Well that’s them just about Finished.
A commander, squad of marines an a Heavy weapons squad.
These were quite a nice, fun set to paint up. If I had a criticism, it would be the mouse fur is a bit flat. Now a super artist would be able to paint the fur in, sadly I am not that man.
I could have painted up the flamethrower pipe a different colour (and still might) as I couldn’t think of a suitable colour.
Sadly not Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip
This hobby is a bit weird I have decided. Well okay the hobby is okay, I think it is me that is the weird one.
A couple of months ago I decided I needed some Airbrush paint so I poddled off to Amazon. I needed to spend £20 for free delivery. 5 x17ml pots of paint came in a lot less than this so I ordered a DVD. Starship Troopers ‘Traitor of Mars” I really enjoyed it so I bought all DVD’s that I could. All three live action ones, two CGI animated ones and the the whole of the Roughnecks series. Great fun…
Next thing is I want to game Starship Troopers. My mate has bought me the role play game for my Birthday. Off I went to find something suitable….That is when I hit the problem. Mongoose no longer provide the minis, yeah you can get them on eBay, if you fancy taking on a second mortgage.
I have Aliens, Predators and Colonial Marines….. I have space Marines and Genestealers and other Tyranid nastiness….. can I find anything suitable in any easy and straightforward manner…..No.
Everything suitable I have found that would work in my mind is either in the states or are in 6/10mm. Rebel Minis or Khurasan would work. Lovely miniatures but the cost of getting them here is rather expensive before getting clobbered by VAT and import duties.
Some awesome ones in 6mm but 6mm is a bit teeny when role playing. Pendraken do a Big Jawed bug which would work with 15mm minis.
Alternative armies have some Flesharon troops in 15mm.
Problem with 15mm is that all of my suitable terrain or maps is for 28mm.
Why am I weird then. I seem to either get interested in something just as everyone else is getting out of it, or I get out of it just as it becomes popular with everyone else.
I am seriously now considering making the bugs as card ones and the troopers as minis. Might stop me grumbling about not being able to get what I want.
A quick edit…
Problem solved….ish… not quite sure how to make the bug 😱
I must get some minis painted tomorrow as I am off for a weeks vacation on Sunday night. Off back to my old stamping grounds in Northumberland. Sadly I haven’t got much painted of late as I have been attempting to get various jobs done as my mate is coming over to animal sit.
I gave these a base coat of white with the airbrush. Then, as they were going to be purple, I mixed up my own airbrush paint. This was a little scary as it was a first, but it seemed to work. I ended up doing a few coats to get a really deep purple.
And now for something completely different…
I said I would paint these up for my mate. Not something you see every day… space Marine mice. They are to be similar to the Hawk Lords chapter…purple and Gold.
We shall see how I get on 😁
I made my own rock Golem.
A big thank you to Jeremy over on Black Magic Crafts for the inspiration.
He is quite a big beasty as shown by the photo below. To the top of his head he stands about five inches tall.
Sadly I seem to have lost my photographs of the build.
Basically I cut out the torso and legs as one roughly humanoid shape. I then set to work hacking away with a knife to get a rocky looking shape. Feet were hot glued onto the front if the legs. The head was made out of a random offcut. Eyes and a mouth were cut into it, a couple of handy pebbles became the eyes.
The arms looked just plain wrong the same thickness as the torso so I cut them in half with my hot wire cutter. Small boulders were made using either a knife or hot wire cutter and then stuck to the body with PVA.
Once dried I added sand and grit to various parts of the model, when dried I blasted it with watered down PVA.
Painting was next with a mix of dark grey house paint and PVA. I then added a home made Black was, which was far too potent (too much black ink). Once dried I dry brushed up through lighter shades.
Various bits of foliage were added once the paint had dried.
The one thing I intend to do is paint the eyes a different colour. Next time I would round of the hands a bit more and maybe add a club.
Below you can see him in his natural habitat.
A couple more random photos:
I have a couple of different figure storage systems….
I thought I would compare the two. These being a Kaiser Rushforth cardboard storage system and a battle foam bag version.
This proved to be more difficult than I thought as it was a bit like comparing oranges and apples. They are both fruit, but not alike at all.
Therefore, we shall go down the ‘what do you get for your money’ approach…
Starting with the KR multi case. The outer is made of a rigid cardboard with foam inserts for the figures. The box lid is held in place by the plastic handle. This one contains spaces for cavalry as well as infantry.
It has space for 36 cavalry and 80 infantry.
The infantry slots are quite tight and the figure with the sword extended doesn’t fit properly. However a quick snip with scissors would allow it.
