More road warriors

Tonight I got my second buggy for whatever vehicular combat game I decide on done.

I have to say I've gotten 5 vehicle models from Aberrant for Warlands and these 2 buggies are by far (I'm sorry to say) the worst.  The components did not fit together very well, even though the entire chassis and all 4 wheels are cast as a single piece they don't sit even on all 4 wheels and there are tons of flaws in the casting.  I generally pride myself on always having a positive outlook on my hobby projects and although I highly recommend the rest of the Warlands vehicle range I would have to give these buggies a thumbs down.

Having said all of that they do a good job of representing Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome style attack buggies and I'm sure I will get alot of use out of them.

I'm looking forward to showcasing the 2 sedans I got from the Warlands line which thus far appear to be by far the best models in their range.

-Jay

Rocket Buggy!

 

Do 2 vehicles count as a "gang"?

 

 

Back to the wasteland...

So after realizing I had done up those 3 soldier types the other day but not ended up with any more useable models for my Fallout game I decided to go back and specifically look for somebody I could use for Fallout; enter Nomad.

The Nomad figure was great as a generic adventurer/hired-gun type and may very well see use in multiple game systems but for now he'll be serving as another lieutenant to Ares in my Fallout force.

Short update for tonight so I can get back to hiding from the storm :)

Cheers

-Jay

Have gun will travel.

 

The first of my 3 Zombie Vixens are done!

After a week of getting distracted and going off on all-kinds of crazy tangents I finally got around to painting my first 3 zombie vixens from Wargames Factory.  I have to say these models were an extremely pleasant surprise, I had purchased the previous plastic zombies from Wargames Factory and was really disappointed in them.  These however are really super-cool models!  There are 10 distinct torso and leg sets as well as 2 crawlers on each sprue so if like alot of variety this set has it, there is also alot of character to these figures with most of them having a distinct enough look to come across like themed metal models rather than a plastic box set.

It took me forever to get started but my next 3 are already half done now that my enthusiasm has been fired up!

Cheers

-Jay

Guess the one that looks like a jogger didn't run fast enough

 

Gentlemen, your country needs you.

Joining the ranks of my re-based and touched up Heroclix today are; Bucky Barnes & Dum Dum Dugan from the Avengers Movie team packs of Heroclix and The Comedian from The Watchmen set.

When I started out working on these 3 figures I had every intention that they would be joining Ares' Merry Men in my Fallout game but really Bucky is the only one who might fit in, the other two are far too well executed versions of themselves (if that makes any sense) to represent other characters without some conversion work.

At this point I don't really have an intended use for any of these figures but they would work well in a Weird WW2 game if I wanted to use them and I do have a copy of Secrets Of The Third Reich that has been gathering dust for awhile.....I think I may have Sgt Rock and a few of the men of Easy Company in my Heroclix bin now that I think about it......

Bucky-The Comedian-Dum Dum

(Winter Soldier-Peacemaker-A Skrull)

 

 

One of those multi-purpose projects

Tonight I reached into my box of Heroclix to pull out a few models with the intention of adding to my modern/near-future baddies for RPG use and realized these guys would also make excellent additions to Ares' Merry Men.

All 3 new figures are from the Dark Knight Rises set (which is awesome and contain some fantastic riot cops as well) and they are intended to be Bane and 2 of his mercenaries.  I liked Dark Knight Rises and although I did enjoy the re-imagining of Bane when I need a Bane figure for a superhero RPG he'll be "classic" Bane in his luchador mask.  Having said that I thought the look of movie Bane was too cool to pass up using and I think he will make an excellent lieutenant to Ares, a Wez to his Lord Humungous if you will.

Cheers

-Jay

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

 

Here come the bad guys!

This morning I was able to finish the first of the warbuggies for my soon to be bad guy force for post-apocalyptic vehicular combat.  Right now the buggy looks pretty basic, I also have a second one to paint and I think when that second buggy is done I'll go back and add some dirt and distress to this one.

I also just got the new Zombie Vixens from Wargames Factory in the mail yesterday and I'm hoping to get a few of those done after work today to show off so you may see a second post late tonight.

Cheers

-Jay

Pull over, we just want to talk!

