Modernish Barricades

The post apocalypse is never far from my mind, at least in a gaming sense. Despite Bethesda recently ruining my gaming experience, I do not feel that the world is about to end. I think my interest goes back to reading The Postman by David Brin after reading a review in White Dwarf of all places. A quick reading and rereading of Day of the Triffids and I am kind of a fan of the genre. Zombies and nuclear war seem to be my preferred way to end the world. The Walking Dead and Fallout out gave been my most recent influences in tabletop gaming but I have a lot of love for ideas from the old RPG Aftermath and almost anything done George Romero and a number of other books and computer games.

Finding players has been hard in the past so I haven't pushed it. In there here and now things are not so bad on that score.  So I am looking at this as a possibility again so I figured it might be time to do something about it. I don't have many figures left to paint and those that I do have I can't find. What I can find is some terrain.

In the end (so to speak) it's close enough to the modern era that the terrain at least should be able to do double duty. What is available is a bit of a mixed bag. I wanted them to all tie together and look relatively uniform and with a lot of the longer I wanted a bit more stability and I wanted it to match what I had done in the past. If I do get X-Com off the ground this year I will need some terrain for that. I have medium terms plans for a zombie and one based in post nuclear war London. Part of me wants to get into 28mm modern but I have a few reservations about that.

I wanted a range of sizes some of which, if not all could be used as barricades and general scatter. Large quantities of tire piles seem to figure highly in a lot of games so I purchased some from Crooked Dice. These first four are produced by them although there is a crate found in my bit's box (I have no idea who by) added to make up the length. Then is is also an oil drum which I think is Tamiya.

The crowd barriers are from Ainsty Casting. I love these guys for terrain. Hopefully these will hold up to the punishment but will need to be carefully look after.

Most of what I have to hand is from Mantic's The Walking Dead : All Out War. Nice details on the terrain as I am starting to expect from Mantic. Some have been added to with stuff that I have handing around to make up the length. Some of the barrels are from a Tamiya kit I got back in the 1980's and other bits have been around for well over a decade. It's nice to get some of things used rather than just hanging around.

In total there is just short of three feet/ninety centimetres of stuff. It's never enough but it's a distinct improvement. I have some Mantic supply tokens to be done. These are a lot smaller but have a bit more detail. Think these will be a project for next week as I expect the Stormtroopers are going to take a lot of work.

Reading And Painting - Scrappers And The Walking Dead

At about six this morning I woke up and started reading the Scrappers Rulebook. I haven't read that much of it and I am reserving comment until I have read it through. Many of the Osprey rule books, with the exception of the Ambush Alley stuff has been okay (both Force On Force and Tomorrow's War being excellent pieces of work) could use a bit of polish. Frostgrave is okay and I have almost everything they have done but I still haven't played a game and I am not sure I will. The more traditional format for Osprey books (the ones with the dark blue covers in the standard Osprey size) have some nice ideas but I can always find big niggles with them. When I have read the Scrappers book, maybe played a game of it and had a chance to consider it, I will do a proper review.

I have continued with The Walking Dead miniatures. I have done a lot of work on the first batch of six and a little bit on the second batch. The New Cruelty demands five figures a week. If I can proceed at the pace I have managed today over the weekend I might get the full dozen zombies done. Maybe they might need some varnishing and some work done on the bases but the paint should be done. As simple models lacking a lot of equipment the number of colours required is limited. You can bet that the character figures will take much longer. As far as these figures go, I expect they are more likely to end up in a Savage Worlds RPG than their intended purpose first.

I can't find any round bases. I have a box of the things in my garage somewhere but I still can't find them. I would like to be doing the orks/orcs but without the bases this is not possible. Now that I have a troll for my orc bloodbowl team, I can see that my interest is peaked with that as well. I am guessing that I am going to side with anything I think I can get a game with.

