Snakes - Or A Coincidence Of Needs

I am currently short of things I want to paint. I thought going to a show last Sunday would change that but to be honest...not really. Half of what I have painted is now done and drying off so I'll post a few pics of that soon. So I have been fiddling about with there projects that are not really what I want to do. I have been going through storage trays I can find at the moment and I am amazed at what I have been dragging out. I'll put some pics up as I start to finish things off. The oldest was got from a shop that closed down twenty years ago but for most part, they are a lot newer. As I am sure you will see, not the most challenging of subjects.

I'll finish the details off when I find my magnifying lamps base

So I found these snakes from Critical Mass Games. They have been stuck on bases for a well over a year, so that constitutes being in the paint queue. At one point, the plan had been to do a 15mm X-Com game. I think I have given up on this idea now in favour of doing something in 28mm. Snakemen don't make an appearance in the new X-Com games but they were a staple of the original. They were the easiest of the races to over come. They weren't especially tough and they had no psychic powers.

The main crux of the argument is, well they were really just there. So the thinking goes, snakemen, eh? Aren't they a bit lame. So I thought I could use them as a really weak opponent race, just ensure that there are lots of them. So I will probably get some more when I next see Critical Mass Games at a show.

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.

Odd Little Things

I used to go to a lot of wargame shows. These days, not so much. Most of the time you see just exactly what you would expect. Every now and again you see something that makes you think you've picked the wrong scale. Well maybe for a minute. Angel Barracks is one of those manufacturers.

These were a bit of an impulse. They are called Drill Worm Nests according to the website. I didn't have a clear idea of what to use them for at the time. In truth I guess I still don't but they look scary enough to make the players think twice about going anywhere near them. They look nicely alien so maybe it's some sort of infestation or maybe something like  shrieker mushrooms from the back of beyond. Maybe something for the X-Com wargame or the Fallout and modern horror RPG games that I run.

They are notionally 6mm figures but I can see uses for them in 15mm and maybe even larger scales.

So I am working through the resin mountain. I am picking my way through what I can find to do. I am now scratching my head wondering what I can do next.

Bob's Iguana Bits

I was looking up stuff to do for Fallout. Images of the web are a great source of ideas. In the original Fallout game there was a stall called Bob's Iguana Bits, the brain child of Iguana Bob Frazer. Bob was actually selling chunks of human, not exactly the food of choice, even in the wasteland.

So I thought I'd do this. It took about twenty minutes of work, not a huge job but I am looking for something to do and I had the bits to hand. It will do as a little bit of table scatter. It's a little bit tall but close enough. If I was going to do any more, I think I would make them a little shorter.

Actually Done Some Painting...

...but not quite what I was expecting to paint. Although I now have a workbench to paint on, I am still scratching around for things that I can do. My eyesight is not brilliant so I depend on a magnifying lamp. I can find the lamp but I can't find the base. No problem I thought, I'll do some buildings. I use pins to keep these together and I can't find them either. So I went looking.

So....No pins and no lamp base. They are probably in a box in the garage. Which is piled high with sealed boxes. So using the lemons to make lemonade I found something that I can do. whilst searching I found some small castle walls. I got them in a shop in the Arndale in Manchester which I think has been closed for twenty years. I think I got them as an impulse buy. I had played in a HOTT game run by Chris Johnson at the MAWS wargame club and I never got round to getting a stronghold for the army I used. The army has never been used since and the walls have been sat in various boxes ever since. Not so much lead mountain as resin mountain.

 So...A nice little project seemed the obvious choice. The paint is almost the same colour as the resin. You can only really tell the difference because the unpainted one has some marks on it.

So...I have the urge and a bit of time. I am now looking for something else to do. I was goin to have a play about with doing some post apocalyptic I started on this then realised that I had no  sand. It looks a bit little bit poop but I am sure that it will work out.

So...I'll look around and see what I can do.

