Hura Reinforced

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Regular visitors to this blog will know that my poor Hura (four-armed aliens from Clear Horizon) got resoundingly hammered by the Space Dwarves in our last battle, with most of the damage done by a Dwarf scoutship which kept flying down from the skies and blowing Hura hovertanks away! My Hura had no response, as the range is one of those tiresome infantry-only ranges, with no support elements.

I’d already given the Hura some Xarledi hovertanks from Brigade Model’s Yenpalo range, now it was time to see what Brigade had to offer in the way of something I could use for AA protection.

Brigade has a huge range of figures and vehicles, but the ones that caught my eye this time were from their sci-fi Polish range. These were sufficiently odd-looking to go with the Hura and Xarledi, so I quickly ordered a couple of AA half-tracks and another mounting a Multiple Rocket launcher System (MRLS).

I’ve now painted them up (they leapfrogged the last of the space dwarves) in the same colours as the hovertanks, and think they have come out very well.

Wilk AA Half-Tracks

Wilk MRLS Half-Tracks

As always, excellent service and models from Brigade. Recommended.

Methinks the Hura need some more…

More Grudd Infantry from Onslaught

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I’ve almost cleared all the 15mm sci-fi dwarves from my lead mountain! Just one more contingent to go, and I’m half way through them.

Meanwhile, here’s the last of the Grudd infantry from Onslaught Miniatures. They are the chaps who produce some really lovely (and complete) sci-fi ranges in 6mm, and a couple of lines of 15mm figures too.

One of those 15mm lines is the Grudd: effectively sci-fi dwarves. Regular readers will know that the basic infantry types (Clansmen, Demolishers, Siege Breakers) have already been finished and logged…so here are the Iron Lords in their superheavy armour and the Drudgers (militia types):

Iron Lords (left) and Drudgers (above)

I honestly can’t recommend these enough. Beautifully cast cubist space dwarves with a variety of very cool weaponry. Painting them as shown is easy: a metallic undercoat that becomes the top coat for the armour, then faces, beards and weapons in different colours. Highlight with some bright unit markings and you’re away.

More Boontown Dwarves

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And the production line of sci-fi dwarves continues as I am determined to clear all of them from my lead mountain.

Today we have the Hearthguard from Boontown Metals:

These are slightly better cast than the Shaker Cannon teams I was complaining about a few days ago, but still of the rough-and-ready variety instead of the clean-crisp variety I prefer.

No matter: must collect all sci-fi dwarves, no matter what!

Warbases SciFi Terrain

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Things are all a bit scifi at the moment: mainly because that’s what tends to accumulate in the lead mountain. Figures for all the other periods leapfrog to the front of the painting queue, with poor old scifi left lingering behind.

But, as we all know, I’m trying to clear some of the lead mountain at the moment, and look what I’ve found and painted today: it’s the landing pad from Warbases 15mm scifi terrain range.

The pad is a laser-cut kit consisting of the ramp and the pad itself. It comes with no instructions, as Warbases assure their customers that the build is “intuitive”.

Well that may be so…but it still didn’t stop me putting the legs together incorrectly first time around. Note that the leg pillars have a top and a bottom (wider gap at the bottom) and that the feet go at the end of the legs not built back up to create a little moat around them. Confused? Look at the picture as you build the pad, and things should become clear.

Painting the pad was fairly easy: a grungy brown for the supports that was then scuffed with black paint, washed and then drybrushed. The pad itself was dyed black-ish with black ink, then highlighted with a grey colour. The red edges are because I couldn’t be bothered to paint every edge with black and yellow warning stripes. I’m sure you can buy thin hazard tape somewhere, but a quick Search gave me 25mm as the thinnest I could find.

Recommended.

First of the Boontown Dwarves

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As you can see from my last few posts, I’m on a bit of a painting jag at the moment.

I’d like to say that this is gradually clearing my lead mountain but, of course, every time I complete a unit, I check the range it comes from and usually end up buying more figures to either fill in the gaps of what I’ve got or to cover new releases.

