Warfare 2025

 

I almost didn't go to Farnborough for the show this year, because of side effects from my medication, what the British National Formulary call a skin reactions. Anyway, enough of the grumbling.

Above on my right is Jon from GZG, long time friend, and on my left is Tim from Gomi Designs who I hadn't seen for 20 years. So just going and meeting up with my two friends made my day.

Below is what I scored at the show.

Decals from Pendraken, Some Rosemary & Co drybrush brushes, a pack of small needle files, and a packet of leaf scatter to try out. Still have a bunch of trees to finish.

We got there and had a good mooch around and found Daleks! I was excited! They're 3D prints from The Madman's Workshop, and come in a range of sizes. I asked about 1/100th sized Daleks for 15mm, and plan on ordering some to try out.

 How can one resist the power of the Daleks!?

Lots of games to see, and a lot of the competition games had real nice tables set up, going beyond the usual green mat and some lonesome scatter terrain dotting the table.

And then there was this.

 

On its last outing, Joe Bilton's What a Tanker Operation Charnwood, Caen 1945 table.

That's it. That's all I've got. Catch you all on the bounce. 

OMWB: Newten Town New Direction WIP 3

More progress with refurbishing my buildings. Above is a repaired long building, which had suffered a break at one end. I rebuilt the missing wall with Milliput, and carved in the brick courses.

To repair t roof I added a plasticard base to reinforce  the damaged roof, then added filler. After this had set, I carved in the roof tiles.

The end result is a bit sloppy, but should suffice for a damaged building.

Below you can see where I've glued Mulberry rice paper to line the walls, because experience tells me the resin tends to break if knocked. And building are easily knocked.

And again below, you can just about tell that the far resin wall window post has broken. I shall rebuild it with Milliput, repeating what I did with the building at the top of this post..

 

Not shown are the reworked floors for both of the buildings above.

One of the floor's lacked any detail, and the others were a tad shallow, which is probably accurate, but these are building for wargames, so I scribed them all to make the planks stand out more when they're drybrushed.

That's all for now. Catch you all on the bounce.

OMWB: Newten Town New Direction WIP 2

 

And the work continues. This refurbishment project has taken me longer to progress than my first estimate of a couple of weekends. Like real life building projects I'm overrunning my completion date, and estimated cost.

I took the four buildings above, and arranged them thus.

The four buildings now make two larger structures on plasticard bases sized to represent pavement.

I ended up having to scribe the floors to deepen the relief to make the grooves stand out. WHat can't be seen is all the fiddly filing to clear excess resin from windows, and fill in obvious seems where walls were butted up against each other.

I also added some Milliput on the oblong building to reinforce the floor between the two halves, as without it, the base flexed.

 So, that's three building down, and six to go.

Yep, I may be some time.

Russian Combat Group

Just a quick post of the Russian quad mechs I've been working on. You can see the old scheme here. I call these walkers Pokhodnaya Boyevaya Platforma, but I'm still noodling the nomenclature I'm going to assign them.

All for now, catch you later.

OMWB: Newten Town New Direction WIP 1

So, this weeks tales of adventure, its a story of two steps forward, one step back, as I began re-working this building.

My objective is to fettle what I saw as faults with the model. I didn't do any serious prep when I first painted it back circa 2016 'ish.'

The circa and 'ish' are doing a lot of work here, as the first boards were built in 2010. 

 

Yeah, I'm an inveterate fiddler who can't leave stuff well enough alone. This was the building I removed from the original town board to paint graffiti on the other buildings as seen here.

 

I started by cleaning up the resin building by removing blemished and defects that arose when poured into a mold. This included filling in gaps, and getting rid of seems in the original master, using plastic putty.

Then added a base with a pavement around the structure. After that I reworked the roof, which I managed to completely muck up big time, as can be seen below.

 

My first attempt ended up warping, from a combination of using a piece of 20 thou plasticard and 'No More Nails' glue to try and level the roof casting. The 'No More Nails' didn't harden properly, and as a consequence the resin roof warped.

