The Federales - Federation Internal Secuirty Forces

It's been a busy month for my blog so I thought I would finish it off with one last post in June. So I thought  I would post something I have been sat on for a few days now. I like these guys, as figures at least. There are five of the six I have done so far. The last one lacks a head because I wanted one that was bareheaded for a sergeant. They have since released another pack with an officer, a couple of mutoids and the really ridiculously low budget security robot from the TV series.

Black is always hard to get right (not as hard as yellow or white perhaps) but I have manged to pick out the details pretty well with these.

Crooked Dice minis. What else can I say. Nice. Very nice. They have managed to capture that cheesy 60s, 70s and 80s low budget scifi look perfectly and do so with really nice sculpts. I have some astronauts and scientists to go up on her when they are finished (which will be soon).

Sol Stellar Survey Service - A First Look

I was looking for some 28mm figures that could be used as a quasi military force. I wasn't after anything too military or too Star Trek but something more like the Scout Service in Traveller. In For All Mankind I have a group called the Sol Stellar Survey Service. They are part astronaut, part geologist, part xenologist, part explorer and part scientist. They also double as a reconnaissance  force in times of trouble. In my game.
After a lot of digging around the only thing I could find were the Spacefarers from Victory Force (not the old Citadel ones). I was a bit reticent to order them as I couldn't find out much about scale or quality on the web and the pics on the web site were just a bit too indistinct. Well I ended up ordering them.

As well as what's in the pictures below I have some vac suited figures and some aliens but I will post pictures of these another time. I ended up paying  £30 tax and handling which came as a real shock. I will make sure that anything else U get is made up from smaller orders in future.

I have fairly mixed feelings about them. They are exactly what I wanted but with a few niggles. Some of the hair styles lack anything but the most basic sculpting.  Big hair with no texture. The figures have a wide range of sizes which is a plus and a negative in my book. They seem to do a lot of zombies of a similar quality which end up a lot cheaper.

My bet is that they will paint up alright. The faces are better than some even if some of the hair is a bit off. They have the advantage of being exactly what I want. I am guessing that my main gripe now is that the day after the arrived Victory Force announce a mammoth sale on this range only. Timing the secret of great...

Yet More Scatter Terrain

This is more of a catch up post than normal. I did most of this a while back and have just got round to taking some pictures before putting the stuff in it's storage boxes. Today's offerings mainly come from Peter Pig. They do some nice scenery packs that I'd had my eye on for a while. I have been after piles of tires for a while. Whilst there are plenty of packs out there, they all tend to be massively over sized for 15mm. Eight foot tires don't really do it for me. The tires come with some old looking petrol pumps which I thought would be great for a Fallout style retro petrol (that's gas for you foreign devils) station.

outhouses

Outhouses seemed like a must. For the shanty type village I am planning, I thought these would be great. I guess they would also work with the sci-fi and Afghan stuff I have worked on in the past. Peter Pig also do some nice furniture. I now have lots of wild west stuff from doing the Fallout game and these were originally wild west terrain.

A bed, piano and a chest of draws are found here and there. I'm not sure why I got the coffins. A bit of an impulse I guess but I am sure they were find a use somewhere.

Most of the rest of this is random junk although the missile came from Eureka I think.

28mm Terrain Tiles

I have more or less given up on the clean up of the desk. I have got a lot done but not quite cleared everything. It is time for a change though as there are some pressing external matters that mean that  I am back on the 28mm front.

The For All Mankind game is just over the horizon (think Traveller Ancients but grey, none wings black bulbous eyes and a ufologists wet dream) so I thought it was time to get things going. I need a load of room tiles for the game and here is the first one to be done. I have ordered a load of figures from Victory Force and some Grey's from Tengu Models. These still haven't arrived. I did get some stuff from Ainsty Casting at the Phalanx Show which included some Crooked Dice/7TV stuff which is currently on the painting table.

I might show some more as they get done but just in case the players are watching. I might not post the interesting ones until after the fact.

Federal Navy Almost Done

 
I had a look at the picture on the Babylon 5 post I did earlier today and it made me feel a little bit glum. I took the picture late yesterday and have worked on them last night and this morning. I need to put some insignia on them but otherwise they are done. I am pretty pleased with them.
I haven't painted any Mongoose figures before (I think they were Mongoose anyway) and I was a little disappointedwith the miniatures. The poses are fine but the lips seem to have been welded on as an afterthought. I have put some iris' and eyebrows on and played around with the faces a bit. It is a fine line between accuracy, putting on something that people can see and recognise as a face and kabuki make up.

