"So say we ALL!" (Skirmish Gaming in the BSG Universe--Part two)

Hello all!

I finally (almost) finished the OPFOR for the Colonial Marines. Of course I had to order more Cylons...20 didn't seem enough, so I doubled that!

The first 20!

The new 20!

There are some that I left with all of the detail on the head, those are the leaders of the five Centurion team. I figured that would be an easy way to differentiate them.

I cut and sanded all the detail off of the head of the bulk of the Centurion heads to allow for the red eye to be painted on the "face". These guys were real easy to paint! 

1. They are merely primed...
2. painted a base coat of Game Color Chainmail silver...
3. then Citadel black washed. 

Close up of one three-man fireteam for use with the GRUNTZ 15mm system...

These guys were all painted and based for an alien planet...the ground cloth I am going to use is the old felt from when we re-felted the pool table, its a maroon color and I have 8 feet of it!

All of the Colonials to face off against the Cylon forces...

This picture shows the size difference (which I believe to be accurate from the show) between the humans and the Centurions.

I'll post some pics when they are totally done!

Mounted police...

As some of you may know, last February I ran a Riot scenario for Ghengis con in Denver, CO.  (Mike from Rebel Minis put up a nice write up here.) It was a hit and I was asked to do it again this fall, but was unable to. I am excited to announce a return of this game in February 2014.

So, with all of the research I have been doing for this type of scenario, I discovered some things I had been missing from my law enforcement (LE) troops. Some departments have mounted crowd control forces. Things like this:


So I searched around for a suitable 15mm solution, and there were none to be found! Plan B involved me searching through my existing minis to see if I could find something close.  That's when my eye found some mounted men on horseback I bought from Rebel minis to use in my Red Dawn scenario in Ghenghis Con this past February.  I ended gaming the convoy ambush scene and didn't do the Hind helicopter chase scene, which was the original thought.

Think of this guy as an extra in "The Postman" with Kevin Costner.

I contacted Mike at Rebel, and he hooked me up with 20 horses and riders, and that is where I started. The horses are kitted out with a two front saddle pouches, two rear saddle bags, and a bedroll behind the saddle.  Most of those had to come off, as riot saddles are pretty simple.

These are the riders, the useful half (lower!) and the half I threw away (upper!).

I then removed the lower (from the waist down)  part of the riders...

giving me this!

I performed the delicate surgery on these riders using an x-acto razor saw as the nippers managed to mangle the first one and forcing me to putty it in order to look good!

After snipping the cops at the torso it was time for super glue!

The problem was that in all the pictures in which riot police are mounted, they do not carry shields (like roman cavalry or medieval knights) nor do they brandish firearms (so the shotgun and pistol toting officers in the pack were not useful for this purpose). I needed to repurpose some of my existing officers that I had already mounted in stands of three.  I tried to pick ones easier to replace, and some who were nearer the edge of the stand. While the picture below isn't super clear its easy to see the silver in the stands, those are from the new pack.

In the next installment....painted!

Snow Marpat on my Marines!

There are few uniforms as distinctive as the USMC's MARPAT (MARine PATtern, based off of the Canadian Army's CADPAT). It was such a departure from the old Woodland Camo pattern used by the US armed forces for decades before.

I had to paint up a USMC Quick Reaction Force for a Ghengis Con scenario.  It's an arctic scenario, so how do Marines fight in the snow? A little research later, I can tell you the answer is: Snow Marpat!

And one of the best places to do research is a website called Camopedia.org.  Its a camouflage specific website and they have patterns from all over the world and also into history.

Breaking out my Peter Pig 15mm moderns, I found a squad that would work for me.  It turned out I needed to do a little research on my USMC TO&E.

I decided on snow marpat uniforms, coyote gear, woodland marpat helmet covers, and white snow boots.

Here's the final result:

Defiance Games Kickstarter: Watch out, my Marines are getting a big firepower boost!!!

Defiance Games is running a kickstarter campaign that is funding a pretty substantial expansion of their Alien War showings.

It includes:

• more Marines, (females this time, thus making the UAMC a coed force!) 

• German Mechs (These will be great support for my Panzergrenadiers I picked up last year, see below:) 

• and the above Hardsuit power armor for the marines.

