Retrospective Musings on Past Choices

Newly finished Takara 1/144th VOTOMS: Blood Sucker, Strike and standard Scope dogs.

A little while back, I was asked on a friend's blog, when did I find out about Heavy Gear, and decide to get into it? It's a good question, which I briefly answered with a comment on his blog, but thought worth expanding with a post here.

The inevitable slide began by rewatching the Pailsen Files.

GZG 6mm Hound Dogs with some minor conversions.

That was back in 2012.

I wanted, I bought some GZG "Hound Dogs," which were great for the type of action the Pailsen Files inspired me to want to play, but too small for my eyesight to cope with on the tabletop.

Then I found some Takara 1/144th plastic VOTOMS on eBay. Eureka!

All the Takara 1/144th VOTOMS I've managed to finish painting so far (I have more to do).

My original plan was to paint the Takara models in a scheme inspired by the British Berlin Brigade. But, after painting two, I found the time and effort it took to do so, sucked all the joy out of the project.

Besides that, when I started looking for more, I sadly found they were no longer generally available.

Blood Sucker front and back.

Unable to get  enough models for two sides, I began searching for mecha compatible with the Takara range, and discovered Dream Pod 9s Heavy Gear range.

Inevitably, all my Takara minis got put to one side, unloved until now.

Strike Dog front and back, version on left a conversion.

And that is the sad, sad story of how after many years of painting 6mm mecha I got sucked into the plastic Dream Pod 9 Heavy Gear KickStarter.

And thus, my future journey on the road to 15mm mecha was sealed.

Scopedog variants front and back.

But my beloved recently bought me a wet palette. So, I wanted to practice on something easy to paint.

Looking around, I remembered my Takara 1/144th mechs, and decided to do them up in the classic two-tone scheme from the Armored Trooper VOTOMS show.

I might even get around to painting the Beetles and remaining Dogs in due course too.

That is it for now, catch you all on the bounce.
   

Size Comparison from Above

Back here I presented a manifesto for RealRobo.

In the comments, I was asked to take a shot from above. The days in London have largely been dull and overcast, but when the sun did come out I took the opportunity to take this shot.

Task completed.
   

Size Comparison: Real Robo Manifesto!

 

Click on this to see the full size 1764 x 1091 image.

  

After I posted my last blog it raised a comment about sizes, with one person coming out with the informed opinion that tracked or wheeled vehicles were just smaller, period. Walking vehicles are, and would always be too large to ever be practical.

This is one of those areas where peoples opinions are informed by a wide range of media, where the representation of walking vehicles goes from the sublime to the extreme. Gundam mobile suits are at the sublime end of the largeness, while the Gunbuster suit is at the mind blowing extreme end.

However, there is Real Robo.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team combat armour suits occupy the very big end of the Real Robo spectrum. The suits in Fang of the Sun Dougram are the size most people assume combat armour is. Dougram provided a large number of designs that were used in the BattleTech game, as did Super Dimension Fortress Macross aka Robotech. While Fang of the Sun Dougram remains one of my favourite anime shows, what inspired me to consider walking vehicles in a more serious light was Armored Trooper VOTOMS, which also has a TV Trope page.

The arguments all boil down to size. And size matters.

In the real world, smaller is better.

I can see how all of the above makes Real Robo a confusing hot mess of different concepts. I really do.

Especially, given that people watch the anime shows or play games with miniatures. The trouble is that wargame models are not to a scale, but made to a size. This distorts the proportions, and again leads to erroneous assumptions about the size of combat armour suits; Heavy Gear being one example of how the models are sculpted for the look on the table.

Fortunately, being crazy about Real Robo and VOTOMS, I have scale models by Takara of both the VOTOMS heroes combat armour suit, called a ScopeDog, and an Abrams tank. As you can see, the ScopeDog is taller than the tank. But, not by as much as one might have been led to believe.

To me, this is what I mean by Real Robo.