This is certainly true of this last week. I painted the Onslaught Miniatures engineers and promptly ordered the new Iron Lords. I painted the figures below, and promptly ordered the previously-out-of-stock battlebikes. And don’t even get me started on the boxes arriving from Battlefront as a result of their 25% off Arab-Israeli sale! I think I’ve just go to come to terms with the fact that for every figure I paint I add a few more to the lead mountain…but at least it means that I’ll live for ever!

So on to today’s offering.

As I’m trying to collect every type of 15mm sci-fi dwarf out there (I know: not a good way to reduce the lead mountain), I duly ordered a couple of units of the Boontown Miniatures range as soon as it launched.

Good service, but not the sort of figures I usually buy: I like my figures very crisp and clean (but hard to paint well, especially with my rudimentary skills!) rather than the more normal Boontown range. Leaving that aside, however, I eased myself into the range by painting the artillery (Shaker cannons) and the walkers (T-26 walkers).

Very shaky!

The Shaker Cannons are typical of what I mean. I didn’t like these at all. You’ve got a hi-tech rear end (looks a bit like the front of a VW Beetle complete with headlights and bumper) then an awful wooden chassis, awful crude-iron wheels, and a screen that looks like it’s been knocked together by orcs!

I quite like the idea of a hedgehog-like piece of artillery, but none of the four barrels are the same. Add in a couple of crew members that are not of the crisp and clean variety, and you have…yuk!

Anyhow, I’ve done my best and decided that these are knocked-together mining tools (presumably for lobbing explosives somewhere when strip mining or something) hence the reason for the crude construction and very bright white and red warning stripes.

In my humble opinion, these would do better as part of a low-tech sci-fi range, and don’t mix very well with the walkers:

These I like much more than the Shakers. Not quite sure why half the firepower points backwards, and why the gunner is unprotected in any way, but I do like the basic shape and stance, and the decided “chicken” look about them.

As I’ve decided that the Boontown dwarf base colour is brown, these are sprayed Mournfang Brown, then washed and highlighted, and with certain bits of equipment painted separately. I then added some decals I found in the bits box and off we go.

These are much more the thing, and have inspired me to have a go at the Hearthguard platoon, now drying after it’s undercoat.

Two Pieces of Advice

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This is really a post about the latest units that I’ve painted, but a post that also comes with two bits of advice.

The first piece of advice is “always buy those miniatures when you see them…as they might not be there later”.

This applies to the gruntling range from Cactus Games: space dwarves in 15mm. The standard infantry are okay: maybe a bit crude by some standards but at least they are properly dwarvish i.e. short. What are really nice, however, are the chaps in powered armour: very cubist in nature and some of my favourite 15mm sci-fi dwarf figures.

Cubist Exo-Skeletons from Cactus

I’m using the present tense here but, alas, Cactus have disappeared, taking their range with them. I mention this because searching through the lead mountain for something to paint whilst I waited for my latest Arab-Israeli figures to arrive, I came across two packs of Cactus miniatures that I hadn’t painted when I did the basic infantry and powered armour types: a set of motor-tricycles and a set of light support weapons.

The motor-trikes are great fun: very silly but full of character. They come in three bits: the front wheel and handlebars; the main body; and the chap in the turret with the gun. It was a little fiddly to get the front to glue properly to the back, but otherwise no probs.

And why is the lesson relevant? Well because I almost didn’t buy these when I bought the infantry. If I hadn’t gone for it then, then I wouldn’t have had these…ever.

The second lesson is “always put all your spare parts in a ‘bits box’”. This is because the light support weapon packs came with two crew figures but a very weedy-looking LSW on a very flimsy bipod. No matter: a quick dip into my bits box and I came up with enough meaty looking weapons to outfit the three teams. The guns are spare turret-mounted weapons from sci-fi vehicles, but I can’t remember the manufacturer. They do nicely as mining lasers adapted for combat.

The stands for the guns, btw, are hama beads. Always good to raid your children’s hama bead collection: they make very useful stands, dividers etc!

So there you have it: two more units for the space dwarves and two important lessons for wargamers everywhere.