The depth of the cavalry tray is about 50mm (2 inches) deep. This is my third case, one has all infantry spaces giving me 160 spaces. The second has space for 40 infantry as well as a pluck and store system where you can make your own shapes.
KR Multicases come in a whole range of styles and inserts.
I got this case brand new for £25.99 with free postage. The other two were discounted and came in at £17.00 each with free postage.
The battle foam case is a different thing altogether, although it contains a similar foam insert to the KR one, these are backed with a more rigid foam (seen in the image below). This allows the trays to be removed without sagging. The bag has a solid plastic edge to it giving further protection.
The top layer contains enough slots for 30 figures. These are bigger than the KR ones, but still the extended sword protrudes.
The bottom layer is a pluck and store system, allowing for cavalry or war machines etc. The depth of this layer being 50mm (2 inches) deep.
Where this case differs is that it also has space for rules etc as well as coming with a shoulder strap. There is also a 3 ring folder system for storing cards or poly pockets.
This case is designed for skirmish gaming. Indeed I will use if for my Frostgrave forces, or gladiators.
As for price. I bought this as it was on offer for £20.00 with £12.50 postage which does seem a little on the steep side. The full price case was £52.00. I saved £32.00.
This bag has quite an impressive list of features.
It now comes down to what I think. Both cases work well enough. Personally I prefer the KR one, simply because I can fit more in it. £26.00 isn’t a bad price to hold 160 figures. However to be fair the Battle foam case is waterproof etc and the rules and dice fit in nicely.
As I said at the start you cannot compare the two as they are very different In the future I may get hold of a battle foam cardboard, but at a tenner more than the KR version I may not. The other option is to go for a KR skirmish bag. These are coming in at £32.00 so not a bad price, compared to the battle foam version. Would I pay over £50 to protect my figures. No. Not when I can protect them at half the price. I can carry a cardboard case and a messenger bag to hold everything in.
Bottom line is. “You pays your money and makes your choice.”
Well, I managed to get everything finished…
His Birthday is today.
They were a lot of fun to paint. It was tricky trying to match in my painting with that of someone elses, but I managed. The main problem was my snow compared to that of Alternative Armies, Mine is more powdery, theirs is more sparkly 🙂
I really enjoyed painting the Ferach in the background. they actually didn’t take much time at all as they are so swaddled in blankets etc. there was a lot of large areas of one colour. If I wasn’t setting my campaign further into the South then I may have splashed out on a unit or two.
They have come a fair old way from the bare metal a few weeks ago. I would have finished them long ago If I hadn’t got back into gaming on the console.
To be honest, the actual painting was finished a week ago, it is the bases that took the time…aka I don’t like doing bases. Most of mine are still waiting to be based.
This lunchtime I took a break from Quasi Napoleonic miniatures and set about building a trio of Char B tanks for another mate.
I got as far as this:
There was a bit of a whoops on the rear wheels causing the gap in the attached tracks. Nothing a bit of green stuff won’t repair.
I am not looking forward to all of the fiddly bits, of which there are many!
He is checking the boundaries…
To his Otterman empire.
Its a dangerous undertaking for him though. Military munitions are found nearby.
It is amazing what your kids can find in the stream. According to the ministry of defence it is a flare/smoke round that has been discharged.
Not more zombies I hear you cry….
Yep afraid so.
I ran into a bit of a problem with these last night. The red would just not cover effectively; this was after me coming down with repetitive strain injury shaking the bottle.
I went back to the old tried and tested method… make a nice pastel shade (in this case pink) and then cover with the required colour.
It worked a treat and red cuffs and helmet crests are a nice vibrant red.
However, looking at the pink, it did look rather good. If I hadn’t already painted my units in blue I would have gone with the pink.
The other thing I managed to do was to fix this resin figure.
He was one from my mate’s collection and painted by Alternative Armies. He had snapped off at the ankles.
It wasn’t just a case of superglue him back on as he was leaning at a bit of a funny angle. Therefore, I resorted to superglue and Bicarbonate of soda.
Luckily, I had a useful assistant who could lob the soda onto the superglue as I held the model in an appropriate position. The soda reacts instantly with the superglue leading to a hard, almost plastic bond. As it was his ankle, I did not file it down, as I wanted a larger surface area to hold together. Luckily, it looked like he had a bit of a raggedy bottom to his trousers.
With having to shake the paint bottle so much I am seriously considering one of these nail polish shakers!
I had totally forgotten about this.
I found one of the spare ones in my newly filled shed and then found the completed base in one of the box files.
My shed has a very bright light, a DVD player with attached TV. Next up is a kettle 😁
I am still sorting out boxes so it does look a bit messy in this photo!
Bogenwald 