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.

Forgotten Forces Friday

Well I forgot last week.. so here is this week’s….

Well not so much a force but quite forceful… may I introduce Cynthia and Charles Wellbeloved, heir and heiress to the Wellbeloved fortune. These two have taken part in various wargames and role playing games over the years and to be honest the years seem to have taken their toll. As Indiana Jones says… “it’s not the age, it’s the miles”

Elves, Cultists and Dropships

I managed to get my elves sprayed tonight, I decided on a different spray colour as I am doing a different colour of cloaks etc.

I also managed to get some paint onto the missing cultist…

The purple paint is pretty naff and will require about 30 coats I reckon. The pigment, for whatever reason, is not mixing in.

And finally the crashed dropship, some pillock forgot to change the print quality so this looks a whole lot worse than the full one.

I still reckon it will make a good objective for the games…

regarding the game, I am considering starting them on the invasion of Klendathu (yeah the bit where everyone pretty much dies… casualties in the first hour were 300 000.

My plan is that they have survived and need to make their way away from the landing zones to await rescue. A short campaign on Klendathu and then (if they survive) move them onto actual mobile infantry from the books and Roughnecks series.

Elven Update

Shading and highlighting to do but otherwise finished…

I am going to flock the green bits and add stippling to the brown bits to act as mud/earth.

Then onto the next lot…

Bucketloads more to go still in the bag, but progress is being made!

The printer is chuntering away in the shed making me a Starship Troopers objective 😉

Back to the Elves…Again

I cracked on again tonight and tried to get as much done as I could.

I started painting the bases with brown and then though sod it, they are getting covered anyway!

I downloaded so much stuff from Thingiverse today that I reckon I will need a whole kilogram just for the downloads 😂.

All to do with Sci Fi and starship trooperery type stuff… aka proxies 👍

I managed to procure a ST plasma bug, cost £25 but the other stuff I was bidding on went beyond £40 the last time I looked… just checked the Rippler bugs got to £67 and the Tanker made £38.50. I had a top bid of £30, but knew I would be blown out of the water. I did find a cheap plastic toy version of the Tanker bug from the states. I have seen some people doing good stuff with these so managed to get it for £4.95 plus £10 postage. Here’s hoping I don’t get clobbered with silly charges at this end.😱

Back To The Elves…

Change in scale and genre..

25mm sci fi to 10mm fantasy. I decided to get a bit more done on my elves. I am really struggling to get motivated with these, what makes it worse is I think I have the same, if not twice as many to make a start on. I have painted loads more 10mm than this lot and managed fine but these are really causing me grief.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I am doing a Facebook group challenge of 30 minutes a day for 50 days…. surely I can get these finished in that time 😱

A really short post today as I am absolutely cabbaged… long day that I have been worrying about for weeks went off pretty well…

Off Gallivanting II

Today we did a recce of the WW2 town defences of Lerwick. By all accounts these are the best preserved in the UK… which is pretty cool.

We just looked at the mid area defences and not the outer ring, the inner ring has pretty much gone due to houses etc. This lot are also up for destruction as Lerwick expands up onto Staney Hill.

Now to the photos.. a view from and of one of the observation posts…

The view out of the slit is off the South end of the harbour, the land beyond the sea on the left is the island of Bressay. The green lump jutting out to the sea is where the main seaward battery sat.

Some lumps and bumps, I am not sure what this is as it has a couple of bunkers/ pits and connecting trenches. It could be a mortar pit with ammunition bunker or I could be talking bollocks… A lot of this section of defences are sitting under those houses… just below them are a pretty well preserved section of tank traps.

Random shots of trenches and bunkers next. The last faces inwards and not towards the potential attack direction, this was deliberate as enemy forces were expected to make for the gaps in the hills and there they would be caught by enfilade fire from both flanks…

In the field below the track there are a host more bunkers and trenches and one of the three spigot mortar positions we have found.

This last photo is taken from another bunker towards more tank traps

This is just scratching the surface of what is up on the hills or down towards the town. I might try and get along to the gun positions at the south end. The north end guns were knocked down and an industrial park built over them. The blue building in the distance is somewhere near where they were.

Mobile Infantry III

Well I got a bit more done on these little chaps…

It was mainly highlighting on the grey uniforms – not that you can tell from the photo…

The other bit of news is…

They now have a way to get down to a planet 😁

This took a very long time to print, but I got there in the end!

I have also had a mess around with 3D Builder and have made an extended 16 seater. According to Cura it will take 18 + hours to print. I added all the bits together in one ship apart from the roof and the rear hatch.

I also had a mess around making a lighter recon craft using the two engine pods and the nose cone. If I remember tomorrow I will get some shots of the STL files.

Back to work tomorrow…

Mobile Infantry II

I managed a bit more on these chaps today…

Still a fair way to go but getting there.

I also carried on printing their ride:

This is in various bits that are glued together. The sides will have panels, the left hand side being printed now. Something went wrong with the interior bit, it separated. It could be a printer glitch or a slicer glitch. The nose didn’t have the same problem so I am in the dark.

This is the interior of the craft. You can see the flaw line on the right hand side. It is just about noticeable on the left hand side.

This is more work by Terrain4Print, again from Thingiverse, so cost at zero to purchase it. I will see what his Patreon costs are as I think he deserves something for his hard work.

I haven’t downloaded it yet, but there is a crashed version of this too. Once this is built I may do a second one and use 3D builder to splice on some weapon pods.

Happy with the way it is going so far. I am running out of this spool, hopefully I will have enough to get the wings and rear hatch done.

Tomorrow I am off gallivanting again. This time to have a look at the WW2 defences of Lerwick. We have some of the best preserved outside of France. This includes a bunker design that is only ever found in France…

I will endeavour to take photographs…

Off Galivanting

Today was the last day of our Easter Holidays…

for some reason Shetland has the school Easter holidays at a set time this means we go back on Monday, w3 are back a week then off for Easter Monday…🤨

My little boy is over the chicken pox and my good lady is over her lurgy and off work so off we went on a mini road trip, involving two ferries.

First stop was the reconstructed Viking Longhouse on the Island if Unst…

There is also a full size reconstruction of the Gockstadt longship. A bit of a long story, but basically it sailed from Norway, got as far as Shetland and never got any further…

A bit more Viking Shenanigans took place with a visit to an original Viking longhouse. This one is a bit of a do-upper. It was built before 1100ad

This appeared due to coastal erosion. Over the last 900 years the sea has worked its way inland and something that was on good farmland is now nearly in the sea.

We then went decidedly modern by visiting Muness Castle. This was built in 1598

It is more of a tower house really, but it was involved in a bit of a fracas with Earl Stewart who built Scalloway Castle (both had the same architect!)

Holes for firearms are everywhere…

The kids enjoyed exploring with the supplied torches…

All in all a good day.

On the hobby front I started printing off the dropship as well as meeting a Facebook Challenge of 30 minutes painting a day for 50 days… we will see how that pans out…