Let me hear you say them again:

always buy those miniatures when you see them…as they might not be there later

always put all your spare parts in a ‘bits box’

Grudd Infantry from Onslaught Miniatures

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If I played my sci-fi in 6mm, then Onslaught Miniatures would be my first port of call. A nice variety of figures with some quite deep ranges i.e. more than just one type of infantry and a support weapon: most of their ranges have got 20+ codes in them.

But I don’t: I play in 15mm…which is why it is so great that Onslaught have now expanded their collection to include 15mm versions of a limited number of their 6mm ranges.

Although I really liked the 15mm Sisterhood range (big women with big guns), they never really got going with it: releasing only a couple of codes and then seeming to go no further.

One 15mm range, however, that does have more than a couple of codes in it is their Grudd range. Whatever the official background, it’s obvious that these are normal-human-sized space dwarves.

The four-squad platoon above is a combination of their Grudd Clansmen, Siege Breakers and Demolishers and looks pretty spectacular, especially with all those outrageous power tools.

What I’m now hoping is that they expand their entire 6mm Grudd range into 15mm…

the grudd range in 6mm so far

Q13: Last of the Invaders

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Just finished photographing the last of the All Quiet on the Martian Front tripods I have been working on. This last batch consisted of another three scout tripods, two grenadier tripods, seven assault tripods and a power node terrain piece.

That’s a lot of points for the Painting Challenge!

Rather than have the tripods as a separate Martian army, I’m going to use them as the AFV element of my Invaders army that uses the Khurasan Alien Invasion range as its core infantry component. As I’ve also now had a chance to photograph all of them, it means another gallery added to the Q13 section of the website: one that shows the entire force.

You can find that by clicking here, but here’s a picture of the army en masse:

Oh yes, finally, someone wrote in asking what colour the tripods were sprayed: it was Ford Neptune Green from the Halfords range of car paints.

More Martian Tripods

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Still working my way through all my All Quiet on the Martian Front tripods.

First up are three more Scout Tripods:

Only three more of them to go!

Next is a quick one off: the Slaver Tripod, which I will be using as the command tripod for the Invaders' AFV force:

That's a metal tripod (the Scout Tripods are all plastic kits) and weighs in pretty heavy.

Finally for this batch, there's an extra I picked up as part of the Kickstarter offer: a downed Assault Tripod.

That's it for this update: plenty more tripods to go.

Oh, and I've had a chance to update the TFL Painting Challenge Scorecard.

First of the Martians

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last weekend's work

My current project or, rather, one of my current projects, is to add the All Quiet on the Martian Front models that I bought as part of the original Kickstarter to the figures that I've painted from Khurasan Miniatures' 15mm sci-fi The Invaders range. I spent last weekend building all the tripods, so this weekend's task was to paint up the first of them.

I didn't fancy brush painting twenty-four plus large 15mm models, so determined that most of the work would be done via spray paint...but which colour to choose. I wanted something metallic, which meant buying some new paint, as all my existing sprays are various shades of dull green or brown or desert yellow (i.e. WW2 and 6DW colours).

I was driving home, thinking about where to get appropriate sprays, surrounded by other cars, when I suddenly realised that I was looking at exactly what I wanted: metallic car paint. A quick trip to Halfords, and I bought a couple of cans of a light green metallic colour. Each can was only £6.99 as well: considerably cheaper than GW or other hobby paint.

Spraying all the tripods took up a can and a half, but twenty minutes in today's blazing sunshine dried everything off nicely. I wouldn't have time to complete all of the models after the initial spray, so settled on the small flying drones and three scout tripods.

Flying Drones

Very simple to finish them:  I painted the "eye" red, any equipment in two shades of grey, any electricals or power sources in a light purple, the tentacles in black-dry-brushed-with-iron, and then found a few places to put a drop of scarlet or metallic blue for variety. Finally, I based them as usual, then used Halfords lacquer to finish them.

I'm very pleased with the result.

The first three scout tripods

A Busy Weekend

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Those of you who follow this blog regularly will know that I have been painting Khurasan Miniatures' 15mm sci-fi range called "The Invaders". This consists of three sets of miniatures: the Science Caste (little grey men), the War Caste (little green men), and two types of Warborg battle robot.

