March 2020 – Addicted to Lead

Dollar Store Finds.

Our local Dollar Tree had a couple of toys that I grabbed probably too many of and turned into wargame stuff. I’ve been hunting for a couple more things to use for scratch building some spaceships I’ll probably never actually play with, but this whole lockdown is cramping my style.

I normally don’t have much luck at dollar stores or thrift stores. I see something posted online and go search 14 dollar stores and find nothing. But these two have been consistantly in stock around me and I was able to pick up about a dozen boats and six or eight of the tanks.

This week’s progress: March 22nd

The week of March 22nd saw me finish up two different projects sitting around and making progress on a third. Well I’m almost done, I ran out of AK Interactive Ultra Matte and waiting on a back order to be filled.

I finished off the metal Combine Ogre minis from Steve Jackson Games. The last of the missile tanks are waiting for the Ultra Matte to come in, whenever that is. Now I need to get cracking on all the plastic minis I have from the Kickstarers. But first I’ll need more bases from Litko.

I had a lot of these, it’s a good thing they don’t suck.

Dipping into 6mm SciFi

I’ve been tackling a lot of 25mm Sci-Fi figures after doing a lot 28mm WWII Germans, so I felt the need for a palette cleanser. I knocked out some 28mm-ish farm animals to use as objectives in viking raids and moved onto some piles of 6mm Sci-Fi units, some of which I’ve had for decades.

Years ago I picked up the last Steve Jackson Games OGRE designers edition that my FLGS had. I liked the game, played some with my kids before they lost interest and then put it away. Later on when the minis Kickstarters were launched I pledged for the base sets, which still amounts to hundreds and hundreds of plastic minis to assemble and paint. At the same time I picked up a couple of batches of the metal Combine minis to tide me over until Steve Jackson Games gets around to Kickstarting them. I also have an odd assortment of stuff I bought in the 90’s when I thought I was going to play Dirtside, a mix of Battletech, GZG 6mm, Renegade Legion, etc…

It just sits up there, lonely and forgotten…

Last weeks progress, week of March 15th

Last week, the week of the 15th, was rough. In preparation of what turned into a total lockdown here in NY my wife and I started to transition to working from home. We set up work stations, decided to pull the 2 year old out of daycare and tried to get a routine set up. I carved a spot out in the basement, moved everything around and got to trying to work.

On the modeling front I didn’t get a whole lot finished. I prepped a bunch of 6mm sci-fi stuff, mostly old metal OGRE minis and some Bradley Miniatures I got from Alternative Armies. These guys will be the OpFor for the plastic OGRE minis I still need to order some more glue to finish assembling. Its just a simple brown desert paint job with green unit markings and some greebles picked out in grey and red.

Dealing with a ‘bad’ month. The road to 350.

We all start out our resolutions with gusto and enthusiasm, and then we hit a snag and give up. January was a slow month for me, but I was expecting it with the holidays and all. In February I had hoped to paint several batches of figures, especially since I had already started prepping and painting a platoon of figures with a real simple paint job before the month began. But, alas, ‘stuff’ happened. Sick family members, hospital visits, bad weather for priming, exhaustion. It all combined and I only finished the 26 man platoon.

A Tomorrow’s War US Marine Corps unit out of the Grissom colony on it’s way to Glory.

Continue reading “Dealing with a ‘bad’ month. The road to 350.”

This week’s painting progress.

I’ve had a productive week, especially after not getting a whole lot done in February. I’ve done two platoons of Ground Zero Games 25mm figures, so I wanted a little palette cleanser, Some variety to break up the monotony.

I keep breaking out my livestock for viking raiding games, so I figured I’d actually get more than a couple cows painted up to join my sheep and pigs. The Warlord Games farm animals are 1:56th scale with good detail, but the seams are ridiculous! I tried using the Vallejo Plastic Putty but it just wasn’t enough to fill them. The Pegasus Hobbies cows are mostly one piece, but 1:48th and have some soft details. The scale differences add some variety and I’m not too concerned about the detail level of a cow…

Not one step back!

Not one step back! Always forward, for the lead pile! Once I paint a figure I have a rule to never repaint it. I don’t spend time striping figures I finished years ago, or spend weeks painting even a character figure. Once they’re done, they’re done! You know, except for the times I go back and strip figures and repaint them…

So I don’t generally revisit minis. I’ll repair damaged minis, put decals on minis long after I finished painting them, and I have some minis who’s bases were never finished and I’ve had to go back and do those. The lead pile is never small enough that stripping a pile of minis and then repainting them because they’re not perfect is a good option.

Painted two years ago, started basing them this week…

GZG 25mm Eurasian Solar Union ‘Heavy’ Infantry Figures

My on going 25mm Project continues with the ESU ‘Heavy’ infantry that were produced in partnership with Eureka Games for quite some time until only a handful of years ago. The Eurasian Solar Union in the Tuffleyverse consists more or less of China, Russian, India, most of the rest of Asia and these troops are clearly meant to mirror the padded uniforms of WWII Soviet troops. In my Tomorrows War games these troops will be used to represent the Democratic Peoples Republic of Glory conscript troops. The DPRG is, more or less, space North Korea. I love the almost retro look to these troops and think they really invoke the image of poorly trained conscripts forced into service.

The sculpts are detailed and the old casts were clean, requiring only a little cleanup. I contacted Eureka in Australia and they offered to spin up the molds for me, but they didn’t have the minis on the website anymore so I had to dig around to find a cached version of the catalog. Shipping is going to make them expensive but it will round out my platoon.