the same."

Red Blok Kolossus Konversion

2011-10-03T10:06:00.000+01:00

Here's another AT-43 figure I'm using as a 15mm walker.

Front

I took an ordinary Kolossus and pulled it all apart. Reversed the torso, repositioned the knee armor, roll bar, back tanks etc. Sculpted a camera/sensor onto the new front, sculpted new knee plates, then messed one up in the process of sculpting a little tarp roll on the back. I need to either get a curing lamp going, or just be more patient.

No weapons either. I ordered some from TheScene and am waiting for them to arrive.

No paint yet, as I haven't decided what faction it will belong to.. Either Star Army or Andromedan as a heavy/medium tank. I will probably do it as Andromedan as I'm liking the idea of the Star army having no heavy walkers, relying on the superior mobility of their BTAs and light walkers.

back

Red Blok AT-43 Kolossus for 15mm Lhurrg

2011-10-02T19:24:00.000+01:00

Here is a Kolossus I have painted to be used as a medium/heavy tank for my 15mm Lhurrg forces. In 5150: Star Army, walkers simply use the same rules as tracked vehicles. I prefer walkers as they are a bit more suited my 2x2 play area.

It is painted in the same colour as the Lhurrg skin, to help tie it to that force. I experimented with a chipped and rusty painting technique to show that the Lhurrg bought this walker and repainted it. Then didn't take very good care of it.. It's meant to look like it's been in the field (and out on the rain) for a long time.

To sum it up, I panted the whole model dark brown and gave it a wash of brown/black mix. I then stippled on the yellow paint, avoiding the edges where the paint is supposed to look worn off or rusted through. Once that was done I did some very simple highlights and used some sepia wash in the joints and deep crevices to help it look rusty.

The black markings are all freehand, which was something I havent done in over a decade. The white kill crosses are deliberately more crude.

Star Army Walkers

2011-09-27T11:27:00.002+01:00

A converted AT-43 figure becomes a 15mm walker

I grew up on the Battletech with all the robots stolen from Macross and Dougram Anime, hated the clans, hated the preponderance of the chicken-walker mecha school. I like my robot suits to be classically robot-like. I love early Gundam too, especially the 079 era, and the 8th MS team series. So for my Star Army armor (I don't have room for tank battles) I'm using walkers.

This model is an AT-43 figure that has a bit of a MAK vibe that I like.

With a GZG UNSC Trooper, and 2 battle suits.

Before I painted it though, something had to be done about the guns. I wanted the beam weapon to be more of a gun and less of an underslung bazooka style weapon, so some chopping was in order.

Gun rebuilt

Gun mounted with extra stock

ProCreate hand-sculpted pack and roll,
Karman weapons repurposed as backpack

Once converted, I had to paint it. This was basically painting a 28mm figure, trying to make it look like an AFV. I think it came out good enough. I tried doing some metal -chipped battle damage, but I dont think I'm good enough at it at this scale. Still, he looks great with my GZG UNSC figures so I'm happy with the end result.

For my next conversion, I'll be trying to make a Red Blok Kolossus look like a Cult of Andromeda or Lhurrg mecha!

200 Followers- Prize Time!

2011-09-23T15:03:00.002+01:00

There were 33 comments since the comp began, so I split the group into groups of 11 , rolled a D6 for each group, then rolled 2d6-1 to determine the winner.

Group 3 won the first round of dice, then comment number 7.. Which was:

Xerus

Slightly ironic as his comment was:

"Wow, that is quite a large prize (well, figuratively speaking anyway...) Are you sure you are not going to miss these 'alien infiltrators' as enemies for the Star Army? They do seem appropriate for that."

So Xerus, the answer is no, I won't miss them because they are going to a good home!

Thanks again to everyone who entered, I was really blown away by all the support and good cheer in the comments. And thanks to you all for following the blog and getting us to 200!

I will certainly be doing another prize again in the future, so until then, keep reading T.S.S :)

It's Prize Time!

2011-09-21T11:59:00.002+01:00

When this blog amassed 100 followers, I gave away a set of CMG Aliens as a prize to a lucky reader.
We have reached 194 as of today and with the amount of stuff I've got waiting in the wings, I think the readership will hit 200 pretty soon. To celebrate this historic occasion, I will be doing a RANDOM DRAW from all followers who leave a comment on the blog between now and the Magic 200th follower joining, with the winner receiving... My painted 15mm.co.uk Octopods!

There are a few more than in the photos, and will make a great OpForce for anyone's existing Sci-fi armies!

Who loves you? Spacejacker loves you.

Elder Sign!

2011-09-20T01:03:00.000+01:00

Sweet solo goodness

Tonight I was too tired to paint miniatures, but my girlfriend went out for a girl's night so I had the perfect opportunity to test out a solo game of a different sort.

I recently treated myself to Elder sign and Gears of war from Fantasy flight games. Gears of war looks really cool... A card and dice driven co-op/solo battle game... But I think I'd like to paint the (excellent) figures up before I play that.. So Elder sign it was.

Elder sign is also a co-op/solo game, played with custom dice and a variety of cards. I'm too tired to fully explain it after battling Cthulhu (where I got sidetracked and lost my place so started again) and Yig (Who tore Dexter Drake, magician, apart).

