Mechs, Buildings and oh my!

Another really productive week, managed to get the foam core buildings from last week painted up:

I sprayed them using a brown stone textured spray that went on ok, it did create some bubbling on the buildings but that died down once they were dry. To finish them I drybrushed on Graveyard earth, desert yellow followed by bleached bone, they look alright, a little brown maybe. Lesson learnt as well, spray the insides of the buildings black before starting the outsides otherwise the white really shows through the windows!

Painting wise I got a fair bit done this week, an Em4 miniatures plastic Mech ready to game with:

A squad of crusty heavy infantry:

and a couple of oddities:

The last two are the controller from the 15mm SHM range and a little familiar from GW's Huron Blackheart kit (I have a few of these from repeatedly being sent failed casts from the finecast range, in the end they were never able to deliver a complete kit, but that's another story...), he looked like he would fit right in somewhere in 15mm :).

Elsewhere I managed to spend a night play testing Fubar Mech:

.... and it never really hung together very well so i've made some more changes to try and streamline the rules and hopefully make it more fun to play.

I managed to order those mini's I mentioned last week, still waiting for a few packs to arrive to get stuck in and sods law I go and order from Khurasan only for them to release a huge number of new releases a few days after!! ah well, just going to have to juggle a few buys and hide the packets coming through the post from my wife...

What did arrive today though was my order from Kremlin miniatures, had a mail a couple of days ago from Russ that they had been cast and were ready to ship and here they are:

I'm really impressed with the detail on these, I initially dismissed them a while back after seeing the pics on the site but i'm so glad I ordered as I can't wait to get these based and on the table.

Rule-wise this week I am still very slowly sketching out the ideas I had for a new rule set that will fill a bit of a niche, it's getting there and I should have something to show in a month, hopefully.

Still working on the Gruntz cards too, particularly the Specialists.

With all that I did this week I will be easing off a little over the next couple of weeks, I can feel the strain when trying to commit to painting/doing so much and it feels like i'm spreading myself a little thin so with a weeks holiday coming up I am going to sit back and relax and probably read through a rule book or two. That does sound a little odd, relaxing by reading through some stringent rulebooks? but I think that's the steady niche of nerd i've been easing myself in to for a while now, you see I am just fascinated with the whole concept of GAME. How people can present concepts in boardgames and role play and wargames whether they are abstract or really marry to the theme that's being played out, it's these play mechanics and different ways of thinking that repeatedly surprise me and drive me onwards to turn my own thoughts into some written form that someone can read as a schematic and then just GAME with......

This weeks show is sponsored by the color red.

Really productive this week! the cold weather still meant I can't get to the garage but...I created a super small paint tray out of an old place mat and brought my lamp up to sit on the edge of the sofa and hey presto, way more time to get painting. My pics are a little dark this week at I took my mini's down to the garage where my photo setup was only to discover it had vanished! My father in law had mistaken my empty box light box as an empty box and had promptly folded it up and thrown it away, apparently he did find it odd that a lamp was poking inside it....

On the left is one of the Chronotopia mechs I picked up earlier that I want to use as a droid attachment for skirmish games, the other two are EM4 miniature plastic Mechs, the green one I am a little unsure about, I like the scheme but I think it needs a spot color somewhere? .I got a box of 5 for £2.50 and to be honest they are great, once based and painted they look good on the table. I based them on two penny pieces to give them more weight and I have no complaints with any soft details etc, they look good after a coat and wash.

A couple of the Mechs I finished a few weeks ago but this week I managed to paint up 20 15mm.co.uk cultists, painting them all in one go in a kind of production line I was able to get them all finished for the tabletop pretty quick but still need to do some extra details to single out leaders. Really like these, the sculpts have just enough detail (some of the hands and feet are a little flat) but are still easy to paint.

These pics made me realize that i'm probably using way too much red in my minis, so hands off it for a while. I'm painting up some GZG Mercenary aliens at the mo so plenty of blue :).

I also bought and printed a copy of the Gruntz rules this week, really liking what i've read so far and I'm planning to get a few plays in before reviewing it fully but in the meantime it has got me in the mood for some armour so i'm scouting to pick up some sci fi tank minis. :)