CASDA 5136

   

Still work in progress; Espera, Downey, and Nguyen's APE suits.

Combat Armor Suit Detachment Alpha 5136

Captain Anthony Downey, detachment commander
Master Sergeant Campbell, operations and team sergeant
Staff Sergeant Morales, combat engineer
Sergeant Mary Lewis, communications
Sergeant Schmidt, medical
Sergeant First Class Frank Radoslovich, weapons

Chief Warrant Officer 1 Andrew McAdams, assistant detachment commander
Sergeant First Class Thomas Nguyen, assistant operations and intelligence
Staff Sergeant Julia King, combat engineer
Sergeant Miguel Sanchez, communications
Sergeant Daniel Robinson, medical
Staff Sergeant Juan Espera, weapons.

CASDA 5136, Combat Armor Suit Detachment Alpha, is my Green Beret Special Forces unit that appears in my second novel Strike Dog. As I was writing this piece up, I realized when I described CASDA 5136 in the book, that I had created a force that was doctrinally different to the Marine Corps Dogs.

I was just writing a cool action sequence for a character in a combat armour suit. But on reflection, it's clear to see that by describing the weapon loadouts I created a force that was functionally different to the one I described in Bad Dog.

That is what I would call, creatively serendipitous.

NB: Espera is the heavy weapons specialist, hence he carries the big recoilless rifle. Though fat lot of good it does him, but to say more would be spoilers.

   

Human Operator Surrogates

And I finally managed to finish painting my squad of 10/12mm infantry.

These are Dream Pod 9 NuCoal models that I'm thinking of using as Human Operator Surrogates, an idea based off DARPAs Petman project.
  

Some More Size Comparisons

Didn't realize that two of the little Dogs had broken arms, they're that tiny, but you can see it in the picture.

Back here I took some pictures of GZGs not VOTOMS, but I was asked if I could take a picture showing them next to other mecha.  Hopefully, people will now be able to see the relative sizes of GZG Dogs, Heavy Gear and BattleTech mechs.

NB: If you compare the old pictures of the little Dogs to this new one the increase in quality between my old camera and my new one is quite remarkable.
 

RAFM Mammoth Strider Size Comparison

  

I'll admit that I've been searching the internet for RAFM Heavy Gear miniatures.  What can I say, wargaming and making models is my hobby.  I found a Mammoth Strider for sale on eBay that had a very small pictures and an incomplete description.

Questioning the retailer produced no useful data, but after checking out the picture and discussing it with friends, yay for friends, I decided that on the balance of evidence it was likely to be an old RAFM Mammoth.  So I took a punt, despite it costing the same as the new smaller version from Dream Pod 9.

It arrived today and the photograph is proof that this thing is humongous, and it weighs one pound 12 ounces, or 795 grams for those more familiar with metric measurements.  It's missing one of the small rotary cannons and the footpad, both of which I'll fabricate replacements for in due course.  First things first, strip the paint off in a nice bath of Nitromors.
  

CASE-2X Portraits

This was going to be a post about taking pictures, and how to up you game, but my game is so good that even when trying to show the problems I failed to produce pictures that were significantly lacking in depth of field.  As a result I went off and had another go and producing the images I needed and found I had written the basics for a short article.  I talked to Henry Hyde and he said go for it, so rather than appearing here my article on upping one's photographic game will be sent to Miniature Wargames & Battlegames magazine.

So what you see here instead are some nice portrait shots of my Bad Dog CASE-2X mecha on a piece of my terrain.  And the first close-up is of Lt Tachikoma's CASE-2XC.

And below is the close-up is of LCpl Kowalski's CASE-2X.

 
Before I finish I just want to show you all a side-by-side comparison of two shots.  The one on the left is a single frame, and the one on the right is made from a stack of images.  One can just about tell the difference in the quality between the two methods of taking a picture.  You'll all have to trust me when I say the image on the right is sharper.

