Unclean, Unclean

Well I have decided to have a night off, as I am starting to feel a bit bleurgh. I think I have caught my daughter’s cold. I really hope not as she was floored for a week with hers. Luckily my lateral flow rest has come back negative.

I got the Aliens off the build plate and they are rather nice…

As it was very sunny here today I shoved them on the Windowsill to get some natural curing done.

I was thinking of spraying mine gun metal and then using the black Contrast Paint oder the top. Won’t that can happen is that it doesn’t work. If that is the case I will spray then black and highlight by dry brushing with blue.

If I do perk up then I am going to get some more done on my pikes…mi have got about a month before I need my army for our big Lion Rampant game.

Predator Puppies and some Painting

So at last my Predator hounds came today. I excitedly opened them to find that I have been sent puppies that I need grow to make them into fully fledged hounds.

They are bloody tiny! So to make sure I hadn’t imagined it I just watched the scene on YouTube and although there is no direct comparison next to a human, they definitely look bigger on the screen.

Have a look and see what you think…

So to make sure it wasn’t the tall predator making them look small I put them next to a Wey Yu Commando…

Nope they still look small, both are in rearing poses so they look quite tall when stood on boxes etc.

As there is a dead Wey a Yu Commando on the base I thought I would compare him. I reckon Wey Yu are accepting child soldiers into the elite…

Just look at the difference between the two hands. The unpainted one is closer to the camera.

I managed to just about compare two heads, apologies for the naff photo, the Ipad was struggling.

I reckon there is near enough a 50% difference between the two.

All in all I am somewhat disappointed in these… I hadn’t realised that when I got them for half the average price that they would be half size! The only reason I got them is because they were cheap!

On a more positive note…

I finished the Hussars and the bases on the commandos.

Tomorrow I will clean up the hounds and get them painted, not that I want to, as they are evidently hunt chihuahua. Luckily they don’t appear in my Aliens RPG… knowing my players they would want to pet them and snuggle them.

Aliens…Civilians

Well I just walked through the door 10 minutes ago. My plans for a sneaky painting session came to nothing as after my two youngest’s play, which was very funny .

I ended up being taxi for Eldest and Eldest’s friend. Not got a problem with that, but it was originally going to be my good lady doing the run, but as it was getting icy,. she asked me. Friend lived 15 miles beyond my house hence the late getting in…Therefore I haven’t the urge to paint anything. So instead I spent my 10 minutes hunting down some civilians in a brown box (which turned out to be white).

I got these a couple of years ago for an Aliens RPG using Savage Worlds. To be honest they are a teeny bit small(You can see the size compared to bishop), but they make some nice civilian scientists and security…Something the Wey Yu Commando might need to escort. This lot come from some Star Wars Game, apart from the winged beasties which are some kind of Heroclix monster. They were all really cheap, somewhere between 20p and 40p each. They will potentially get rebased sometime in the future.

Regarding the RPG

Having read the rules again last night a player doesn’t need to beat a score, they just need to roll at least one six.

So with a strength of 4 and stamina of 4 the player rolls 8 dice. If they get a six they succeed, any other sixes are bonuses and allows them to undertake stunts – basically bonuses based on their skill.

If they got no sixes they could push the roll, in other words roll all 8 again, but would then need to add one to their stress level and then roll a number of stress dice equal to their stress level.

Other players can lend a hand in a task, each giving one extra dice.

Group rolls are just that, one person makes the roll, with up to three others helping. Only one roll is made, not one from each player. Sneaking in a group is harsh… the player with the lowest rating makes the roll alone, which is, in reality, quite realistic.

The one thing it is very clear about in the game is that failure is failure, you don’t get another roll. You have to find another way.

Unclean, Unclean

So today has mostly been spent in bed, with odd foray to the bathroom or kitchen. I slept until 13.45 and have somehow managed 1200 steps on my fit bit.

Luckily the 3D Printer was nearby, so it hasn’t been totally unproductive day.

Five done with the sixth on the way. These are going to be Christmas gifts for my class.

I also spent this afternoon reading the rules for this…

I am getting the hang of them apart from the unskilled roll rule…

As soon as I copied this it made sense… each skill is based on an attribute… so strength attribute has close combat, heavy machinery and stamina as skills. You have 14 attribute points to spend between 4 attributes and then 10 skill points to share between 12 skills. In the game you add base attribute and then skill level. This gives you the number of D6 you roll. So if you don’t have the skill you are reduced to the attribute alone.You are allowed to push you luck by rolling stress dice based on your stress level. This increases the the likelihood of succeeding, but also rolling one’s which is bad. Up side is you don’t need to roll a dice for mundane things. Field stripping an M41A prior to a drop is easy, doing the same thing whilst the barricades are being overrun by Xenomorphs is a totally different thing.

Having read a bit more, further into the book each time you roll a dice you add the stress level dice too, getting a one means there is chance that your character panics. The system here is add a d6 score to the stress level and read off the chart. This runs from no effect up to catatonic. Mostly this only lasts for a single round, but if the score is high enough then the results can permanent.

Reading the pre generated game (cinematic) chances of survival for the players is pretty slim! It starts off on a small moon LV-426 in the terraforming facility of Hadley’s hope… whatever can possibly go wrong!

I cracked open the card pack too

There are:

22 weapon cards,

20 Character cards,

3 vehicle cards

10 initiative cards.

The weapon cards do have multiples so a number of repeats in there. There seem to be 20 separate characters who are used in the 2 published adventure modules, but are also useful as NPC’s

Three vehicles are the Cheyenne dropship, the Apc and the Daihotai 8×8 civilian tractor.