I have tried to write this post a few times today. For some reason it is proving really difficult. There is obviously a lot going on in my head at the moment. Having had a terrible nights sleep and a busy day there has been no time to catch up with myself. Hopefully, tomorrow will prove to be a better day. There are a lot of calls to make so maybe not.

Another Building...

This time in 15mm. I was playing around with this prior to starting the derelict project. I was thinking then that this was a nice idea. This is another project that will have to be stopped as lack of toys has stopped play.  I wanted something to go with all the stuff I already have but something a little more industrial in natures. I guess this gives a passing glance at what industrial units actually look like and not much more. Still it's the thought that counts. The general idea is that this is a post apocalypse building/combat zone, hence the upended floor paving slabs.

Today I have done a few tiny little bits to this and there is now not much more to do. I would to change the roof. This will mean finding some black flock covered sheeting I have in a box somewhere. The floor tiles are made from foam sheeting I got from hobby craft ages ago. The tiles are 1cm squares to give me an idea of size. The vents and windows are from TheScene and the door is GZG.

I have no immediate plans to do any more 15mm stuff as I am going to do some more 28mm stuff. That said, I cut out another blank box to do anther smaller industrial unit.

New GZG 15mm Ground Vehicles

As well as the civilian mechs I got at Triples I got some of the new trucks. These are now glued together. They have a nice rugged 2300ish look. I'll not do too much about them here but I'll post a bit more when they get closer to being done. The one on the right hasn't quite set right so I've had to re-glue it.

I have been playing about with some of the GZG vehicles. I started on the military ones the other day. These are still at a very early stage. The trucks are really what I was after. I know they are vehicles but in many respects I see them more as scenary. The aim for them is more as things to make the terrain more interesting than it is to use them as vehicles.

I like the buggies as they have a nice Space 1999  vibe. This show is one of the best bits of scifi cheese even now. These too are a long way from ready.

15mm GZG SciFi Armour

I have purchased a large amount of  GZG 15mm vehicles that have have been sat around for a while now. In terms of weight in the lead mountain, this is the single biggest purchase I have made in ten years. I wanted some stuff that would fit in with my ideas for Tomorrow's War. Sort of 2300 meets Aliens. So lots of mid-tech stuff with wheels and tracks are the main order of business. I have a some srmoured grav vehicles which I think  will do for a more advanced focred just for good measure. Mostly I wanted some civilian looking vehicles to use more as scenery rather than vehicles. All of which now require some degree of attention.

They have been taking up limited storage space ever since I got them. I thought it was about time I did something about it. Sooooo...... If I put some paint on them, it means the project has been started and is not at the gathering dust stage. I can justify buying some more stuff to stick in storage when I go to Triples later in the month. Then I can sit back and admire an even bigger lead mountain. In general, the lead miuntain has been getting smaller (or did I just stop buying 28mm figures?)

Wondering why there is a picture of a mountain at the top of the post? Well that is lead Mountain Colorado. No, seriously it actually exists, it's not just a clever metaphor :-)

Peter Pig Stuff

After my recent spurt of activity for the Fallout game, I spent some money with Peter Pig recently. I know I seem to be painting corpses at the moment but there are two reasons. the first is that I really, really want to and secondly, I only have to paint half a figure which means the lead mountain will disappear quickly.

A lot of the dead are modern US figures so I thought I might as well paint up the Peter Pig Snipers and some odds and sods whilst I was at it. I'll publish those soon. The dead soldiers are done in the same way as I did my American's previously. Who needs a painting log book when you can blog it and go and look at what colours you used back then.

There were a few GZG NAC casualties lying around. I wanted another Fallout Vault Guard casualty and painted a couple of NAC casualties as well. The NAC will be doubling are troops from the New Californian Republic in the Fallout game so it seemed like a good time to get them over and done with. I'll publish the NAC/NCR models when I get chance to take some pics.