So I snapped it apart, and rebuilt it on a thicker 40 thou piece of plasticard. Twenty thou is half a mil, and 40 thou is 1 mil thick. I also used super glue to make sure it stuck together, and then filled in all the cracks to restore the roof to a serviceable condition.

A serviceable condition meaning, bashed and battered, but still functionally a roof.

And this is as far as I got over the course of a weekend. All of the above is a lot of work for very little forward progress.

I'll catch you all on the bounce.

Bad Dog Marine Command Mech

And the final macro shots of my RAFM conversions. This is Tachikoma's CASE-2XC Mod 2 command Dog variant, loaded for Bear from Ghost Dog.

The Mod 1 variant only has one hard-point on the backpack. So, if I need to field that version I just swap the body from one of the standard CASE-2XC Dog's. 

Run Tachikoma, run, side view. 

 

 

And from the otherside, still running for her life.

 

And, the respective magnetized sub-assemblies, laid out to show how the model comes apart.

And as always, catch you on the bounce. 

Bad Dog Army Communications Mech

And continuing my promise to my friends here are another set of macro shots, showing off my RAFM conversions. 

Here's an Army CAS-3-Mod-2 Ape 4CISR mech: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.

Front view.  

Three-quarter rear view.

 

And, again here's how all the parts are magnetized, allowing me to have different poses to use as a reference for a book cover artist.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

Bad Dog Air Force Security Mech

And keeping my promise to my friends about posting macro shots of my RAFM conversions, here's the rebuilt Air Force CAS-4CP, meant to control a whole bunch of security androids as used by Ferretti in my story Ghost Dog.

Total bad ass side view. 

 

 

 And rear view.

 

And, here it is showing all the magnetized parts, which allow different poses for a book cover.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

Bad Dog Army Combat Engineering Mech

 

I promised some friends I'd post some macro shots of my RAFM conversions. Here's an Army CAS-1-Mod-1EV Ape, engineering mecha.

Rear view. Towing cables to go.

Below side view.

And, here shows all the magnetized parts, which allow me to take pictures of different poses for reference for a book cover.

 Catch you all on the bounce.

OMWB: Newten Town New Direction

It has been a while, seven years it seems, since I posted anything about my buildings for wargames. How time seems to slip through ones fingers.

Anyway, I decided, after seeing what the Too Fat Lardies were doing with their terrain that I could take a leaf out of their book. My town terrain boards are super fab, but each square fixes what buildings go where in a town.

I want more flexibility, I want the freedom to arrange my towns however I gorram please.

So, after much procrastination, I decided rather than finish off the last four town boards I have to hand, I would chop them up and re-build the buildings on their own discrete base. This would have the added advantage of getting rid if the seams in the road too.

An added bonus from doing a town this way.

And while I was doing all of this I looked at one of the resin buildings and decided to file out all the scarf left by the limitations of the way they were molded.

My beloved couldn't tell the difference between the building on the left, and the one on the right. Clue, the one on the right has the window frames filed clean.

 That's all for now, catch you on the bounce.

Insurgent Technicals

I reprocessed all the pictures I took last week, because I wasn't happy with the colour balance. I usually take one picture with a white card, as my reference in the camera when taking a series of pictures, but forgot too last time.

However,  I went back with the same lighting set-up (which was quick and dirty) and took a couple of reference pictures. Using them as a baseline, I reprocessed all the originals pictures.

So, above is my crew-cab conversion of Peter Pig's Toyota.

And above is a group shot of all my PeterPig Toyota's. I still have a couple more different Toyata's technicals to assemble from Khurasan. I'm glad I bought them back before all the faff over tariffs came into force. I shall assemble them for my insurgent force in due course.

That's all for now, catch you on the bounce.

Combat Armor Groups

I had a mega photo shoot, which despite my best intentions, I still managed to forget to take some different angles on some of the models. Anyway, after so much time has passed, here they are.

Below, starting from left to right. 