But once you get the hang of it, it's a very suspenseful game of resource management and nail-biting rolls of dice. Can you collect enough Elder signs to seal away the evil and win? Or will the Doom track fill up and the Elder God be summoned into the world? (Yes, says Dexter Drake) Either way it's a ton of Lovecraftian fun.. And pretty reasonably priced at around £25 as it has a great deal of replay value.

Highly recommended for the soloist.

5150 Star Army R.D.S

2011-09-18T13:17:00.003+01:00

Pimped out!

Okay, after a lot of thinking, I figured out a squad record sheet replacement that has the following characteristics:

Reusable/Rewritable without pen or pencil.

Small footprint

Easy to read

Easy to make

Easy to share :)

(For a millisecond I thought about making them all deluxe and selling them on RPGnow, but it's such a simple idea that there's probably little point.)

In the spirit of THW pseudo-military acronyms, I christen this invention the RDS... Roster Dice Sleeve.

From left to right: Squad REP, Leader REP, Ast. Leader REP.

Squad (in white) and platoon number (in yellow) on the ends.

I'm really pleased with them!

Khurasan Naga Blaster-Halberdiers

2011-09-17T16:58:00.001+01:00

The Cult of Andromeda expands!

Jon just gave me to OK to show off the Naga figures with Halberd-blasters. I like the way the black hafts look with the gold bits.

Now these are out of the bag, expect to see them facing Lt. Duke's Star Army boys. Presuming of course, that they survive the Lhurgg campaign...

5150 Accessories

2011-09-16T10:25:00.000+01:00

So naturally when I start playing a new game, instead of actually playing more games I get down to the distracting business of building lots of stuff I may or may not need to play it with.

First of all, I'm making some QRS sheets. The ones in the book are fine actually, but as I use a PDF, it gets tiresome hopping around while learning. I am also pushed for space (as I often moan about on this blog) so I like playing-card sized QRS rather than big sheets. It's also fun in a perverse way, trying to fit lots of information onto a tiny card.

Here's my first couple:

Click for full size

I'm doing a reaction card for each faction, using the one Weapons QRS I have done above, a shooting/damage card (that I will likely not need after a couple more game, it's very simple) and probably a PEF summary card, then a Card for each of the 3 different enemy tactics charts. I'm considering a weapons vs vehicles chart for the back of the infantry weapons card.. Apparently the chart is different though I haven't checked how.

Next, my PEF counters came out so nice it got me thinking. If I can ID my figures' equipment by looking at them WYSIWYG, then why not make some kind of model for the rest of the info?
All that's left to know in a game is the armor type (I can easily remember that) and the Squad's REP, the Leader's REP and the Assistant leader's REP.

Here are some ideas I scribbled down:

Which style is your favorite?

These wouldn't need to be on the actual table I suppose, but they would at least look nice and take up very little room. The ones on plastic bases could be made with stuff I already have (Always a huge plus) but getting the other ones laser cut from acrylic might be awesome too. Whichever way, I love that they are easily reconfigurable with simple color coded dice.

Note: I do realize that a small notepad would easily solve this as well, but if I can play a game solely with models, cards and dice, it will put a smile on my face.

Finally, I got a "defensive position" result in my last game and had no specific model to represent it. I have exceeded my gaming budget for the moment by buying solo board games so I wanted something cheap or free, that I could make easily (as I have said many times, I'm lazy and cheap).

Here is a quick design that requires only foamcore rectangles, with the corners cut off:

If I make 2 of each, it should be enough for most games. I will need some bunkers, which should be easy enough, and some buildings. I am deciding between GZG shacks and modules (Nice and small) Old Crow buildings (Good value larger buildings) and hand made (Cheapest but unlikely to get finished any time soon).

So much to do, so little time!

5150: Star Army Mission 2

2011-09-14T14:14:00.002+01:00

Morale:
Star Army 8
Lhurgg 4

Star Army Investment Level: 3

Weather clear, daytime
Ariel recon OK
Intel level 3
Good intel. Lhurgg Investment Level: 3

Lt. Duke: "Looks simple enough."
Command: "We've lucked out. Your patrol revealed a weak point in their perimeter, practically unguarded. We're sending you in to push the point."

Mission: Attack! (Enemy on patrol)

Command: "Take your whole platoon and an HMG team, hit those alines hard!"

House rule time!

I don't have 24 painted troops. Also, I play on a 2x2 mat, so those kinds of figure counts are getting too high for my taste. Therefore I have taken a major liberty with the force organization charts. In my campaign a Squad is 4 men. A platoon is 12 men. Platoon leader is part of squad 1.

Mission objective: Destroy the enemy!

Walking in. This battle I figured I'd have enough to handle so I just skipped the insertion sequence.

The platoon:

1st Squad, 3rd Squad, 2nd Squad, HMG Team

1st Squad Rep 3
Led by SCOPES rep 5
Asl rep 4

2nd squad Rep 3
Led by MALONE rep 4
Asl rep 4

3rd Squad Rep 4
Led by DUKE Rep 5
Asl rep 4

HMG Team :rep4

I rolled up the battlefield. A bit less terrifying than last time

Terrain rolled up

My fancy new PEF counters. Still need flock.

The first PEF charged out cover. False alarm, just the wind blowing garbage around.

False alarm

First and Third squads rush forward to cover, while the HMG team tries to get a line of sight on the buildings with PEFs reported inside.