Babylon 5 / Federal Naval Figures

This is really a quicky post. I got these Babylon 5, 28mm figures really cheap a several years ago. They became part of the lead mountain and stuck in a box. With the For All Mankind RPG game in the offing, I thought that they would do for the few Federal Navy figures I needed. The figures are at an early stage with a bit more work needed.

The main organisation will be the Sol Stellar Survey Service for which I plan to use some Victory Force figures. I'm still waiting for them.

Vac Suits And Some Odds And Sods

Another quick post. I have another 15mm character figure to put on. It has been sat on the bench foe a few weeks so thought I should put a picture on here. This is supposed to be a US marine officer figure. I'm not sure it's as good as the Navy Officer I did a few weeks ago but it's not too bad. I think it's a GZG figure mainly because it's on a round base.
 
These are some very old 25mm Grenadier Traveller miniatures. They were painted when I got them and I didn't fancy going to the efoort of stripping as the pait job was ok. So I have really only tarted them up. This meant ink, some bits of colour and a few bits of highlighting.  They are a little short but with the base don't look out of scale. I'll have to make sure whatever I use as flocking covers up all the sins.

Space 1889 RPG

Space 1889 is one of the few RPG games where being British is what it's all about. Which I think is pretty cool. The racial stereotypes that surface in the game are perhaps a little out of date (two worlds wars and one world cup, no mustn't say that in these enlightened times). These are just a few pics from the game the other day. I have to admit when the tripod arrived I was a little bit twitchy but we fought through and overcame. 

The bad guy still managed to get away at the end though.

Just in case anyone is interested, I have no idea who makes any of the figures and apart from the my character (I showed a few weeks ago) none of the figures belong to me.

Fallout Falls In

About half the figures I had planned for the fallout game are now done. Mostly I am pretty okay with them (that's impressed by my standards). Not sure about the one with the cowboy hat as she doesn't seem to have much of a mouth. I've had a look at the the one in the pack and I am fairly sure that the face is not my fault. There's also a female security guard in a cap that's face doesn't look that great but it is better in reality.

The NAC figures were at the time the game started a bit of an accommodation. I had a few left over from a NAC force project a while ago and they were close enough to the look I wanted. Towards the end of the last game te players acquired a big rocket launcher. In savage worlds I play with an adventure deck. This deck grants some advantages in certain situations. One of the players burnt a load of cards to get a big rocket launcher to kill a big monster. Sadly, another player got a really lucky shot that killed it just as the rocket launcher got into position. Anyway, they now have a big rocket launcher (something like a Milan) so i thought I had better do some figures for it.

Phalanx Show

Phalanx is my local show and pretty good despite being in St Helens (where they make glass and terrible rugby league teams (for the Americans out there rugby league is like American football but you don't get a rest (time out to catch your breath in the middle of a game, only in American :-) ), helmets and body armor because we're hard). It is a good little show and I go just about every year. They support the charity Combat Stress who help former soldiers with mental health problems so can't be all bad.

I am planning a new RPG game in the near future so I got some minis for that. So expect to see some 28mm stuff arriving over the next days and weeks. Most of the stuff was brought from Ainsty Castings and also sell some Crooked Dice stuff too.








For the first time in a while I didn't buy anything for 15mm. This was not through lack of trying just that there wasn't much there that I fancied. I think that this might pass as 15mm. I'm thinking they might make alien ants nests of something like that. I have no idea who sold me this so if anyone recognises it please let me know. The same goes for the wind turbine below.
So keen to get on with things was I that I found that I was well into the basing and painting process before I had even started. So here are some pictures. These figures are kind of inspired by a 1970s TV series called Space 1999. This was Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds etc) at his best. The suits are pretty close to the ones n the show and have been used elsewhere. The scientists are not really from Space 1999 but the heads

really are. One of them has just a hint of Martin Landau.

These are some scenic bits from Ainsty castings. I have a fair bit
of their stuff now. They also sold me the Crooked Dice stuff.








The last couple of pictures are Federated Security Troopers also from Crooked Dice. These are so closely based on the Federation Troopers from Blake's 7 it is untrue. I was figuring on using these for internal security troopers in an upcoming RPG I have pending.

WIP Some Falloutish Figures

As part of the ongoing desktop mopping up campaign I found that I had a load of GZG figures that had painted hands and faces. These were started when the Fallout game was in full swing which was much earlier in the year. This is just the first stage. On top of these, there are some more to do. I've added a few more poses. The good guys ended up with some heavy weapons so I've started some of those two. I'll put some pics up when they are done.

