Raider Robot

Another retro-sci-fi robot got done up tonight.  This time it's the Raider Robot for This Is Not A Test.

The Raider robot is both a super-cool looking fig and it also shows its heritage as a Depend-O-Bot that has been salvaged and then had some improvised weapons and armour bolted on.

I can't say enough about how this awesome figure captures the feeling of a futuristic society in decay.  I mean, who wouldn't want to strap an axe and a tire onto a robot if they had one?

I've got one more robot on my desk and then the future of the robot project lies in the hands of Canada Post as my next batch of figs is in transit and a strike is looming.....

......but to be fair if those miniatures get held up I may still have one or two unpainted figures in my backlog.

-Jay

ROBOTS!!

I've been bouncing around back and forth on a number of things the last few weeks and one of the things I had started in earnest a while back and recently came back to was a robot gang/crew/force.

Judge Dredd currently has rules for renegade robots as a playable action and the dialogue on the This Is Not A Test Facebook page would also indicate that an all robot band may be in the works.

So far I've got my first six retro sci-fi robots done.  Three were previously finished, one was a re-basing job late last night and two got painted yesterday during the baseball game.

First up Junk-Bot had previously been based on a lipped base and I just wanted to put him on an unlipped textured base with some light rubble.

Next up is Mr Doc-Bot.  Mr Doc-Bot is another Fallout inspired pseudo Mr Handy this time re-imagined as a medical robot.  I  had always intended to do a medical robot but the timing is ironic because about 5 hours after I finished painting him I got the model that  will probably end up replacing him.  So Mr Doc-Bot may or may not ever make it to the gaming table.

Last but not least is the first figure I've gotten painted from the Robot Townies line by Armorcast.  Robot Townies is a line that is 90% robots and characters inspired by Futurama.  I expect to get all of the Robot Townies line painted before year end (I think Santa-Bot might be next).

That's the current state of things.  I expect more robots this week and then I might detour back to Frostgrave for a bit.

-Jay

This is how the world ends.....

My mutant animal farm continues to grow and expand!

After my last game of This Is Not A Test the forces of the Colonel's Revenge were able to get their hands/paws/wings on a mini-gun salvaged from a ruined tank in the wasteland.  This turned out really well as I didn't lose any of my warband members and accrued enough barter script to recruit a new follower.

So a little bit of chopping and swapping later and I've got the first of my mutant Porkers (pig-men) to add to the Gallus Gallus and the Hoops.

The figure itself is a Wrath Of Kings Union worked with the sword arm chopped off midway up the forearm and then replaced with a GW Terminator Assault Cannon.  In addition I trimmed the round shield up into an octagon shape to re-purpose it a stop sign and a fantasy themed figure suddenly feels like it fits into a sci-fi game.

I'm bouncing around on a few things right now so I honestly have no idea what the next fig showing up on the blog will be.

-Jay

Dial "9" for MEAN!!

I've been bouncing back and forth on mutants and survivors for my post-apocalyptic gaming lately so today I landed on a model that covers both; Mean Machine Angel.

Mean is a member of the infamous Angel gang from the Cursed Earth of Judge Dredd comics.  The Angel family was basically a bunch of cannibals where a couple of them (Mean and I think Fink but I'm not 100% sure) where also heavily mutated or impaired by the radiation of the Cursed Earth.

I'm hoping to get some Judge Dredd games in this year but I could also use Mean in games of This Is Not A Test or even Gamma World.  I'm also hoping to get my hands on more of Foundry's version of the Angel gang but that can be difficult at best in my part of the world (or any part of the world that isn't the U.K. for that matter).  If not I'll mix Warlord and Foundry models together and hope their scales are similar.

I'm also newly energised to paint some scenario specific models for This Is Not A Test so some zombies and a trade caravan could be on the way shortly.

-Jay

Gas Mask Girl

During my lunch today I finished my last Worlds End Publishing model (until September I think); Gas Mask Girl for This Is Not A Test.

Thus far Gas Mask Girl has been the unofficial mascot/pin-up for This Is Not A Test and I've got to say I think they did a great job on the model execution.  She has a few extra bits and pieces (pistol holster, duffel bag, goggles, gas mask) but she isn't overly cluttered with unnecessary clutter.

I still need to get a few weird animal-mutants done but Gas Mask Girl will also represent me starting to go off in a different direction and do some more realistic or grounded post-apoc miniatures.

-Jay

You've got a bit of red on you...

I've got a bunch more post apocalyptic miniatures sitting on my desk right now waiting to get some paint but I decided to take a brief break and paint up a Malifaux fig for a game (which I then forgot to bring to the game anyway).

Rafkin the Embalmer is a model that pairs up well (thematically at least) with McMourning and the rest of his 'hospital' staff.

Rafkin embodies the best of the horror and murder themes of Malifaux.  He makes his way through the world by presenting himself as a loyal servant of the Guild while secretly practicing the necromantic arts in the morgues of the city.

That was my slight detour from the apocalypse, back to the wasteland tomorrow.

-Jay

A little bit of housekeeping

I wanted to put up a few odds and ends today that I finished a couple of weeks ago and never thought to post as well as update something that I'm going to be fixing/changing.

