Cranking up production in the shipyard!

I’ve been on a Full Thrust kick lately despite not having played in probably 20 years! I’ve picked up a number of collections from Ebay and facebook groups and I’m filling out some areas with orders from Jon at GZG.

So far I have four-ish factions laying around. I have a sizable UNSC fleet almost all built and a I’m testing out a paint scheme, I have an NSL fleet that needs more assembly, A Crusty fleet that needs assembly, and an old school Kr’Vak fleet assembled and on the work bench now plus a new Kra-Vak fleet that is partially assembled and needs more models to flesh it out. I also have a pirate ‘fleet’ but it’s so few ships that I finished half the fleet just working out the paint scheme on four test-ships so its hard to count that as a full fleet.

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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.

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Three projects from the back of the shelves.

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.

I talk about my effort to clear out stalled projects in the my contribution to the Wargaming Recon blog here: Stalled projects, or Oh Shiny! The road to 350.

Stalled projects, or Oh Shiny! The road to 350.

We all have projects we started and then ignored for awhile. My biggest issue is when I put a wash on something and wait for it to dry overnight, only to immediately start on something else and ignore the first project. This is one of the reasons why when I’m painting my D&D monsters and NPCs I stop after the wash and simply seal them. I don’t need to have a top notch paint job on a monster who will hit the table once or twice, so it’s base coat, wash, heavy varnish since it’ll be abused, and shoved in the plastic tubs I keep them in.

Unfortunately wargamers are basically hoarders. Every single wargamer that I know, and role player for that matter, has piles of unfinished projects, rule books and instruction sheets from everything they’ve ever done. 14 pairs of spare arms from a finished box of plastic infantry? Better keep them, you never know when you’ll need 30 left arms that only hold a specific SMG!

Mostly arms… a couple of heads…
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