So, to be clear, Bad Dog is a  hard SF take on Real Robo. It takes the ideas of Armored Troopers VOTOMS, and turns up the hardness to eleven.

BTW: As promised, I took two pictures to show the difference when taking pictures in Hi-Res versus stacked images. The picture at the top was taken using the Hi-Res mode of my camera, the picture below was made using multiple exposures stacked together to form one image. Both models are on bases to equalize their heights off the ground.

Click on this to see the full size 909 x 603 image.

    

M2184 HUHMTT

The Oshkosh HEMTT-LHS prototype.

In an effort to get my wargaming mojo back, which seems to have gone walkabout of late, I decided that I need to work on something.  Me being me, rather than restart one of my current projects, I chose instead to work on something different.

As those who come and read here regularly know I'm currently obsessed with writing several novels set in  the near future.  In the second and third novels my hero leads a mission off-world, and I took my inspiration from the current US military HEMTTs.  And there are lots of variants.

In my novel, the team uses an Oshkosh M2184, a Heavy Utility High-Mobility Tactical Truck (HUHMTT) which carries palletized loads in standard ISO shipping containers with a palletized loading system.

Now I want a model.

The metal M977 actually looks OK next to my models but the castings are rough.  The resin version is nice but a bit too dainty.

So, I bought a QRF M977 which is a 15mm model.  My Heavy Gear combat armour suit conversions are nominally 12mm but, because it's SF, where scale is relative to time and space (BTW that's a joke) I thought being a bit larger wouldn't matter.

However, I was less than impressed with the quality of the casting and put it to one side to consider my options.  Then I went bought a resin Kami de Korokoro M997 from Hobby Japan, which is nicely cast but, true 1/144th scale, and just looks a bit too small next to my combat armour suits.

The M977 metal and resin chassis next to some Takara VOTOMS vehicles.

However, I have a bunch of Takara vehicles that came with the VOTOMS I bought a long time ago and I'm looking at making something up using parts from them.  So, my plan is to play around with bits of plastic that I have to hand and see what I can come up with.

As the advertising people say, Watch This Space!

Finally, I hope that all my American readers had a good Thanksgiving day, got some bargains in the Black Friday sales, and generally had a good time.

Heavy Gear Jager versus Takara 1/144th VOTOMS: Size Comparison

       

The Jager is shorter, but bulkier than the Takara Rabid-Dog and Blood-Dog.

Well my parcel arrive from Dream Pod 9.  I'd ordered some Utopian faction Golems, and a support Armiger with drones, a Southern Jager, and assorted weapons.  Everything but the Jager and weapons went under the Xmas tree as a present, but was so excited I had to start assembling the Jager, and thought it would be good to show a size comparison picture of the Jager with my Takara microscale F144 VOTOMS.

Primed white and given a black wash.

What I find attractive about the Heavy Gear models is the number of different guns and missile packs that one can choose from.  While I was working on this I realized what my nagging doubts were really all about when I posted here.  My VOTOMS are lovely, but they will always be VOTOMS and what I want to do is build a force based on my Bad Dog universe background, and I think the Dream Pod 9 Heavy Gear mechs will make a good platform for me to customize models to represent the vehicles in my stories.

I know this is incredibly sad – author making models of the mechs in her own novels, but at least I can point any cover artist in the right direction about what a CASE-2X looks like.  Having had this epiphany I can now move on and pretend I'm somewhat normal and not totally obsessed with the wild imaginations of my mind.
   

Takara 1/144th VOTOMS

Update 7.12.14: My partner ran my original photograph through Photoshop and produced this rather punchy picture.

The above picture makes my models look rather stunning I think.  They're good, but this makes them look excellent, which is what I suppose a good photograph should do – capture the best aspects of the subject.  Certainly made me realize how much I originally liked the scheme (Edit: Comment added for context).

Update 8.12.14: Original picture for comparison as I realized it would help to be able to compare and contrast both.