I have an idea that these could be used for a fallout game. They might well be of use to a HOTT game in 15mm. I guess they have some scope for the skyrim/viking game but they are a littlle on the small side for that. Other than that, I have no idea.

Now I need to varnish them. Guess what, I can't find the varnish either.

2300: More Trouble On Beowulf

The referee is having a laugh. Did somebody say "Kobayashi Maru"? If I wanted to put myself in situations where no matter what I was going to do, I was going to get screwed, I'd go back to working for the local council.

Seriously, it was a lot of fun.

Who is not going to love dealing with a corporate lawyer who has their own personal ED 209 security droid in tow.  Give them a cheesy corporate vice principle to add on to that. The mass eviction of a load of British locals in the middle of a massive storm. Did I mention that the corporation has a history of genetic slavery? Good solid people right? The kind you trust every day. Well if your American and you vote Republican. Or Democrat.

The locals a great. Really welcoming. The second one we meet is insistent on using a neural whip on one of the workers he employs in his brothel. Luckily for us, we find out after my security tem leaser knocks him out cold and leaves him with a few missing teeth that he is the local leader and everyone in town, well pretty much, is related to him. Said employee is a pleasure bot so  not really human. Except that somehow, she is the first bot to develop true artificial intelligence. This is largely due to her employer using a neural whip on her.

Said neural whip was removed from the local businessman by the head of security. Just for comic effect, he decides to toss it to the engineer. The engineer now knows that attempting to juggle a live neural whip does not always end well and that there is no ice cream or medals afterwards.

So, after finding that there is a fortune "In them there hills" just before the corporates move in, we get some orders (after defeating the corporates attempts to jam our single) from the ESA to ensure that the corporation stay out of the town. I'm not sure if this is the ESA doing the right thing by it's citizens or just wanting to make sure that it secures a vitally important strategic resource.

Anyway, we have a drop ship on it's way with six marines and thirty locals. we may get some guys i battledress too.

Anyway, there will be lots of poop to be in next week. We don't play nice with our friends, I suspect we are not going to play nice with the corporates wither.

2300: Trouble On Beowulf

Three posts in one day. I must be doing something wrong. Last night was Mark's 2300 at the club and an enjoyable bash it was.

One of the things I like about hard science fiction is that the planets, even the habitable ones, are pretty unpleasant places to be. Beowulf is probably not a place to go on holiday. I don't see many all inclusive package deals being set up. Assuming the resident life forms which are big and lethal, don't eat you, the weather, including twelve meter high tides don't drown you, it will be the five day, days that send you barking.

The ESA have sent us there and we are waiting for our ride. Just whilst we happen to be at a lose end we are sent into the middle of nowhere to go and look at something that crashed there. We are not the only ones. The French (bad guys in 2300, but not as bad as the Chinese, or was it the Americans? Things are a little ambiguous from the point of view of a Brit) in the form of some militia, who are not local and in British territory, have come looking for what we are looking for. Which is a French, Military surveillance satellite. These are illegal after a planetary treaty. When we found it, it had a bomb in it and some unknown alien technology, probably Kafer (the real enemy).

Anyway, we come to blows with the French and an APC. So whilst me and and the rest of the team start shooting at the enemy Dave's character (an Anglo Danish Marine Lieutenant with the same level of education as a tapioca root) jumps on top of the APC and shoots the gunner and causes the driver to crash.

All in all a good firefight, I've nominated the marine for a medal and of course we have managed to annoy a lot of people despite saving the day, again. Thanks to my huge medical skill, everyone made it through and get some damage back.

Next week, our ship will arrive to pick us up and we will see where that takes us.  

2300: A New Character

Last night was character generation. I will be playing Senior Scout Andy Smith. It took all evening for the ref to work this through with four players. I think that is more down to the players than the referee. The game will be done in 15mm.

