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 :)

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.

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...