MI-13 is full of character(s)

As part  of my ongoing project to get a Konflikt '47 force done I need to get a command section done.  I'll be using the MI-13 commandos from Incursion for my actual squaddies but I also need to get some officers to lead them.  The truth is I'm painting ahead of getting my rulebook in hand so I'm not 100% sure how I'll stat these guys out but I'm sure at least one or two of them will work.

First up is Black Jack.  Black Jack is a named character for Secrets Of The Third Reich and although I got him painted awhile back I circled back and repainted about half of him to make him blend in with the troopers I just painted.  I also removed him from the 40mm base I originally had him on and re-based him on a 32mm base.

Black Jack is basically a diesel-punk cyborg and general all around hard-man.  He's got an over-sized revolver and a big chunky power-fist.  The figure can with a variant gun hand but it was firing a Vickers machine-gun single-handed and that honestly looked ridiculous to me.

Next up is Zip Kelly "The Hurricane".  I bought Zip just because I thought he looked cool and until I got him out of his blister pack I just assumed he was going to have a jet-pack.

Zip looks more like a pulp-era hero than a soldier to me.  I can easily picture him being the star of a radio drama and if someone was looking to set a DC Comics game of any sort during WW2 he'd make a perfect Spy-Smasher figure.  Unfortunately for me Zip is yet another case of 'he looked better before the photo' for me, at a distance he's fine but on closer magnification his chest emblem looks rough.

Last but not least is Paddy Mayne.  Paddy is the named character/leader that comes in the MI-13 starter for Incursion.  My instinct tells me that Paddy is the least likely to end up serving as an officer in my force as most games don't allow for leaders and single characters to be armed with heavy weapons.

Of the three figures Paddy is the most basic, that's probably why I like how he turned out the best.  There's absolutely nothing fancy about Paddy and he feels like he suits the setting perfectly.

I've got 6 more commandos to paint and then I'm think I'm done with weird wars stuff until I can find an appropriate robot for Konflikt.

I think I might detour off my plans for a few days and get some Halloween-y stuff done before Monday.

-Jay

 

Pip pip, cheerio, steady on, etc, etc

Over the years I keep getting interested in retro-sci-fi takes on World War 2 but I never get off my butt and actually paint anything.  The problem for me historically is that I'll pick some obscure rules that aren't available through my FLGS and then act genuinely surprised that no one else is jumping on board.

It seems after years of small press game companies thinking this would be a good idea a larger company has now gotten in on the act which means more accessibility for the average gamer.  Warlord Games has published Konflikt '47 which is sort of a "what-if" super-science take on the ongoing Second World War.  The other times I've brushed up against this have been AE-WW2 by Darkson Designs and Secrets Of The Third Reich by Westwind Productions.

Roughly 9-10 years ago I bought a bunch of stuff for Secrets Of The Third Reich and today I finally got enough of it painted to be useful for both Secrets Of The Third Reich and Konflikt '47.

What I've painted will be used (depending on your way of looking at at) as four five-man sections or two ten-man squads.  To make the figures useful (or maybe just more useful) for both systems I actually ended up painting 24 figures.

In Secrets Of The Third Reich each five-man section will have either a Sergeant or Corporal armed with a Bren-gun, one trooper armed with a Bren-gun and 3 troopers armed with Enfield rifles.

In Konflikt '47 each five-man section will have either a Sergeant or Corporal armed with a Sten-gun, one trooper armed with a Bren-gun and 3 troopers armed with Enfield rifles.

When I started this project my original intent was to use Warlord's Bolt Action British Infantry with some gas-mask heads but they didn't look super-sciencey (I just made up a word!) enough to me.  One of the things I really liked about the Westwind figures was that they were all depicted as wearing flak vests which might be historically inaccurate but feels better to me to go with the background.

I'll probably make a command section out of the Incursion MI-13 figures and then I just need to lay my hands on some suitable looking robots/mech-suits.

I've got to say specific projects aside it felt good to actually get a sizable number of figures painted in one sitting for the first time in a long time.

-Jay

You know those projects that just linger?

Lately there have been a few larger scale games I have been wanting to play but I keep failing to launch on getting larger projects done.  Inspiration hit me tonight and while digging out figure cases I caught a lucky break on another larger project I want to do.

First up: Adeptus Arbites
I've been a huge fan of the Arbites for pretty much as long as they've existed.  Over the years I had collected a decent sized force but always felt like they weren't quite right.  Then earlier this year Games Workshop released their awesome Sector Imperialis bases and I got excited about updating the look of my existing models.  I will be re-basing my entire Arbites collection but it was also a reminder that 5 of my squads need new Proctors to lead them, so before I start re-basing these 5 models are going to see some paint.

I can't wait to get this done as I think once I start re-basing it will make my mid-80s collection looks very millennial.

Next: Konflikt 47 by way of Secrets Of The Third Reich
I assembled my first squad of Weird War Brit troopers awhile back but never got very enthusiastic about them.  No real reason why, just couldn't get energised to apply some paint.  While digging out my Arbites I came across 20 troopers I had started painting years ago (around 8 years ago I think) that captured the right flavour and were already started.

This should make my entry point into Konflikt 47 a little bit easier if I can just find a few more figures.  The big challenge in using theses figures for Konflikt is that the squad structure in Secrets Of The Third Reich is ridiculously Bren-gun heavy so as it stands I will need to replace about 4 of my Bren armed troopers with Sten guns or Enfield rifles.  Hopefully I've got at least one pack of what I need hiding in the depths of my basement.

Let's see where these new projects take me.

-Jay

Hobby Grab Bag - What can brown do for you?

I did something this past weekend that I haven't done in a long time.  I sat down and spent some time building models.  That probably sounds silly given that I obviously get a reasonable number of models built but because I've painted to many single figures over the past 3-4 years I usually just put them together while washes or drying or something like that.  This weekend I built 2 ACTUAL "units" (I honestly don't remember the last time I did a whole unit at once) with the plan of painting them this week.

Another oddity cropped up while I was prepping units to paint that I noticed is something that has frequently happened with me in the past.  I'm painting two completely different units for two completely different games but without planning it I'm using extremely similar colour palettes for both projects.   Back in my GW days I would frequently be painting 40K and Warhammer units at the same time, and because I played the Blood Angels for 40K and the Vampire Counts for Fantasy I would often be painting two forces that had nothing in common that were none-the-less; Red, Black & Metal.

This time around I am starting a completely new Age Of Sigmar army instead of going back to the Vampires.  The Vampires have been great and I still really love the background and the models but to be honest every time I play them I feel like I'm really just using an 8th ed Warhammer army in a new game system.  So I decided I wanted something (for me anyway) fresh and new.  Enter the Sylvaneth army.  The argument could be made that the Sylvaneth army is really just an updated to the Wood Elf army but the fact that the new list is comprised entirely of animated tree spirits makes it feel otherworldly and like something that fits into a time of legends for me.
I'll be starting off with a unit of 16 Dryads and assuming that goes well there are more Dryads and Treemen coming!

So having established that my first unit will be heavily Brown and Green I'm also going to be painting some basic infantry for Konflikt 47 which may ultimately do double duty in games of Bolt Action.  I assembled 10 Warlord Games British  Infantry and gave them the gas-mask heads from Westwind Productions Secrets Of The Third Reich to make them look a little more science-fictiony.
I'm still not 100% decided on whether they're be commandos or paras but I'm leaning towards paras if for no other reason than to add some colour to them.

Well there you have it.  Either my first attempt in years to batch paint will be super-productive or it will call out why I switched to single models in the first place.

-Jay