These are modern US troopers and the odd Vietnam era figure. I like the normal sniper figure but I am not so keen on the Barret rifle. Still, it's better than the competition. There is a figure which I assume is meant to be Rambo. I wanted a figure with some character for Force on Force, a positive leader perhaps. I know it's Vietnam but looking at the figure I don't think this will make any difference. I feel that I will play with this one a little but more before it is done.

Finally, I have a military leader for the Fallout game. I know this is a fairly iconic pose dor a fairly iconic character, Whilst he isn't in a jump suit it does not look that far off.  I just could not resist this one. I'll use the other one  in the for something proper I promise.Well maybe a zombie. The player who this model was done for believes in the power of the tash. I was tempted to raise the angle of the arm just a little but perhaps this would not gone down quite so well.

The Dead Walk, I Mean Lie Down

Well it's been a slow time on the blog but this is mainly because the real world has been fairly busy. Paperwork and training were things I had thought I had left behind but perhaps not. The painting table hasn't been especially busy but some stuff has been going on. I now have a phone with a decent camera again so I can take some pictures. There is plenty of stuff but I thought I'd start with these as they are on the tabletop at the moment.

The Not Walking Dead

I had felt I needed some dead bodies and Peter Pig seemed the obvious choice. As my previous background project is over I thought it was time for a new one and corpses seemed like a good idea for something to keep me occupied.

I got a chance to go to Vapnartak wargames show at York race course last weekend and spent some cash. Mainly with Peter Pig who I haven't seen at a show for a while. York is a bit of a trek from Home but it was a nice show if a little bit cramped. I've never been before but it's had a few good reports from friends.


I had a few ideas for Peter Pig minis after seeing a blog called the Special Corps. Sadly it's not active anymore but it is well worth a look. He had been using Peter Pig "Hey you in the Jail" minis for sci fi including some nice conversions. This blog had been a major influence on me when I started down the road of 15mm gaming and I have been planning on buying some minis.

So I went to York to get some corpses, some western figures and plenty of odds and sods. Sadly they don't take the western figures to shows so I had to settle for corpses, scenery and some vehicles.

I had a few corpses and casualties from GZG in their NAC range and some body bags from TheScene which I had painted already but wanted a lot more (which I will get round to posting but it will be a dull post). I have painted some live NAC troopers and a corpse as Vault Dwellers for my current RPG endeavor  a couple of weeks ago and wanted to paint some more bodies. This is not because I thought the players would be intimidated by them. Honest. No, I really am being honest but it would have been a good idea.

I wanted some corpses for several reasons. Firstly mass combat games leave corpses behind so a few bodies for markers is a good idea, particularly for force on force and stargrunt. Secondly I wanted corpses to be proto zombies for a zombie game. It's always nice to have some corpses for RPG games. Finally I wanted some bodies for scenery purposes. The scenery pieces aren't here, they are still in a bag. I perhaps went a it crazy as I now have well over fifty bodies to paint. This is one of the nice things about gaming in 15mm, you can have lots and lots and lots.

Armed porters

I wanted some unusual figures for my Fallout game and I happened to have some armed porter figures from a manufacturer that I am not currently mentioning because of their appalling customer service. I was planning on moving into doing some 1920s figures at some point so got these a few months ago. As they were an easy paint job I thought I would give them a go. They still need to be inked and based but that won't be too hard.
I have some more stuff to go up so I will hopefully be posting some more over the next couple of days. It feels kind of nice to be posting again.

Toys....Yey!!!

The first money I have spent for a while has been on some miniatures from Ground Zero Games on some more 15mm stuff. GZG have been one of my favorites over the years. One of the things that has been missing from my sci fi tabletop was vehicles. Be it Hummvees or family cars, everywhere and every when has a lot of vehicles in my mind. Streets look empty without them. Apart from shopping centres, most street have moe cars on them than people at any given moment. Sci fi is where it's at for me at the moment so I have got few vehicles to make the tabletop look a bit more interesting and maybe something for the troops to use. It's a big chunk of lead. Most of it looks like it will work well together. The wheels for most of the vehicles are fairly modular and only really vary in scale. Some of the larger APCs could well double as Traveller ATVs. The longest one does look a lot like an old school ATV which is not something I have ever seen before. Whilst they are not contemporary vehicles they don't look all that different from modern vehicles and I guess they have some uses in Force on Force as well as Tomorrow's War. 