The next PEF is another false alarm. One left. Duke's team moves up with the RF Laser on point.

Lt. Duke:"Take it easy boys. Lhurgg guns are shorter range than ours. Cover all your angles."

The RF laser trooper is first to get eyes on the PEF area. The PEF resolves as 1 squad in defensive position.

As I was out of matching terrain, instead of adding another piece, I improvised the setup by rearranging the buildings, moving the "better" building back to be the defensive position and and swapping the worse one forward. I think this is in the spirit of the rules, representing a positive ID on the area compared to an earlier general idea.

Gulp. Some enemy.. Now it's on!

This part of the PEF procedure always confuses me. The PEF just resolved and the Star Army are the ones who are moving, so The Lhurgg roll an "in sight" test (in response to the Star Army figure that resolved the PEF.)

The Lhurgg pass 2 dice but as their SMGs are out of range, they duck back. As they have ducked back, the RF laser can't see them and cannot fire.

Star army wins the next initiative. The HMG can now see a Lhurgg in cover on the roof of the building. A quick burst sees the unfortunate alien ripped apart, Obviously Dead.

Jenkins: "Whoooo! First blood, you naked bastards!"

The Lhurgg pass their man down test and carry on.. But duck back as the Star Army come into view out of range. 1st squad attempts to flank, but their low rep makes fast moves awkward. They end up getting in the way of the HMG team somewhat.

Lt. Duke sits out of range and aims at the building with his men in a line.

Squad 2 loses a man to SMG fire as they get into position. The Grenade Launcher cant get a shot.

Crunch time. The Grenade Launcher moves into position.. But the targets duck out of sight.

Over on Duke's side, the RF laser spits death and blasts a Lhurgg out of cover, out of the fight.

1st squad moves around the flank.. The Lhurgg leader fails it's in sight test! 1st Squad only has rep 3 however and their fire has no effect.

Star army wins activation again.

3rd squad continues to move around out of range, causing the Lhurgg to duck back again. As they are all in cover in a building, I am assuming they are not compelled to move anywhere, but just become ducked back. I hope this is correct.

2nd squad GL fires and misses. Apparently this means no effect. Lhurgg pass their received fire test and carry on.

Lhurgg Leader:"Where are our reinforcementsss! We are pinned down in this rat trap!"

1st squad moves up firing aggressively, but hits nothing due to cover. The Lhurgg leader is deadly accurate with his return fire and tags Scopes, taking him out of the fight. This leaves 1st squad in a bad way.

Scopes goes down

Initiative roll double 3. Random Event.. Sniper! 2nd squad is targeted and a shot rings out. The Grenade launcher trooper is down and out of the fight.

Sniper!

Malone: "Goddammit! Wilkins, help me drag these bleeders out of the sh*t!!"

The Lhurgg win initiative, but are too low rep to activate.

A 1st squad trooper runs forward and tries to ready a grenade.. Drops it. Rolls under his rep and goes prone as a result.

Scopes:"Aggh.. You green sonofabitch.. <passes out>"

Another trooper retrieves Scopes. The Lhurgg leader ducks back after an exchange of fire.

3rd squad's RF laser once again churns up the ruins and takes the last warrior out of the fight. The leader carries on, but is badly surrounded.

Squad 1 and the Lhurgg leader exchange ineffectual fire while 3rd Squad flanks and takes the leader down stunned with another deadly burst of RF laser fire.

Lt. Duke:"Get some!"

The trooper that dropped the grenade runs forward and captures the stunned leader...

Lhurgg Leader:"No Reinforcementssss...Ugh."

Secure that prisoner!

Star Army Win!

Post battle
One man from squad 2 is obviously dead and gets a replacement. Everyone else recovers from their wounds and returns to duty.

SA Morale: 9
L morale: 3

Lurg investment level -1

Command:"They are on the run by the looks of it, Duke. Nice work."
Lt. Duke:"It was sloppy. These boys are too green."
Command:"Then brown them up. Dismissed!"

A great game. I had to do an awful lot of scrolling back and forth through the rules, but mostly to make sure I was doing everything right. I think if I make up my own set of custom QRS sheets it will not be a problem again.
I'm impressed with how once the game gets going, there is next to no bookkeeping, and I could remember most of the relevant squad stats in my head or by looking at the minis. Really cool stuff in that regard.

The poor Lhurgg didn't bring enough troops to this battle and were shot up a treat. 1st Squad's rep of 3 was a big liability and the Lhurgg managed to pass all their man down and received fire tests with aplomb.

I've had an idea regarding a squad counter with 3 dice in it to track Squad Rep, Leader Rep, A.Leader rep and a 4th for star power for the star. If these are color coded, it will be an easy way to keep squad records without paper or pencil.

This BatRep was picture heavy, which was kind of fun but really slowed me down and ruined the immersion a little. I think I'll stick to a before and after shot in future.

IMPORTANT

If you decide to buy the rules, I strongly advise reading through them and playing out learning encounters as the books instructs you to. It is done very much in the style of video game tutorials, where it introduces the mechanics a little at a time. You learn to move and shoot before you even introduce the vehicles or random events.

For example:

"STOP!

This completes the vehicle section of the rules. I suggest that you play a small game with one or two vehicles per side to get used to the game mechanics. Once you have learned where to look on the QRS while you're gaming and how the mechanics work you can move on to bigger battles and learn how to add structures and terrain."

