2m turkish artillery vsf 1877 irregular miniatures

Just a quick post to upload a pic of my Turkish VSF artillery. Although I'm using POW as a guide for the units , I'm modifying them both to fit units available from the Osprey and Nafziger OOBs but also to take advantage of the VSF theme.

I still need to get another battery to meet the POW list and  Gatling battery to meet the standard  regiment numbers. I'm toying with making some mule mounted mountain guns to as Irregular don't do these and I think they were allocated to the chasseur battalions. Of course  there can be some more interesting developments in the VSF  world. I've spotted some little land-ships by either Brigade models or Irregular that I can use to create a tracked, steam-artillery unit.

It might be a while till I get to battle with these as i still have a few cavalry to do and then I need to order the figures for the Russians. I'm hoping i'll get them on the table by September. Thanks for stopping by.

1/3000 astronefs? Irregular miniatures' aeronefs modified

Hi,
I received  a set of  pre-dreadnought / aeronefs from Irregular recently and although they don't come with a marked scale they look closer to 1/3000 than my 1/1200 stuff from brigade. So I set about preparing these to join my other space fleets. It looks like these came off a display unit as they were already painted and had some tape on the bottoms. I set about gluing a strip of spruce to the bottom of each ship and carving a  full hull -

Next, a swipe of filler and an undercoat -
pic to follow

I found a picture of Irregular's display board with the 2nd hand collection I bought from them, including the aeronefs  - you can see them centre bottom of the pic below - that explains the black stuff on the bottoms of the figures. I'll do some repaints of the rest of the space ships over the next year or so.

2mm Irregular Miniatures VSF Turkish 1876 in progress

Planning my  forces for  a VSF collection -  and initially going for the Turkish. My order from Irregular arrived in super quick time and although I've  spent only a couple of hours at the painting desk, my  first 800! Turkish infantry are painted and ready for basing. It's been  nearly 30 years since I painted some 2mm Bavarians for Mac's models in Edinburgh, and whilst my eyes are not what they were, my hands are as steady as ever :)

Not entirely happy with my first efforts, I'm going to try a black undercoat with the next batch rather than the grey with black wash i used this time. The  wash did help me to see what I was painting but there are some light voids  between the legs on a few figures.

So my phone is useless for macros, looks like  I'll have to crank up the old camera for the finished figures when they're based. Although I already have Turks and Russians for the 1870s in 15mm, I thought the period was fitting for VSF as the Turkish  navy had  ironclads and gatlings were available.  These are the Turkish regular  infantry plus  redif and nizam units. I have some Romanians to do as well as some Arab irregulars, Sudanese / Egyptian regulars, Caucasian cavalry, Mamelukes, Bashi basouks, and Arab camelry (just for fun) . There's  6 units of artillery , some skirmish units and some commanders, but i have yet to buy some terrain, trains and supply bases.
i'll post some clearer pics once my camera is up and when I've got  these based. Thanks for stopping by.

So far, I've got four battalions  of nizam and three of redif. Here they are on my latest terrain pieces made from foam sheet inserted into the undersides of Hexon terrain tiles.

This looks like a column of Redif companies. I based them on 2mm mdf (3mm seemed to raise them too high) and covered the bases with  GW's Agrellan earth texture over some textured gel used for art. some fine spring flock was chosen to match the lighter  colours of Shipka Pass. Originally I tried using  15mm size bases for Principles of War, but I found the  units ran right to the edges and would be rubbed badly when picking the bases up. Instead I went for 40mm frontage bases that allowed me a little room to get a more realistic look and enough clear space to protect the figures from fat, sausage-fingers. I added some fine brown chopped flock and some little sprigs of  foliage to make bushes and young trees. Much of the open ground around Shipka looks like this according to the photos I've seen. 

A battalion of Nizam (can you tell the difference between the redif and nizam? Im not sure I can!) formed for battle. In front of these I would like to have a battalion of Chasseurs, but they're not painted yet and I need to order a few more from Irregular Miniatures. At ten pence a block, they cost  60 pence a battalion, that's about a third of the cost for 15mm and I can paint about a thousand  men in a day!

Steampunk - VSF - Aeronefs

Somehow, amongst the many distractions, I found myself  tinkering with the idea of playing aeronefs. I guess it s not totally out of the blue, since,  some years ago I had been putting together forces for  war on Mars in 15mm and using Principles of War rules. Somewhere, along the way I must have  spotted Brigade Models' Aeronefs and found myself , this year at Salute, taking a more than casual interest. I decided I didn't want to go with the forces they had selected for the various nations, but that I would create my own,  and select the ships from Brigade's catalogue to suit my taste.