Well the world (of the future, present or past) seldom changes. Random character generation makes for much more entertaining characters. Traveller is perhaps the most chaotic generation system it seems to be possible to create with a series of specific rules. Chaos theory will be proven right every time.


We are playing the crew of an E.S.A. ship so there will be a lot of national boundaries. In the chaos of character generation, my character ended up as a bigot with no social skills. He is however, a kick arse scout, with an obscene level of medical skill who can do just about anything on a planet (except drive or ride) \and can fly a star ship or system ship reasonably well. Did I also mention that he is a little on the stocky side? No he is 5'6" and 104kg. Just for giggles I looked up his BMI and it was 37. That is just a little past the end of the line on the obese axis (literally of the scale). His daily calorie requirement would be sufficiently met by a couple of standard British Army ration packs or any medium sized mammal.

I imagine it will be fun trying to find him a vac suit. Funnier still for the French and German characters, who the character does not like and out ranks. It has already been suggested that my character needs to go on an equality and diversity course and a diet. Still, he is tough, smart, well educated and just lucky enough to make it through. I think.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some More 15mm Work

I alluded to some 15mm painting that I had done the other day. These were really just some characters I have planned for one of my RPG games so I put a bit of effort into them.

The first is a US Navy Officer although I am sure it would also do for a Bolivian Policeman or one of the crew off Loveboat. Think this is an Armies Army Figure I think. It would be perfect if oit ddn't have a blue tooth earpiece in. He seems to have got a nice strong jawbone but does seem to be pouting. What did I do before inks? The medals aren't really anything in particular because most of the bars are two small. Although you can't see it in the picture he has bars on his sleeves as well.

The following two have been painted as sort of Buddhists. The first actually is a Buddhist from the Peter Pig Vietnam range. You can see that the face was nearly as orange as the saffron robes. No it' not Roger Moore in his heyday. Although the figure is meant to male it is a double for a female buddhist character from my old Conspiracy X game.



The last figure is also from Peter Pig. This is a religious Leader Figure from the AK47 range. He has a dead body counterpart in the picture below. It seems like a nice striking pose that I think I can use in a few games I have coming up. He has the look of a slightly organge Captain Morpheus to me.
 
Lastly here are a few more corpses. One is meant to be a policeman like the ones I painted last year here. There is also a US postman and a few others for good measure. These were nearly all military types and I was hoping that I have turned them into something more civilian like. What do you think?

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.

Triples

I've been to the Triples wargame show yesterday. This is the biggest show in the North of England and the highlight of the gaming year. It's been a good day with some good mates. And a burger van. Mustn't forget the burger van. One was missing but he'll be down in a few weeks instead. He's vistied for just about every Triples for the last twenty years so it felt a bit odd but nothing I won't get over.

I got the feeling that there weren't quite so many people there this year but there were still plenty of traders. There seem to be a few new traders and the established ones seem to be doing okay.

Mecha Bodies

Mecha Arms

Having just started painting some GZG vehicles I had the excuse to buy some more. I purchased three of the new civilian mechs and some of the new trucks. I haven't got round to doing anything with the trucks yet. I have had a look at the mecha. I haven't put them together yet but this a is a view of the basic mecha kit and the three weapon systems with the mechs. They are not as grufty as the military versions but they are a lot cheaper. I can see some use for them in a range of scifi games and maybe even Fallout when the game comes back for the new season later on in the year.

One of my mates was talking about doing Empire of the Dead last year. It's something about steampunk being the new black or staying in or something. I am guessing that this is another game that is going to die on it's arse but I thought I would give them a go (he said looking at a pile of 6mm French Napoleonics that are gathering dust). I figured that I cold use one of them as an RPG character in an upcoming space 1889 game. I had the idea for an aging Kiplingesque general with a boderline mental health problem. The figure, with smoking jacket, revolver and swagger stick, seemed to be the right one. The rest of them could be used in another game or maybe even Empire of the Dead if there is someone willing to give it a go.

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 :-)