A very nicely considered approach and once again, far superior to previous versions.

Grenade Launcher Conversion

2011-09-13T23:16:00.001+01:00

All painted up

As my UNSC collection lacks a grenade launcher, I set about one of my spare SAW troopers. I planned to do something with this mini anyway, as the SAW is not that easily distinguishable from a rifle for me.

I wouldn't ordinarily convert a painted figure like this, but hey.. It's 15mm. If it all goes wrong I'll buy another whole fireteam for like £3.

So I whipped out my clippers and snipped off the end of the gun, then puttied on some bits to help it stand out. The magazine is supposed to be a big drum full of 40mm grenades, and I gave him some packs to carry ammo in on his back. I'm getting faster with the putty.. This only took about 20 minutes :)

A snip here, putty there.. Grenade launcher!

I scored in some lines on his packs after the putty hardened a little. I painted the gun casing green to distinguish it a bit from the squad SAW.

I'm all set for my next game now. Fingers crossed we meet some hostiles this time ;)

5150: Star Army Campaign Mission 1

2011-09-12T21:12:00.000+01:00

A pivotal moment in the game

I played my first game of 5150: Star Army today. Here is the report.

I chose to play Star Army (my UNSC figures) against Lhurgg.

I was counting Lhurgg as PDF (planetary defence force) armed with SMGs and electric swords (1H close combat weapon) and the combat artist (+1 in melee) ability. There are no rules for nudity, so I classed them as in soft body armour.

The Lhurgg mutant counts as a squad asset.

He is hard as nails (3d6 for knockdown tests)
carries a 2h weapon and a Heavy Machine Gun.
Counts as wearing HB armour due to his size and extra head.

Star army Squad is Rep 5
Led by LT Duke, Rep 5, Star Power 5
They have 1 RF Laser and 1 grenade launcher. (I don't have any grenage launcher figures, but I'm going to modify one of my UNSC SAW troopers into a grenade launcher model.)

To begin the campaign , I rolled on the appropriate charts and got the following situation:

Campaign Morale:

Star Army 8

Lhurgg 5

The Star Army is Contesting a Lhurgg held planet. The Lhurgg have been raiding at will through the region for decades and the SA has finally been tasked with putting a stop to them.

1st mission: Patrol
(A campaign's first mission is always a patrol)

Star Army Investment Level: 6

Command: "This beach-head operation is vital to the attack on the planet!"
Lt. Duke: " So what assets do I have access to?"
Command: "The maximum allowable on a mission of this type!"
Lt. Duke: "Which is?"
Command: "None! Get your boots dirtside this instant, maggot!"

Weather: OK (I didn't roll a 1)
Ariel Recon: Successful.
Intel level: 4

Lt. Duke "That's good to hear, brainy. So what do you have for me?"
Pre mission Intel: Bad Intel.
Lt. Duke "…"

I rolled up the terrain and got this:

Initial setup as prescribed by the dice...

Lt Duke: "Holy crap. Tell me we're not footslogging it across that open ground."

Insertion roll: walking in.

Command:"Congratulations, you are footslogging it across that open ground."
Lt. Duke "Tremendous."

PEF (Possible Enemy Forces) markers are rolled and placed. Two in the ruins, one out in the open on the left.

The Star Army deploys in a long skirmish line in sectors 8 and 9.

Roll for initiative. Star Army Wins and activates with a 5. The first PEF is in plain view, so a First Contact roll is made… Pass 2 on first contact: Mission does not "go wrong". Whew.

PEF Resolution: Enemy investment level is it's maximum: 3

Pass 0= False alarm.

Lt Duke "Don't un-clench just yet ladies, double time to that cover line up front! Move it!"

I "Fast move" my squad up the table. Fast moves are rolled per figure, so it takes a pretty long time. Still, it spreads out the squad into an interesting shape.

The remaining PEFS, both Rep 6, quickly break cover and move rapidly into the open. Both are false alarms as I do not manage to roll 3 or lower (The enemy investment level) on any of my PEF resolution dice. The last one was in the best defensive position, so it was a little tense, but soon it swung violently out of cover...

Pvt Jones:"Sorry sir, scanner glitch. I think it might have been some kind of native... Cat. Or something. I'll recalibrate."

Another False alarm. No more PEFs.

Huh? No enemy troops? Not much of a battle.. I double checked the victory conditions for a patrol. To win I had to spend one full activation in each of the top 3 sectors of the board. This meant lots of activation rolls. Each activation roll carries with it the possibility of enemy reinforcements. Aha.

I played on.

Lt Duke "No napping you apes, keep 'em peeled while we scan the area."

The activation dice rolled time and again as I moved up and checked out all 3 sectors. All remained quiet until what turned out to be the the penultimate activation roll came up Star Army 2 and Lurggh 5.. a 7! Possible reinforcements!

Lt. Duke: "Heads up troopers, I smell trouble!"

But as the Lhurgg's dice read 5, which was greater than their investment level of 3 (their maximum), they passed 0 and got no reinforcements.

Pvt Jones: "Say again sir?"
Lt. Duke: "Uh, nothing. Just clearing my throat. Koff."

The next few turns are spent inspecting the remaining top 2 board sectors and the activation dice bring no more surprises.