The first of many (I hope)

 

 

Zatanna Zatara

Today another cool figure from Reaper's Chronoscope line, this time instead a futuristic soldier we have the lovely Zatanna Zatara.

When I started doing superhero miniature gaming awhile ago I found the Heroclix line to be an excellent source of cool figures at really low prices but unfortunately some of the figures rather than being inexpensive were just straight up cheap, sadly all their Zatanna sculpts were in this category.  What I'm talking about is subpar sculpts with odd proportions and just unappealing overall appearances.  In recent years however alot of miniature companies have been doing a brisk business in look-alikes of various genre characters.

Zatanna was both a great opportunity to add to my collection of Justice League figures as well as an opportunity to test out the new Citadel Texture paint I picked up after work today.  I've got to say that although I still definitely need some practice with it I'm very happy with how it works.

-Jay

Pick a card, any card.

 

Mhorgoth The Faceless

Today's addition to my growing legions of the night is Mhorogth The Faceless from Mantic Games.
Mhorgoth is the powerful necromancer depicted in all of Mantic's undead artwork leading the armies of the dead.  One of the things I really liked about this model is that it creates a very different image of a powerful wizard, instead of the wizened old mage who has a frail body Mhorgoth looks like he is both mystically and physically powerful.  He puts me in mind of alot of the evil wizards from the old Fighting Fantasy novels of days gone by.

Mhorgoth will definitely be a fixture in my Vampire Counts army, I have yet to decide what role (if any) he will play in my upcoming Pathfinder game.

-Jay

Ready for battle!

 

Vroom!  Vroom!

So yesterday I dug out all my unpainted Aberrant Games Warlands stuff and started prepping it for painting.  Before I got stuck in with any projects which are likely to see alot of use I wanted to practice a few techniques on a model which doesn't fit that much into my gaming plans.  Enter; The Utility Truck.

In Warlands gangs take on many forms so the Utility Truck exists to fill alot of different roles; troop transport, supply point, rescue & recovery vehicle, etc.  It's a cool model and if I end up actually playing Warlands I'm sure it will be vital but otherwise it just doesn't quite fit.

The Warlands vehicles scale with 20mm miniatures which means they work fairly well with my Sanctioned Ops' vehicles and they blend in reasonably well with alot of die-cast toy car lines.

I've got 2 dune buggies and a Maxwell V8 Interceptor on my painting table now as well.

Keep watching this space!

-Jay

From the front it looks like a supercharged Brinks truck.

 

But from the back it's true heritage is revealed.

 

Cool looking, but more 'combat resistant' than combat vehicle.

 

 

 

And now for something not entirely different....

Well I've decided to take a break from painting my never ending collection of modern day zombies to paint some fantasy zombies...okay, ultimately this project won't be all about zombies and will actually be me painting fantasy figures for my Pathfinder game....zombies just seemed like the natural starting point.

I've decided to build most of my man-sized monsters for my upcoming Pathfinder game out of miniatures from Mantic Games.  The two big drivers for this are that I really like the Mantic figures and this is a good excuse to get some paint onto some of them and as I'm sure many of you will guess by the 20mm square bases it's also a push to get an updated Vampire Counts army done.

The paint job on these zombies was super quick and easy as I started by undercoating them with Army Painter's 'Barbarian Flesh' spray coat.  This is neither here nor there in terms of painting 5 figures for an RPG but when I want 50-100 of these for my Vampire Counts army it will be a huge time saver.

-Jay

I can see the darkness is already creeping in...

 

A Blast From The Past: Dark Future

Like alot of gamers I first got into hobby games through Dungeons & Dragons before venturing out into the world of miniature gaming with Warhammer 40,000 but the game I have invested the most time, energy and hours into over my time in the hobby by a HUGE margin is Car Wars.

Car Wars was a game published by Steve Jackson Games and was played with cardstock counters on paper maps.  It drew on alot of different source material but the thing most people would probably associate with it is the Mad Max series of movies.

A few years ago I got it into my head that it would be cool to play Car Wars as a miniature game with three-dimensional scenery and so I started collecting vehicles and other bits and pieces.  Also in the long ago time Games Workshop published a vehicular combat game called Dark Future which was my first opportunity to actually paint some dedicated combat roadsters.