My original CASE-2X conversion, running light with just a basic load-out. Main weapon is a 20x170 mm M41-AC230 autocannon, with under-barrel 40x53 mm Mk 30 grenade launcher. The left arm mounts a NATO 7.62 mm M240LC sustained fire machine gun.

Next is the CASE-2XC command variant, loaded for Bear from Ghost Dog. This adds a shoulder mounted 20 mm M21-A8 gauss rifle, and carrying a three pack of 70 mm MGR-170 Direct Fire Missile's to the basic load-out.

And the last CASE-2X has a shoulder mounted heavy-indirect-fire pack with a 15 pack of 140 mm MGM-240 Precision Guided Missile's, as mentioned in Bad Dog, which mounts a 12.7 mm GECAL Rotary Autocannon.

Model sans an arm, because I forgot to paint it, Oops. And below, again from left to right.

The rebuilt CAS-3-Mod-1 Ape weapons specialist with a M75 80mm lightweight high-velocity recoilless autocannon, a M134 GAU-2B/A 7.62 mm minigun on the left arm, with a shoulder mounted 15 pack of 70 mm MGR-170 Direct Fire Missile's. Espera's load-out from Strike Dog.

Next is a CAS-3-Mod-1 Ape with a basic load-out with a 20x102 mm M26-AC autocannon, and a shoulder mounted pack of four 70 mm MGR-170 Direct Fire Missile's

The kneeling CAS-3-Mod-1 Ape is communications variant with a M47-Mod-1: 40 x 53 mm Automatic Grenade Launcher (belt/drum fed). I might add a shoulder mounted NATO 7.62 mm M240LC sustained fire machine gun at some point. As and when I get round to it.

And finally, a CAS-1-Mod-1 engineering variant. It has a M121A: 120 mm Heavy Mortar for demolition work. I'll put up some close-up shots soon.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

Combine & Pan Euro Laser Towers

A little over two years after Don Hawthorne kindly sent me these, I've finished assembling them, slapped on some paint, and I've now managed to take some pictures as proof of completion.

It's super nice to now have laser towers for both the North American Combine and Pan European Federation.

I still have a number of Ogre miniatures that need painting, but I've managed to acquire a Vulcan Ogre, which is missing some parts, for my Ogre/GEV collection/ plan of world domination to come to fruition.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

OMWB: M1120A2 HEMTT LHS

I've wanted a model to represent the truck that appears in several important scenes in my novel Strike Dog. It's the main vehicle used by the team to explore Two Moons. My original plan was to convert a 1/64th scale Matchbox toy.

But, when I saw that Butlers' Printed Models now offered models of the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, I couldn't resist buying them. I got two M1120A2 LHS HEMMTs, one soft skin A kit cab, and one armored B-kit cab.

Comparing both HEMMTs, Matchbox's model is quite a bit longer than the 1/100th scale model, which is not really a problem. But, being wider than the smaller trucks container, is a problem.

 

It's a problem, because I need a bunch of Conex boxes to represent the off world Alpha site base. Getting more containers from Butlers' Printed Models is easy.

Getting more Matchbox HEMMT containers, not so much. 

I plan  to convert the HEMMT to represent a 10 x 10 M2184 HUHMTT PLS (Heavy Utility High-Mobility Tactical Truck with a palletized loading system), described as having a cabin that seats four people. 

So, either way, I have to extend the cab, and lengthen the chassis.

Anyway that's all for now. Catch you all on the bounce.

OMWB: Russian 15mm Armour

I bought a few Team Yankee sprues off eBay. These are easy enough to glue together if you have the assembly instructions. As the sprues didn't come with any, I had to hunt around the Battlefront website.

Above, left to right, are a TOS-1, a T-70B, a BMP-3, and a T80U.

The TOS-1 and T-70B are for my near future modern insurgent's force. I'll probably go for a dessert scheme for these.

I got the T80U and BMP-3 to use as near future Russian reserves. I have also got a T-90MC awaiting assembly too. With the Kurganets I got earlier I think I have more than enough armour to meet my future needs.

Catch you all on the bounce.