Warborg Heavies - rather nice

They are all done now, but what I need are some vehicles to go along with them. I was wondering whether to start a quick search of the 'net for something appropriate when I remembered that I had several boxes of unbuilt and unpainted models from the All Quiet on the Martian Front Kickstarter. What could be more appropriate for vehicles to accompany a range called The Invaders?

A quick root through the lower slopes of the lead mountain and there they were. And a quick Bank Holiday Monday later, and here is about half of the initial build:

In total, I seem to have acquired about 18 of the large tripods, so there's another shelf's worth in addition to what's shown.

I didn't have any instructions, so had to work out how to put them together from pictures of completed models. Not a problem: they go together intuitively, and there's only a couple of critical points that you need to be aware of during construction.

Now all I have to do is paint them!

Last Of the Astagar: the AFVs

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The Astagar were originally a "bit part" race from the Critical Mass Games universe: providing squads of interesting-looking mercenaries rather than having a full range to themselves.

Such was their popularity, however, that CMG ran a Kickstarter to create a full range of Astagar figures and, although the Kickstarter wasn't successful enough for everything envisaged to be created, enough people signed up that all the basic infantry, infantry support weapons, APCs and AFVs became available.

Today's painting: three Astagar Main Battle Tanks

I took part in the Kickstarter but, as is often the way, didn't quite get exactly what I thought I'd pledged for. No real damage done, but I was short a platoon of main Battle Tanks and, unfortunately, CMG folded and sold their range to Ral Partha Europe who, although they have all the infantry for sale, haven't yet got around to the resin vehicles from the range!

Just the other day, however, a chap in the States announced on Facebook that he had some to spare, the deal was done, and my Astagar force is now ready for battle.

More Invaders!

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You may recall that my current project is to paint up the company of "The Invaders": a 1950's inspired 15mm sci-fi range from Khurasan Miniatures.

First up, a couple of weeks ago, were the Kalinet Warborgs (see post on July 8th). Now, to go with them, I've completed the troops from the Warcaste: little green men:

I've got two platoons (each of three heavy squads) plus enough drone controllers and electronic warfare specialists to give the opposition a right pain in the keyboard!

These are lovely little models: proper 15mm rather than being little green men who tower over the opposition. The arms and legs look delicate, but I had no problems when painting or basing them. Variety isn't bad: I reckon there are about eight or nine variants plus the command and drone control figures.

They painted up very easily. Spray dark green, then highlight all skin in two lighter shades ending with a very bright green for the last highlight. All clothing was dark purple highlighted in lilac. Weapons were two shades of grey. They have loads of augs in their heads, all of which I touched up in gold. Took about two hours per platoon from start to finish.

Now all I have to do is to add the high command of Greys, and I'm done.

Recommended.

First of the Invaders!

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Another 15mm sci-fi range that I've found at the back of the cupboard is Khurasan's "Alien Invasion".

At the moment, the range consists of three different types of infantry and one truly and utterly ridiculously huge transport (and yes, that is a 15mm tank for scale comparison).

Leaving aside the £50 piano stool shown right, the infantry are actually quite fun. The three different types are the Greys (little grey men available as scientists or armed), the War Caste (little green men) and the Kalinekt Warborg battle robots.

So far I have only had a chance to paint the Kalinekt Warborgs, but they have turned out very nicely indeed. There are two different types: a standard 'borg with a machine pistol and a heavy 'borg armed with a giant gatling-style cannon. Both types have several very characterful poses.

The 'borgs are about 20mm high, and I can't wait to get these chaps onto the battlefield.

Same figures, different angle

The Rest of the Itu'a

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When you have your painting mojo fully engaged, you can churn out units almost at will!

Yesterday's post mentioned the first of the Itu'a units from the Itu'a box from the lead mountain, today's post is the rest of them: a platoon of kalat warbeasts and their supporting bio-mortars.

These are big figures for a 15mm range. Khurasan describes them as: "Massive, three-meter-tall Kalat warbeasts lumber amongst the myriads, one type providing even heavier fire support from arm cannons, another deadly close combat power with massive crab-like claws. A third type of massive Kalat deploys further to the rear, in bio-batteries of three, breeding toxic bio-mortar bombs in an egg chamber mounted on their carapace -- from these they feed the bombs into their arm mortars to launch toward enemy lines."