I spent at least a whole day on the internet going through all the photos I could find, choosing which ships I wanted to purchase for the Turkish Air Navy. But what's the point of having an air force if you can't hold the ground you dominate? So, off to Irregular Miniatures for a 2mm Turkish VSF army. Now, surprisingly, Irregular don't have a Turkish VSF army ready in their lists. No problem . I explained my project to the proprietor and low and behold, despite being in the middle of moving premises, an army arrived within 48 hours complete with the specified Arab irregulars and some cossacks. Now in 2mm , can you really tell a cossack from a spahi? I like to imagine I can.

So firstly, the aeronefs from Brigade Models -

well actually, two landships from their French range, no doubt loaned out to the Turks in exchange for a share of the profits from the latter's impending foray into Turkmenistan. I also bought several packs of spare guns and masts and I'm thinking about using open topped turrets as opposed to the originals as supplied..

Now , I did think about refighting the Great Paraguyan War, and I really liked the designs for Brigade's South American, so I purchased the Chilean, Brazilian and Argentinian models as shown. They look very sleek and modern and no doubt crewed with British naval veterans.

I have  four more aeronefs to upload  later as they are currently  drying from their undercoat as are the 2mm Turks. I'll send updates as  I make progress; thanks for stopping by : )

Kallistra starships 1/3000

In addition to the  two fleets of Kallistra 1/3000 space dreadnoughts I picked up last year and finished this one, I also had the good fortune to pick up a decent collection of second hand ships from Ian of Irregular miniatures. They had been advertised on his site for a month and I was  very  pleasantly surprised to find they had not been  nabbed by the time I had gotten around to ordering from  him a Turkish VSF force in 2mm to go with my  aeronefs on route from Brigade. Anyhow, the collection from Irregular included two fleet flagships from Kallistra! And, what is more, they were the flagships for the Quellarians and the Altarans - the very fleets I had!

Here they are in all their glory, as delivered and clearly having enjoyed the attention of a younger  gamer -

I'm about to run up to the loft and undercoat them.. while they're drying  I shall update the homepage with the latest arrivals -  2mm Turks and aeronefs

Cold weather Infantry - GZG Scandinavians 15mm

Ready for those situations where it's too cool to be comfortable, my cold-weather troops are ready for action. Forget skis; these guys will travel in armoured comfort... eventually.

I suspect these are GZG Scandinavians and when it came to painting them I sort of ran out of inspiration. I could have gone fully camo, but i wanted a quick easy project. White on white would be too boring, so I assumed normal, temperate kit with just a winter parka. Not much good for deep winter but fine for a frosty morning.

Each squad is made of  one Senior NCO five troopers with personal weapons and two Junior NCOs with Squad support weapons.

..and I have two squads ready for patrolling the forests and tundra of a planet somewhere far away(or just Earth).

Cheap mechs! 15mm sci fi

I picked up a box of these cheap plastic mechs from a local hobby shop. I fiddled around trying to work out which arms were a good fit for which body and put them back in the box. Some time later I bought  some GZG prawns and some mechs off ebay. I didn't look too closely at the figures on ebay but I was slightly disappointed to find they were the same cheap ones I had already bought. So now I have two boxes worth and decided, that to cut my losses, I'd have to at least play with them.

My concern is that they will easily overpower anything else I have to fight them with so unless I'm prepared to finish a long stalled Japanese mecha, these guys are going to rule the battlefield.

Considering the combat and fire strengths of these guys, together with the multiple weapon systems, sensors and what-not, I suspect they will be fairly expensive to field.

I think I ought to try using a proper background for my future photos as the figures get lost in the crap of the background! I'll have to tidy the work space and see if I can make room for the light box.

The Scene 15mm Sci fi jet bikes

  A couple more pics of the jet bike riders from The Scene -

So I tried  a camo scheme for an icy, desert environment. This figure has the rider shooting out to its right. The others are concentrating on staying in the air.

I was really after a retro scheme here and I remember Dassault Mirage 3s being a silver and red colour back in the 60 /70s. I'm not so keen on the skull like  fairings, a bit Games Workshoppy

I might buy a few more, and fill the front fairings in. They do reflect the skull like detail on the helmets of the riders though.

