CAS-3-Mod-1 Portraits

Army Combat Armor Suit Mark 3 Model 1 [click to embiggen].

Okay, here are the first two RAFM conversions painted. 

First up is Espera's CAS-3-Mod-1 Ape carrying on the right arm an M75 80mm lightweight high-velocity recoilless autocannon. The left arm has a M134 GAU-2B/A 7.62mm minigun. Finally, the suit has a shoulder mounted missile launcher carrying 15 rockets.

Though Espera only appears in Strike Dog my assumption is that this is a pretty standard Army Ape suit loadout for a weapons specialist.

Army Combat Armor Suit Mark 1 Model 1EV Engineering Variant [click to embiggen].

Pearson's Ape is a CAS-1-Mod-1EV: engineering variant with a shoulder mounted 100mm mortar for demolition work.

Defense against armor suits is provided by a M26 short-recoil light 20mm autocannon that fires a 20 x 102mm high explosive dual purpose anti-armor (HEDP) warhead with a range of 3 kilometers. The M26 comes with an inbuilt Mk 30 40 x 53mm underbarrel grenade launcher effective out to one kilometer.

In addition, the CAS-1-Mod-1EV carries an M240LC general purpose 7.62mm machine gun.

Tell me what you all think about the paint job on these as I tried out a whole bunch of new techniques. Any suggestions for making them better will be gratefully received.

OMWB: Painting Six Combat Armour Suits

Taken with my 7-14mm wide angle zoom.

Another post coming to this blog from a veritable flood of creativity. I've started painting these models using my wet palette, which theoretically allows me to blend the paint. So far all I've managed is plain washes for the basic colour.

WIP taken with my 60mm macro.

Still a ways to go with these, which leaves me with a question...

How Much Time Should it Take to Paint a Single Mini?

 Enjoy, catch you all on the bounce.

Mecha Suit Size Comparisons

This is how Dream Pod 9 Gears compare with Takara 1/144th scale VOTOMS. They're pretty similar height, but the Gears are bulkier, which is probably down to being cast in metal.

The Dream Pod 9 models are really nice, and relatively easily customized allowing one to tweak the pose.

With my camera out, I took the opportunity to take a bunch of pictures of my collection of my miniatures from GZG, Dream Pod 9, and RAFM mecha suits.

Everything I've recently painted with a RAFM Gear for comparison and Object 295.

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.
   

Strike Dog: Russian Quad Mech

   

Not every model I make ends up on the cover of my novels, or at least not yet. Pokhodnaya Boyevaya Platforma or Object 295 appears in Strike Dog, Chapter 9, Assault: as the "big bad" that ruins the day for CASDA 5136.

In the past I've played WW2 wargames with Soviet forces. Despite reading a bunch of books about the history of the Eastern Front, my Russian language skills leave a lot to be desired. I know a handful of words and the odd phrase.

The usual yes, no, thank you, good-bye platitudes etc., but it's all Greek to me (pun intended).

Also, when I was doing the research I found that there's no one way of transliterating Cyrillic into Roman letters.

Worse still, the number of letters in each alphabet don't even match. So, if you take the phrase, "I can't read Russian," it looks like this when written in Cyrillic script:

Я не могу читать по-русски.

Transliterated from the Cyrillic alphabet into our Roman one, it comes out like this:

Ya ne mogu chitat' po-russki.

To my Western eyes this looks a lot like squiggly maths.

 

This model was nearly finished two years ago, when I planned on using Dream Pod ( Heavy Gears for my Bad Dog games. But, now I've gone up from 12mm to 15mm, this model is not that big when compared to the RAFM Gears.

So I may have to make another, larger model. We shall see.
   

Surprise: The Other Fleet

 

At last the other fleet, after months... on checking back to my last spaceship fleet pot, nay four years... I finally got around to finishing these. I took the opportunity to varnish them whilst doing some other spraying.

 

I like to call this my Chris Foss Fleet, because how Chris Foss used to do multi-coloured spaceships that use to adorn so many SF book covers when I was young.

 

I originally painted these to portray merchant ships. At one time I had plans to run convoy games with the Green fleet as escorts. The reality is if I use them now it will be as privateers.

As per usual, clicking on the pictures to enlarge. And finally, the odd one out. A Galoob B5 Star Fury, which I had lying around and decided to tart up back four years ago because I could.

 
Ah well, at least they're done.
  

First Six Combat Armour Suits Completed

All the combat armor suits that have or will appear in my Gate Walker novels.

I started this project back at the end of January, five months ago, now we're at the end of June. How time flies by? As I've recorded here, there has been a lot of fiddling and modifying to get these looking the way I want.

But now they're done. As always, click to embiggen the pictures.

This started out as Espera's suit from my novel Strike Dog, but will now represent a variant of the CAS-1-Mod 3.

I now have another eight RAFM Gears to convert, and fortunately enough spare parts to be able to do variant weapon loadouts with magnetized arm joints.

A CASE-2X suit variant based on the support platoons in my novel Bad Dog.

And below there's a triptych of Tachikoma's new boss suit that will appear in future novels.

CASE-2XC-Mod 2E variant.

And finally some close ups of Ferretti's Buster suit. The right arm isn't magnetized because the ammo feed restricts the arm movement, but the right arm is, but that's purely for the ability to be able to pose the model when taking reference shots for cover art.

CAS-4CP variant.

So, the next stage will be to wash these in preparation for painting.  

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.

Mech Suit Progess: More Fettling

I added a roll bar to protect the head from the crane arm, and changed the weapon because I could.

Just when I thought I was getting nearer to slapping some paint on these, I had an idea. It's all Wouter's fault too! Only kidding, Wouter, you got me thinking.

 

You can see the magnets nestled inside the torso, and the extra stowage I added to the back of the mech.

I have a bunch of old RAFM Gears, but a lot of them are missing parts, like heads or backpacks. However, this means I have a bunch of spare arms to play with.

I had to rework the arm, as my first attempt to sculpting didn't work out.

So the thought occurred to me that if I magnetized the shoulder joints I could swap arms on the models, and change out the weapon loadouts to suit my fancy. How hard could it be?

Jolly hockey sticks, not so much hard, just more time consuming than I imagined.

You can see clear through the torso that I've drilled to mount the magnets, and close-ups of the sculpting on the knee joints.

So that's what I've been doing, and it's taking a bit longer than I anticipated to convert all the models, so yet another work in progress report. But soon I shall start painting them.

Soon I say, my voice lost in time and space.

Guest on SciFi Shenanigans

  

This is late news because I became distracted by world events. I remembered to put it up on Facebook, but forgot to do so here. I can only blame myself for not posting this news here sooner. Doh!

I was recently invited to be a guest on the SciFi Shenanigans podcast.

So now you can hear me speak in Episode 155 – MilSciFi Panel 3 – British Edition, hosted by JR Handley with my fellow Mil-SF authors Tim C Taylor, and Ralph Kern.

In other news, after a long hiatus I've started writing, refreshed after a long, much needed break to sort out my shit.