Couple of 15mm bits

Things have been really quiet here on the 15mm front, i've not really been able to get stuck in to any rulesets or get any games in so the models have been sat waiting to be painted but I did manage to finish off a couple of units.

First up is a group of GZG USNC Hardsuit troops, I honestly don't remember ever ordering these! but thought i'd have a go at painting brown and yellow together, they came out ok but i'm not sure how well they will fit in with the other USNC troops.

Next is a great Resin/Metal mixed kit from Khurasan miniatures the Corporate Marine L-HAC (Legged Heavy Assault Cyborg), this unit towers above all the over 15mm miniatures and Mechs I have and even works really well as a 28mm Mech unit. I always thought the model was familiar and it does appear to have more than a passing resemblance to Robo Cain from Robocop 2...

The unit stands really well on it's own so I left it off a base, I just need to get some buildings/city to scale it up against! :) Here's a comparison pic of the L-HAc against a few other minis to show it's size off:

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......

Easing back in

Really hectic last couple of weeks with travelling and an unbelievably stressful work week this week (had to put some 12 hour days as well) have taken a big bite out of any scheduled time I had to get cracking hobby wise, although I still found the odd hour to get a few bits done....in between I managed to paint up a couple of GZG Cyclops Heavy Battlesuits, went for a slightly different colour scheme with these and played with some lighter yellows/browns, yellows being a colour I have shied away from due to the paints i've used being very watery but I used a foundation paint with looked pretty good. Looking at the pics blown up though I really need to water down some of the paints as it's looking a little heavy handed.

I popped into the range to pick up some household bits last weekend and was surprised to Foam Core boards for sale! I've been checking on their website but never found it. Picked up 5 A3 boards for £7.99 and just went for it, no major scale measurements just went for roughly 2.80 cm per floor and went a building. I made up three north African/Tunisian esque builds that I figured could be used in a host of scenarios/eras, I managed to pollyfilla the cracks today and should sand them down and texture spray them tomorrow:

While I was travelling I took the gruntz sheets with me and started sketching out the stats for the mini's in my collection, i've started making the profile cards up and putting the jpegs on the Gruntz forum here, the pdf I was creating were really crisp but they are coming in around 8megs so i'll have to see if I can make them smaller.

Elsewhere I got lost in flights of fantasy, I have been meaning to playtest the Fubar Mech rules once a few mini's were painted and to even get a few games of Fubar in but time has not been on my side, perhaps next week....also while I was away I took my notebook and outlines for a new ruleset/background I wanted to work on having had a large number of ideas sketched out I want to get some structure in place but again once back in my room I just needed to crash. :( I will get my ass in gear and get this ALL done next week! (note to self).

Having bought a pile of miniatures back before last December the idea was to get them all painted before buying any more and I cannot stress how hard this has been! There is SO much quality being released in 15mm at the moment and so fast it's hard to keep up, so I am going to have to focus and expand on what I already have. Looking at the Cultists I was trying to find an APC/Tank that would really suit the theme and came across these fench WW1 tanks from Blue Moon via old glory in the uk:

I think with a little conversion work these would make some great Cultist Steampunk APC/Tanks. To lead them it has to be Comrade Vortan from Kremlin miniatures with some armoured support via the Cyberian Death commandos, but they also need some kind of big hitters i.e a mega construction of the disciples....mm I do have a few dollars in paypal for my first Khurasan order. :)

There's also been this scratch I have been wanting to itch for a while, I having a passing interest in the ACW and have been recently reading/learning the history so want to explore the wargaming side, only it's a little awkward. I don't feel I know the history enough to do full scale or even the painting schemes justice but I want to get stuck in and since no one has published "Wargaming: for people who don't know much about history but like the cool uniforms and the loud guns." I thought I would start on the small skirmish level. The 15mm.co.uk potomac mini's caught my eye a while back (a nice paint job goes a long way) so might be a good start, rule wise I have been edging towards getting Too Fat Lardies Terrible Sharp Sword along with the original sharp Practice rules. Seems a bit of a pain in the ass having to buy both to get the full rules but hey. I was looking at Fire and Fury Regimental, but with the International postage/import tax/UK postage handling charge etc it's a bit too much to ask just to tip my toe in.

