Updates and More Stripped Acquisitions

Progress being made with the rebuild of Espera's Ape suit on the left, and the running repose companion CAS-3-Mod 1 suit.

I've repositioned the minigun on Espera's ride to sit under the forearm, and I've found a suitable ammo chute to connect it to the ammo pack on the back. I've also decided to modify the missile pod to have it hang off the backpack rather than being shoulder mounted.

I have a stash of various Gears since my first acquisition off eBay. I've now added a few more.

 

Above is an Armored Hunter stripped and currently sitting on my bench waiting for me to decide what I want to do with it.  I'm pondering over making it into a Heavy armored variant of an Ape, or a light version of a Buster thereby making my current Buster a two seat variant.

Decisions, decisions.

And pictured below are two Heavy Gear Kodiaks that I acquired and now stripped ready to be built. Now do I build them as twin seater Buster variants instead of using the armored Hunter for a single seat Buster variant?

Again, decision, decisions.

 

 

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

Relief at Progress

 

Finally, I've managed get the paint on the torso and head to match the work I'd done before having to strip it. Phew. Breathe a sigh of relief at managing this. A first for me matching glazes and washes, made easier using a wet palette and additives.

Just have to do the final assembly, varnish and decal the torso and head to call Ferretti's Buster done.

In other news, I've acquired two Kodiaks and an armored Hunter. The Kodiaks will be converted into Busters to go with the one above. 

No doubt I will tinker with variant weapons loadouts on these.

The Armored Hunter was an impulse purchase that took my fancy. I'm tempted to make it the ride for my CASDA weapons specialist.

These took an awful long time to make it across the Atlantic, and at one point I thought the parcel had gone missing. Much relief now they've safely arrived. All the RAFM Gears are mine!

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

More RAFM Gears Acquired

Two Azure Devils Jagers, A Grizzly, and Support Cobra.

Thanks to the kindness of Jeff Racel I received a some more DP9 RAFM Gears. These additions will plug a couple of holes in my collection.

Also, expanded my weapon selection and accessories, which was a total bonus win when it comes to my conversions, because you can never have too many choices to choose from.

A bunch more weapons and spares for stowage.

And there's more... Moooaar I tell you!

Jeff very kindly sent me two Jaguars that I will strip and rebuild, which was a totally unexpected bonus.

 

The green Gear with an axe might be the Predator Jaguar variant.

Finally, a Matchbox HEMTT PLS, which was super kind of him to part with. Now I have plans. Cunning plans to turn this into a representation of the trucks that appear in both my Strike Dog and Ghost Dog novels.

M1120A4 HEMTT LHS precursor to 10 wheel PLS version.

Muwuhahahaha! Catch you all on the bounce.

RAFM Combat Armour Suit Conversions

I thought about calling the title of this piece, Oh look... Shiny!

Yesterday I sat down at my workbench, and instead of continuing with the cybertank I've been working on, I got out my box of old RAFM Heavy Gears.

I made the decision that for games it is easier to source infantry in 15mm, and therefore I need bigger mech models for gaming. Yes, that decision has some ramifications for my future purchases, but after 8 years of trying to find good power armor infantry in 1/144th or 12mm I've decided that 15mm is the way to go to bring my Gate Walker universe to the playing table.

I want to make up six APE suits (acronym for: Autonomous Pilot Expert-system) to represent half of CASDA 5136 from my second novel Strike Dog. I only need six models as the others would be identical, as in carrying the same sort of loadouts. My thoughts being that each half of the detachment was a mirror of the other.

I took my Heavy Gear Northern mechs, which I had been working on, and changed the heads to those from the Desert Sharks. I then took three of the Desert Shark Hunters I had to fill out the squad. I have a Jaguar for the commander.

I plan to do a weapons conversion for my character Espera's ride who carries the big recoilless rifle, though fat lot of good it does him, but to say more would be spoilers.

After sorting through a load of packets for weapons etc, I decided to make up a Marine Corps Dog squad (acronym for: Dispersed Operation and Guidance System).

