Busy Times But Some Work In Progress

Where does the time go? With summer holidays, illnesses and work time has just shot by. At the moment I am trapped in home work hell. this is a mixture of trying to do some coursework for myself and proving that I am smarter than a twelve year old (which apparently I am but it has left me with something of a headache). I've found a little painting time but not as much. I have been largely distracted by the real world. It looks like I may be moving soon. It's looking like I will be in North Wales in a few months. I know I don't have a good word to say about welsh fish and chip shops but the place is pretty nice and may even be zombie proof.

First a big plug. I have been playing board games with a guy with an online shop called Monkeys With Fire. He is a decent bloke and offers good deals on  board games, comics and memorabilia. His site is well worth a look.
 
I haven't had much time to work recently and less to work on the blog. Even so It's been a few months since I posted anything so I thought I had better do something even if it is a fairly short post with no pictures today.

There has been some work done on the Victory Force stuff that arrived the other week but at least it is some where to getting them done. I still have some work to do on the Crooked Dice stuff but I guess this is my latest temporary obsession.

I've also started a 28mm Viking project and been doing some role playing stuff. The plan is to run a game that is vaguely based on Skyrim sometime in the new year. I have some vaguely Norse fantasy stuff to go with it as well. Instead of painting I seemed to have spent a huge amount of time on Ebay buying up stuff as cheaply as I can find.

I will be doing some more fallout stuff in 15mm as the game is coming around again.

There is also a plan to buy some stuff from MinintureMOJO. This is going to be more post apocalypse stuff. I fancy the figures but not sure I want them for a winter apocalypse. I fancy something more like the Summerland RPG. I really like the MiniatureMOJO figures and he seems to be supporting the game. There will even be zombies.

Thanks for reading.

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. These were purchased for a Savage Worlds game. I am calling "For All Mankind". NB from 2026 This was before the TV series of the same name. 

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 sci-fi 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.