I'm having a moment of doubt.  The questions causing the doubt are:

1. Does this scheme work? (Edit: New photo answers that question).

2. Is it better to cut my losses on the Takara FS/144 miniatures and go down the Dream Pod 9 route?

With regard to the second question – it arises because I will need an OPFOR and I will be using both Caprice and Utopian forces miniatures from Dream Pod 9 to fill those roles.  But, would I be better off building a force where I can get more models if I should want to expand my current collection?

Procrastinating big time on this question.

NB: I went and updated my pledge on the Heavy Gear Kickstarter to the full core set.
   

New Glasses for Painting

I have some new glasses for painting with.  Designed to give me ultra close-up vision, which work up to a point, but I'm getting old and it is still hard to see as well as I use to. At this rate I'll be up-scaling to 30mm, or whatever 25mm is called nowadays? 

As you can see above I've started works on some more Scope Dogs, and below some Diving Beetles from VOTOMS so that I have some figures to play Heavy Gear Blitz with.

I have played a couple of games of HGB with Roger and we are planning to meet up sometime to play a few more. I have mixed feelings about the rules.  

On one hand there is a great little game trying to break out of the book, on the other the layout of the rule book is less than optimal, which makes it hard to find the rules. On the rules side of thing, some of the writing is overly complex, or maybe I should say that the rules explain simple things in an overly complex way with too much jargon for my taste.  YMMV.

The great parts of  the game are the artwork, back story and general design of the Gears.  I am slowly getting my NuCoal Jerboa painted too, as can be seen below.

VOTOMS Conversions

To round out my Heavy Gear army I'm converting some of models to make variants that I think look good. First off is a straightforward conversion to the Turbo custom variant that comes in the Takara set to make it a Barcoff's variant from the Pailsen Files. Still need to finish off the rocket launcher and adding the grapple launcher to the backpack.

Next up are these two WIP shots of a conversion to represent the Burglary Dog variant from the Shining Heresy five episode OVA.

And here are a couple of more Strike/Rabidly Dogs and my second Blood Sucker, which is going to be my other army command mech for my Heavy Gear army. I'm planning on changing the Strike/Rabidly Dogs guns using parts from the Dream Pod 9 Heavy Gear Blitz range, before I go any further with painting them.

So all I need to do now is print out some stat sheets for a game of Heavy Gear and use these models as proxies of Dream Pod 9 designs. 
  

Xmas Goodies: Yummy, Yummy Yum, Yum

This, I think, really shows off the camo scheme quite well.

Goodies indeed this Xmas. Not only did I get some North American Combine miniatures and Charley's War Volume IX, both of which I knew I was getting, I also got a surprise prezzie.  I like surprises, and this one came in the shape of an Olympus F2.8 60mm Micro 4/3rds macro lens.  I had forgotten how much better fixed focal length prime lenses are than zooms, no matter how good the latter might be.

Here are some examples done on the fly to test out the new lens.

Super extreme close-up and one can really see the shading and blending, and dust, doh!

And here is the Blood Sucker on my urban terrain board, looking good, and hopefully giving a good indication of the size of this model.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet cruelties abound as I spot a splash of green on the wall of a building that I've never noticed before.

The Strikedog shape is nicely broken up against the buildings.

Dream Pod 9 Heavy Gear Jerboa paratrooper mech, shown for a size comparison.

Just got to work out what weekends I'm free in January and then I will be able to arrange for my first game of Heavy Gear Blitz.

Beetles, Tortoise & Fatties

First up are three Diving Beetles that appear both in the Pailsen Files series as Marine specialist mecha, and in the Armored Trooper VOTOMS Stage 2;  Kummen Jungle Wars segment of the original series. Two are primed with Citadel Foundation Catechan green, while the middle is in olive green, which is much easier to apply over the foundation green. I have another couple of these and intend to paint this unit up in a jungle stripe camo.

Next is Mellolink in his motorcycle and side-car combo and my one and only Standing Tortoise of the Secret Society,  not yet cleaned up and primed. This is one of the two enemy mech designs that appear in VOTOMS, being seen in the Kumen Jungles Wars segment.