After much mumbling I decided to go with Heavy Gear Southern Jagers, and use a Black Mamba to represent CASE-2XC command suit. Here I had to improvise because while I have plenty of complete Northern mechs, a lot of my Southern forces are partial acquisitions; missing heads or back packs.

And then I decided I'd make up an Assault Grizzly for Air Force Master Sergeant Ferretti's  Buster suit, a Stone Mason for Corpsman Keith, and a Bricklayer for Combat Engineer Sergeant Pearson.

Now all I have to do is clean up the castings and assemble my new squads. How hard can that be!

RAFM Cheetah WIP

This is picture is of the pre-loved and slightly tatty Cheetah I got off eBay, which was sans butt-plate.  As luck would have it I could find no pictures on the web of the Cheetah taken from the rear.  Fortunately, I have friends who have complete Cheetahs to send me pictures of what the butt-plate should look like.

However, as luck would have it–or not, as luck only involved winning an eBay listing–I managed to buy a Whitecat.  This has the same V-motor butt-plate as the Cheetah, so I am now using this as a template to fabricate a replacement for my model.

I started by bending up a bit of wire to make a frame for the Milliput butt-plate.  Then I added the Milliput and moulded it into the rough shape I needed.  Still a bit of shaping and carving yet to do, but it has been far too nice to be sitting indoors making toy soldiers to finish the job.

And here's the cleaned up Cheetah awaiting assembly.

   
So, more updates to come, but now it's time to go off and shoot pointy sticks at round things: archery being lots more fun to do when the weather is nice.
  

Northern Guard Painting WIP

And this weekend I managed to slap some paint on my Northern Guard Gears.  Still a long way to go, but I'm one colour application closer to finishing.

The Jaguar on the left has had the main green shaded, while the Hunter on the right has had the arms painted the rest remains to be done.  I really want to get my Northern Guard squad done, but unfortunately, with the nicer weather I've been going out more, mostly to shoot arrows in archery competitions, so the painting has been put on the back burner for the time being.
  

RAFM Even More Reinforcements

And just when you think you have enough, along comes the chance to buy more!  I couldn't resist these, especially as the bundle included spare weapon packs, which will mean I can play about with the weapon loadouts on my collection of Heavy Gears.

What's interesting, and therefore exciting, is the options this opens up to me when I assemble the next batch of Gears.  And, furthermore once I've taken a picture of it, I have one broken bazooka that has snapped in half, which is not something you see everyday.  Still, it has got me thinking about repairing it and making it into large missile launchers.

Beside that there's the two tanks, which means that I now have tanks for both my Northern Guard and Southern Milicia forces too.  Given that I didn't go to Salute again this year, this and the other eBay haul have salved my need to spend money on wargaming paraphernalia.

Enjoy.
    

On My Workbench WIP

Just a picture to show people that I am working on painting and making stuff and not just buying all the shiny off eBay that I can find.

As you can see the Visigoth tank from here has been primed and now has a coat of paint.  The three RAFM Gears are slowly being painted, while in front of them are the Dream Pod 9 Gears that I went back and slightly modified, setting back their completion.

In front are two unpainted Gears that I now have the parts to complete so they can be primed, and in centre place is my stripped and being rebuilt custom Ogre that is going to be made up as a Pan European Federation Vulcan.  Below is a close-up of my revised autocannon model for my Bad Dog Universe setting, the original long version can be seen here.

Close-up shots are brutal for showing defects.

  

Mammoth WIP

So this is what my recently acquired Mammoth looks like when stripped back to bare metal.

I'm missing one of the small rotary cannon and the foot-pad, both of which will have to have replacements fabricated.  The large rotary cannon is a lovely example of a well sculpted/made master.  Whoever made the masters for the RAFM Heavy Gear line deserves praise for doing some very nice work.

I have one question though, I've seen this model with one missile arm and one gun arm, but mine has two gun arms.  Do I need to rebuild one into a missile version?
   