Coming up I am tempted to visit my FIRST wargames show! Exeter Legionary show 2012 is on May 5th (I think, they've neglected to put the date on the actual show site...) and there are a few interesting traders going, be good to see Angel Barracks and the 6mm mini's in person. It's a long shot i'll be able to make it but you never know :)

Anyway, feel like i'm just brain dumping now so best to sign off. Probably best to try and update a more regularly that one big weaving conversation, :/ Cya's.

Into the Heart of things

Right, i'm getting to the point now where I have based up all my minis and have painted quite a few, got some terrain made up etc but i'm at a bit of a crossroads as to where to head of to next? Do I keep painting up war-bands for skirmish or start to pull in new elements and begin building up some forces for larger scale combats..I think i'm going to start pulling in some more troops and armour to match up with what I've already painted up and to hopefully start to get some cohesive paint schemes together.

Terrain wise I still need plenty more! I realized what I was missing during my last game and that's some kind of sense of height/verticle perspective with buildings etc, I want to start off with a north African or mudisley esque set of buildings so this week I have been researching these from buying pre painted through to casting my own.

Painting this week has been pretty good, managed to finish off all the GZG Mercenaries, love these sculpts so painting them was no chore. I think i'm going to use these at a couple of squads of Guln/Nerg for Gruntz as they fit the fluff pretty well. Definitely going to pick up the other Mercenary pack GZG sell as well to bolster this lot up.

To paint these I used the following for the basecoat (over black spray):

Skin: Enchanted Blue

Boots: Scorched Brown

Armour: Boltgun Metal

Leather: Bestial Brown

Trousers: Adeptus Battlegrey

Then washed the skin using Leviathan Purple and the rest of the model with Devlan Mud.

To highlight I mixed some bleached bone with the base colours and used some Mithril silver for the armour plates.

It's a pretty basic scheme but it was fairly quick to paint and I think it looks pretty effective, if I was going to change anything I wouldn't have used quite such a heavy mud wash on them as they dried quite dark.

Had a bit of a bargain turn up in the post this week from ebay :

A mixture of 12 Tom CATS and Wild CATS along with 16 Bio Soldiers from Rebel Minis, they need a little bit of work and I have started to re-base them but they should provide a substantial force! :)

Also this week to stop me getting too drained with the painting I got a bit of time to update the Fubar Mech one page rules with a few small changes such as:

- removed the mount points limits.
- removed limit on jump packs.
- Added restriction to Evasive actions for Heavy Mechs.
- Added some additional modifiers to the Damage charts depending on Mech class.
- Edited the layout of the document to provide more space for further work.

With some great input from Chris from the Basement Gaming Bunker (these changes were his ideas and I agree they fit well), the latest version can be found here. Hoping to get some play testing on this under way in the next few weeks once I have finished painting up some of these Mechs on my table.

Got cracking making some new pics of my mini's ready to create some cards for Gruntz, I used Gimp to format the images and then Inkscape to read in the PDF templates and alter the details. Looking pretty good so far, will get these printed/carded and ready to roll soon. :)

All in all a fairly productive week, got some travelling to do next week but it's pay day as well so I am eyeing up some big hitters! Enjoy. :)

Dirty little secrets...

Well, I didn't get nearly enough hobby time over the holiday period due to not actually been sober enough to to focus on anything smaller than my hand! Hobby gifts were slim on the ground this year too (a pack of D6 and a pair of slippers to keep me warm while painting in the garage).

I did manage to get a few mini's painted and due to having a nice eclectic mix primed up ready I was able to pick and choose any and experiment with the painting, ending up with this crew. All ready for a small skirmish or a shooty game of Blasters and Bulkheads.

Just before we get to the new year I thought i'd clear up my work space in the garage, while cleaning away I kept finding more and more mini's just forgotten about or half finished in boxes. Which leads me to one of wargamings little secrets (or not so secret), pretty much no one can keep up with the demand of releases coming out, just trying to get one army painted and based can take years not allowing for all the shiny items that come out in between. I'm guilty of it as much as anyone, having multiple projects on the go and still keeping one eye on ebay/news sites for any good deals.

So, having a good tidy up allowed me to take stock of what I've got and to start planning out the projects for the year, only problem is they don't look that many, I keep convincing myself I can run more! I have included my 28mm projects here too, just to give myself a written reminder of what I proposed:

• Vostroyan Army (28mm): Almost, almost there with this, been working on it for about two years and i'm down to the last ten man squad and two vehicles to finish, then it's basing and I will have completed a 1000 point all metal vostroyan troop force. :)

• Ork Army (28mm): This one has been collecting dust for awhile, still needs a few characters and vehicles painting (the warbikes finally killed it for me in the end, I hated trying to build and paint these so they ended back in the box).