The other main mech type that Chirico fights are the Balarant Union Fatty's, which I have none of at this time. They look like this:

The above is a picture is from the Takara F144 Series 3 box set, and if anyone has any of these they would like to sell to a good home please contact by leaving a message here?
   

Blood Sucker & Strikedog Done

Blood Sucker triptych.

First seen here, as a work in progress, now finished.  These were a bit of a challenge to paint, and I'm not convinced that my photography does them justice either? But please bear with me as I indulge in VOTOMS frothing goodness.

Strikedog triptych.

Next up is a extreme close-up portrait of the Blood Sucker piloted by members of the Red Shoulder Brigade.

Here is an extreme close-up portrait of the Strikedog. On my monitor both of these pictures measure five and half inches tall.

On my monitor this picture scales to one inch, which is how big the models really are.

  

Dogs are Back in Town

  

Here are four of the Takara F144 Scopedogs from the VOTOMS TV series that I have based and painted olive drab. The model on the far left is the turbo-custom version that Chirico Cuvie pilots in Stage 1: Uoodo City segment (I tend to read Uoodo as Voodoo). While the model at the end on the right is a variant that I shall be using as my command variant from the Armor Hunter Mellowlink spin-off OVA.

The Scopedogs are fielded by the Gilgamesh Confederation in the VOTOMS TV series, and ideally I would like to play games set in the VOTOMS universe with these mechs. 

The background setting to the TV series is the end of a war between the Gilgamesh Confederation and the Balarant Union who are the two main combatants in a war that has been going on for a hundred years. By the end of the TV series fighting has broken out again between them, which let's admit is total hog heaven for a wargamer.

Anyway, these four mechs will make up the first squad of my Heavy Gear army I'm building. On the advice from Heavy Gear forum readers I'm going to using the stats for the Basilisk for my Scopedogs.

The second squad will be made up of a Blood Sucker and three Strikedogs that will use the stats for the Black Mamba and Silverscales that the Gear Garage army list provides. Though I have the Blitz rule-set I've yet to play a game, as I would like to play against someone, rather than roll dice by myself.

I find it's hard to find time and people to play with, which is a bit depressing really. So we shall see how it goes in due course.

Not wishing to do anything to less than total excess, here are another four Scopedogs to provide alternate variants, either for the first squad, or to form an additional third squad. I think that these poses add real character and variation to the figures. 

The plan is to paint all these Scopedogs in the scheme I tried out on the Blood Sucker and Strikedog that I posted here. That will keep me busy for quite sometime too.

Initially I primed these models with white paint, but since I started this project I've gone over to priming using Citadel's Catechan Green Foundation colour instead, as painting the olive drab over white was a pain to try and get a consistent coverage while keeping it smooth and thin.

Finally, these are the models for a fourth squad, providing yet more alternative poses for me to choose from when fielding my army. One can never have too much of a good thing! 

The models on each end of this line-up are the two recent acquisitions I got given by Jon at GZG, and they are both variants I don't have. As you can see these are primered using Catechan Green and are awaiting me to get around to painting the olive drab base coat.

Initially I intend to use my House Steiner infantry to accompany these, as the army I've drafted on Gear Garage has two platoons of APC mounted infantry as the core of the army, with two squads of mechs/gears in support, which seems rather sensible to me.

Needless to say I am also waiting the arrival of the NuCoal Jerboas I ordered from Dream Pod 9, which were posted on the ninth of December. I may be lucky and see these arrive before Xmas, as one never can tell how fast parcels will come, but realistically I suspect that they may not arrive until after Xmas. Then I will be able to do a size comparison, and hopefully they will prove to be compatible? 

My intention being to use them for the OPFOR as stand-ins for Balarant Union Fattys. I've also got some spare weapons coming with them, including a couple of bazookas that I have plans for.

VOTOMS WIP

Strikedog on the left and a Blood Sucker on the right.