The figures in the picture are mounted on 2p pieces (just over 2cm across), so you can see how big they are. The bio-mortars are even taller.

So that's the Itu'a done for the moment, and so great was the impetus they provided that I've re-done my Hive gallery in the Q13 section of this website. Here's the Hive massed and ready for action:

First of the Itu'a

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Having got my painting mojo back with the Astagar, it was time to pull the next box out of the lead mountain and see what was in it.

I have far too many boxes in the mountain at the moment: some of them literally unopened!

What tends to happen is that I happily paint and play for a couple of months and then suddenly realise that (a) I have money in my PayPal account and (b) there are loads of new releases that I haven't bought yet...particularly 15mm sci-fi releases that, if I don't buy now, could disappear forever if, as is so often the case, the manufacturer goes out of business. I then end up manically buying everything new that, of course, all arrives at once, and ends up in the lead mountain cupboard.

This particular box was from Khurasan Miniatures: a controversial company (Wikipedia IABSM scandal, TMP sock-puppet scandal) which produces an amazing range of figures, both historical and sci-fi. 

I have lots of both, and this particular box contained sci-fi figures from their Itu'a range: an insectoid/carapace-heavy race that I intend to include into my Hive army.

First up is an Itu'a Swarm: a platoon of "Myriads, who are smaller than humans but armed with long biorifles and a set of pincers with which they can more than hold their own in close assault".

These are very nice. Despite their ridiculously sized commander (at least 30mm tall) the main body are proper 15mm figures that paint up very nicely indeed. I've chosen to paint them in my Hive colours of various shades of dry-brushed red, but the picture on the Khurasan site shows what you can do with them if you can actually paint.

Next up are the Itu'a Kalat warbeasts: more scale creep!

Last of the Astagar...

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...for the moment, at least.

These are the extra grenade-launcher and flamethrower types used either in small three-man (snake?) teams, one of each per platoon, or to augment the regular infantry squads.

With what I have painted already, I now have two full platoons of three eight-man light squads each, which I can make into standard weight nine-man squads by adding the bombardier (red shoulder flash) or heavy weight ten-man squads by also adding the flamethrower chappie (orange shoulder flash).

All I need now is to find some of the original Astagar MBTs and SP artillery that were available on the Kickstarter. Anyone got any they don't want? Anyone...?

Q13: Astagar Second Platoon Finished

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I've finally had a chance to finish the second platoon of Astagar infantry. Lovely models to paint up, and a nice variety of poses as well.

The Astagar were originally produced by Critical Mass Games, but are now available from Ral Partha Europe...well, at least the metal figures are: the resin vehicles are not yet there.

I bought the Astagar through their launch Kickstarter, but have been kicking myself since then for not buying the AFVs and SP Artillery models at the same time. So, my usual plea: if anyone has any that they want to sell me, please get in contact (address is in the right sidebar somewhere).

Just the squad support weapons to paint up now, and then that's the Astagar project finished (well, until I can find some AFVs and SP artillery for them).

More Astagar

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More from my latest project: a company of Astagar, the 15mm sci-fi snakemen originally from Critical Mass Games but now part of Ral Partha Europe's offering.

Here is the first of the two infantry platoons that I am painting: 

Really nice models that paint up well. I like the variety in poses and tail positions.

If I have one gripe, it's their size. I know they are designed this way, but the models are mostly easily 20mm tall, which makes them very large when compared to a standard 15mm human. Either humans are the shortest race in the universe, or the world of 15mm sci-fi wargaming is suffering from extreme scale creep!

It also means that they are quite difficult to base. I had to use the Warbases equivalent of a small FOW base for each model, which means that they will take up an awful lot of room on the tabletop. I shall just have to see how that turns out.

Anyway, I like them...and would repeat my request that if anyone has any of the Astagar MBT or SP Artillery models that they don't need, I'll happily come to some arrangement to take them off your hands. They're not yet available from Ral Partha. Admin@vislardica.com please.