Eurasian Solar Union – Addicted to Lead

Painting scheme for GZG 25mm ESU Heavy infantry.

In an effort to stop losing my painting recipes I’m going to start posting them here!

Week of June 28th, great progress for the start of July.

I set out this past week to finish off two forces, and start two more. I had the last of my ESU naval troops to finish up in their urban camo, and the last six destroyers for my Kra’Vak fleet that I accidentally washed off the red ink from. I also wanted to start my 15mm GZG Colonial Militia troops and the 15mm murder robots from The Scene that I had to strip the poor paint jobs off of and rebase.

I wanted to paint the robots a metallic red. After seeing a couple of videos on YouTube out maxing your own metallic pants I gave it a try. Unfortunately the robots turned out a pink Pepto-Bismol-ish color that I was most definitely not pleased with. So I took this as an opportunity to test a couple things out since I couldn’t find a metallic red paint I was satisfied with. We’ll see how it turns out and I’ll strip them again and use the best method.

Peoples Liberation Army. First Glory War solo campaign.

The First Glory War commences as the Peoples Republic of China lands troops on Glory in a bid to cement their claim on the newly settled garden world. A company worth of light mechanized troops, plus logistical support, lands near what will eventually become the Republic of Arden. The forces were hastily assembled from the 11th Stellar Intervention Division which had just stood down from a seven year long suppression of a rebellion on their colony world Zhuang. Although the war on Glory was short and only included a handfull of major actions it did see the first use of Armored Fighting Suits in the last days of the war.

First Contact, The defense of Foix. The First Glory War solo campaign.

After a failed legal bid before the Organization of Progressive States to claim discovery of the garden planet Glory, the People’s Republic of China launches a “Liberation Fleet” and starts the first extra-solar system military action in human history. Titan Interplanetary corporate employees and the newly settled colonists leasing land in what will eventually become The Republic of Arden brace themselves for combat. The spark of war ignites as a platoon of PLA troops pushes through Bois de l’écart Foix, a logging encampment set in the Foix Gap. The settlers construct a hasty defense and prepare to repel the PLA troops.

GZG 25mm ESU figures for Tomorrows War

Part of the collection of Ground Zero Games Stargrunt figures I picked up included a platoon of Eurasian Solar Union ‘Naval’ figures. These come in two uniforms, one with helmets and hard chest armor and a smaller selection with the same uniforms and added ‘cold weather capes’. I’ve decided to use these as my Democratic Peoples Republic of Glory regular troops and the cold weather capes as stealth camo capes acquired through the backing of China late in the Second Glory War.

The sculpts were done by Kev White and hold up very well for their age. I ordered some extras from Ground Zero Games recently and the casts are just as clean as the 20 year old ones I have. They are full of sharp details and are consistent in size with the rest of the Stargrunt line and with the WEG Star Wars figures I have.

The week of May 3rd, new toys and fixing old mistakes.

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.

The week of April 26th, wrapping up a good month!

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.

Ground Zero Games ESU naval figures and a Proxie Models pre-fab building.

Last weeks progress, week of March 15th

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.

GZG 25mm Eurasian Solar Union ‘Heavy’ Infantry Figures

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.