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Aliens… Smidge Forward

Sadly my plan to get bucket loads done today failed miserably. Mainly through lack of motivation (aka playing on the console) and freezing my bits off (probable lack of Vitamin D) followed by the fact that we now have Netflix. I believe the technical term is Minge watching or something like that.

So my progress today resulted in skin tones and some grey shirts…

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more productive.

On the historical Shetland story front I have a cracker, still doing a bit of research but should be out soon.

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Aliens…Splashing the Paint About

Tonight I made a start on pretty much all of the figures at once 🙄. As I had paint pots open I painted various bits as I went along.

There is pretty much more white on these than colours, but a Start is indeed a start.

Unsurprisingly I got further on with the xenomorphs… well they are all black!

I did edge highlight various bits with white over the top of my attempt at a zenithal highlight. I think I might have wasted my time as to be honest the Black seems to have gone over it with no discernible effect apart from the ridge quest on the nearest one.

Maybe as the paint dries completely I might see something more noticeable. Now as these are meant to be spitters I could add some bright green to the bulbous bits on the side of their heads, but to be honest I am in two minds.

I was going to tell you the tale of Betty tonight, but I think it will have to wait until tomorrow as I am tired and need to go to bed. The tale involves a terrible storm, a ship wreck and silver medals from Queen Victoria herself.

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Aliens, Predators and Prey

So tonight I sprayed this lot.

We have five prisoners and a ‘Bishop’ at the back (aka poor buggers in the wrong place at the wrong time). Five Xenomorphs (supposedly spitters) and then the Predator at the back.

I also have this little chap too. Bishop is trying his best Barbara Woodhouse ‘Sit!’, but this may prove ineffectual…

Looking through the various books on the actual Aliens there are no ‘Crushers’ that I can find. The Aliens versus Predator console game had one of these, probably where the idea for this miniature came from.

Now considering I am not going to buy any more figures for a good while, I do keep wishing that I had got a pack of the Weyland Commando and the Predator hounds.

I have Marines, Aliens and Predators from the First Prodos AvP game. I am kind of kicking myself that I didn’t get others before they lost the Franchise.

Regarding the miniatures above, I am going to go down the Contrast paint route with these too. I sprayed the Aliens grey with a white highlight as they are going to be black so hopefully the black Contrast paint will work better than straight over white.

I will make a start tomorrow.

On a total aside…. did you know that today is the day that the first German Bombs dropped on British soil in WW2. Rosyth had been bombed the month before but the bombs fell on vessels in the sea, with the loss of 16 sailors and 4 German aircrew. On 13th November 1939 Four Bombers hit Sullom Voe, which had two cruisers and a merchantman at anchor as well as numerous seaplanes.

Four bombs fell in the sea and four hit land (the first on land). The only casualty being a rabbit.

Up here many people believed that the Flanders and Allan ‘Run Rabbit’ song was about this, however it had been sung a month before the attack. The dead rabbit did have a knock on effect of making the song more popular. At least he/she didn’t die in vain!

It did make a rather large hole….

Needless to say the rabbit in the photo above was not the original martyr rabbit. It had been purchased from a butcher in Lerwick for the photo call.

And Finally… I hit a milestone today… this is my 100th daily post in a row. (To be honest I only know because WordPress told me I had done 99 yesterday).

Let us see what total useless information I can come up with tomorrow 🤔… in case you were wondering the bombs were dropped by Dornier Do 17.

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Night Off…

Tonight I was being Dad’s Taxi, so by time I got home, washed the dishes etc. I couldn’t really be bothered, plus I had a parcel in the post.

I totally forgot I pre ordered this 😂

It has s a lovely book with good atmospheric illustrations…

It came with a host of extras too…

the map itself is huge.

So after watching one hit wonders from 1968 to 2005 on YouTube I read the rules..

Sad thing is a lot of the one hit wonders I really liked!

Tomorrow I will get back to painting something 👍

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 12 Comments

Worm Infestation

They just keep on coming! Ok maybe I should stop hitting print, but they are strangely satisfying.

I have decided on a red colour scheme for these… I did cock up the layer height on my first print. I bet you can’t tell which one it was!

The nice thing about the 3D printable files is that one can up and down. The dodgy print one is 100 %. The middle one of the double ones is the 100% one too.

Another package came in the post today…

I was a bit concerned that I was going to be building a whole pile more figures but nope, they came ready built and based 👍

They aren’t too bad size wise to the EM4 miniatures. These are pretty much the light infantry version…

And these the heavy infantry version (with two weird mutant things)

These are going to be painted up as Fleet Rescue (whatever colour they are).

Big day tomorrow, job interview for a deputy headship of one of our high schools, therefore early night tonight…

I will try and get the light infantry and the new stuff sprayed tomorrow evening.

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Mobile Infantry….Sort Of!