The scene hover craft with stowage , radar etc

Just finished these hover craft from  The Scene. Mike kindly gave me some machine guns for protection and I used some of his tarpaulins  and one of the radars from his radar set.

I started off by cleaning and undercoating them, hiding the joint between hull and skirt with plastruct and adding the extra equipment.

I also masked off the upper part of the skirt and applied some textured paint, hoping to reproduce a non-slip coating. after another undercoat, black this time, I gave them an overall coat of sand after spraying the lower part of the skirts with hair spray.. i did try some camo patterns but the amount of detail on the vehicles it just looked too busy. Having worked back the sand paint on the skirts to reveal black 'rubber' under the worn areas, i masked off the  skirts and resprayed the hulls white with black pre-shading, followed by a mid green. This had  filters and  (after decals) washes applied to try and pick out he detail and give some weathering to the hovercraft..

 I particularly like the low cost of these vehicles! I'm a real tight-fist when it come to buying figures so The Scene  is a very useful company to source my transport and stowage.  Hope you like my hovercraft, thanks for looking :)

Ammo crates 15mm plus

These are my ammo crates from The Scene .  I really enjoyed experimenting with the wood effect though it took several goes to get something I was happy with. There are small crates -  closed and open without lids and large crate closed and opened with hinged lids.

15mm chemical / oildrums for Sci fi / Moderns

Just remembered I hadn't posted the large drums from the scene. It think they would look fine with 20mm too.

15mm Ammo Boxes

Just finished these great ammo boxes from the The Scene. I just checked out the site here and couldn't believe how inexpensive they are. I'm gonna have soo much fun adding these to my vehicles and  figure bases. :) The smaller ones are meant for 15mm and the largr are meant for 28mm

And here they are loaded into the back of a 15mm grav mule.

Wasteland Warriors 15mm TheScene

Just finished this from TheScene. I wasn't aware just how nice these figures were until I started painting them. Beautiful, clean detail and great expressions on their faces. When I first got some wasteland warriors last year, I converted them into regular military type, but now I want a gang of these guys. Great fun to paint!

 Looking up and to the left, with worried expressions... what have they seen? Perhaps a government gunship is coming for them.. will they reach cover before they are chewed up by its mini-gun?

River craft for TheScene 15mm Sci-fi

Had an awesome day at Warfare yesterday; spent way too much money! Brought back some river craft for Mike at The Scene, to be tarted up before they go back into the display. I also bought a load of mercenaries on Jet bikes and two hovercraft from the same.

Anyhow, here's a step-by-step

Stage 1) Mike applied a 3-colour scheme camo.  My first job is to highlight the centre of each colour.. The craft on the left has had a tan wash applied to the centre of each brown spot.

Stage 2) Next, the light green is highlighted. The craft on the right has now received the tan highlight, but using a thinner application for a softer effect.

Stage 3) All the craft have  recieved the tan and light green highlights; now the craft in the centre recieved a mid-green highlight to the previous dark green areas. The floor bottoms of the bows get a coat of dark grey.It's taken about an hour so far..

Stage 4) The rudders are painted various shades of grey and green , looking for a good colour to help define the model. The stowage is blacked out and the barrels in the left-most craft are given a coat of leaf-green.

Stage 5) The craft are given a   thin wash of black in all the crevices, around details and in shadows.

Stage 6) The craft are given highlights along all edges and on all details using a pale pastel green. This is complete after 3 hours.

Stage 7) The  stowage is painted in various single colours so as to stand-out from and help define the craft.

Stage 8) The craft are painted in gloss varnish before some hazard markings are added to clean up and define some weak areas. These are painted over  decals to keep the hand- painted appearance. There also some danger markings on the sterns and some very-hard-to-see bio-hazard markings on the oil drums. 4 1/2 hours into the project.

Stage 9) Finally, at 5 hours from start, the final codes are added to the craft from decals and the project is finished. I hope Mike likes them!

 Thanks for looking.

More QRF? 15mm alien - mercenary forces.

Not sure where these are from - QRF is no longer showing sci fi on their website. But here they are anyway, my latest merc aliens: Awaiting a repaint - original pictures deleted :(

Waiting for picture...

Not sure about the colour schemes, they look a bit bright. I'm happy with the skin colour, but I think the next batch will be in plain sand.

QRF 15mm Skull hunters - not predators!