The initiative cards are simply numbered 1-10 so you can see what order people go in.

I am toying with the idea of printing the troop APC as well as some civilian vehicles. I have some civilian ones already downloaded from Thingiverse and RPG now, these were going to be for Starship Troopers so useful for both…

The other thing I have already is a shuttle craft..civilian, but still something useful for both games…

Tomorrow is my two youngest children’s Christmas play, with my eldest having a bean feast soirée. Not sure how much I will get tomorrow.

Weyland Yutani Commandos almost Done…

Well tonight I would have got these finished, apart from a small mishap, but more of that later…

I have pretty much finished the actual bases, apart from washes, tidying up and the black edge.still a couple of bits to do on the actual miniatures. The metalwork on the flamer guys shotgun and the headset on the one with the cap.

As I said I would have got these finished, but for the mishap. As I was carrying in a pile of figures I caught my sleeve on the door handle and dropped a box of them. Sadly a plastic box full size of plastic figures onto a concrete floor didn’t end well.

So I had to repair half of the things in the box. I then built five miniatures.

Have you ever noticed, no matter how many things you dryfit and test things, the second you add the superglue then they won’t go together… not to mention add superglue and they somehow become covered in oil or something and ping merrily across the table like a miniature Barnes-Wallis Bouncing bomb!

But anyway I now have five scouts and twelve Genestealers to paint.. the eagle eyed amongst you will spot a bit of gaming nostalgia…

I have a toss up between painting the above or the following:

The above show off pretty much the remains of my Flintloque with the exception of the elf cuirassiers. So I have two dog gun grew, five dog Hussars and five undead wraith Hussars.

I am undecided on which to go for next, it will more than likely be either of the above sets. Hints and suggestions greatly appreciated.

On a totally different note, I ordered a pair of Predator hellhounds, they popped up on EBay for £9.99, I put a bid on and was the only bidder so got them for half the normal price.

Weyland Yutani Commandos and Friends

Not much done this evening as the family were painting the advent calendar.

As for the commandos I managed to get the bases washed and the base colour dry brushed on.

I repainted the white bits, ready for painting tomorrow.

I thought I would share the original miniatures I painted a couple of years ago.

First up the marines… I added the chunky metal floor. I can certainly say that my painting has improved a bit since then.

Next up a Predator and prey

And finally a few of the fifteen first edition aliens…

I added bits and pieces to the bases with Greenstuff as well as adding on the grating.

The new one piece casts are sooooo much better. The aliens above were painted black then highlighted dark blue. I can honestly say that I prefer the paint job on the new ones.

I am now on the hunt for some unicast marines 😂

So tomorrow I will attempt to get the bases completed. I Just found my Lost Patrol game with Marine scouts and genestealers… I might have a blast at them (especially as I have purple 😉… I could do with some pink too 🤔).

We shall see where my paintbrush leads…

I watched this today on Squidmar miniatures…

Something I firmly believe in, and funnily enough was just discussing this very thing the other day…

Here is the little cartoon in the video… something I shared a while ago on Facebook…

till tomorrow…

Weyland Yutani Commandos…

Only a tiny bit done tonight as I really didn’t get in until 9.00.

The floors have had a layer of gun metal…

They could do with a thinned down layer too to try and get into all the holes. I will do that tomorrow as well as give them a wash then a highlight. Pipes and cables will have a white layer added (if needed) and then painted up to match the previous ones.

As these are getting closer to finishing, I am beginning to wonder what to paint next?

Weyland Yutani Commandos…on a Roll

Tonight I felt like I made a lot of progress, I didn’t, but it felt like a lot 😁

Not much white left on the miniatures now. I went for a black on the weapons and also did a lot of tidying up as well as painting boots and gloves.

I have been using my 20p brush for all of these…

It is beginning to get a bit of a bend in the tip, but my AP and GW ones did too.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get the bases done 👍

Wey Yu Commando…Further Work

Tonight was a slow, slow…slow white painting session… but eventually I got all of the white recoated…

As can be seen from the above, I managed to get some other colours on too. These are now at the ‘I hate them’ stage. Still a lot to go on these, but getting there. The floors will be the same colours as the prisoners and aliens. The elbow cup is a bit annoying as it is in the wrong place, it is still on the elbow, but it just annoys me, not sure why.

Boots and gloves tomorrow as well as the weapons. I am going to repaint the smart gun tomorrow as I want it to be different to the the green pouches. I will do the same colour for the pulse rifles and flamer. Not quite sure what colour yet, I will see what colours I have got. Possibly black and gun metal.

Wey Yu Commandos

Tonight was a bit of a late one so not much done, but I did manage something.

I also decided on a colour scheme of sorts…

This is the state of play so far, the other armoured sections will be the same colour as the upper body. I just needed to repaint the various bits back in in white.

I am quite intrigued by the galerus on the left shoulder. Definitely gives protection to the neck on that side, especially when firing. Pouches etc will be a military green (I think) happy to hear people’s thoughts on that.

I decided on this colour scheme as I wanted them to be in a different uniform to the marines (camouflaged), one that stood out. Meaning no confusion on the tabletop.

I really should get the marines out to see how this lot compare size wise. The originals were on a recessed base (as were the aliens and Predators).

So plans for tomorrow is to repaint the white bits that need it and then get on with the armour. I painted these in one of my new 20 pence (size 0) brushes. It seemed to survive unscathed.