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.
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.
This week was a good week, with a wide range of progress. I’ve tackled miniatures, work projects, block progress and YouTube progress, although I’ve slipped in my Instagram posting mostly because of the work project.
I finished up 10 Terminator Genisys resistance fighters in a similar urban camo paint scheme that I’ve been working on for the GZG figures. I’m not entirely satisfied with the paint jobs but it pulled together a little more after the ink was so I’m going to call them done and put them in the storage box. They’re just going to get cut down in droves by the terminators anyways.
I’ve been going through my tubs of minis and clearing half finished projects off of shelves. I’m really not interested in moving minis with half a paint job on them, I finished a bunch of my planned painting early this week so I wanted to knock out some quick progress.
I started finishing off a whole bunch of painted 15mm sci fi minis whose’s bases were never painted. I’ve looked into a rules systems called Mech Attack which uses hex basing and infantry on movement bases which lead me to take some 15mm mechs I had put on washers and take them off for rebasing. Unfortunately in the process some paint was stripped off of the feet and needed to be retouched. These Khurasan 15mm mech walkers will be used as infantry support mechs, the smallest mechs I’ll be fielding and probably designed as vehicles in the rules. Mech Attack doesn’t have rules for anything this small so I’ll have to figure something out. I also pulled out two un-built models, so I’ll be doing a video when I assemble and paint them. These are simple walkers with two twin autocannons and a 2 shot anti-tank missile launcher. They’re small and squat and serve as lower tech walkers in my Tomorrows War forces. Khurasan sells these as the Python Power Armour under their Nova Respublik line
Khurasan’s Python Power Armour promo photos.
I learned about Mech Attack from the Chicago Skirmish Wargames blog where they’ve done several write ups of club and convention games they’ve used the rules set for playing in 28mm with some awesome terrain and mechs! Check out their archives here: Chicago Skirmish Wargames
I also pulled out two Combat Wombat grav scout armored cars from the same box. One was finished, but the second had it’s commander bust loose before it could be finished being painted. The vehicle commanders are Brigade Models vaguely Russian troops. I’ve used them as DPRG in Tomorrows War where these scout vehicles are higher tech than their usual equipment and provided by their Earth based sponsors. I’ll be basing them on a hex base and giving it a floating appearance with some brass rod, which has to wait for Litko to open back up. Combat Wombat has unfortunately been out of business for years with the fellow who bought the line refusing to even answer questions about it any more, which is a shame because their turned brass barrels were awesome and a unique product in the 15mm sci-fi scene.
Combat Womabt’s Fennec grav scout car sample photo.
The third project I finished off this week was a set of Warlord Games Higgins Boat gunners. I go these well over a year ago for our D-Day in July game and didn’t get them finished in time for the 2019 game so they sat on the shelf. I don’t know if we’ll be doing a D-Day game this year with the pandemic but I wanted to get them finished and moved off the shelf of shame. I also have a third Higgins Boat to finish painting. It’s tough finding color photos of the drivers and gunners but the ones I found had the life jackets painted in some ‘Army Green’ colors, which is boring. So I went with the yellow life jackets, might not be historical but it does give them some more character and they stand out now.
As far as my 2020 painting goals go I only get to count the 28mm gunners, the others are just retouching so they don’t really count towards my 350, but I have 25 or so GZG 25mm ESU figures based and prime and I’ll start knocking them out next week, so April looks like it’ll be a good month.
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.
I started of the week with a short list of models to paint. I wanted to start on my Tehnolog Battletech force and paint up some of the Beyond the Gates of Antares Ghar battlesuits, not that I know what to use them for since I don’t play the actual game.
The more I use them the more I like the Army Painter matched primers and paint. They’re not cheap but they speed up my painting progress quite a bit, and these days the time is more important to me. I used the Wolf Grey and decided on a french Caunter camo inspired paint scheme for both the Ghar and the mechs. Painting them together helped get them finished pretty quick, by the time I finished going down the production line with one color the first model was dry and ready for the next.
The beginning of April hit me with some hobby ADD. I started the week working on some more Eisenkern, a third squad plus a command element to finish up a platoon. That didn’t last long though! I also have a longish term project of finishing the basing on three platoons of 25mm GZG figures that wasn’t even touched.
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.