I'm currently casting about trying to decide which rules set I want to use for this genre (the contenders are; Car Wars by Steve Jackson Games, Wreckage by Fantasy Flight Games & Warlands by Aberrant Games) but in the meantime I thought I would dust off my Dark Future Sanctioned Ops and show them off.  Hopefully I'll be following this up in a day or two with some Warlands vehicles from Aberrant.

-Jay

Pretty sure if you see this in your rearview mirror you're screwed.

 

Atleast when you approach them from behind you can tell who they work for.

 

A slightly better view of the overall vehicles.

 

 

 

We few, we happy few.....

It looks like I have 200 points worth of Ares' Merry Men done for my Fallout game.  I still have 4 figures waiting to be painted to finish off the box set I built them from but they can all wait for another time.

Tomorrow sees the beginning of work on figures for our upcoming Pathfinder game.  I'm hoping to start with a horror themed game for Halloween and maybe transition to a more Christmas-y game for November-December.  I don't want to give it all away incase some of my players are reading this but I'm pretty sure I can pull off 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas' as a fantasy role-playing adventure.

I'll report back from the land of square bases tomorrow.

-Jay

Ares' Merry Men

 

All around me are familiar faces

So today I went off on another diversion and took a break from my two running projects.  Personally I've always found the best thing about taking a break from a hobby project but still doing painting is that it keeps me from getting bored with long-running projects while still letting me get stuff done.

These 2 figures from Reaper's Chronoscope line (which is awesome for sci-fi, modern and superhero gaming) I bought over a year ago and just never got around to doing anything with.  Looking back I can't honestly even remember if I had an intended use for them or they were just cool figures I knew I'd want for something someday.

Basically these guys are Baird and Cole-train from Gears Of War.  They're cool figures that could be used in lots of different sci-fi settings and I might even try to come up with a use for them in my upcoming Fallout game.

In addition to wrapping up my Fallout stuff I just started prepping models today for an upcoming Pathfinder game I'm planning on running so expect to see some fantasy figures on the blog soon.

-Jay

I think Cole-train needs a bigger gun.

 

Back to the low-tech mercs

After showing off some high-tech additions this morning it's back to bolt-action rifles and WW2 era submachine-guns.

My three new additions give a little more character to my force with an NCO armed with his trusty revolver joining up with Ares' Merry Men (...hmmm, that might end up being the name of my mercenary company...).  In addition another trooper with SMG and another with rifle give me more basic soldiers to choose from.

I've got four more troopers to finish and then I think I'm going to get cracking on my Bolt Action Ruined Hamlet scenery.

-Jay

A little extra leadership should help things out.

 

Every post-apocalyptic army needs a warlord.

After going back and forth on what I wanted my force leader for Fallout to look like (army officer, the lone wanderer, gang leader, lord humongous, etc) I finally settled on what I think is a fantastic figure that actually fills alot of those descriptions; Ares from the recent Avengers set for Heroclix.

Ares was a model I was extremely happy to get my hands on (he's my favourite Avenger) but unfortunately his build made him appear a bit small compared to other 'brick' type superhero figures in the same scale, in-spite of this he was also a bit too big to fit with a conventional 25 mm force.  However for the role I envsisioned him in for this project he was perfect.  If we assume my mercs are all average sized people then this Ares model would scale out to be approximately 6'9" tall and be built like a weight lifter, in short he looks like the kind of guy who could use a baseball bat to carve out an empire in a lawless society.

To get him ready I re-based him and repainted his flesh and weapons and then just applied a wash over the paint job that was already on his clothes.  I'm very satisfied with the result and have no doubt he will strike fear into the heart of the NCR.

-Jay

Ready for war!

 

Fallout Mercenaries almost done!

I finished 7 mercs for my Fallout game tonight and I have 7 left (mostly finished) on my painting table now.

I decided to go back and try the sci-fi weapons again but kept the WW2 pouches and heads I've been using.  I think these turned out pretty well and the high-tech and low-tech seem to be working fairly well together.

Just need to add some hero-type figures to my force and possibly a robot or two and I think I'm good to go!

-Jay

Have guns, will travel.

 

Boy, I sure wish I had a 1st Recon guy looking after me.

 

 

Another blast from the past.....the forgotten forces.....

To properly see the humour in this situation I hope you'll all indulge me in a longer than usual pre-amble to today's content.