After Dragonmeet I can now relax a bit and paint something other than OGRE/GEV miniatures for a while. So here are my work in progress pictures of two VOTOMS I've been working on. These are painted up using the British Army on the Rhine Berlin Brigade pattern, but with a different colour pallette.

Still a little bit more work to do around tidying up the guns that got a bit of over paint on them.

The Blood Sucker fins on the shoulders are supposed to be communication aerials.

As you can all probably imagine these were quite fiddly to do, and all done free hand with no masking tape. The models are so small that using masking tape for the camo pattern would have been a nightmare.

Does this I'm getting into Heavy Gear? Yes it does. While BattleTech remains my first love, and the mechs from Fang of the Sun Dougram are my favourites, I also like VOTOMS too, and as Freddie would say I want it all. Of course this means I will have to paint a lot more gears, as mechs are called in Heavy Gear, but that is a burden I think I can bear?

So I have a bunch more of the Takara VOTOMS on a tray waiting to be painted. However,  I'm still going to need an OPFOR, so I just ordered from Dream Pod 9 a pack of NuCoal Jerboa gears and some spare weapons for conversions from them. After getting a copy of Life on Terra Nova at the weekend I've been catching up with the background universe that Heavy Gear is set in. While I'm drawn towards the Southern factions, because they look most like VOTOMS, because I have a load of real VOTOMS I thought I would go with using NuCoal gears for my OPFOR.

I like the look of the Jerboa gears, which was why I chose NuCoal as a force. My VOTOMS will represent a Southern Milicia unit. More updates in due course, and some pictures of the two VOTOMS that Jon from GZG gave me that I have now assembled.
  

VOTOMS in 10mm

These are Takara F/144 micro scale VOTOMS. Oh these are even lovelier than the GZG Hound Dogs. I got quite a large haul of these recently, sixteen boxes of these beauties in fact. These are an inveterate modifier's dream, as they come in lots of tiny-teeny pieces, which saves cutting them up and all. I can see that this may not have been their best selling point when they were first released though. When was that? Back in 2006, which means that I was quite lucky to find these on eBay. The chances of getting more is slim in the short term. In the long term, things come to those who wait.

The models are in a soft plastic, like most gashapons in fact, and as a result they bend a bit. The trick is to put some wire into them, which stiffens them up considerably. Once glued together they then become remarkably rigid. So here is a  shot with two 10mm MechWarrior infantry, a  GZG Hound Dog, and a BattleTech Atlas for size comparison.

I want to go back and tweak some of the models a bit more. Adding at least one bazooka rocket launcher weapon to one of the Scopedogs. Then modifying a couple of the rifles into snub guns too, along with making variants versions of the missile launchers. I also have three more of the blue Rabidly Dog mechs to make, and one more Blood Sucker mech ( the one with the red antennae) to make up. I've also got one Tortoise and three Diving Beetles along with assorted vehicles and accessories to play with too.

Furthermore, acquiring these has made me want to start playing OHMU Warmachine, a game that I wrote, but that I never thought I would want to start playing again.

However, these little mechs are just perfect for OHMU, and I've been inspired to peruse the old second edition files I have. OHMU was always written to be used with the miniatures that one could get hold of, as even back in the day, I didn't imagine ever marketing a range of specific OHMU miniatures. Not unsurprisingly, we got a lot of feedback saying that the game sucked because we hadn't market any miniatures for the game. Yes, we did draw up concept art, but that was for inspiration, and more of an aspirational thing for how the mecha of the world of OHMU looked.

Live and learn.

Anyway, I've also had a rules writer's epiphany and a moment of clarity about how to re-write OHMU Warmachine that came fully formed into my head. I'm trying to fight the urge to get over excited, and too involved in a project that will suck away all my time for very little reward though.

OHMU Warmachine didn't sell well, got reviews that said it was a mediocre to poor game, and generally the project dragged me down into the pit of despair that led to me losing interest in my hobby. Oh, and here is a nice conceit for all you VOTOMS fans.