North American Combine Infantry WIP

 

To end week three of Ogre miniatures here are the 6mm Combine infantry figures I've based. I need to texture the bases next, and then I'll be another step closer to completing the miniatures to run the games of Ogre at Blast-Tastic! in October as announced here.

I guess that makes that official then. You heard it here first.

 

Each base of three figures counts as a platoon, and I have based some figures as one's and two's for casualty accounting. The above represents three Company's worth of men.

This is equivalent to a Battalion sized formation, and as I have the same number again this means I'm fielding what can be called a short infantry Regiment. 

I haven't a clue what to call my new Regiment, so any suggestions for a name will be considered.

Perhaps I need two names, one for each Battalion as the US Army names its infantry formations differently to British conventions. I shall have to go away and do some research.

Ogres in the Chop Shop: Pan European Mark 3 WIP

Week three of the Ogre fest. Here's a side view of my newest Mark 3, showing the cut down tower to represent it being lowered. No doubt some bright spark is going to come along and tell me the Mark 3 wasn't able to lower its tower, and I'll say who says it's lowered?

I've gone and positioned the secondary batteries at a different angle too, so as to visually differentiate my Pan Euro Mark 3 from my two Combine Mark 3 Ogres.

Not sure that I actually like the look, but it's cannon, so it's cool.

Here are a  couple of pictures showing how I built up the model with magnets from the get go. I started with gluing in the first magnet to the front half and reinforced the joint with Milliput.

I then added Milliput to the rear half and pressed the magnet into it while it was still soft.  All looking a bit rough from the magnet being pulled out while the Milliput was drying.

Here you see how the embedded the magnets into each half of the body shell.

After all this was set I added more Milliput to fill out the cavities in both halves of the Mark 3 body. This is to both strengthen the joint, and give the model a more correct visual profile when looking at it straight on where one can see the underside.

Ogres in the Chop Shop: Pan European Mark 2 WIP

Ending week two of my April Ogre postings, here is my Mark 2 assembled, and looking pretty spiffy.  

This is one of those models, which for me at least, looks better sitting in front of one than it does in pictures. I don't know why that should be, but it just is. For me, the design looks more like what the Pan Europeans would do to improve the Mark 1, rather than a true Mark 2 design, but that's just my opinion and it is worth exactly what you paid for it. 

Hence the posting stating this is going to be a Pan European Ogre.

I routinely fill in the underneath of all my Ogre models, not to give them heft or anything, but because when I look at the model at eye level I notice the hollowed out bottoms, and that annoys me. Most people I imagine are less fussy about this than I.

 

I've magnetized the turret so that it doesn't come off during handling, but still allowing it to fully rotate for the play value on the table. As they say in advertising; keep watching this space for more, as I prepare for week three, and further pictures of my alarmingly big Ogre collection.

It's a bit like Pokemon; gotta catch them all. 

Ogres in the Chop Shop: Combine Ninja WIP

In my mind the Combine Ninja is the cutest of all the Ogre models issued by Steve Jackson Games, there's something about the proportions that make it look sleek, fast and tidy.

 

 Here's what the bottom looks like when one has embedded the magnets in Milliput.

 

And finally a close-up of the magnets and how I've strengthened the joints with fillets of Milliput around the rear body joint. This prevent the magnet from being sheered off, as super glue is not good at handling sheer forces, whereas Milliput is.

Nihon Vehicles WIP

A tray of miniatures that I stripped back to bare metal. They were originally painted yellow, and used as stand-ins for my Combine force, before I became an MIB, and started demonstrating Ogre officially. 

I've split the models that use to be my Combine force into those that are going to be used with my Nihon Mark 4, while the rest will form the core of a Chinese force at some point in the future.

Most of the models I have are the old Ral-Partha BattleTech vehicles, including the long out of production original Pegasus scout GEV, which is a lovely miniature.

The light tanks, as I have said before are Heroic & Ros miniatures; the turret from their Merkava, and the body from the Bradley.  The modified SRN4 is if I remember correctly from Stan Johanson's range he used to market for BattleTech, long gone I'm afraid.

I held back on sorting out these models under the mistaken impression that SJG were interested in developing their Ogre miniatures line, which clearly they are not, because they can't make money selling them. Every cloud has a silver lining, in my case it means I can expand my forces using stand ins with a clear conscience.

Finally, I also want to shout out to Super Galactic Dreadnought's blog, where he posted these two images that I'm re-posting for the record.

If you look at the list above, one can see Combine Set 8, with the tantalizing title of Divisional Assets, which may have been a tracked mobile command post of some sort.

  

The list with the Paneuropean Set 12 Archangel GEV-MCP and escorts would have introduced another new unit to the game, and the escorts were most likely to have been some GEVs.  However, none of this ever happened, and most likely never will. 

In my opinion, without a targeted marketing strategy to generate sales interest, and new additions to the miniatures line to maintain it, Ogre miniatures was never going to make enough money for SJG, and arguably even if it was making money it wouldn't make enough to satisfy the bottom line.

Ogres in the Chop Shop: Nihon Mark 4 WIP

Welcome to the first in a series of Ogre miniatures related post that I am putting up this month. I had thought about doing an April's Fool post for Ogre, but the idea I had left a bad taste in my mouth, and wasn't funny for any definition of funny that made one laugh; more like crying in frustration from the attitude express here; my post and Phil Reed's reply follows it.

So, the picture above shows one of the sample models of the Mark 4 that Steve Jackson Games rejected some time back in the 1990s I guess.

Now assembled and resting on my workbench in all its massive glory.  For me this model goes a little past the line of how big is too big, because it's larger than the Mark 5 and the later Mark 6 models. So, I can see why it wasn't brought to market.

Not only that, but it would cost a small fortune to produce and an even larger one to buy.

As you can I've used neodymium magnets to connect the two halves of the model together, my preferred method of choice nowadays when it comes to Ogres. The colour scheme for my new Nihon Ogre force is going to be overall pink with purple and orange splinter dazzle, it's going to look awesome.