Miniature Manufacturers – Page 2

June 14th, a week full of prepping.

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.

Peoples Liberation Army. First Glory War solo campaign.

The First Glory War commences as the Peoples Republic of China lands troops on Glory in a bid to cement their claim on the newly settled garden world. A company worth of light mechanized troops, plus logistical support, lands near what will eventually become the Republic of Arden. The forces were hastily assembled from the 11th Stellar Intervention Division which had just stood down from a seven year long suppression of a rebellion on their colony world Zhuang. Although the war on Glory was short and only included a handfull of major actions it did see the first use of Armored Fighting Suits in the last days of the war.

Progress for the week of June 7th.

Well this is really about a months worth of progress it seems. The ‘Rona caught up and some other family crisis’s slowed me down for a couple weeks. I was making some slow progress but I didn’t finish anything until this past week where I made some good progress.

I finished off ten more of Rebel Miniatures Earth Force Home Guard troops, leaving only about 15 more before I’m finished with that particular lead pile and move on to the Rebel Minis Titan Marines.

First Contact, The defense of Foix. The First Glory War solo campaign.

After a failed legal bid before the Organization of Progressive States to claim discovery of the garden planet Glory, the People’s Republic of China launches a “Liberation Fleet” and starts the first extra-solar system military action in human history. Titan Interplanetary corporate employees and the newly settled colonists leasing land in what will eventually become The Republic of Arden brace themselves for combat. The spark of war ignites as a platoon of PLA troops pushes through Bois de l’écart Foix, a logging encampment set in the Foix Gap. The settlers construct a hasty defense and prepare to repel the PLA troops.

GZG 25mm ESU figures for Tomorrows War

Part of the collection of Ground Zero Games Stargrunt figures I picked up included a platoon of Eurasian Solar Union ‘Naval’ figures. These come in two uniforms, one with helmets and hard chest armor and a smaller selection with the same uniforms and added ‘cold weather capes’. I’ve decided to use these as my Democratic Peoples Republic of Glory regular troops and the cold weather capes as stealth camo capes acquired through the backing of China late in the Second Glory War.

The sculpts were done by Kev White and hold up very well for their age. I ordered some extras from Ground Zero Games recently and the casts are just as clean as the 20 year old ones I have. They are full of sharp details and are consistent in size with the rest of the Stargrunt line and with the WEG Star Wars figures I have.

Progress for the week of April 10th.

This week was a good week, with a wide range of progress. I’ve tackled miniatures, work projects, block progress and YouTube progress, although I’ve slipped in my Instagram posting mostly because of the work project.

I finished up 10 Terminator Genisys resistance fighters in a similar urban camo paint scheme that I’ve been working on for the GZG figures. I’m not entirely satisfied with the paint jobs but it pulled together a little more after the ink was so I’m going to call them done and put them in the storage box. They’re just going to get cut down in droves by the terminators anyways.

The Resistance fields a heavy weapons squad to take out some toasters!

Three projects from the back of the shelves.

I’ve been going through my tubs of minis and clearing half finished projects off of shelves. I’m really not interested in moving minis with half a paint job on them, I finished a bunch of my planned painting early this week so I wanted to knock out some quick progress.

I started finishing off a whole bunch of painted 15mm sci fi minis whose’s bases were never painted. I’ve looked into a rules systems called Mech Attack which uses hex basing and infantry on movement bases which lead me to take some 15mm mechs I had put on washers and take them off for rebasing. Unfortunately in the process some paint was stripped off of the feet and needed to be retouched. These Khurasan 15mm mech walkers will be used as infantry support mechs, the smallest mechs I’ll be fielding and probably designed as vehicles in the rules. Mech Attack doesn’t have rules for anything this small so I’ll have to figure something out. I also pulled out two un-built models, so I’ll be doing a video when I assemble and paint them. These are simple walkers with two twin autocannons and a 2 shot anti-tank missile launcher. They’re small and squat and serve as lower tech walkers in my Tomorrows War forces. Khurasan sells these as the Python Power Armour under their Nova Respublik line

Khurasan’s Python Power Armour promo photos.

