The Badlands Assemble

The Badlands Assemble doesn't quite have the same ring to it as The Avengers Assemble, but I've had these sitting in a box ever since the original Heavy Gear KickStarter arrived, which was two years ago.

Doesn't time fly. 

I've been feeling a bit out of sorts, because the side-effects of my medication is a bit rough, which is why I missed last weeks post. 

I felt I needed to do something to cheer me up that wouldn't get bogged down if fiddly details. So I got these models out of the box and cleaned them to get the grease off. I find windscreen wash, which has isopropyl alcohol and a wetting agent, is good for this. 

Anyway, this was about the limit of what I could manage.

Visigoth Tank WIP

   

Taken with my Olympus 7-14mm F2.8 Pro, at 7mm, F8, 1.3 secs, ISO 200. Crop from 64 megapixel Hi-Res shot.

This Visigoth tank from Dream Pod 9 is humongous, so much so that in my mind it better fits my 15mm Heavy Gear force than their 12mm line. It's so large it would have to be a giant Ogre style cybertank otherwise.

So, primed and first colour blocked out.

One step closer, which is going to be my mantra for this years work: one step at a time takes you one step closer to completion.

And, just so people can see how large this tank is, here it is with a squad of 15mm figures.

   

Second Heavy Gear Blitz KickStarter

After a month's delay to fulfill their Jovian Wars KickStarter, Dream Pod 9 have announced a launch date for their Heavy Gear Blitz expansion. I understand it will be in the next couple of days.  If you've not been following their FaceBook page I recommend looking at some of the renders they've been posting, and the tease for the Gilgamesh tank looks really interesting.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely I can pledge due to my other financial commitment, namely publishing Bad Dog.  But if I could I would, so check it out.
  

Next Wave Of Russian Walkers

Snip, snick went the snippers, snickecty-snack, snick, snick they went some more, and one-by-one the pile of parts did grow. 

And here's a quick work in progress shot of a bunch of Heavy Gear plastic Caprice mecha snipped off their sprues waiting for me to find some time to clean them up and assemble them.  Things are a bit busy at the moment, hence the briefness of this post with a couple of writing deadlines hanging over me.

So I'll catch you all on the bounce next week, when hopefully, I will have made some progress.

Catching Up

This last week has been very busy with work and having to deal with changing my internet service provider.  The one bright light amid all the stress this caused was my Heavy Gear KickStarter pledge arriving from Dream Pod 9.

I took some pictures of everything unpacked, kept the rule-book out to read and had a hell of job getting everything back inside the box.  Whoever packed this did an excellent job.  I ordered the Caprice army in addition to the four army starter pack, added a couple of extra Accos, and took advantage of the option to buy some Terra Nova terrain: Badlands Outpost and four stone heads.

As you can see in the above picture I also took up the offer to add a couple of standard models to my order: the new Hoplite and a couple of metal Gears – Hunter and Jaguar for a special conversion.  So Christmas has arrived early at the Paint-it-Pink household.
   

PetMen HOS

These figures are 15mm tall models on 25mm bases, and picture is a focus stack.

Well I had a bit of a weekend, as in nothing seemed to go right with my painting.  First off my Russian walker mech has turned into one of those faffing hell projects.  You know the ones I mean, where you take two steps forward and one step back.  So it's still not finished.  Then I hit a problem with my combat armour suits I'm painting up to match the two I've already done.  Let's just say that I was cursing the lack of opacity in my new chosen green.

Anyway, I managed to finish these.  Six bases of PetMen that are Dream Pod 9s GRELs that are all left handed, which really bugs the hell out of me.  This picture is going off for the TFL 2015 painting challenge, which is the first time I've had anything to submit for three months.
  

PetMen: Human Operator Surrogates WIP

  

A twelve PetMan squad made up of three four PetMan fire teams.  Nomenclature, don't you just love it.

These Dream Pod 9 GRELs have been hanging around my workbench being a drag on my productivity for sometime now.  Partially down to getting carried away with other shiny things, and partially because they had so much flash on them that they were a PITA to clean up.  I'll define my measure of PITA here as thirtty minutes per base with two figures.  Flash surrounded them all, and I don't mean Flash, saviour of the universe!

Still mustn't grumble really as this is a first world problem to do with toy soldiers that have more airmails on them than is decent all things considered.  And still far less flash than a 15mm HEMTT truck I bought that sits languishing out of sight, awaiting the day I'm prepared to straighten out all the castings and carve back the panel lines lost in the warpage, which sounds like something out of a Games Workshop Chaos Codex.