Having purchased a few different items in their list of products, this will help my games I can run for Tacticon 2014 in Denver, CO. I bought in at the $65 level because of all the stretch goal items I was going to get.  I am excited to buy for this type of figure, it seems like there would be more of these around, but there aren't. I also think the price is pretty good, especially compared to the DUST! minis.

 If you are interested, you can find them here until Oct 9th, 5:30pm EDT.

So say we all! Skirmish gaming in the BSG universe (Pt. 1)

 I really enjoyed the reboot of Battlestar Galactica (of course when I was in Junior HS, I enjoyed the original too!)  There were many great ground battles fought between the Colonial Marines and the new Cylon toasters (centurions). I would like to create a battle for some far flung listening outpost or some other excuse to fight...










My friends at Rebel Minis have some great figures that I feel would work wonderfully as Fleet Marines. They can be found here. I have only base-coated  these, more to come on those specifically. I think I need to order some more of these as I only have the one pack so far.

While at Historicon this year, I stopped by the Old Glory booth when I saw the magic word "sci-fi" minis...I found these Blue Moon figures to use as Cylons, with some slight modifications and painting wonderfulness...Here they are with only a base-coat and wash. They still need a gloss and highlights as well as an eye located somewhere on the chrome dome!

I still have some work to do (obviously) including the maps for the scenario and some scenery to fight over. Plus, if anyone knows of plans for a Raptor, that would be great...now off to watch some episodes to catch the flavor!  

More to come!

Don't open, dead inside!!

(2014--Year of the sci-fi)

In 2011, I was played some games at Ghengis Con in February.  These games were all using Force on Force from Ambush Alley Games. I enjoyed the simple dynamics of the rule set, so I took a chance on Ambush Z, their take on the zombie problem.

Wargames factory's zombies are pretty cool, and incredibly affordable!

For only $19.95 you get 24 zombies.  They are multi piece models and it was easy  to remove the parts from the sprue and organize them.

As you can see there are legs to the waist, torso and head parts, as well as right arms.

This hoarde represents about three boxes of the zombies.

He kind of looks like a fat Chuck Norris...

 

This guy has both arms and seems to be saying "Come at me bro!"

These two pics show the considerable amount of flash and mold lines.

Another view of the horde!

Army painter's "necrotic flesh" is the base coat for the Caucasian zombies...but that is the next installment!!

Defiance games Marines Review (part 2: Assembly)

Well, since 2014 is the year of the sci-fi, I am gearing up for those conventions with builds of the various figures I accumulated recently. In preparation for next year, many of my purchases this year were sci-fi. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, defiance games was on my pre-x-mas list last year.  I started to assemble them this week, and there are some pros and cons to these guys. Let's start with the good:

These guys are about 32mm foot to top of head:

They went together easily. The legs were one piece and I glued them directly to a base (I used a washer as it was not as artificially tall as the standard 28mm base, will blend into the tabletop terrain better, and offers a bit of heft to the model.).  

Next came the torsos. They fit together quite smoothly.

I had a choice to make, which guns to include....most of my guys were riflemen, 

 

With a few heavies thrown in for good measure.

But as you can see, there is one drawback:

I have three leg sets, six different head selections, five gun choices, four left arms....but only TWO torsos! What the heck? That grouping makes no sense! I had "almost enough" to make one more marine per sprue x  11 sprues, so I could have had 11 more guys per box? I should have casted an extra 11 in resin. 

(I may still buy another box and do that. It seems a huge waste of extra parts, I am kicking myself for building all of the guys now!)

So here is a finished marine:

I did mix up the guns a bit, and used all "closed face" helmets. (What can I say, I like the uniform look.) There were other head choices: open helmets

Or no helmet at all:

The only kit included were backpacks, (only one per sprue, I'm using them for radios) ammo pouches, (two per sprue) 

and small pouches (three pouches per sprue, I mounted them on the men's arms).

Overall the fit was good, guys went together quickly using testor's glue (in the black, sloped bottle) and they look cool.

Now for the cons:

First there was a lot of flash on the arms, as you can see in these pics:

There were considerable mold lines, which depending on where they were located on arms and legs, difficult to remove...

After priming them with Armory white primer, they are ready to be painted, however, I have to come up with a camo scheme first.

Next up, painting in Part 3!