As a veteran painter and gamer I found over the years that I make 2 distinct and separate types of hobby purchases; stuff I'm buying to paint and use in that game/tournament/con/league that is already scheduled, and stuff I'm buying because I think it's cool and even though I don't "need it" I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually (affectionately known by most gamers as their backlog).  And so my tale of confusion begins....
Around 20 years ago I was working in my FLGS when my boss informed me he wanted me to start pushing a new upstart game called WarZone.  WarZone was a 28mm sci-fi game set the dark future of the Mutant  Chronicles game universe.  As soon as I read the rulebook I was hooked!  It was like 40K meets the rapture with a cyberpunk ashetic laid over the whole thing.  I presented the book and promo materials to my in-store game groups and started taking orders, personally I was the most excited by the Imperial Army....unfortuantely....so was everyone else.  I realized the game was going to tank in our shop if we didn't showcase other forces and figures so I put aside the Imperial figures I had ordered for myself (knowing someday I would get back around to them) and instead painted up a Dark Legion (zombie, mutant, chaos-monsters) force so all my customers would have a force to play against.  The games were fun and I enjoyed my Dark Legion force (and got plenty of use out of it over the years) but I was still regretting not painting my Imperials.  After a couple of years I moved out west and found a new group of gamers who I hoped I could coral into WarZone....and they all wanted to play Imperial as well....so I painted a new Capitol Army and carried on.
Fast forward to last week.  While working on my Fallout project I cam across some remnants from my old Capitol army that I knew would be great for my friend Stan's NCR force, as I'm no longer at a place in my hobby-life where I have to get things done for a deadline I figured it was time to dig out my old Imperial Blood Berets and give them the paint jobs they'd waited so patiently for all theses years.  It took me about an hour to prep the figures

See, all ready to go!

 

 

 

Then I remembered I really should finish my Fallout mercs and that I would have plenty of time to paint my Blood Berets next week, so all I had to do was tuck these guys away in a figure case until I had time for them.  So, I dug out a figure case to put them and found this...

If it's unclear, that exactly what I just decided to do, only twice as much, already painted.

 

 

So not only have I already had this idea once, I had completely forgotten that I had done it.  On one hand I cursed my stupidity, on the other hand if I did paint the 7 guys I just assembled I would have a playable force almost right away.  I thought maybe instead though I should add some Golden Lions.  Just as I was about to start taking mold lines off a pristine fresh from the blister packs squad of Golden Lions I suddenly thought; "gee I wonder what else is in that figure case?"

Not completely finished but maybe another 2 hours worth of work.

 

So I guess the moral of my story is; if you've been doing this for 20+ years and you think a project would be cool....just double check and make sure it's the first time you're thinking that.

-Jay

So a Paladin walks into a bar.......

While prepping more mercenaries the other day I came across this miniature and found myself off on another diversion.

One of the things I've been feeling my Fallout force needs is a few peices that differ from my basic mercs but still clearly inhabit the Fallout universe.  As it turned out I had a figure that I think is a pretty good stand-in for a Brotherhood Of Steel Paladin.

Some more mercs should be showing up tonight and either tonight or tomorrow I should have kind of a funny 'blast from the past' which unfortunately highlights how forgetful I can be....trust me, it's funny.

-Jay

Not all Paladins in gaming ride white horses

 

Redneck Zombies!

I finally finished my last 2 zombies from my first box of Studio Miniatures!  These are 2 redneck looking zombies (can't figure out why one has a samurai sword in him mind you....) and I think these guys were a great 1 day diversion.

Tomorrow is hobby-day and with any luck I should be mostly finished my Fallout mercs by the end of the day.

Wish me luck!

-Jay

Why do I suddenly want to watch 'Duck Dynasty'?

 

Back to the studio for more zombies!

I decided to take a break from my Fallout mercs for a couple of days and get a few more zombies done.  After my last post I had 4 more zombies to paint to finish Zombie Horde Part 1 by Studio Miniatures.

Of the remaining four two are done now and I hope to finish off the other two tonight.