I learned about Mech Attack from the Chicago Skirmish Wargames blog where they’ve done several write ups of club and convention games they’ve used the rules set for playing in 28mm with some awesome terrain and mechs! Check out their archives here: Chicago Skirmish Wargames

I also pulled out two Combat Wombat grav scout armored cars from the same box. One was finished, but the second had it’s commander bust loose before it could be finished being painted. The vehicle commanders are Brigade Models vaguely Russian troops. I’ve used them as DPRG in Tomorrows War where these scout vehicles are higher tech than their usual equipment and provided by their Earth based sponsors. I’ll be basing them on a hex base and giving it a floating appearance with some brass rod, which has to wait for Litko to open back up. Combat Wombat has unfortunately been out of business for years with the fellow who bought the line refusing to even answer questions about it any more, which is a shame because their turned brass barrels were awesome and a unique product in the 15mm sci-fi scene.

Combat Womabt’s Fennec grav scout car sample photo.

The third project I finished off this week was a set of Warlord Games Higgins Boat gunners. I go these well over a year ago for our D-Day in July game and didn’t get them finished in time for the 2019 game so they sat on the shelf. I don’t know if we’ll be doing a D-Day game this year with the pandemic but I wanted to get them finished and moved off the shelf of shame. I also have a third Higgins Boat to finish painting. It’s tough finding color photos of the drivers and gunners but the ones I found had the life jackets painted in some ‘Army Green’ colors, which is boring. So I went with the yellow life jackets, might not be historical but it does give them some more character and they stand out now.

As far as my 2020 painting goals go I only get to count the 28mm gunners, the others are just retouching so they don’t really count towards my 350, but I have 25 or so GZG 25mm ESU figures based and prime and I’ll start knocking them out next week, so April looks like it’ll be a good month.

I talk about my effort to clear out stalled projects in the my contribution to the Wargaming Recon blog here: Stalled projects, or Oh Shiny! The road to 350.

The week of May 3rd, new toys and fixing old mistakes.

The week started off well, adjusig my test paint scheme on my 25mm GZG ESU naval troops and finishing the figures I had primed up. There is a squad left in ‘cold weather capes’ that I need to decide how to make up with stealth camo cloaks. In the Tomorrows War setting the Chinese PLA has access to personal stealth technology so I just need to figure out how to model that on the cloaks.

The week of April 26th, wrapping up a good month!

April wound up being a good month overall, with significant progress! I finished the equivalent of 44 more 28mm figures towards my goal of 350. I’m also 2 figures away from completing the commission of a German WWII army for a friend!

This week I worked on a couple of test color schemes for 25mm Ground Zero Games figures. I wasn’t happy with the last time I attempted an urban camo pattern, so I took another shot at it I’m fairly pleased with this first batch of figures, the only change I made on the next batch was painting the guns darker which helps them stand out against the grey armor plates.

Ground Zero Games ESU naval figures and a Proxie Models pre-fab building.

Progress for the ACTUAL week of April 5th…

Somehow I can’t read a calendar and labeled last week’s post wrong… THIS week of April 5th saw me shake off the hobby ADD I started the month with. I finished off one project, three test pieces for Blood and Plunder and continues to expand my 6mm forces.

Late last year I bought a large collection of Dreamforge Games Eisenkern soldiers. Half of them were assembled well enough but not even primed, the other half were on sprues still. I gathered a platoons worth of assembled figures, fixing a couple of them or adding bits, and started painting them up in a simple ‘Space Germans’ scheme. I had one squad left, plus the command element, to finish my first platoon. There’s enough figures left to eventually paint up a full three platoon company plus support weapons, powered armor and a battlemech if I want to continue.