Chronicling the eternal struggle to reduce the Lead Pile
The week started off well, adjusig my test paint scheme on my 25mm GZG ESU naval troops and finishing the figures I had primed up. There is a squad left in ‘cold weather capes’ that I need to decide how to make up with stealth camo cloaks. In the Tomorrows War setting the Chinese PLA has access to personal stealth technology so I just need to figure out how to model that on the cloaks.
April wound up being a good month overall, with significant progress! I finished the equivalent of 44 more 28mm figures towards my goal of 350. I’m also 2 figures away from completing the commission of a German WWII army for a friend!
This week I worked on a couple of test color schemes for 25mm Ground Zero Games figures. I wasn’t happy with the last time I attempted an urban camo pattern, so I took another shot at it I’m fairly pleased with this first batch of figures, the only change I made on the next batch was painting the guns darker which helps them stand out against the grey armor plates.
The week of March 22nd saw me finish up two different projects sitting around and making progress on a third. Well I’m almost done, I ran out of AK Interactive Ultra Matte and waiting on a back order to be filled.
I finished off the metal Combine Ogre minis from Steve Jackson Games. The last of the missile tanks are waiting for the Ultra Matte to come in, whenever that is. Now I need to get cracking on all the plastic minis I have from the Kickstarers. But first I’ll need more bases from Litko.
Last week, the week of the 15th, was rough. In preparation of what turned into a total lockdown here in NY my wife and I started to transition to working from home. We set up work stations, decided to pull the 2 year old out of daycare and tried to get a routine set up. I carved a spot out in the basement, moved everything around and got to trying to work.
On the modeling front I didn’t get a whole lot finished. I prepped a bunch of 6mm sci-fi stuff, mostly old metal OGRE minis and some Bradley Miniatures I got from Alternative Armies. These guys will be the OpFor for the plastic OGRE minis I still need to order some more glue to finish assembling. Its just a simple brown desert paint job with green unit markings and some greebles picked out in grey and red.
My on going 25mm Project continues with the ESU ‘Heavy’ infantry that were produced in partnership with Eureka Games for quite some time until only a handful of years ago. The Eurasian Solar Union in the Tuffleyverse consists more or less of China, Russian, India, most of the rest of Asia and these troops are clearly meant to mirror the padded uniforms of WWII Soviet troops. In my Tomorrows War games these troops will be used to represent the Democratic Peoples Republic of Glory conscript troops. The DPRG is, more or less, space North Korea. I love the almost retro look to these troops and think they really invoke the image of poorly trained conscripts forced into service.
The sculpts are detailed and the old casts were clean, requiring only a little cleanup. I contacted Eureka in Australia and they offered to spin up the molds for me, but they didn’t have the minis on the website anymore so I had to dig around to find a cached version of the catalog. Shipping is going to make them expensive but it will round out my platoon.
Continue reading “GZG 25mm Eurasian Solar Union ‘Heavy’ Infantry Figures”Ground Zero Games is known for two things. 1: Great sculpts, and B: not having photos of those great sculpts. I bought a large collection of their 25mm figures from a guy a couple years ago and just started painting them up for use in Tomorrows War and solo games of 5150 Star Army. The collection isn’t quite complete so I’ve been adding to it from GZG and also just recently contacted Eureka Miniatures to pick up some of their sculpts too. I also just got some new toys for photography, macro extension tubes, and wanted to play around with them so I figured I’d take some photos of these great sculpts.
The sculpts are pretty good, my favorite so far from GZG’s 25mm. The details are well defined and realistic. The sizes, sculpts and quality are pretty consistent across the entire GZG range and match size wise with several other 25mm range including the West End Games Star Wars figures which I should be tackling later this year. The castings I got with the collection were very clean and the new ones I ordered recently have minor and very easily cleaned up flashing.
I have a decent sized collection of unpainted Ground Zero Games 25mm Stargrunt figures that I’m planning on using in both Tomorrow’s War and 5150 Star Army from Two Hour Wargames. My plan is to use them to fight out both the first and second Glory War, pitting the DPRG against the combined force of the US Marines and the Republic of Arden.
GZG’s Neu Swabian League’s troops in their hard armor, enclosed helmets, gyro-stabilized SAWs and energy weapons fit well into my vision for the US Marines. They looks tougher than the ESU troops but still just behind the cutting edge like the Marines are described.