Just for reference these are 15mm tall, 5/8ths of an inch for those of you who don't do metric.

In my series their military designation is HOS, which stands for Human Operator Surrogate, and they're semi-autonomous robots with a hybrid expert system artificial intelligence operating system controlled by the operators of the Air Force CAS-C4P (Combat Armour System Dash C4 PetMan).  This allows the operator to effectively multi-task by distributing themselves across a network of up to twelve PetMen at a time, and act as a force multiplier; in my imagination Global Dynamics Corporation Defense Industries sales pitch would call them An Army of One.

The PetMen are only briefly mentioned in Bad Dog as part of the back ground setting of the novels universe.  They get more page time in the sequel Strike Dog, where you gets to see them in action for the first time.  But in won't be until final book Ghost Dog that you will get to see them deployed in anger against an enemy.

PetMen are a real thing. Click this link to see it in action.

  

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.

CASE-2X Combat Armour: Shiny Distraction

I've been mumbling about Heavy Gear for a while, having gone so far as to put my money where my mouth is by signing up for the KickStarter, and buying miniatures, but my intent is not so much to play games in the Terra Nova setting, rather to play games in the my own setting. 

For those who follow my writing blog you will know I've written my first novel working title Bad Dog.  I've even written the first drafts of two sequels, so I'm quite invested in my story, and being a wargamer I want to play games in my universe.

The above are a load of bits & pieces that arrived recently.  

Some were bought specifically to provide the parts for converting some Dream Pod 9 miniatures to make a model of my CASE-2X combat armour, called Dogs by the Marine Corps pilots in my novel.  My first attempt at making a Dog can be seen here.  I wasn't totally happy with it, because it just looked like a slightly modified Heavy Gear Jager, which funnily enough was what it was.

So here is my second attempt using the main torso from a Heavy Gear Mamba to change the look of my combat armour suit.

On the left is my heroes mecha from the first novel, and on the right is her officer variant from the sequels.  

I've used the Dream Pod 9 snub cannon to represent the 20mm auto-cannon, modified with a frag cannon to represent an under barrel grenade launcher.  I've also added a parts to represent the over the shoulder sensor post and the arm mounted snub 50 cal, which is part of fixed load-out for all Marine Corps Dogs.  

The command variant adds a shoulder mounted rocket pod, and has extra antennae for all the communications gear a command suit carries.  The head on the command model comes from Dream Pod 9s Razor Fang Mamba.

Tell me what you think.  Be honest, this is for posterity, as in they will become canonical  and I want to get the look right.  For instance I could go with Mamba heads for the basic Dogs, and use Cobra heads for the command variants?  My next step is to make models up for the rest of the named characters in Bad Dog, followed by an Army Special Forces suit from the first sequel called Strike Dog, and an Air Force Forward Observer suit from the third novel called Ghost Dog.

After that there will be rules.  Whether these will be variant Heavy Gear Blitz Beta, or something else will rather depend on play-testing of the new rules from Dream Pod 9.  Either way models will be made and games will be played.

Merry Xmas 2014

Ho ho ho and now I have some Heavy Gear Utopian Golem mecha, and a copy of X-wing and the Rebel Alliance Blockade Runner, neither of which was a surprise, but they were most wanted.   I did get given a non-wargaming present that was a bit of a surprise, a nice condition second had Birdy Red folding bicycle – it's German so it's all very technical with full suspension.

Have had a lazy day watching Wallace & Gromit, Gnomeo & Juliet, Top of the Pops, the Queen's speech, Puss in Boots, and the Goose is in the oven and we are just about to watch Dr Who.  So I hope you've all had a great day opening presents, eating and drinking, and are enjoying the day.
   

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.
   

Heavy Gear Caprice

I admit it I gave in and made a pledge for the Heavy Gear Kickstarter, initially only for a dollar, but then came to my senses and upped my pledge to $65.00 for the Caprice starter army.  I like the look of the four legged walkers, and at the price listed it's win-win, plus the add-ons and postage and packing deal for this was too tempting.

I have to admit that while I love the Heavy Gear universe, I have no one to play with, and largely I'm buying these for games in my own universe, which I still have no-one to play with, but it keeps me busy and off the streets.  So my plan is that these Caprice walkers will form the core of my Russian Federation special forces unit, and will face off against my VOTOMS who will be used as my Confederated States Marines.
  

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.

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.