RAFM Reinforcements

I scored off eBay four, pretty much pristine, packs of RAFM Heavy Gear models.  I now have a Northern Guard White Cat and artillery, and Southern Milicia Stone Mason and artillery.  Don't have any plans for the artillery at this moment, but the two Gears area nice addition to my growing collection and fit my ideas for the two forces I'm planning.

 
Still need a Kodiak.  Just saying in case anyone know of any going.
  

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.
  

RAFM Jaguar

 And here is the final model for my first squad of RAFM model for my Heavy Gear project.

As you can see this is the first Gear I've gone off piste by converting the medium autocannon using a contemporary Dream Pod 9 very light field gun as the basis of my conversion.  I hadn't imagined I would do any conversions on these old models, but the weapon on the Jaguar, when compared to the light autocannons on the Hunters, just didn't look beefy enough to justify being called a medium autocannon.

What the original medium autocannon looks like.

This is probably my inner wargamer coming out; bigger is better and that kind of thing.  Please feel free to criticize and throw brick-bats or praise.

Still, I don't think I went overboard with the conversion and I've incorporated parts from the original casting into my piece. This is now going off to the paint shop to be primed with the other two Hunters ready to be painted to match the Hunter Commando.

Happy days.

NB:  Yesterday a mad man killed people in London before being killed himself by the Police. By the time I heard about the event, it was all over.  It's sad, but it's not the end of the world, even though a handful of people lost their lives. The biggest enemy is the generation of fear, because when people are fearful their cognitive abilities are reduced by the overwhelming emotion. Oh, and just in case you think I'm being cool and rational because I wasn't there, I work for the hospital on the other side of the river from the House.

RAFM Assault Grizzly

Again, due to the kindness of a fellow wargamer, Jochen Wenzel from Germany, I now own a Grizzly... ho, ho, ho!  Jochen thank you very much for your generous offer, I'm lost for words.

My plan is to be able to get nine Northern Guard Gears onto the table.  A squad of four with three Hunters and a Jaguar; a fire support team of said Grizzly and a Fire Jaguar; and a recon team consisting of a Cheetah and a White Cat; lead by a command Hunter.

I then plan to make up my five remaining Desert Shark Hunters.  I'll use them to add another squad consisting of four Hunters, and put the other one with my command Hunter to act as his support for larger games to act as the force senior sergeant.  From that you can tell I plan to have a mechanism in my game so that commanders do things that are useful to the outocme of the game.

In an ideal world I would be able to have mechanisms for the impact of logistics, but even I think that will be for the campaign rules.
  

RAFM Assault Hunter

This is the third of my original RAFM score that consisted of three Hunters, two Jaguars and a Bricklayer.  My next step is to make up the standard Jaguar as the squad leader for this my first squad of Gears.  I'm not sure if that's a legal squad in the game, but given I'm intending to use my own rules so I'll make squads to match my rules.

That's not meant to offend any hardcore Heavy Gear players.  I'd be happy to play with anyone who knows the rules well enough to teach me and have a fun game.  The odds are long on that happening, so I need rules my partner can get to grips with, and so I'm adapting the Star Wars X-Wing combat system.

I plan to post some construction rules, really too grand a description for my rough notes, soon.
  

RAFM Hunter

Back here I showed my first clean up of my Hunter Commando, and now I've moved onto the next RAFM Gear and tidied everything up, as can be evidenced by the picture of what it looked like when it arrived.

What I learnt during this assembly was how easy it is to misidentify parts.  After stripping all the models I received I thought I had correctly sorted out all the bits, but to my chagrin I hadn't.  I had put the Jaguar torso with the Hunter legs, which in and of itself is no big deal, until it came time to assemble the missile pod.  Then I found it wouldn't tight fit, and put it down to the way I had positioned the backpack.

I disassembled the model and reassembled it and got everything fitted, though the missile pod was still a tight fit, and was finishing off the model when I received a package containing a squad of Desert Sharks.

Wouter Wolput, a reader of my blog who lives in Belgium, very generously offered me his unwanted squad of Gears for the cost of the postage.  Thank you again for parting with them.  Most appreciated.

