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Light Infantry… a smidge more done

Ye gods I am Knackered…. so only a little bit done on my Troopers tonight.

They are slowly getting there. I highlighted all of the armour, not that you can really tell. Luckily I opened up my wet palette so the mixed paint should still be good tomorrow.

I also repainted the medic’s armour white in places. I know it isn’t cannon to either the book or the films/series but hey they are my figures and it kind of works.

Tonight I also had a mooch about my Humble bundle downloads… somehow I nearly ended up with a 7 and a half hour print of a Carthaginian war elephant. It was more to see if the printer could manage it as it seemed it wouldn’t print without supports. Luckily common sense prevailed (as I don’t have any ancients and at least no Carthaginian forces) so it went back into the downloads.

The one thing I should try is my fighter bomber I found on Thingiverse… it will make a nice TAC fighter for the ST world.

Strange Fact… that probably everyone knows… Starship Troopers was originally going to be called Bug Attack on Outpost Nine (or something like that). The director had never read the book and was advised to do so, and thus Starship Troopers was born.

Tomorrow we are going to carry on play testing my mates new RPG… some how I don’t think our characters will make it out alive.

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Big Bugs and Light Infantry

I decided to spray my Plasma bug black today to help speed up the painting. My major issue was that I had already sprayed the bulb white… a quick ponder and out came the cling film.

It worked really well or so I thought. I bet you can’t spot where the cling film was torn!

I gave it a blast with grey to help add some highlights. I was quite pleased as I managed to get get this done before work.

When I got home I did some more on the Light Infantry. Mainly the armour on the troopers as well as a bit of splinteresque camouflage on the sniper.

Still a whole lot to do but I am getting there at a rough rate of half an hour a day… day 17 so far.

Whilst I am painting I have been listening to an audiobook on YouTube…

It is about 30 years since I read it last. My Starship Troopers obsession is now taking me into comics… the first 4 should be with me soon.

I suppose I should make a comment on the YouTube comment, it is in fact quite a big thing… 2 weeks ago my internet download speed was 0.2 at its very best.

I am now sitting at this…

It is amazing how much easier it is to watch YouTube at this kind of speed 🤯

Off to listen to more of my story 😁. 4 hours in and not a bug in sight 🤔

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Troopers… Further Work

Today I am knackered and I blame my children,

we went swimming and their way of enjoying themselves is to chase me round and round and round in the rapids then chase me in the indoor pool and then chase me in the outdoor pool. Then sit on my back as I have to test my lung capacity to get across the pool before I expire…

Anyway, I managed to get some more paint on this lot, only half an hour’s painting as there was homework etc to do too.

I am trying for the 30 minutes a day for 50 days. Up to day 16 and had one pass so far.

I have also ordered some more figures, these are some Star Saga miniatures from Mantic and will hopefully be ideal for my fleet officers and fleet rescue teams.

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/star-saga/product/corporation-minion-booster.html

12 figures for £7.99 isn’t too shabby. The top 5 would have been ideal for proxy MI infantry too. Oh well… I don’t know how big they are compared to the EM4 ones, but hopefully Mantic haven’t gone down the mega sized miniature like GW have.

On the 3D printer front, I made this for my Wife’s colleague. Everything is designed by me apart from the actual letters. I downloaded those and put them together to make the word he wanted. It is backwards as it will be imprinted into the wax.

Although it is a really basic thing I am quite chuffed as I designed it. The lettered bit sits inside the pot, the hole is there to technically push the whole thing out..

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Troopers Started…

Well I gave them a good spray this morning along with the Plasma bug.

The two at the front are going to be my ‘downed’ fleet crew hence the smg and pistol. I sprayed them grey and once dried I attempted a highlight in white… quite frankly I ballsed it up big time.

The big fella was sprayed grey and then the bulb was sprayed white. I will attempt to paint it sometime. I will more than likely use my airbrush on him.

Once I gave them a good 8 hours curing (I know it should be longer) I started blocking in the uniform colours on the troopers. I left the officer and fleet crew as a I am trying to think of a uniform for them.

The sniper is having dark green armour with a splinter pattern instead of the grey blue that everyone else is having.

It was a nice day so I took a quick photo on the way back from my daughter’s riding lesson.

Not a bad place to stop off at. I am not sure what happened to the photo, it seems scratched and grainy. I think one of the filters must have been open…

Other Shetland News… we have had a fair few Humpack sightings over the past week, there used to be a population up around here that were almost wiped out by the whalers. Perhaps these are from the stock that survived….

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More Troopers

I had asked Doug over at EM4 if there were any if the metal arms for the plastic troopers. Sadly there were none and were not likely to be going to be any either. But a little while ago he emailed me to apologise that his other company Moonraker Miniatures had some left. I thought this was jolly decent of him as I wouldn’t be spending hundreds of pounds on a couple of packets of arms.

So the order arrived today.

I have built one set up using the command sprue arm set and the Ganger heavy weapons set. The later are for gangers as the name implies and not really for the troopers. A couple fitted so these became heavy weapons and the rest became a medic, an officer and a comms trooper.

Not knowing really what I was getting in this set, I also ordered some metal miniatures

From left to right, heavy weapons, sniper/scout, comms and an obvious officer type. My initial idea is that in the RPG as the players specialise then they can choose a new miniature if they want.

I will attempt to get these painted up sometime soon.

As I was driving to pick up some horse feed I drove past some more of Lerwick’s defences….

The photos taken of the bunkers etc were on the skyline. The original road block is about 60m in front of my car.

If the weather is good this weekend I will mosey along to the battery and get some photos.

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Washes, Highlights and Another Big Bug

This sounds like a hairdressers advert, well apart from the big bug, unless that is some form of bouffant hairstyle.