This really is a case of one can't see the difference unless one is looking at the hi-res images on one's monitor, and know what you're looking at, because I'm reaching the pixel resolution of my screen.
  

Repaints & Additions

  

Renumbered because I'm using a different conversion for Sgt Tachikoma's CASE-2X.  And yes I did repaint around all the other original decals.  Not recommended as a high fun activity.  Comparison with original paint.

I decided to repaint my first two CASE-2X suits, which can be seen here, because of negative feedback about the way the green looked.  I figured this was down to the dominant colour being lime green rather than olive green, which affected how the olive green I'd used looked.  Of course this is all highly theoretical given that you all are seeing the images on a monitor that will not necessarily reproduce the colours of the original.  Not only but also the size you can see these on your screen will also vary.  On mine they're humungous.

Still after playing around with them for a while I realized that I had to replicate the colours on the next batch, so I bit the bullet and bought a different shade of green that I liked the look of from the Army Painter range.

You can see the original paint here.

The big thing is that this camo scheme is not how the suits are described in the novel.  I describe something called ChameleonFlage, which does what it say on the tin.  This allows the suits to blend into the background, as long as they're not moving.  Moving will give their presence away.  I toyed with ways to fake this, but while I could probably do one model in something that looked pretty awesome as an interpretation of ChameleonFlage, I doubt I would have the will to replicate it across two squads of suits (ten plus models).  I say this because I've already experienced this feeling with a couple of VOTOMS that I painted, which can be seen here.

Another change to the scheme was making the whole of the lower abdomen armour orange; originally I'd split it in half, but I wanted to make replicating the scheme across the squad easier.

When shut down the CASE-2X Dogs are described as reverting to a grey/green colour, which would look pretty dull on a miniatures.  So this scheme is really all about making the models look good, while suggesting that they're in some sort of military camouflage scheme.  It works for me, and the new shade of green, called Greenskin looks tonally brighter to me, which helps make the models pop more.

Well another little packet on miniature stompy robot goodness arrived from Dream Pod 9, who are managing to rival GZG for fast service.  So more conversions to come.

 
     

CASE-2X Updates

Here are the finished Heavy Gear models that I've converted to represent the combat armour suits in my novel Bad Dog.   The above shows my February submission to the ongoing TooFat Lardies Vis Lardica 2015 painting challenge.  What I have here are two sets of jump off point markers, three stone heads from Dream Pod 9 for a mission objective marker, and two much modified Heavy Gear models.

Here are close-up pictures of my finished Heavy Gear models that I've converted to represent the combat armour suits in my novel Bad Dog, which are used as recon units, or for Special Forces operations where getting conventional vehicles into the Area of Operations would be difficult.

This is the standard Marine Corps CASE-2X: Combat Armour System Environment Dash (Mark) 2 Extreme.

This miniature shows the CASE suit in its stripped down configuration, to maximize speed.  Therefore it carries a basic load-out consisting of a M41-AC2 20 mm auto-cannon with a Mk 30 40x53 mm under barrel grenade launcher, and on the left arm it has an inbuilt snub nosed Beowulf 50 cal anti-personnel weapon.

The second picture shows the CASE-2XC (Command variant) that officers ride in to control their command.  Again the CASE suit carries the basic load-out, but has a one-shot anti-armour missile pack on the right shoulder.  Added to give the commander some defensive capability against vehicles, rather than an indicator of putting her in the front-line as such (think TOWs on Bradley recon IFVs).

I have also received another packet from Dream Pod 9 with more Jagers, a Kodiak and for some reason two Diamondbacks (I must have had a reason for doing so, I just forget what it was).  So my plan now is to start fiddling with the Kodiak and Diamondbacks to make up the next Bad Dog universe combat armour suits.

Finally, I also thought that the stone heads turned out really well too.  So here's a close-up.

  
NB: Edited pictures as feedback suggested the pictures were rather dull and didn't show my painting off at its best.