• Battlefleet Gothic/Full Thrust: Still need a couple of ships to complete my BFG chaos fleet and start getting it on the table, some of the Full thrust ships look mighty tasty too....I have also started drafting out a one page ruleset for space combat.

• Wood Elves (28mm): Another one bought on a whim for a game i'm very unlikely to play, about halfway ish through painting these but still a way to go, a nice distraction now and then.

• Mantic - Kings of war/Warpath (28mm): Big fan of Mantic and what they do, I picked up the Kings of War starter last summer and tried to do an intense 3 week speed paint of the whole box (over 100 minis!), it quite literally broke me and it has been sat back on the shelf in shame. Good learning experience though, and with the Warpath starter showing up for as little as £30 now with two full armies and rules I might be tempted again.......

• Adeptus Titanicus: I used to love this and the Titan models, unfortunately sold them all a few years ago. Now on the lookout to try and pick up some new minis and build a titan order.

• Rogue Trader: Another ruleset I really miss, would love to pick up another copy of this and a few RT era mini's for small RPG skirmishes. Along with a possible Iron Hands/Adeptus army.

anyway on to the 15mm:

• USNC army: Picked up a fair few more mini's and vehicles for the USNC, still going to paint them in a sci fi red colour scheme but I want to experiment with some more realistic looks.

• Mech Detachments: I've a few mech minis to paint up and I was inspired by the recent release of the Imperator (which looks great) and the number of complaints about it's cost to see how many different mechs suitable to 15mm I could source for £20, managed to find some interesting specimens which I hope to paint up and blog soon.

• Cultist/Mechanicus: Got a few packs of the cultist mini's from 15mm.co.uk (they look a little off scale to me? wonder if it's the large bases they are on) and they look ripe for converting into a Mechanicus cult troop with robotic arms etc. the cyborg enslavers that came free with this order should go well with these too.

• Characters: A big mass of individual character models to paint here, I loved painting what I got so far so expect these to be high up on the priority list.

• Alien troops: From Mercenaries to Crusties, lots and lots to paint up.

• Redemptionist force: Fair few of these to get stuck in to, having a few problems seeing the details on some of the models but I might just try some painting experiments and see how it goes. Also the 15mm.co.uk site has just updated with new pics for the Laserburn range, looking a lot better.

• Terrain/Terrain/Terrain: bane of my life, must admit I do not like making terrain but I still have all the scatter terrain from before and the main boards to finish. Ho hum.

Phew! that felt pretty epic working through it all, but all going well I should be able to knock each one off the list in good time......

New Horizons

...And so it begins. A few months back I kind of stumbled upon/ran into a whole new world of wargaming, i'd been an avid 28mm gamer for a long time being brought up on Rogue Trader and just expanded from there. Painting and collecting, chasing the elusive dream of a complete force.

I was happy, but in recent years the increase in costs/frustration at rules just left me feeling boxed in.

Then along came 15mm, I really cant express how awesome this discovery has been for me! the figures, the rules, the community, so...here I am trying to blog about my journey. Which leads me to....a whole new world of exploration of painting/collecting/photography/modelling.

I started off by picking up a few mini's from Ground Zero Games and just got cracking, here are the results:

and so to the first of my probs, playing around my camera I was having a few issues trying to get the light right and getting the camera to focus on the whole scene. I started off by painting up some USNC light Infantry, the models were great to paint and I really liked how they came out:

To back these guys up I grabbed some of the Spider Drones, when painting these up realized I had skipped over some cleanup and I tried a different paint scheme to contrast with the above troops:

I finally managed to get some better lighting sorted for the Spider Drones but must admit the close in shots show up so many painting defects! I still love the idea of multi legged combat walkers so to provide some heavy support to this group I added Gun Crab Walker, loved this model and the vision of it stepping over terrain firing of support shots:

Anyway, here was my first step into 15mm and I loved doing it all, the above took me just a week to build up and paint with an average of an hour a night so really a great plus for me! Only now I need to get some opposition painted up, some terrain sorted and get stuck into a few rule sets! :)