One of these guys is a very generic zombie male with shirt, pants & shoes, well sculpted and executed but nothing truly noteworthy.  The second figure however is outstanding, it's funny because I never even noticed him on the box when I bought it.  First up a quick 'warning'; he's wearing an open bathrobe and nothing underneath so if you're offended by zombie junk hanging out don't scroll down....  Having said that this figure is AMAZING, in addition to the general sense of comedy created by the clothes (or lack thereof) he's wearing bunny slippers and carrying around his coffee mug!  It's one of those figures that really stands out as something more interesting than the norm.

One more post later tonight featuring my last two zombies and then it's a dozen Fallout mercs for tomorrow!

-Jay

Always dress your best, zombie attacks can happen when you least expect!

 

More mercs for Fallout

Got my next 2 mercs for Fallout done tonight.  I'm really enjoying the mixture of high-tech and low-tech on these models.  I think in my next batch I might do a 1st Recon Sniper from Fallout: New Vegas.

Now that I'm settled on colours and model components I'm able to get these guys done fairly quickly, so I may actually take a break from them for a day or two and then just try to crank out the remaining 16 at one go on my next day off.

-Jay

Two more mercs for right price!

 

Fallout Mercs inbound!

The first two figures for my new Fallout force are now done and will be the template for the rest of the mercenaries in my force.

I'm really happy with the decision to ditch the helmets and go with bare heads, they look a little lower tech and a little meaner.  In addition the british infantry arms and weapons seem to be doing the trick so far for creating a unique look to the models.

Two down, eighteen to go!

-Jay

Ready for action!

 

More sci-fi RPG miniatures.

As work continues on miniatures for my upcoming Fallout game it's made me a little nostalgic for days gone by and I decided to dig out a few more figures I had done for RPG and skirmish gaming that do a great job of highlighting the fact that you can often find exactly the right figure when you look a little bit outside the box.

My first 3 figures were used in 3 completely different role-playing games.  First up was my character from a D20 Star Wars RPG game.  He was basically a military character who's background was that he had washed out of Stormtrooper trainning and was now a freelance merc.  The figure is from the VOID miniature line.  Due to an extremely lucky decision to purchase exactly the right item before the finale of our first game session he cemented his position as the combat master in our group.
The second character is a figure I painted for a friend of mine to use in a dark-gothic-future RPG setting.  I needed a female gang-member with an oversized pistol and this miniature from Wargames Foundry's 2000A.D. line fit the bill perfectly.  I had gotten her as part of a bundle deal from Wargames Foundry and always wanted to paint her but until this particular game never really had  use for her.
The final figure in our first group shot was my character from a different RPG set in the same dark-gothic-future universe.  He is a Heroclix model from the Giant-Sized X-Men set.  In his case all I really did was touch up the main body of the figure and repaint the head, other than that he was good to go right out of the package.

The second group is a batch of Heroclix re-paints/touch-ups I had done in preparation for a Gamma World game I was planning to run before my group requested that I run a fantasy RPG instead....so maybe there will be some fantasy RPG characters coming to the blog soon.....

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

Figures from; VOID, Foundry & Heroclix.  Re-purposed as RPG player-character models.

 

Still waiting for a game to use these in......

 

 

Welcome to Plasticville Part 3

Today's addition to the wasteland is the Bachman Plasticville Motel.  I like this piece because it reminds me of every sketchy motel I've ever seen in a horror movie over the last 20 years.  My only regret is in hindsight I'm wishing I'd bought 3-4 of them so I could make a larger motel rather than a freestanding tiny roadside sort of place.  All in all though I think if I combine it with the earlier diner I painted and possibly add a gas-bar I can create a realistic looking scene.

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

Radroaches check in, but they don't check out!

 

Welcome to the warehouse district!

As work continues on the Plasticville buildings for my Fallout games I've also begun looking around for some buildings that convey the sense that this is after the atomic war and not just 1950's small town USA.

I recently got the Ruined Hamlet set from Warlord Games and that is going to make for some excellent ruined houses but I also came up with these ruined Warhouse sections from Heroscape: Marvel Edition.  These are absolutely fantastic pieces which are not only pre-painted but actually have some subtle weathering applied as well.

The plan is to get some plasti-card and base these up as one building with a rubble strewn interior but in a pinch they're tabletop ready as is.

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

Two pieces of the same scenery (1 front, 1 back) straight out of the box.

 

Same two pieces with their busted out wall sections.