 It took a little while to get the vehicles put together but it had to be done. They look like something now do I feel better.There was a little bit of flash but it was not excessive. The bits seem to fit together okay and there are no major gaps when the sections are fitted together. I am feeling the urge to do some painting but I think till I get my new compressor at Christmas. There was a fair bit of other stuff including two new mecha and some infantry and even a few Christmas freebies as well. They look pretty good I think.

I wanted to do something along the lines of Aliens could want to replicate some elements of it in my games. Instead of doing the blasted planet of LV-426 I have been working on the desert terrain. So now I need something to make it look right. Big wheel raised above the ground was the look I was going for. Painted in the right colours I think these Bulldog trucks from GZG (below) should do the trick.

It is gradually taking longer and longer to work my way around blogger. It is one of the reasons I have been posting less. Getting things into place without the format changing itself is becoming a major ordeal. I would have liked to posted this yesterday but I have spent so much time getting the pictures in the right place and not disappearing or duplicating themselves. There should hopefully be a few more posts over the next few days.

Catch Up Post

Things have been a little crazy over the past month or so. With the new arrival has come four hours of driving everyday and a lot of other responsibilities. Keeping me busy and tired but I am starting to get used to the new regime and not finding the need for an afternoon nap anymore. 


I have been doing some actual gaming since joining a club in Warrington. I really like the people there. No real loons (myself excluded) and a lot of good company. As well as doing some roll playing I have been doing some war gaming which is something I thought I had almost stopped doing. I am really enjoying it despite not having won a game yet.

This was an American Civil War game where I got drubbed. I would like to say it was not really my fault. Bad deployment dice at the beginning of the game meant my opponent got got to the high ground first. There after wave after wave of troops got shot up before they managed to get into position. A couple of corps later I was just about getting into position to take the guns whilst my team mates were taking a beating further on up the line.

Unsurprisingly we lost. We put up a really good fight. I think the initial deployment worked against us and the not so grand dice rolls didn't help our side at all.


I have played a fantasy game and a Very British Civil War game. Both of which I have enjoyed and done pretty well even if the over all result was not so grand/

I have really been enjoying the role playing. It's all been Savage Worlds which is a good thing. Something other than D+D and Shadowrun has been more than welcome. The killing frenzy that started out in a three musketeers with magic has continued through a 28 days later game and I am now playing Rippers.

Painting time has been at a premium and having lost my phone I had lost me camera too so I haven't had too much chance to do much.

I haven't had much time for painting. Since coming back from Spain I have completed ten minis. I have got some more paint over the last few days so I am hoping that this might get my painting mojo going for me again. These are some of them part of the way through. They are a mix of Khurasan and Rebel. I have spent some time working on my back ground project minis which are now just about done. They are modern western insurgents just to give my modern American infantry something to fight whilst I get round to finding some middle eastern opponents. When these are done maybe I will get on a nd run a force on force game. I have been looking at what to do next. I have a couple of vehicle to do and some wheel RPVs to do before I recieve some more vehicles from GZG whch hopefully should arrive in the next few days, Christmas post not with standing.

Zombie Horde Marches On

Well I have been busy painting. To the left is a close up picture of one of them. After day one it was clear that zombies need a lot of colour so a lot of changing of paint and washes brushes makes for a slow process so after five hours I had just about managed to get most of the basic coverage done. I still needed to go back and finish off accessories, hair and shoes before moving onto the next stage of the process. It was hard work but I guess the bulk of the work was done. This involved a little fine detail work like marking out the M on the restaurant staff and even the strings on bikinis. Still I feel like I have broken the back of the seventy zombies that I have to paint Just the detailing left.