The squad breathes a collective sigh of relief. What looked like a potential killing ground turned out to be a literal walk in the park. Mission Complete.

On their return to base, Lt. Duke racks up 1 fame point for a successful patrol.

Lt. Duke "I call that a 'Duking'."
Command: "SHUT YOUR SCUMHOLE AND GET TO THE DEBRIEFING CHAMBER!"

I rolled for campaign results and the Lhurgg force's morale was reduced by 1, as news of 1st Squad's historic unopposed landing spread through their ranks. I guess.

Campaign Morale:

Star Army:8

Lhurgg: 4

Post cakewalk thoughts:

Uh.. What? I had a nagging suspicion I didn't do everything right, but as far as I can tell from exhaustive checking, I'm 99% sure I did. It seems that rolling a 4 or better consistently for PEF resolution against an investment 3 enemy means... No action.

As a solo game? A great Success. I was drawn into the battle before it began while rolling for intel and setting up the board. Making my way across the board was a tense experience and I guess I can say I was certainly surprised that I met no enemy.

As a battle? Not exactly action packed by anyone's standards. I was entertained by the result in any case.

The rules held up very well with me having to flip around to find out everything I needed, mostly because each reference to a different rule is followed by a page number. eg: Roll for situation x (page y) which makes it all very painless.

Unfortunately I ran out of time to play another game, so fingers crossed for another report in the near future that tests the actual combat rules ;)

Khurasan's Cult Of Andromeda

2011-09-11T16:27:00.003+01:00

I gambled on painting the the rifles black/grey for contrast and I'm glad I did.

Khurasan has just released a new range of models called the "Cult of Andromeda". They have strong mythos overtones but are firmly sci-fi in terms of weapons. You could probably stretch to steampunk though if you wanted to use them for less spacey battles. I've got some of the Naga Halberds done too, but Jon hasn't released the photos yet so I'll hold off posting them until he does or gives me the OK.

I went for an Egyptian feel for these models, as I didn't want them to look just like my Thulids. These I did with an all-green color scheme that I think came out rather well.

Thulids in deep green robes and sickly green flesh.. Spooky!

They came out so well in fact, that I'm considering selling off my 15mm.co.uk Octopods and investing in more of these.

Finally, here is a multi-tentacled beast that reminds me of a Shoggoth...

Look at all those tentacles!

With the Octopus God and a cultist for scale.
The big beasts are on 50mm bases, the cultist on a 20mm

5150 Star Army Review

2011-09-09T00:52:00.001+01:00

I have always has a tempestuous relationship with THW products. On one hand I am a true fan of the way their rules truly buck the trends so common in wargaming and deliver a very different play experience to anything else on the Market. On the other hand, I've never been sure if I was playing them correctly and had trouble making sense of them in many cases. I found the layout baffling, the language used unhelpful, seemingly endless charts that seemed to have limited effect.. There were always speed bumps that stopped me really enjoying the experience.

It is for these reasons I never bought the original 5150. Five years have passed and THW has stuck with it. They have released many more games and paid a great deal if attention to fans. THW fans are pretty hardcore and luckily, very enthusiastic and positive toward newcomers. This is important to know because THW rules are supported through their Yahoo group, which boasts thousands of members. Some people say this Yahoo group is a strength of the system. (To play Devil's advocate I would suggest that if the system was that well written it would not require a Yahoo group to comprehend it... But let's put all that aside for now.)

After reading a couple of good reports I took a chance and downloaded the PDF from RPGnow.com. I'm glad I did because this book is really, really damn good.

First, to judge the book by its cover. Gone are the cringey CG efforts of the previous editions. Like all current-gen THW covers, this one is tasteful and professional looking.

On to the rules, they are written in a much more clear and direct way to the older sets (my experiences have been with Legends of Araby, CR 2.0 and 3.0) and explain the game in a very well thought out sequence that makes the game a pleasure to learn. The layout is thoughtful and a tremendous improvement for the company.

The game is presented this time as a campaign system specifically for running battles that the ubiquitous Star Army might take part in, rather than a "everything you can imagine" approach. This focus makes the whole product feel tighter and more polished. There are lists and charts for alien and insurgent forces that will proxy well for a lot of mini ranges on the Market.

Some of my favourite positives about Star Army:

*No points values. The game runs great without needing them. Brilliant.
*Vehicle rules that are both different to infantry systems yet share common mechanics. Slick.
*Vastly improved squad mechanics that are quicker to use, yet lose no flexibility. Nice.
*Great campaign system for military battles.
*Highly scalable to your own minis and terrain collections. Plays well with a handful of figures as well as platoon strength forces.
*Arguably the best solo rules and quick scenario generator on the Market.

Negatives? Surprisingly, none so far. I need to get some games under my belt to make any more comment, but as far as reading the book goes I am enthused about playing and feel likeI know how to.

One caveat may be the price. $20 USD is more than I'm accustomed to paying for a PDF, and there are a lot of comparable products for a good deal cheaper. However I don't feel cheated in any way and will hopefully get a lot of fun out of the book.

If you are at all interested in the THW family of games, this one represents a genuine turning point and you owe it to yourself to try it out.

Happy Gaming!

Khurasan Goodies

2011-08-25T15:07:00.000+01:00

A micro-post to say I haven't just been messing about with 6mm minis , I have painted a bunch of stuff for Khurasan, but can't say anything until Jon has released them into the news. I haven't quit on 15mm yet!

