Birthday Acquisitions

The X-Wing meme of – Mistakes Were Made – seems almost applicable here, except that this was no unforeseen splurge, but rather a birthday acquisition. The U-wing is a very pretty craft from Rogue One that I think has all the attributes that made the X-wing so iconic.

Ghost of course, is from the cartoon series Rebels, which like The Clone Wars has added more to story than some of the prequel and sequel films in the Star Wars franchise.

Either way, I like the ships and I'm looking forward to playing a game of X-Wing at some point with these two models, and trying out some of the special rules that go with them.

Heavy Gear Blitz Rules

  

I've only managed to play Heavy Gear a couple of times. The main obstacle is that when it comes to mecha games, BattleTech is the 800lbs gorilla in the room.

Therefore I have to pitch Heavy Gear to BattleTech players as an alternative to playing classic or Alpha Strike. And, any Heavy Gear game I run has to also compete with other games like Star Wars X-Wing, which feel more modern from their play sequences.

Anyway, the discussion is over on the Dream Pod 9 forum. If you play Heavy Gear or have an interest in mecha games, then check it out.
  

Newten Town WIP: Weathering

Anyway, after a lot of faffing I got around to working on Newten. All that's left to do now is put down some grass flock and it will be finished. Yeah, I know "all" is a very diminutive word to describe an indefinite amount of effort required. Like the word soon.

So when I say finished, what I mean is mostly finished, as I'll probably want to do some graffiti and add some clutter, like debris, but mostly finished. I'll keep telling myself that, it's good for the morale of the troops. Ha!

And here's a birds eye view. See what I mean about needing some more clutter?

Four Dogs WIP

And here's an update on my progress with getting my Dog combat armour suit squad moved along. Still a little ways to go before I can call these done.

This may not look like much progress, but I changed some details on the models: removing the machine gun on the arm and replacing it with  a better part, and also shortening the barrel of the autocannon on two of the models, which required touching up the paintwork.

On the left is Sergeant Tachikoma's Dog, set up as running light, ready to lead her squad on the into the interior of the White Mountain for the Search And Rescue mission.

The three models on the right represent part of a squad from the support platoon that also featured in my novel Bad Dog, seen here "loaded for bear."

In 2071, Sergeant Tachikoma leads a Marine combat armor squad. She knows the Corps never promised her a rose garden, only the chance to fight for her country. Now, she faces her greatest challenge, two terrifying alien pillars that trapped her into reliving the same day again. The day she dies. Today, she needs every ounce of courage to save her people from annihilation.

 Link to Bad Dog.

Buster and Two Dogs WIP

Here are three personality models, as in representing major character's combat armour suit rides. Ferretti's Buster fell and broke, which meant I had to repair the damage and repaint parts. The two Dogs are Corpsman Keith's new ride, which won't appear until I after I write Two Moons, as he needs it for the plot of Red Dogs.

As you can see I've also changed the over the shoulder mount on Tachikoma's Dog. Again this is down to what I'm plotting for Red Dogs, and yes I do think about this things way before I get around to writing the scenes.

As before I painting these as a group to try and finish them all at the same time. My reason being I will at some point need to pose them and take a reference shot for my artist when I ask him to do a cover for me.
   

Human Operator Surrogates

And I finally managed to finish painting my squad of 10/12mm infantry.

These are Dream Pod 9 NuCoal models that I'm thinking of using as Human Operator Surrogates, an idea based off DARPAs Petman project.