Subatduku Alien Force

Maneuver group.

I've finished painting my Khurasan 15mm Entomal aliens, aka the Stikk. I'm using these in my Bad Dog universe as Subatduku. They've yet to appear in a novel, but will appear in Big Little Wars wargame rules.

Support teams and command team.

I have another ten figures to paint, which will make for a second maneuver group in due course.

I've decided to take a break from painting to build up some more combat armor suits that have been sitting on my work bench waiting for me to get back to them.

WIP: Robots Rally!

I got my set of Robot Rally circa 2002. Still haven't played a game either, so these miniatures that come with the game have sat on the lead mountain for eighteen years.

Ironically, I managed to paint the robots below below a friends as a Xmas present in 2004.

So, I'm painting my set in a different combination of colours, because why not? And, who wants to be boring and paint an identical set again? Not I. Which, also probably explains why I'm so terrible at painting armies.

Anyway, all the colours of the rainbow still seems to me to be the right choice for fun, happy robot rally mayhem. So here they are with the base coat laid down.

 

 

I mounted mine on British pennies for weight and for ease of transport as they can be secured with a magnetic sheet in a box. Pro tip right there. But interestingly, for definitions of interesting that may vary, you can see that the moulded round bases aren't.

So, these are a work in progress. Something light and fluffy, painted for fun.

OMWB: Scaling the Mountain of Lead

These ABC Warriors have sat in the lead pile for more years than I care to remember. And it has to be said that sat around in primer for nearly three years too. Okay, let me put that into perspective for the younger followers who may be reading my blog.

My guess these were bought circa 1988.

Unpainted figures in the lead mountain lie. Given enough time, may even appear in a game or two.

So I've laid down the first coat of green with some wash to increase the depth of the shadows, and next is the mid-tones and highlight shades. After that, I'll add some red to make them pop.

And, my Martian Metals K'Kree that have also sat around after being primed waiting for me to notice them too.

As I've said before, these K'Kree are rarer than rocking horse shit. I picked them up circa 1984 on a trip to Toronto from a store on Yonge  Street. Along with my Zhodani marines that I posted here, which can be found in the side-bar under Martian Metals.

It has only taken me four years from noticing that they needed to be cleaned, then another year until primed before they finally wandered onto my paint table. Slow is steady, I guess!?

OMWB: New Year: New Figures

 

 Bugs Mr Rico. Lots of bugs.

These are still a work in progress. The big mother bioweapon I had to strip and redo, but the models below only need a little more work to finish.

 

These figures are the Entomal aka Stikk aliens from Khurasan.

They are beautiful castings with enough variety of poses, but with reasonably consistent weapons and battle rattle to satisfy my needs.

Spoilers, these are the models I will be using as aliens in Big Little Wars, which have yet to appear in any novel.

Yet...

MARPACE Exoskeleton Suits

Three two man teams form a squad. The squad leader mounted as two figures on one base for ease of identification.

These are Clear Horizon Epsilon Squad infantry. Inspired by the exoskeleton suits from The Edge of Tomorrow aka Live. Die. Repeat. I've had them in my too be painted pile for too long. Since 2017 in fact.

Part of me thinks this is shockingly slow. The other part of me thinks that it's just down to my inability to just focus on one thing at a time.

For me this meant I had to understand how a squad in the Gate Walker universe was built.

No, I couldn't just take a current Marine squad, because nothing is ever totally static. A position recently reinforced by the Marine Corps changing from a 13 man squad into a new 15 squad. About the only thing that seems consistent is three teams make a squad.

A three figure base for the senior leader in command of the platoon with a Big Dog mule.

Xmas Haul

And here are my prezzies. The MDF terrain pieces from Charlie Foxtrot Models, who I can highly recommend because he turned around not only the order, but some custom corner pieces for me.

Some Scale 75 Instant Colours that I've tried and liked, so getting some more is welcome. These were from Hobby Heaven on eBay, who also sent a Christmas Cthulhu badge. Thank you. Again, highly recommended.

Got a book by an author new to me who specializes in first contact stories.

And my big prezzie, which was a total surprise was a LED light for my camera, which I will have to practice with, but will be super useful for when a flash is not welcome.

Merry Christmas 2021

A year that can best be described as a good example of the Curate's Egg. Bad, but needing to find something good about it because, otherwise the horribleness of it all just gets you down. Time as they say to turn lemons into lemonade.

An opportunity to try and makes the best from all the bad happening around us. So Merry Christmas one and all.

OMWB: Something New, Something Old

 

This last week I have been busy writing Big Little Wars. Roaring along with 3,250 new words added to the running total of 28,456 words. But still a fair bit to do.

The Scenarios are the next big job ahead of me.

Meanwhile, lurking on my workbench is an ABS filament print of a Bob Semple WW2 tank that I'm making into an insurgent improvised armoured fighting vehicle. Wants to be a tank when it grows up. Not happy with it yet, but I will prevail.

I bought some liquid Green Stuff to smooth out the printing ridges. After that, I'll tart up the barrel and maybe add a TOW missile or some thing to jazz up the model.

And adjacent is my long overdue armored exoskeleton suited infantry project.

Spent a long time procrastinating on how I wanted to base them, and another long period of neglect as I painted other models. But they are nearly finished. In the home stretch with one more glaze and some some drybrushing to finish these.

So that's all until next time. Catch you all on the bounce.

The Jungle: The Mighty Jungle

As you can see, I received a very generous package of jungle terrain arrived from my dear friend Tamsin; a wargame sister of battle whose blog can be found here, or in my blog list in the left column of this page.

She had been building some mighty fine jungle terrain on her blog a while back, and impressed, I commented on her work. To my surprise and delight, Tamsin then offered me the surplus trees as a gift, which I was truly flattered to be offered, and grateful to receive.

The box of trees arrive yesterday.

I took a quick photo, but I was too busy until today to post it. Sorry for not emailing you immediately Tamsin, but I was busy, more like lost in writing my Big Little Wars rules, managing to add a mammoth 2,069 words to the project. Not yet finished, but closer to reaching that goal.

I see a jungle, a mighty jungle in my future. Thank you again Tamsin.

To all my readers, stay safe. Catch you all on the bounce.

Big Little Wars: Post 5 - Chapter Headings

 

A progress report that is more than just there has been progress. I've set a goal of completing the first daft by Christmas. So I sat down and made a priority list of what I needed to do to finish to be able to send the first draft out the door to my play test team.

The picture shows the progress made and the word counts.

My document tells me that the current word total is: 19,677 words; though the project counter only says 19,401 words. No doubt there are good reasons for this, but I haven't a clue why they differ?

This project has completely sidetracked my work on my next novel, but doing this has involved me thinking about a lot of stuff that counts as world building stuff I will need to know for later stories. I'll take that as a win.

The list of sections to finish are:

Chapter 2. Big Little Wars Assumptions: 

Terrain; Choose Your Faction; and Overview of play.

Chapter 3. Playing Big Little Wars:

Deployment Points Example; Command Dice Example; Action & Movement Examples; Resolving Attacks; and Combat Resolution Examples.
Chapter 5. Troop & Vehicle Creation: 

Armored Fighting Vehicles; Robotic Attack Vehicles; and Weapon Options (cost to do).
Chapter 6. Force Organization: 

Adding vehicles to a force.
Chapter 7. Scenario Set-up:

Force building for scenarios (this is the first of the two big parts of what's left to finish).
Chapter 8. Optional Rules:

Non Player Controlled Forces; Company Level Games; and Calculating Line-of-Sight (is the other big part of what's left to write).

That's it. Catch you all later.