Well believe it or not my order from EM4 arrived today, which for the isles is very speedy indeed. Ordered on Monday night at 21.45..dispatched on Tuesday and with me by Thursday… So well done EM4

So what did I get for my money….

The boxes came flat packed which is a nice touch, I never even considered getting any boxes at all. The back shows what you get..

Now bear in mind that these cost me £10.20 plus VAT and postage so they are really good for the money. There is a mould line but to be honest most plastic stuff does anyway, some worse than others.

I made a one up as a test subject:

20 seconds had him built. He isn’t glued yet but that can wait. He is a shiny grey plastic that is quite hard . I will get him prepped and sprayed and see how he paints up.

Compared to a bug….

He is quite small but bugs are meant to be scary so he will do. I ordered 4 boxes of these to allow me to have a whole squad with the long arms, and some fleet types with pistols. I might raid my Catachan Troopers box to see if there is anything useful in there, but as these are smaller then I doubt it.

So what do I think…

Are they Mobile Infantry… nope – they are proxies and for the money I paid for them then to be honest I don’t really care. This lot plus postage and VAT is cheaper than some of the postage alone on EBay.

If I get some actual MI miniatures will I still use these, yes I probably will as they will be ideal as security guards or non Federation Forces.

Were they worth the money… yes indeed, I challenge anyone to find a set of brand new 25mm miniatures cheaper. There might indeed be somewhere out there but I certainly haven’t found them yet.

These will be painted up as the ‘light’ mobile infantry on the films rather than the CAP troopers from the animated series or indeed the newer CGI films.

I also downloaded a ‘suitable’ drop ship on Thingiverse for these to land in, not to mention sci fi buildings, bunkers and various vehicles and scatter pieces.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 13 Comments

BUUUGGGSSSS

Yep I am back into Starship trooper mode!

Today the postman brought me a very nice parcel…

I managed to get a good deal on EBay … sixteen miniatures for £48 with free postage. Yeah that is a lot of money for plastic, but the Starship Troopers miniatures are like rocking horse droppings. I though £3 a mini wasn’t too bad, having a look at other things up for sale I could get six for £45 or one for £11. So all in all not a bad price.

They are a whole lot smaller than the ones I printed… even my 60% sized one is big…

These two were pre assembled, the rest were still on the sprue. I need some flying ones and at least a Tanker bug, but once again these are going for silly money.

I would like some ST mobile infantry, there are less of them than there are bugs it would seem. There are more in the states than over here, £20 postage on top of £30 plus for the actual miniatures is putting me off – that and a poor track record of getting stuff actually to my house from the states.

So to proxy the troopers I ordered some EM4 plastic troopers five miniatures for £2.55…

https://em4miniatures.com/collections/science-fiction-near-future-miniatures/products/troopers

For that price you really can’t go wrong…

I got four sets so have a fair amount to play with. Sadly the command conversion and in fact most of the conversion bits were sold out which was a bit of a bummer to say the least. I will give him a shout to see if they are going to be restocked at any point. These have been sold out for ages so I really don’t see that they will be… but as they say …Shy Bairns get nowt. At the very least I might get a contact for who made them.

So off I go back to EBay to see if anything ST is going cheap… I have more chance of spotting a flying pig!

I have found a proxy drop ship on Thingiverse that I can print myself, as well as terrain and ground vehicles so that should keep me busy for a while.

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BUUUUGG!!!

Technically it should be BUUUGGGS…

but I only made one!

This thing is bloody massive. I reckon I need to drop it down to about 25% smaller at least and see how it looks. If you were wondering…the white stuff is baking powder. It causes a reaction with the superglue and sets instantly.

I had some de-lamination problems with the legs especially at the ball joints. Therefore I quasi posed it and then glued everything rigid. I printed the arms on a raft and had no problems with them so that might be the way forward if I do decide to do another one.

The one thing I forgot to mention and that is that this is a poseable bug (well it would be f I hadn’t superglued everything in place). It was designed by JOOXOE31 and again downloaded from Thingiverse.

I didn’t get any painting done this evening because of building this beastie, and various family related shenanigans… (including a stint of Ghost recon with my son. Who hasn’t quite grasped the tactical disadvantage of standing on a roof in full view of his father armed with a sniper rifle.) I also had a go at my hunting game and met the worlds first bullet proof Elk! Tracked him for 4 kilometres before I managed to bag him in the end.

Off playing Vikings in a school tomorrow so not too stressful a day 😁.

Posted on by maenoferren22

Alien Eggs

I saw this cunning idea on the terrain tutor Facebook group. I thought I would give it a go. I cut some squares out of EPVC and sloped the edges. I then basically glue gunned a pile of Pistachios onto these bases.
I then mixed up some Milliput and smoothed this on with plenty of water. I added a bit of texture with one of the tool’s handles and then rolled up some longthin sausages and let these twist themselves up and stuck them onto the bases or draped them around the eggs.