So, I was checking out the models and comparing them to the next Gear I have waiting to be cleaned up, an Assault Hunter.  I then noticed that Hunters have a slightly different torso to Jaguars.  Big doh moment!

So I had to disassemble my Hunter once more and clean up the correct torso, and start assembling it for the third time.

Thankfully, as you can see, all done now.
     

RAFM Hunter Commando

And here it is, painted, decals applied and varnished.  A classic real robot anime scheme inspired by the VOTOMS show.

Also, I'd like to add an observation about size and scale, one of my hobby horses.

This model, measured to the top of the head, stands 43.5mm.  That's 1 and 11/16ths (correcting typo) of an inch for my American readers.  In 1/87th scale, 3.5mm to the foot, this means the model represents a Gear that stands at 12.42 feet.  The current Blitz 1/144th scale, 2.12mm to the foot, and my Hunter stands at around 28mm, which is 13.2 feet.  And just as a comparison a slightly larger Blitz Gear like the Mamba stands at 34mm, which is 16.04 feet tall.

Funnily enough the RAFM Hunter, if treated as a 1/100th scale model, which is 3mm to the foot would stand 14.5 feet tall in real life.  So everybody is right when they say these models are suitable for 15mm wargaming, because they are.

I found  some pictures from the RAFM catalogue Heavy Gear Northern Guard online, with a list of all the models issued.  Those listed in bold are those I've managed to get hold of.  Still looking for a model of the Kodiak for my collection just because I like it.

Hunter 1200
Assault Hunter 1201
Jaguar 1202
Strike Jaguar 1203

Cheetah 1204
Strike Cheetah 1205
Grizzly 1206
Assault Grizzly 1207 (since posting acquired)*

Hunter Commando 1208
Bricklayer 1209
Fire Jaguar 1210

Rabid Grizzly 1211

Kodiak 1212 

White Cat 1213 (since posting acquired)*
Light Artillery 1214 (since posting acquired)*

1215 Number apparently not used

Sniper Infantry 1216 
(not shown)
Recon Infantry 1217 

(not shown)
Standard Infantry 1218 


Heavy Infantry 1219 

Black Cat 1221 

(not shown)
Armored Hunter1222 

(not shown)
Cheetah Fang 1223 

(not shown)
Hunter Recon 1224 

(not shown)
Crossbow Grizzly 1225 

(not shown)
Predator Jaguar 1226 

(not shown)
White Cat EWH 1227 

(not shown)
Black Claw 1228 

(not shown)
Kodiak Destroyer 1229 
(not shown)
"Desert Sharks" Box 2050 

Mammoth Strider 2052 

(not shown)
Assault Mammoth 2053 

(not shown) (since posting acquired)*
Klemm tank 2055 
(not shown)

So my plan now is to make up my standard Hunter next, and then the assault Hunter and a Jaguar so I can field a four Gear squad.  After that I'll make up a squad of Southern Gears then it's either the Cheetah or Bricklayer: the former is missing its butt-plate and the latter is missing its claw, so both models will need to have new parts fabricated.

Day by day my RAFM Gear Force proceeds to grow ever larger.  Muwuhuhahaha!

NB:  Since posting this I've acquired several new additions to what I'm now calling my Project Gear Force.
   

Heavy Gear Force Awakens

It's the kindness of friends that makes life fun.  Thanks to Sitzkrieg for expanding my Southern Gear collection.  Left to right: Mamba Brawler, Jager Blitz and Armored Jager.

For a long time there was no hints or signs that I would ever get into Heavy Gear, such things were musings or mad thoughts of un-sane Elder Gods from another dimension waiting for the stars to be right.

These six Northern faction RAFM Gears mark the start of my slide into insanity and downfall.  Top left to right: Bricklayer, Fire Jaguar, and Jaguar. Bottom left to right: Hunter Commando, Hunter, and Assault Hunter.