Quite awhile back I ordered a Reaper Bones Golem to do up as my Golem for Hunt The Golem for Frostgrave.  I never got around to playing through that scenario pack and given that Into The Breeding Pits is now looming in the horizon I may not for some time, however I was able to lend it to some friends to use so at least he's seen a tabletop now.

I started off going super basic on my golem with grey stone and a wash but that honestly looked a little too flat.  I went back and added a few metallic elements and gave the clothing a light green wash over the existing stone colour just to  make it a bit more visually interesting.

Next up I finished my next 7 zombies from Zombicide Black Plague.  I'm really enjoying these figures and now that I have 3 of the variants done they don't look quite so repetitive on the tabletop.  Having said that thought now that I have a decent number of them finished (21 so far) and I've actually use them a few times I've run into a different issue.

Their basing, or lack thereof.  Originally I was content to just paint them up and leave the bases plain as that worked okay for the board game.  Now that I'm using them with other miniatures it's the one thing that makes them look a bit weak.  I've decided this week to go back and chop them all off their bases and remount them on cobblestone bases like my current D&D and Frostgrave minis which should also make them look more coherent when I blend them into my Age Of Sigmar Army.

For my cobblestone bases I have been using a 1" punch to punch out textured plasticard and then trimming it to fit on top of standard 25mm bases.

I'll paint up 21 of these this week and then pin my existing models onto the finished bases.  That should hopefully finally dispel the obvious fact that they are board game pieces being re-purposed for war-gaming.

Now what to do next......

-Jay

  

Thundarr The Barbarian!!

It was a dark time known at 1980.  A time before every Saturday morning cartoon (they used to only really show them on Saturday mornings) was a 30 minute infomercial for a toy line.  A simpler time when you get at up the end of an episode of The Flintstones to get a bowl of cereal and when you came back the actor who voiced Fred Flintstone was now an evil wizard plotting world domination.

It was the time of THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN!!

Thundarr The Barbarian was an animated show that aired for 2 seasons that followed the adventures of; Thundarr The Barbarian, Ariel The Sorceress and Ookla The Mok (kind of an ape/lion hybrid) as they travelled across the wilds of post-apocalyptic America.  The show was geared to kids but was very much in the vein of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards or Heavy Metal in that it freely mixed sci-fi and fantasy.

Interloper Miniatures makes a pack of Wastelanders that are perfect representations of Thundarr and his friends.

These will be great figures for Gamma World as they cover some options that don't show up in a lot of other figure lines and I also fully expect to field the forces of Thundarr in at least one game of This Is Not A Test.

This is the kind of stuff that truly makes the miniature gaming hobby great to me.   It's a throwback to my childhood and its the kind of thing that is super-fun and doesn't take itself too seriously.

-Jay

The Kill-Joys

Last night I finished the 6 "Old School Mutants" figures for This Is Not A Test in preparation for playing through the demo rules against a Peacekeeper force.

I've got to say I really enjoyed painting these figures as the mutants themselves have tons on neat little bits and pieces you may not notice at first (it looks like Snake-Eyes has a partially formed conjoined twin growing out of his side!).  I decided to go for a slightly jaundiced skin-tone with the idea that these guys should match any Fallout -style super-mutants I'm able to lay my hands on in the future.

                                            (Left to right)  Davey - Kill Roy - The Twins

                                                 (Left to right)  ? - Snake Eyes - Pokey

Although I painted these guys for This Is Not A Test I could also see them making it to the tabletop as mutants in Judge Dredd or Necromunda as well.

More from the wasteland coming tomorrow!

-Jay

Depend-O-Bot

Tonight I finished my first "official" This Is Not A Test miniature from World's End Publishing, the Depend-O-Bot!

The Depend-O-Bot is a multi-purpose humanoid robot chassis that can be equipped for multiple different needs.  It is one of the standard commonly appearing robots of the This Is Not A Test game universe.

I really appreciate that This Is Not A Test is a system usable with any and all of my existing post-apocalyptic miniatures but at the same time they make some really cool stuff that I'm looking forward to painting as well.

I've currently got 6 more World's End models to get done this week and then I'm on hold until my Peacekeepers arrive in September (unless I break down and order more stuff before then).

My apocalypse is getting a bit robot-heavy so we're on to some mutants tomorrow.

-Jay

Mr Fixit-bot

I'm back and closer (always inching closer) to having a semi-permanent space for gaming and game related mayhem in my home.

I've actually gotten a fair bit of painting done over the past 3-4 week but I've been super-slack with taking pictures so hopefully I'll be able to post a bunch of stuff over the next week.

Tonight's contribution is a medi-bot from Aberrant Games Rezolution sci-fi minis game.  The truth is I haven't played Rezolution in years but I keep digging out their models to use for other games.  The medi-bot has been hauled out and re-purposed as a light duty construction robot for post-apocalyptic Fallout themed gaming.  Basically he's a Mr Handy if Mr Handy was less round and a bit more industrial.

My initial plan is to use Mr Fixit in games of This Is Not A Test if and when my mutants start adding members and if the long suffering Walter The Wobot shuffles off his mortal coil.

I have a second medi-bot that will actually be getting painted up as a medical robot but before I got around to him I got tons of awesome new figs (you'll be seeing over the next 10 days) that jumped the line ahead of it.

-Jay