Detailing can be a pain in the backside but with dozens of different colours I was expecting day two to be really hard work. I had originally set out to do about twenty five minis. As I started painting on day one with twenty five figures. I soon decided that I would do the zombie cheerleaders, firemen and restaurant staff in appropriate team colours so this ended up with fifty figures. I normally plan to pain about twenty figures in a batch so this seemed like a lot to do.

This is the more or less finished product. I am sure I will keep detailing them as I always do. There are about another dozen of them but I couldn't get a decent piccture of all of them. Spray them with varnish put them on washers and do some detailing on the base. Then another thirty and then another hundred or so and I should be done with zombies.

Well I guess that this batch is done now. I re-read some of Ambush Z last night and feel the urge to do a game of that. Think I might move on to something else. I wouldn't want to get bored.

Another Bits And Pieces Post

Well I didn't get much feedback about the colour scheme so I plodded on with it anyway. The plan was that this would end up looking like WW2 US marine camo. If I can't have what I want then I get something tenuously close to what I want. I am really not sure that I have got the colour balance right on the pictures. Hopefully it is sandy enough that it won't stick out like a sore thumb on the table top.

So these are four of the twenty not colonial marines.  I am hoping to use them for tomorrow's war and maybe some RPG game stuff. i was thinking that they could be a moderate tech post apocalyptic force.

Whilst waiting for inks to dry on the marines I have had a play about with some x29 blockhead suits from Critical Mass Games. Nice figures and look like beefier cousins ti  the jeager robot from Khurasan. Unlike the marines, I want these to stand out and be seen. there seemed to be a lot of robots in Fallout so maybe these would work for PA too.
 
Now for a taste of what is coming next. Te two police figures on either side are zombies and all four are from Rebel Minis. The next thing on my mind is the zombies. i want the uniforms of the police officers to match their dead colleagues so I thought that I would start here. Most of the RPG stuff I run in modern America I run in Washington D.C. because I have a fair bit of background stuff for it so I wa planning on using D.C. uniform colours, powder blue shirts and black trousers. I might paint some more figures in a different uniform colour. Just a thought if anyone is reading this, it would be good to be able to get some figures that look like state troopers..

Bits and Pieces

I have had some time to do a few bits and pieces of terrain today. Swimbo has just gone out and she has left me alone for a few hours today.

Big rocks and bigger mecha with a few GZG troopers for scale

 

 This is more of a closeup of the rocks and the marines. The idea is that I am going to cover the base with PVA and sand and then paint it to match the rest of the terrain. If this works then I will do some more. just to give you an idea of the speed I work at, I retrieved the rocks from my parents old, old house before they moved with the idea to do this. They moved out of this house in 1994. I get round to things eventually.

I did a bit of work on the mecha as well today. I put some lines on it and then did a bit of dry brushing. it has brought out the rocket pods quite nicely. In the foreground is some wreckage. It's made from a part of an old 25mm vehicle that got repurposed recently.

I wanted to do some rubble and this was a test bed. It's a 50mm wooden base with some flexible filler and a load of odds and sods from my bits box to make it look interesting.

As always comments are always welcome and if you really want me to have a good day please join the blog.

Force on Force at Triples

I have played force on force Falklands War games. I got to play the British. My tutor got to play the argies and he had a few bad rolls during set up.

As I was on the attack I still thought I was on the back foot. I tried to follow doctrine and hit stuff with heavy weapons to knock them out before they became a problem. I think by about trun four most of the opposition had either fallen to direct fire from the heavy weapons or close assault.

The guys who were running it were doing it as a charity thing for the Royal British Legion which lets face it is a damn good cause.

The guys involved in this really made my day and I take my hat off to you.

cheers