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 :)