Ground Zero Games makes a well fleshed out 15mm line of Colonial Defense Force troops including heavy weapons and both helmeted and soft capped versions of most sculpts. Lightly armored and armed with basic weapons these will fill the role of backwater or reserve troops fantastically.
The line includes the standard packs of riflemen, SAWs, snipers and shoulder fired rockets, command and coms, and several heavy weapons with generic crews that could be swapped into any of the other heavy weapons GZG makes. There are also figures with smaller assault weapons and shotguns, suitable for close quarters combat, horse mounted scouts, and a motorcycle mounted trooper.
This was a rough week. Storms, power outages, sick family, construction at our apartment. I got done as much as I thought I was going to and then some, but it was more like mechanical movements than an escape and meditation. This coming week isn’t looking much better, but I want to play around with video and YouTube a little more so I’m keeping the painting expectations down.
I’ve been on a 6mm kick for some reason. I’ve rarely played any 6mm but they’re quick to knock out and cheap to buy so in the scheme of things it’s cheaper than a movie…
With my solo campaign centering around the invasion of a newly colonized planet I wanted to have some believable militia/national guard. Thankfully GZG has a great line that fits in with my existing 25mm collection.
The Colonial Milita could easily double as corporate security if you leave out the old veterans and crazy hair.
I picked up a bunch of Ground Zero Games’ 25mm armed civilians from their lines to supplement the Stargrunt Colonial Militia. I’m slowly working my way through them as I batch paint several armies. The first set that I finished are the Partisans, a set of three armed civilians that I’ve done up as two riflemen and one squad support weapon.
I’ve had a small UNSC for since I started playing around 2005 or so, maybe a couple of years before that. During a move they all got packed up and put into an attic never to be seen again until the next move. When I moved in with my now-wife I came across the case and it’s been on my mind for a couple years until this pandemic hit and I started painting more and pulled the case out wanting to paint something different in between batches of 25mm and 15mm figures.
As with most of my minis from that era the needed to be stripped, reassembled and re-painted. This did give me a chance to give them a unified paint scheme, and to fill out the fleet of course. Thankfully right at that moment Jon at GZG was running a pandemic special on the Full Thrust ranges so I stuck while the iron was hot!
I set out this past week to finish off two forces, and start two more. I had the last of my ESU naval troops to finish up in their urban camo, and the last six destroyers for my Kra’Vak fleet that I accidentally washed off the red ink from. I also wanted to start my 15mm GZG Colonial Militia troops and the 15mm murder robots from The Scene that I had to strip the poor paint jobs off of and rebase.
I wanted to paint the robots a metallic red. After seeing a couple of videos on YouTube out maxing your own metallic pants I gave it a try. Unfortunately the robots turned out a pink Pepto-Bismol-ish color that I was most definitely not pleased with. So I took this as an opportunity to test a couple things out since I couldn’t find a metallic red paint I was satisfied with. We’ll see how it turns out and I’ll strip them again and use the best method.
I finished up a small fleet of GZG Neu Swabian League old sculpt ships this past week. For the NSL I prefer the old sculpts. They just scream ‘flying brick’, tough ships winning battles through brute force. I got my hands on a couple of small fleets through Ebay and Facebook groups an assembled a couple of the SDN carriers and an escort cruiser. I grabbed a couple of smaller escort ships and started a test paint job.
These casts were of mixed quality. Jon at GZG mentioned the molds wearing out on the larger NSL ships which prompted him to retire them and make the new sculpts. The two Der Theuerdank dreadnought/carrier models I got my hands on first definitely showed signs of miscasting. It didn’t help that the previous owner assembled them poorly and roughed them up pretty bad. If I had noticed the damage I probably wouldn’t have bought them. I got a third cast, a Von Teggetthoff Dreadnought identical to the carrier minus one added piece, and the cast is crisp and the pieces fit pretty well together. The smaller ships were well cast with the exception of some minor damage on the escort cruiser’s bridge section that made me use some putty to help it attach to the hull.
Once the carrier was assembled again and painted up the damage is far less noticeable, and I’m going to add some greebles to the second one to hide some of it.
I wanted a pretty simple paint job reminiscent of WWII German vehicles, both real and Hollywood. I decided to go with a ‘German Grey’ base coat with darker grey and Field Grau accents. I picked out some details in a very light grey to show them off against the darker mini.
This past week wraps up a very productive month of June, I’ve been tracking my progress throughout the year on my painting log page here.
I’ve been working on my Full Thrust fleets and one of the fleets I’ve picked up in trade and on Ebay is a fairly large Kra’Vak fleet. Being an alien warrior race I wanted to emphasize their zeal and lust for battle with some garish paint jobs. I’ve been contemplating using inks through my airbrush for awhile now and I just got my hands on a Badger Renegade Krome .21mm airbrush so it was the perfect time. I chose a lime green and bright red paint scheme, with the red being airbrushed ink over a white ink base. I was satisfied with my first attempts and continued onto the wash. Well that is when I discovered that the ink will just reactivate and run unless you seal it before washing. Thankfully I only had to strip six destroyers and redo them. Seven other capital ships got finished this week.
This week was mostly prepping Full Thrust and 25mm Stargrunt minis, although I did knock off 10 more colonial militia figures.
The big project for this week was two old school Ground Zero Games Neu Swabian League Der Theuerdank carriers. These humongous pieces of lead were a huge pain in the ass. I got them off of Ebay and they were poorly assembled and filled with putty that didn’t want to come off even in he ultrasonic cleaner. So after several weeks in the ultrasonic cleaner and a couple of times grinding away with a Dremel they were finally ready to be assembled. Unfortunately I think these were some of the last model out of the molds before they were retired, because they’re full of casting flaws and do not fit well together. I have a third one of these that I will be turning into a dreadnought that is infinitely better cast and looks like it will be pretty straight forward to assemble, although to the weight it will still be getting a couple of pins and some putty
I got 10 more Colonial Militia done as I mentioned, including some NCOs which I mistakenly didn’t get painted in the last batch. All three are characters, fitting for militia. One has an orange Mohawk, one is an old man smoking a pipe, and the third is a pot bellied cigar smoking guy. Better photos will follow once I set up my photo tent again.
I prepped a bunch more Stargrunt figs, putting them on bases, evening the tabs out with putty, putting on my basing paste. Doesn’t make for great photos but it’s the dirty work that has to get done.
There’s ten more each of the Colonial Militia (including three primed but not painted), nine more ESU troopers, and twenty one OUDF troops who will be used as a mercenary company in my solo games.
I’ve also been working on figuring out how to mount my Full Thrust ships, preferably on removable stands. I think I’ve finally got something figured out that will work using brass rod and jewelry barrel clasps.
I’m hoping to finish up the colonists and get some work done on my Kravak fleet for Full thrust this coming week.