Tonight I managed some highlights on the robots…

As with most things they look a lot better in real life. I spent ages highlighting edges and flat panels, not that you can tell, there is now a huge contrast between the dark recesses and the raised areas.

I also bunged a light wash on the elves, yeah I am back on with them…

Trooper Ted is keeping an eye on them 🙄

And finally the big bug, where does that fit in… my latest purchase, all the way from Virginia Beach in Virginia in the USA.

It’s a Tanker bug, complete with shooty bits. Press the button on its back and the spring loaded mechanism fires the ‘plasma’ out of its mouth.

So why all the way from the states and why a toy from the ’90s… simple reason really. I got this chappy for a fiver with £12 postage. Compare that to the £35 used and £60 in box you can see why. And the States, it was the only place I could find one at the time. Typically once the purchase had been made then a few popped up in the Uk on EBay. I did do a bit of research and as the cost was below £30 then I would pay no import duty… looks like it was right.

Although the bug itself was funky, along with bubble wrap was a bit of a newspaper, which was just as interesting as I have never seen a newspaper from the states before… the one weird thing (to me that is) is it is really long and thin.

Compare it to the mighty tome that is…The Shetland Times …a mighty paper of editorial prowess and cutting edge reporting….

As you can see, starlings can destroy your car… secondary pupils at the New Anderson High school need road safety lessons and as our brand (shiny) new high school appeared about 100th out of 339 schools in some league table everyone threw a wobbly about how the rankings are flawed. It is really funny how rankings are flawed when they show a poor result, I have yet to see anyone, anywhere go ‘huzzah we are top, but there again the rankings are totally flawed so we reckon we should be nearer the middle!’

To be fair we don’t have official league tables in Scotland and it was a single performance indicator that was used to gain the data.

Ohh yeah, some schools are getting about 9 weeks off this year due to building work taking place…

Ohh yeah and someone was appalled that the paper had printed the ‘f’ word in full in this parochial family newspaper… on that note, I had better f*** off and get some things done before bed… tomorrow is Friday… I might still be able to find something that is forgotten… probably more 10mm elves….

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3D Beasties

My printer has been taken over by my children!

So far we have a lizard and an Octopus…

Further to this I decided to support a Humble Bundle charity sale. I plumped up £25 and got sooooo much stuff.

To be honest I wasn’t going to bother but it did have a few useful bits and bobs in it, well more than a few to be honest.

What I didn’t actually realise is that the total value of my downloads is over $300😲.

I did find a designer who I hadn’t seen before, and shall keep an eye on him.

Anyway the bundle is here…

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/3d-printable-dungeons?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_3_layout_type_twos_tile_index_1_c_3dprintabledungeons_bookbundle

I reckon it would take me months to print everything if I wanted to.

Some of these are going to appear in my Starship Troopers mix.

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Little Steps

Only managed a smidge of hobby time tonight…

The light in the kitchen is now dire since I moved things around in here.

Luckily I moved one if the lights around just now and providing I kneel on the floor then I can take some photos in light…

Teddy bear Trooper is getting there as are my CHAS proxies

Hopefully I will get these three finished tomorrow and get on with my elves, my poor forgotten (again) elves!

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Off Gallivanting…. Again

My Sister in Law went back home on the boat tonight so we decided to take her and my mother in law to the Smugglers Cave, the same one we found a year ago.

I was really proud of my eldest who overcame her fear to come down into the cave.

As can be seen from the photos below there was a bit of a swell.

It was a great morning’s stroll out.

The last photo above shows the power of the sea. Those boulders (roughly the size of a fridge) were put up there by the waves. The top photo of the two shows the extent of the boulder fields.

As it was such a good evening we actually had an impromptu barbecue.

I also managed some hobby time…

More work on my cultist and robots and a start on my teddy bear trooper…all 3D Printed again 😂

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Sci-Fi day

Firstly look what came in the post today!

This thing is huge, I can’t wait to get it painted.

Secondly I resprayed the crashed drop ship as the paint that had gone onto it had gone all shiny and horrible. So a quick drop into the car place and voila…white…or rather white-ish. It really does need another coat.

I also sprayed the intact vessel too.

Third on my busy schedule were the two combat robots from Ill Gotten Games. I am considering using them a CHAS units for Starship Troopers.

These came in bits. Legs and torso printed with the two separate arms next to them. To make sure these were secure I printed them on a raft, I should have got them off straight away but forgot! By time I got to them they had decided that they wanted to stay attached 🤬.

As the white spray can was out then I gave the Elves a blast too. They had gone all horrible and shiny too.

Yesterday I went over to my mates and we played UBoot. We sank 10,000 tons of merchantmen, locked horns with some rather nasty corvettes. Survived two depth charge attacks, with various leaks and a major fire we ended up with an exhausted crew and errrr… ran aground in Norway.

The highlight of the game was passing within 750m of a convoy in a massive storm at 01.00. We thought we would risk it and it worked.

One final thing… some of you may remember my gallivanting around the WW2 defences of Lerwick.

I eventually got a copy of one of the original maps ….

Interestingly the map was drawn to allow certain land owners to have evidence of what was on their land, these are denoted by the various letters inside the circles. My wife added the red to make it easier to see. It doesn’t show any of the seaboard defences apart from the tubular scaffolding round the coast at Brei Wick.

In my pictures I showed a trench system that didn’t face the front, it can be clearly seen in this map. The Germans were to be funnelled into a killing zone near to where it says South Staney Hill.

The other thing that it shows is my offices when it was an HQ building as well as a dotted circular shape between two HQ’s this was where a battery of howitzers were sited. These were to be used for fire support on the far side of Staney Hill.

I will try and get to the battery some time soon and get some pictures of that.