 

 

Resident Evil!

This morning I finished touching up my Resident Evil miniatures from Recreational Conflict with a couple of figures from Tactical Miniatures thrown in to round out the S.T.A.R.S. team members.

The Resident Evil series of video games (Resident Evil 2 in particular) are what drew me into the survival horror genre of gaming and films in the first place so my appreciation for them tends to hold through thick and thin and even when I take a break from the series I always seem to find my way back.

Also in this post I'd like to ask all of you for a little help.  I've done fairly well assembling a collection of miniatures to game Resident Evil with but there are 3 characters from the series I've never found suitable models for:
-Enrico Marini (STARS Bravo team leader from Resident Evil & Resident Evil 0)
-Claire Redfield (from Resident Evil 2 & Resident Evil Code Veronica)
-Billy Cohen (from Resident Evil 0)
If any of you could suggest some figures for these 3 characters I would really appreciate it.

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

Primary characters from the original Resident Evil video game.

 

Brad Vickers, Kenneth Sullivan, Joseph Frost

(Spoiler warning: I don't think these guys are going to make it!)

 

Leon Kennedy & Carlos Olivera (video game Carlos, not movie Carlos)

 

 

 

 

Back to the drawing board......

In my experience 99% of the time someone refers to a model they are painting as a "test model" what they really mean is they're going to hammer out their paint scheme on that model and then apply it across a squad/gang/unit/army/etc.  I think for the first time in my time in the hobby one of my figures just failed the 'test'.

As I mentionned and showed in an earlier post I'm going to be painting up some mercs for a Fallout game with my friend Stan.  I assembled, primed and starting painting my first 3 models as 'test' models and realized pretty early on that as much as I like the body armour the guns and helmets are completely worng for the setting.  Unfortunately as cool as the figures are (UAMC Infantry from Defiance Games) they are not very conversion friendly in the arms/guns area and none of the head options worked for what I wanted...enter Warlord Games and their Bolt Action range.  I've created 2 new test models which still use the great UAMC legs and bodies but are now sporting Bolt Action british heads and in one case the arms and Thompson sub-machine gun as well.  Once I get some paint on these I should be able to figure out how everything blends together and hopefully be able to drive the New California Republic out of my territory!

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

Cool figures, but not the right ones for the job.

 

These boys look like they know a thing or two about the wasteland.

 

 

 

Odds and ends

One of the things I have found that happens when you're bouncing back and forth between hobby projects is that you come across things that have been "half-done" for a long time.  Every once in a while it's nice to finish those things off because they don't take much time and they make you feel like you accomplished something.

Today I had 3 half-dones that I decided to finish.
The first was another Hasslefree Survivor, this one is a cop with mini riot shield and baton.  Unfortunatley the pictures didn't turn out at all so I'm all tell and no show on this one.
The second model was my not-Leon Kennedy from Recreational Conflict.  The funny thing about Leon is that this is the figure that convinced me I needed to do an order with Recreational Conflict 3 or so years ago but somehow he was the one figure from the entire order I never got around to finishing.
And lastly I have 2 more zombies from Studio Miniatures that didn't get finished with my last batch.

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

The first character I ever played in a Resident Evil video game and still my favourite.

 

Two more zombettes.

 

 

More Judges Part 2: The Return Of The Revenge (sequel names are hard!)

This morning I managed to finish up my 2 remaining Mongoose Street Judges.  I have to say I warmed up to this half-step between the comic and movie colour schemes pretty quickly but now that I have 5 models painted in matching colours I like it even more.

I'll probably be taking a break from painting Judge Dredd figs for a week or two as I really need to finish all my Plasticville buildings and get my mercs for Fallout done.

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

There's alot more Judges on the streets these days.

 

Female Judges

Out of my additional 4 Judges from Mongoose I've managed to finish 2 of them tonight.  These 2 represent a regular Street Judge as well as a Psi Division Judge.  I basically used the same colour scheme on these 2 that I used on my earlier test model. 

I'm looking forward to finishing my other 2 Street Judges and then either doing up some of my Judges on Lawmasters or possibly painting some of the Wargames Foundry models of the actual characters from 2000A.D.

Thanks for visiting

-Jay

More Judges on the streets!  Well this street atleast.