Side project

2011-08-22T14:23:00.000+01:00

Despite organizing my 15mm projects and STILL being behind my paint schedule... The planets aligned and I found an old box of my dear old Epic Orks. It dredged up dormant lust for 6mm minis. I took some photos. This happened.

http://nanosolo.blogspot.com/

This is a side project, so don't worry, 15mm is still my main focus. Which reminds me, I must start those Copplestone barbarians. Maybe watching the new Conan movie will inspire me.

What's on the H.U.D

2011-08-19T12:41:00.007+01:00

I have shamelessly stolen this post idea from Mik at Mik's Minis. He describes his upcoming projects as what's on his "H.U.D" (Heads up display) and I felt it was time to re-organise my ever changing project lineup as I'm having a "not much hobby time"stretch again.

1. Eldritch Horror in 15mm

To Paint:

Final 7 Khurasan zombies. 15mm.co.uk Daemon.

To build:

Some terrain (indoor floorboard style modules? Bayou terrain on CD's?) convert some Agents from The Scene into 1930's types.

2. Sci Fi narrative skirmish

To Paint:

RAFM Traveller figures, Blue moon Aquans, Shivans, GZG Ravagers, 15mm.co.uk Octopods, Micropanzer troopers, GZG Alien mercs.

To Build:

Shanty town tech terrain, Convert some Rebel minis Titan Marines, Investigate 3d printing some "Star-ingrad" ruins modules.

3. Solo Rules

Finish 1/2 done Eldritch Horror supplement for ItEN. Finish up and format "Throwdown" a new set of ultra ultra fast gunfight rules I've cooked up. (I know I never really totally finished Gut Check.. I'm sorry... I get distracted really easily)

4. Decide

...On what the heck type of terrain to concentrate on, as I've built:

Regular- For use with a Zuzzy mat. Most of this has been gradually cannibalized into Hex based stuff or sold off to Robin from Gruntz. I have almost nothing left.

Modular Squares- For grid based rules I keep neglecting to use (Forlorn Hope) and ItEN.. I suppose. I put an awful lot of work into these but haven't played a single game with them. Worth selling?

Heroscape Hexes- I thought they looked nice and would save me measuring. I think I'll keep them for playing RSBS or Quik or something like that. Maybe I can use them intelligently for Throwdown somehow. They aren't great for doing urban terrain and I'm starting to think they look less nice than traditional terrain, say on CD's.

CD Bases- OK, I haven't built any but my latest hot idea is about using them to make terrain that would be very easy to source, easy to place on the table (everything fixed to CD's, no loose bits) and completely uniform/interchangable. Plus I thought of a cool way to use them that means you don't need rulers. The downside is it would be the 4th different type of terrain I have, Although it would be compatible "regular" terrain I suppose, so maybe not that bad.

I have a really bad habit of sourcing, buying and painting a bunch of terrain I don't end up actually using for any games. Worse, I think I've spent more time painting terrain than minis in the last year, which is ass-backwards. This is getting silly (and hard to store..) So I need to be brutal and narrow it down! How brutal? I'm giving away a big box of lego* to charity today.. That's how brutal.

So yeah.. Pretty messy H.U.D, but there you go. Now figuring out how to add it to my page.

*Don't worry Mik, I saved all the minifigs.

DLPS Crew

2011-08-16T09:55:00.005+01:00

I painted these a while ago and had been putting off photographing them because of the eyes. Painting eyes on a 15mm figure is a tricky business... Many sculpts don't really have eyes, more just hollows. I think this actually looks better a lot of the time and is easy to paint. These models are amazingly detailed, but the eyes are so deep-set I'm not sure I can get a brush tip in without hitting the edges of the face. I think eyeballs look best on creatures where they can be a bit cartoony. Anyway, I kind of gave up for the moment and declared them done.

Apart from the big Alien guy, these figures are a bit on the small side. Compared to the newer 18mm-ish UNSC models, these look like teenagers. Maybe not a bad thing. They scale a lot better with old true 15mm models than newer sculpts that tend toward 18mm. Compared to the Khurasan post-apoc line or the GZG UNSC, these guys look noticeably smaller.

Great models, they have inspired me to dig out all the traveller minis I went to great trouble buying then never painted.

(PS- Blogger's new posting interface is not working very well.)

Following broken

2011-08-07T16:03:00.003+01:00

Oops!

I moved this blog to a dedicated account, and in doing so have ended up "not following" any blogs. I will redress this gradually, as Blogger has no way to export or move a following list. In fact you can't even do a mass delete.. You have to do it one at a time. Depressing.

Just letting you guys know I will be following your blogs again soon, I just have a lot of clicking to do.

Spacejacker

Review: Mantic Plastic Cases

2011-07-27T12:15:00.000+01:00

I bought 5 to test them out.

I realised during the week as I painted a zombie horde, that I had run out of room in my KR multicase to store all my figures.

As you know, I'm cheap and lazy. The cheapest and laziest storage solution for me turned out to be the small figure cases sold by Mantic games. They are only £1.50 each, and less if you get a bulk pack of 10 (Which I now wish I had.)

The main reason was that while there are better boxes and better foam, I didn't want to faff around ordering them separately and cutting them to fit.. And I certainly couldn't do it for less than £1.50 per complete unit.