Although I have plenty of the kra'vak from GZG, they're not the most inspiring of figures. Despite my kra'vak winning their first  game in a test of the prototype 'Endless Conflict' rules, I wanted some predator types with more 'oomph' for skirmish level engagements. Hence these QRF 'skull-hunters'.

After looking at some movie stills I painted them with black armour, dry brushed up to light grey. Whilst it looked good up close, the figures were very dark on the table. So I decided to brighten them up a bit with a dark gold base to the armour. Some of the figures are a bit vague, but there's a couple of really nice poses and my favourite..... the chap in the middle. My least favourite is the chap on his right with what looks like a wonky head.

The figure on the far left is ready for close combat, most have empty hands as the 'skull hunters' have hands free weapons mounted on their left shoulders plus 'claws' mounted on their right forearms.

Knowing how they love the hunt, especially up close, they will have good close combat scores and good armour - reflecting their tenacity and physical toughness. Their shooting will be average, with excellent countermeasures (chameleon suit) encouraging stalking with sudden ambushes to close combat.

Thanks for dropping by :)

Human 15mm Sci-fi Troops GZG DPRG

Just finished these Human troops, probably GZG 15mm but I can't identify them on their website. Gave them desert camo helmet covers and body armour over green fatigues.

They will need some transport -  I fancy some low tech for them, maybe QRF Bufffels or something similar.

Nearly 4 years later -  I've got the models now, but the assembly looks a little complicated. Might be a while before they reach their units...

Colonial Marine Squad

 QRF's Colonial Marines, nothing to do with the Alien series Marines. ;)

Tried to paint them with four-colour disruptive camo; happy enough with the results for a quick project. I should tidy up the bases before I post them next time. Set of nine includes a guy with a facehugger attached. Not so useful for me but I can use him as a casualty marker.

New Israelis - GZG

Hey, Just posting up my New Israeli troops. Just finished the bases although they've been sitting around on the desk waiting for enough troops to need basing to make the effort worthwhile. Hate mixing up  the base mix and then have left overs! There's another dozen or so troopers without bases yet- I need to order some more at the end of the month :) The tank is a random one I grabbed from ebay, no idea  which faction it's from, but looks like a New Anglian commander. I figure it looks like any tank commander so I used it.

Following up the recce team are some infantry and a light tank to exploit any gaps in the enemy's defences or to hold a position while  they wait for support to move up. I went overboard and did OSL on the visors too. Silly me...

UNSC

The very first of my 15mm Sci-fi units -

The UNSC have employed these heavy scouts to provide up to date situational reports with the capacity for light interdiction. I have also begun writing my own Sci fi rules which I hope to provide  here at a later date.

These fellas were purchased from The Scene and were converted a little to fit more with my regular troops purchased from GZG.

 The crews were original modified by the seller from orcs! I modified these further from the post-apocalyptic look to make the heads into visored helmets and remove any spikes from the armour.

The bikes each have four linked plasma cannons and the walker carries four auto-cannons. As you can see the legs don't really work as concepts, there are hydraulics where they wouldn't work and the top parts of the legs are mismatched. Despite this I still like the finished model, although I will find some armoured glass to protect the pilot in the future.

Picked these up from GZG back in September. I wanted to come up with a colour scheme that would fit with most environments so i went with grey. Seems a little boring, I could've let my imagination run. As for basing, well, who knows where these guys will end up, so I just did some rocky desert scrub type terrain. There are stacks more UNSC kit that GZG do and I'll explore that in the future. Anyway, four platoons of between 9 and 12 men. One heavy weapons platoon, one recce platoon, and two rifle platoons.

Each rifle platoon  consists of  four men with auto-rifles, two men with  heavy auto-rifles, a mini missile launcher and a sniper with auto-rifle and multi-mode sights.

The recce platoon has four men with auto-rifles ( one with the multi-mode sights), two men with heavy auto-rifles, one man with a mini-missile launcher and a ATGM missile launcher. Finally the commander works with a local liaison trooper, someone who knows the area, people and culture. In this case the liaison's armed with an old machine gun, basic but reliable.

Lastly, is the heavy weapons team. This incorporates the heavy weapons for the company and the overall company commander.

These heavy plasma cannons are clearly too large to be carried about by the troopers, so I shall be buying them some 'Mule' transports in the future. The platoon has three men with auto-rifles, two men with heavy auto-rifles, one man with a mini-missile launcher and the two plasma-cannon teams.