Wolves

I've just piled these back in a draw. They have been on the workbench shelf for a while so I thought I'd better stop them gathering dust.  I'm not sure about the basing as they were done a while ago and I think my painting has improved a bit since then too. A dozen wolves seems like a lot for most games. It stems from a game several years ago where the party were attacked by a pack of ten

wolves. A quick look in the box of figures found two wolves, sort sort of dog, a skeletal dog, a couple of lizards and that was about it. Stand ins for the other wolves were some oldhammer goblins. These goblins usually do most of the standing in as they were the only figures we had in any number. So I decided to go on a bit of a crusade and got these guys. Oh well, back in the box they go.

200 Posts

200 posts in just a little over a year. Most of it seemed to make some sort of sense although I'm sure my dad would not see it. I admit to enjoying it.

So what's going to come in the next hundred posts. I am hoping to do some X-com stuff in the near future and continue with the Fallout theme. I am running a scifi RPG soon so there might be some 28mm miniatures and terrain for the game. I will eventually get back to running a zombie game. I also have plans to get some more modern game figures. Specifically some Afghan and Brits. I am probably going to get some 28mm  A Very British Civil War force or maybe two and I can feel the nagging desire to get back into some Spanish Civil War miniatures in 15mm or 28mm. Not to mention the ongoing desk top clear up. I will of course keep up with the other stuff as well.

Thanks for reading let me know if you have any requests.

RIP Iain Banks

I heard that Iain Banks had died yesterday. He has written many scifi novels but his none scifi novels were what I loved best. I read The Wasp factory back in the eighties not that long after it came out as a recommendation. It's not exactly a change you're life novel but I have read every Ian banks novel since. I don't think I could give him greater praise than to say that every time I went to a book shop I would look to see if there was anything new. There will be one last Iain Banks novel, which despite some strenuous effort just didn't get to the bookshops before he died. I am kind of saddened that there will be no more books by him as reading his novels have always been great experiences.

Half A Dozen Shades Of Grey

Another slightly suggestive title. I suspect that there might be a few more women looking at this post than normal.  It possible should have been half a dozen shades of greys.

There isn't much to say here. I have a huge number of these figures. The idea was to use them for an X-COM game. Then I moved onto doing a force for Tomorrow's War or Stargrunt. I have done a few to see how they turned out. Then I thought that I was going to use a few for a Conspiracy X game.

Keeping Busy

I have spent the last few days clearubg up stuff on my work bench. The bench does not look any better and if anything is slightly worse. I have based and varnished nearly two hundred 15mm figures. This by and large makes fairly dull viewing so I haven't posted for a few days.  I feel a bit better. There is a game show next week so I might be able to justify buying some minis. I won't need to justify buying some more storage trays though.

I had a fair few miniatures from a company whose now lost my business because of their astoundingly poor customer service. They were hanging around part painted and taking up space. So I finished these SAS figures off. These were a real pain to paint. They have huge amounts of flash of them so of which is nearly impossible to get rid of without damaging the figures. I have done the best I can with what I had. I can't help but think of Ultimate Force when I look at these. Well if you ever need a laugh just give it a go.

Clearing Up

Well this is a post about trying to clear up what has been left hanging around on my desk for ages and finding things is drawers and boxes that really just needed a little attention to finish them off. I have almost finished some GZG vehicles. The green ones still require a bit more work on them.

Not much to say about what I have done today. I didn't get as much time as I would have liked but I still managed to get some things done. Stuff has been jumping out of draws onto the table and almost painting themselves. I did start and finish some landmines. These will be useful when fallout comes around again at the end of the year. These were an easy enough job. I've painted some other bits of rubble bases and some telegraph poles. This is work in progress.


Figures that have been hanging around on the table have miraculously glued themselves to bases.  Those that have already been glued to bases have found those bases painted. There is a load of stuff that has been hanging around since the Fallout game finished but as usual, there is a load more to go.

Vacc Suits

I've painted up a few Vacc suited figures today. I've not got a good word to say about the supplier as they have mucked up every order I have sent them. Suffice to say that I won't be buying anything from them again. They have been in the half painted pile for a while so I thought it was time I finished them off so I can free uo some space on the desk.

GZG Trucks Painted

May has been a busy month for Lead Reckoning. This kind of shows that I have the time and momentum for doing some gaming painting and developing some new ideas. So I am hoping that June should be another good month. So to help make it happen I thought I would post early and I have some pictures of GZG vehicles to show off.


 These are some of the older GZG trucks I showed on the blog last month and in their kit form back in December, now painted. They look okay to me. I had a play about with some of the GW glazes. Then I changed my mind and painted over them. I like the variety that GZG offer within a limited range of parts. The orange tracked vehicle really has a sense of a Traveller ATV.
Looking at the pictures, as usual, makes me think I need to do a bit of touch up work. The grey actually stands out on my normal gaming surface which is very sandy in colour.


I've been gaming today so I have some pictures to post soon as well.