Card storage!

The cases are thin plastic, almost exactly the same as old VHS cases, with 2 thin bits of loose foam. I considered glueing them in, but having at least one of them loose allows you to store cards etc. in the top. I am storing the unit's QRF cards along with them in the same box. Nice.

Khurasan 15mm Garn on 20mm round bases

I like that I can print out my own paper sleeves to ID the boxes. As you can see, this makes them quite neat and handsome to store on a bookshelf. I would have gone fancier, but I have become stingy with printer ink.. And I'm telling myself that the minimalist look is best anyway.

I wouldn't trust the cases to 100% protect my figures in a backpack or anything. With some slightly sturdier eggshell foam in at least one of the sides, I think these would be OK to transport figures as long as you were careful.
BUT, for storing them at home, they are an excellent solution for someone like me that plays small scale 15mm skirmish games. I can put a whole force, or even 2 opposing warbands into one box so I don't have to dig through my larger case to play a quick game.

Overall, the lightweight nature of the cases is more than balanced out by the (amazing) price and convenience. They arrived via the post within 48 hrs of me making my order online. Bravo Mantic!

ItEN QRF Cards

2011-07-26T12:44:00.004+01:00

(Edited July 27th 2011, to reflect Grit values changed in v2 rules)

(Click for full size document)

Here is a test sheet of character cards I made for playing "In the Emperor's name" with my non-GW 15mm figures. (The cards are designed to save printer ink, in case you were wondering why they are monochrome.)

The models I've statted are:

Garn
Garn Flesheater
Garn Hegemon
Lhurgg
Lhurgg Boss
Lhurgg Mutant
Zombie
Zombie wolf/dog
Zeig Trooper (Titan Marine)

I've done a little bit of work modifying the game into a non-40k setting, but it's not quite ready for release yet. Honestly though, the game is so open and tweakable that you don't really need to change anything in the rules except the names for some things. The fact that I could stat up my own minis so easily is just the tip of the iceberg.. The (solo playable!) campaign system is brilliant.

I want to have a bit of a zombie throwdown to see how it plays, so I started with those.. And immediately made up my own special rule for undead.

ItEN is a pretty special effort, and I think warrants a look if your'e interested in small skirmish games with any figures you have to hand.

All my 15mm Zombies

2011-07-25T11:04:00.001+01:00

I tried speed-painting these conversions I did of zombies from GZG sci-fi civillian miniatures to bulk out my other zombies.. The idea was to make space station crew or a science team that had been zombified.
The original plan was to replace their heads with Peter Pig skull heads.. but the skulls were so small that it didn't look any good to me. I tried using a couple anyway.. They ended up looking better as base decoration.

Heart-shot, no-eyes, meatface, skully

Intestines-out, brain-out, no-face, porter

While it was a fun project, they are actually a little small next to my other Khurasan zombies. When in a mass though, they are OK I suppose.

Mixed blue zombies

All my zombies

I have one pack of 7 Khurasan zombies left unpainted... Blue or fleshtone/bloody? Hmm..

More Khurasan Zombies

2011-07-24T18:27:00.001+01:00

I have bought a total of 3 bags of zombies from Khurasan in the last year, with the aim of gradually building up a horde. These models are brilliantly sculpted with lots of unmistakable zombieness to them. Even better, they are only dressed in rags so will work in any time period or zombie setting.

My original set was painted green, and I'm not sure what I should do.. Mix the different colored zombies in with each other, or re-paint my earlier models in the new "resident evil blue" scheme I've done.

The original idea was to paint them in exactly the same colours as the wolves, but I panicked at the last minute and couldn't bring myself to do more grey miniatures.

I have almost completed some zombie conversions I did a while ago, made out of GZG colonists with some putty and head swaps with Peter Pig skeleton heads... Stay tuned.

Thanks for looking!

Khurasan Undead Wolves

2011-07-19T18:44:00.000+01:00

the complete 6 pack of wolves in 3 poses.

I spray base-coated these guys black while completing some secret project models, and slapped some paint on them today. I was aiming fro a very fast paint job and they sure delivered!

Glued to sand topped 20mm platic bases, sprayed black. A quick dark grey overbrush, folowed by a light grey drybrush, then painted in all the teeth/bone/blood areas in solid blocks of colour. A devlan mud wash on these areas, highlighted once with the original colours and then washed again with Ogryn flesh gave a very pleasing quick result.

Picking out the eyes with yellow dots was a pain, but it looks really spooky so was well worth it.

These came out really well for the small effort they took, and will hopefully get some time on the table in horror games, paired with my zombies, also from Khurasan.

Thanks for looking!

Old Crow Crates 'n Barrels

2011-07-18T14:55:00.000+01:00

Crate stacks and barrels with Khursasan Post-Apoc raiders.

A package arrived today from Old Crow castings. It contained some crate stacks and barrels. These will be great scatter cover for any of my games, and I'm really impressed with the models.
I glued two of the barrel stacks together to make an upright barricade... Easy.

I also got a starter pack of 15mm pipeline parts. They would work equally well on the floor or walls.. Still deciding how to make use of them. They could easily end up in either my Spaceship or Vault tile sets so I'm undecided right now.

Also, I just sent photos to Khurasan of the last batch of models I completed for them, so hopefully the news will be out soon and I can post about them. :)

GARNNN!!!

