Mallard joins the Swinetrek expedition

The fourth and final 'new' member of the Swinetrek expedition for This Is Not A Test is Mallard the duck-man.  In my head he sounds exactly like Jason Alexander.  The figure is the Duck with S.A.W. from Black Scorpion Miniatures.

My starting crew for my This Is Not A Test campaign will be the three pigs I had painted last week along with one of my Gallus Gallus miniatures named St Hubert.

I'd like to find a few more sci-fi animal mutants to add to my warband as it grows.  Time to start scavenging around.

-Jay

The star is ready for her close-up

Link Hogthrob might have been the captain and the leader of the Swinetrek but the true star was always Ensign Piggy.

Ensign Piggy is the final of the three characters from my latest Interloper pack (I've got to think what to do next from them) and has been painted a slightly different hue than her two male companions.

This completes the 'core' of my new warband for This Is Not A Test, I do have one more character I want to add and then I think I'll have a look at the freelancer section with an eye to adding something different to add another flavour to my warband.

I can't wait to get these three on the table next week and stick it to the man!

-Jay

The doctor will see you now

The second member of the Swinetrek is now done; Doctor Julius Strangepork.

The doctor is the second figure from the Interloper Miniatures pack that contained the previously painted Link Hogthrob and the soon to be painted Ensign Piggy.

I need to pull out my This Is Not A Test rulebook and figure out exactly what role Doctor Strangepork will play in my warband but regardless of skills or abilities I'm just happy to have him on board.

-Jay

Captain Link Hogthrob reporting for duty!

Time to trek back to Swineland, a Swinetrek if you will.

After an extended time away from This Is Not A Test three things happened that got me stoked to return once again:
1.  Both of my regular opponents are excited to play once again.
2.  World's End publishing released a new supplement for This Is Not A Test.
3.  Since our last campaign ended Interloper Miniatures has released a super-cool pack of sci-fi Pig-People.

Today I started painting those new Interloper figs with the goal of the three of them forming the core of my new mutant warband.  This is a bit of a break from tradition for me as I actually painted my warband leader first, normally I paint up a pile of regular troopers first.

Our new fearless leader (no disrespect to Gallus Prime) is Link Hogthrob.  Link is basically a cross between Zap Brannigan, James T Kirk and a side of bacon.

This is yet another amazingly executed figure design by Interloper Miniatures.  Link's environment suit has a lot of well sculpted elements and really captures a unique look and feel.

I'm looking forward to getting my next two characters done (hopefully tomorrow) and getting back to the table for some This Is Not A Test next week!

-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

Here come the Hoops!

For those of you who didn't thing the Gallus Gallus were enough Gamma World flavour in my post-apocalyptic games I've now added the Hoops!

The Hoops are basically mutant bunny-men that have appeared in every edition of Gamma World.  In more recent editions they have been presented as more feral and malicious than in their original background.

First up is Echo with his pistol

Then we have E.B. with his shotgun

And lastly Bugs with his rifle

Two of the Hoops should show up in my next game of This Is Not A Test and then I hope to get onto some Porkers (pig-men).

I'm running out of weird animal hybrid models to paint so unless any of you have any suggestions I'll probably move onto retro-sci-fi robots next.

-Jay

Gallus Prime and his support chickens

I finished 3 more of my Gallus Gallus for This Is Not A Test and got in my first few games today.

I used them as mutants with the wings mutation.  The figure with the helmet was my warband leader Gallus Prime, the missile launcher armed soldier is Boom Gallus and the spotter never actually made it into my force but I have an extra figure if I need him later.

I got in my first two games against the U.S. Department Of Agriculture (reclaimers) today and although I lost both games it payed a lot like Frostgrave where I didn't take any long-term crippling damage and in the end my warband is actually a bit better.

That's it for the Gallus Gallus, all six figures are done.  I've got some Hops and some Porkers up before my next This Is Not A Test game.

-Jay

Gamma World - Gallus Gallus

The apocalypse is starting to get a bit weird around my place...

After getting ahead a bit on my Frostgrave project and deciding I'm going to hold off on posting my Ravenloft stuff until my players begin to see it I've had some time to circle back to some of my post-apocalyptic gaming stuff.

First up (for this year anyway) are the Gallus Gallus (chicken-men) for Gamma World.  These awesome figures as well as some others you should be seeing by the end of this week are from Interloper Miniatures.  Interloper has a fun range of pulp sci-fi figures that don't exist anywhere else in the market.

I will be using these guys for some games of This Is Not A Test in the near future, but before then there will be some more chicken-men and possibly some rabbit-men on the way as well.

-Jay

And now for something completely different

Four-ish years ago when I started this blog I was playing in a semi-regular Gamma World game.  It's always struck me as odd that that became one of my jumping off points for documenting my hobby time because as anyone who is a miniature gamer and has played Gamma World knows it is one of the worst systems to try to find miniatures for.

For those of you unfamiliar with Gamma World it is(was?) TSR's and then Wizards Of The Coast's weird post-apocalyptic take on sci-fi.  As a role playing game one of the things that made it great was that it was filled with truly unique settings and creatures that made it feel entirely different than many similar themed games.

As is often the way of things for miniature gamers I searched high and low for good figures to use for the game but didn't find the right stuff until after I had left the campaign and really didn't have an immediate need for them anymore.

Fast forward to now.  I've been looking into a skirmish wargame called This Is Not A Test and have decided that rather than doing a gritty down-and-dirty band of Mad Max or Fallout style survivors I am going to dig out my collection of models for Gamma World and finally get some paint on them.

My first stop is humanoid-chickens called Gallus Gallus in Gamma World.  These could also sub-in as mutants in Judge Dredd or Necromunda if you play with a sense of humour.

These awesome models are the work of Interloper Miniatures and for any fans of the genre I highly encourage you to check out Legion's fantastic and unique models at Interloper Miniatures

The goal is to get theses 6 done tonight so I can move on to some equally silly and fun stuff this weekend.

-Jay