Then a chance find in non-euclidian space, called eBay, there were six RAFM Gears that merited a token bid.  And then the stars turned, and I became the owner of the basis for a Northern Heavy Gear squad.  From there, further searching, and with the help of kind friends, I have doubled my haul.  In the process I've also acquired some incomplete models that will be good for spare parts.

And another three RAFM Gears did appear.  Left to right: Southern Iguana, Northern Desert Sharks Hunter, and a Cheetah.

This means I now have eight Northern and four Southern RAFM era Gears.

Now the madness has taken hold, I want a Kodiak to round out my Northern Gear squad.  For my Southern squad another Jager, Mamba, and a Cobra would be nice to have too.  Then I could then make up two squads for games.

So now all of the new acquisitions are in the process of having their paint stripped in Nitromors, and you can all expect to see progress reports, like this one, as I assemble and paint them in the months ahead.
  

Heavy Gear Mods

After fixing my RAFM Hunter Commando I was looking at my Hunter conversion I made to represent Sergeant Espera's APE suit, from my second novel, and thought I can do better than that.  Such is the burden of being self-critical.  Below is the original conversion.

I think my rearranging of the weapons loadout and replacing the boxy rifle looks better.  While it's a pain to rebuild models when they're in the process of being painted, I wasn't going to be happy with it until I did.
  

RAFM Hunter Commando

     

I can see why old Heavy Gear grognards lament the passing of the large Gears.  This is a lovely model, full of character, even if the casting quality is not a patch on current Dream Pod 9 products, which are far better as evidenced by the miscast ammo box on the rear of the bazooka.

Oh lucky me what a shiny frabjous joy, joy acquisition...

I bid on six RAFM era Gears on eBay and won.  This was probably down to the fact they were partly painted and assembled and there was a high chance that parts were missing, which wasn't a problem for me as I have an ample amount of Nitromors on hand, and missing parts can always be fabricated from my spare parts box.

I got one of each of the following: Hunter Commando, a standard Hunter, an Assault Hunter, a Bricklayer, a Fire Jaguar, and a standard Jaguar.

Surprisingly, only one model was missing a part, the Bricklayer has no claw.  But, I have spare claws from MechWarrior construction mechs that will work.  And, as can be seen in the above picture, the Hunter Commando's bazooka is mis-moulded.  But, for me at least, this an easy fix because I can use a part from the current Heavy Gear large bazooka.

I'm tempted to play Heavy Gear using these models, but as a semi-RPG squad level game.

It seems a shame to me that Dream Pod 9 hasn't considered re-issuing these Gears as resin and pewter models as they're no larger than the Gear Striders they already sell.  I imagine this would please an awful lot of players of the game and would go a long way to mending a few fences in the Heavy Gear world too.  Besides which, it would make them money and allow them to diversify the game.  Blitz for large games, heroic scale for small actions.

Now I'm scrabbling around for a couple of Southern Mambas and Jagers to go with these.
  

Further Size Comparisons

 

Last year I posted a piece comparing the size of Dream Pod 9 Gears/Mechs against a scale real world vehicle.  And then another piece looking at the size of the Visigoth tank next to an Abrams.

This time I'm comparing a RAFM era 1/87th scale Hunter Command with a 1/144th scale Hunter conversion next to 15mm–1/100th scale–Abrams and a 1/144th scale Abrams with a Clear Horizon Epsilon 15mm miniature and a MechWarrior Dark Age 10mm Grey Death Legion power armour figure.

What does this mean?

I've been bitten by the accidental purchase of six RAFM era Gears.  I say accidental because I put a low bid on them not expecting to win, but I did: hence accidental.  Now I have the urge to acquire more RAFM Gears because they're lovely and shiny, must catch them all...

Realistically, if I can get hold of a couple of Southern Gears then I'll probably be satisfied as it will allow me to have heroic scale stand-in models of my character's mechs from my novels.  OTOH though, the temptation to go full-on 15mm for my Bad Dog verse project is strong because it's so much easier to get figures in different poses.

What you're hearing is the sound of the wargamers lament.