2011-07-13T17:29:00.002+01:00

Garn warrior and Hegemon

Back view

I couldn't wait to get to these, and I had a chance last night to get paint on this small elite unit. The putty conversions came out well.. Subtle but exactly the look I was after.
I realize now that their uniforms are exactly the same color scheme as my recent post-apoc paintjobs.. But hey, I make no apologies.. The lime green skin makes up for it I think.

Old and new Garn Warriors

Back view

The warriors are a mix of original figures and the new, which are one piece castings. I definitely recommend mixing them, as it creates a really nice diversity of pose.

Finally, I finished off my spare Flesheater. I painted him with brown skin and white ceramic armor, so he sits well with the other one, while looking different to the other regular troops I have.

Here's a final shot of all my Garn together.. Not much of a cohesive theme, but at least the different units are easy to tell apart!

Garrrrrn!

Garn Converting

2011-07-11T18:20:00.000+01:00

While getting a little bit of hobby time (about 2 hours) on the weekend, I ran across my unpainted Garn, and was reminded of how badly I wanted the Hegemon and Flesheater models, but then didn't paint them once in my grubby paws. So I set about doing the second Flesheater and prepping the rest.

I had the idea of making a mixed skin tone unit, with more of a uniformed and less of a "naked dinosaurs in boots" look. Don't get me wrong, I think the Lhurrg are awesome models, wang out and all.. But the bare legs with human boots has always bothered me a bit with the Garn. (I think if they had open toe boots with claws poking out the front I would be happier).

So I set about the small group with some ProCreate putty, which really is easier to use than greenstuff as people say. These are fairly modest conversions, but the idea is that these Garn will only have exposed heads, arms and tails. The rest of them will be painted as fatigues and armor plates. I am going to do kneepads on them all the match the Hegemon, but am wisely waiting until the trousers cure so I don't mess them up.

Garn are still my favorite Sci-fi 15mm alien race. ;)

My next painting session is set aside for secret unrelased models, so the poor old Garn will have to wait a while longer, but my enthusiasm for painting them is high.

3d Spaceship modular tiles

2011-07-04T10:14:00.001+01:00

Completed tile with Micropanzer 15mm SAS and GW Rippers

I've finished (forgot to varnish) some spaceship interior modular tiles for use with 15mm scale figures. They took a lot of planning, but were very easy to make once I had everything to hand.

With GZG Alien Merc

Following the same principle as my underground vault tiles, each one is a 5x5 gid of 25mm squares. Most of the tiles have an opening in the middle of each edge so that they may be connected in a huge variety of different layouts.

With Khurasan Post-apoc ganger

Here's the recipe:

125mmx125mm foamcore square for the base

25mm lipped square bases for the tiles

checkerplate plastic sheet for the tile inserts

IMEX/bits for alternate plates

Hirst Arts "industrial edge" pieces. Cast in Hydrostone from TabletopBuildings.NL

Assembly tip: I used a small individual blob of Copydex (PVA like glue) to glue each square and piece down. Spreading PVA all over the whole tile will cause it to warp.

Make sure you paint PVA thoroughly over the edges of the foamcore. This will prevent the spray undercoat from eating into it. I was considering hand painting the undercoat on but believe me, spraying is a lot less hassle. If you have a spray gun, then you can use acrylic paint and won't have to do the PVA.

The painting was quite simple. I drybrushed GW Mithril silver all over the whole piece. Then I painted some of the pipes with a dark green and used a wash of brown ink/black ink/future wax on the pipes and to make some oily patches on the floor. The goal was to make the whole tile look a little less uniform.

I did a little bit of an experiment and tried to paint on some green light from a computer screen spilling out. It worked OK, and I recommend adding some kind of small colored element to each tile to stop it looking dull.

Small bits of color make a big difference

What really makes this project work is the Hirst Arts pieces. They are almost ideally suited to doing this sort of thing in 15mm... They look great and scale perfectly.

I had a caster make mine because I didn't want to hassle of learning to cast my own.. However if you have the space to do it, the savings of buying your own mold will soon become apparent.

I need to order some more plastic bases now to complete this first set of 9, but I'm really pleased with how these have turned out.

Thanks for looking!

Now I'm in trouble...

2011-06-30T23:57:00.001+01:00

The Abyss of 15mm fantasy!

OHNOES!!!

I just ordered the new 15mm barbarians from Copplestone castings. This means I will have to order some Blood Dawn Orcs now. And some Demonworld figures. Argh.

At least it will stop me trying to play SOBH with lego. I know. Don't ask.

Khurasan Post Apocalypse Raiders

2011-06-30T23:14:00.000+01:00

I've had these minis sitting around for a while, and to be honest I've put off painting them because I found them a bit intimidating. They have an amazing amount of detail and a lot of different surfaces.. Chainmail, cloth, skin, etc. I managed to get them finished quite quickly due to some welcome sunshine today. I did it the old-school Warhammer method of "one color at a time on the whole unit", which predictably, worked well.

I'm kicking myself for not ordering the rest of this small range last time, but hey, it's not like I don't have an entire drawer full of unpainted minis, so I suppose I can wait. I may press some more Sci-fi minis into post-apoc service. In fact it will be fun doing a few little conversions. Probably time to get some more GZG gasmask heads in.

Thanks for looking!