Gruntz 1.0

Not much done on the modeling front this week I'm afraid. I haven't had much time to work on my rule set latly and have come to realise that gruntz is not only a well made and well published game but also pretty close to what I was aiming for and had developed so I'm going with gruntz.

I've baught and printed it out and realy like what I see. I have wet to play test it but from what I can see and have read it seems complex enough to make it interesting but not to complicated ( a couple of sheets of tokens would have been good).And its great to have followed something from the bigining like much of the 15mm Sci-fi comunity. So well done to Robin and the gruntz comunity! I hope to convert my french friends to gruntz as soon as possible !

Ollie

Dropship ahoy !

Well I just tried to post an article about this earlier and my computer bugged and deleted the post. I was a little cross to say the least...

So here I go again!

When I was last in England I purchased a Clone Wars dropship that was on sale. I wanted to buy three but my girlfriend pointed out that I didn't actualy know what to do with them, or where to put them so I'm sorry to say I capitulated...

It's not a bad kit at all. It's pre-painted, pretty much 15mm scale,  easy to assemble and comes with a flight stand! Is that all you say?
Well, yeah but thats not bad... Is it?

Here are the pics:

Front view

Rear view

Dynamic view

Sorry again for the pic quality, I hope to change that soon.

Ollie

Cons of camera phones

Well, my phone takes really good life size pictures in the day time but is a strugle to use on miniatures.

I can't seem to get a good picture of my prefabs... So, I think the answer is to get a better camera in the near future. Until then I'll try to only post descent photos as I have been doing, but not as many as I would like.

Here's my workspace...

 You can see the base coat is on the prefabs (back left). Those funny looking black and white cloud cards are area effect markers for Axles & Alloys which incidentally I still haven't got around to playing... Sometimes enthusiasm doesn't quite catch up with reality :(

In meantime here are some terrain pieces that came out OK in the photos.

A dumpster truck and a MNU/generic truck (both toys bought at the flea market)

Couple of sci-fi/modern rusted dumpsters (there resin models from Hornby I believe but they looked really clean and shiny so I had to make them look a little grimy)

Some imperial cargo containers (again, from toy trucks, painted, weathered and stenciled)

Sorry again for the lack of prefab updating, I'll try some photos again soon. Promise !



Ollie

Pre-Fab colony

I've been collecting some St Moret (cheese spred) boxes to make a pre-fab colony. They're plastic with a card cover that I've soaked and scratched off. As soon as my GZG order came true with the doors I ordered I got stuck in. Well not too stuck in as I'm going as always simple and not too complicated.

I've gone for a Bar, two generic buildings and a generator style building. I may add on a little more detail before I paint them but the general idea is there. I've used some bit's I've had lying around and plastic card for the windows. There's an upturned lip around the bases that I was going to remove but have decided to leave because I think it probably adds stability and doesn't really detract from the over all look. 

Here is a scale photo:

C&C is welcome if any one is out there...

Ollie

Latest read ''Embedded'' by Dan Abnett

Since reading the Gaunts ghosts series I've really got into Dan Abnett. Since, I've read the Eisenhorn trilogy and Horus rising. Even if you are not into 40k, the Gaunts Ghosts series has a sertain realism and the Eisenhorn trilogy is gritty and full of details which make it more believable than most other 40k books IMHO.

''Embedded'' is a great read, full of action and detail that seems not so different from modern day conflicts. I recomend it to any one planing or playing an RPG or a Wargame in a gitty frontier sci-fi  game.
And the cover is realy cool !


 Ollie

Size is an issue.

Well since my previous post I've been looking at what I've got for my 15mm forces and decided to follow up on what I said previously about GZG vehicle sizes and I'm going to store them away somewhere for 10mm or something like that (check out the previous post for size comparison).
I really prefer Old Crow vehicles as they are better sized for 15mm and have a robust feel to them.
Having said all that I really like GZG infantry and have absolutely no complaints about them and will be using them as my main infantry retailer.

I'm not getting much done at the moment to post about but will be soon hopefully.


Ollie

More Old Crow

Ladies and mainly gentlemen,

I have to say that I am really impressed with Old Crow products. I've just received (a little late but, meh whats the rush?) my latest Old Crow order !
The quality is great as I have already mentioned in previous posts. The size of the vehicles is way better than the GZG vehicles that are just too small for my liking. I don't know why GZG's are so small, they almost seem made for 10mm...
And apart from the complementary hand signed ''With complements'' form that I think is a great touch and always gives me a smile when I open a parcel from Old Crow I got a sample set of three infantry miniatures. I'm actually quite impressed with them, they seem well scaled, thow a little bit skinny but however nicely detailed. They've got a a very near future look to there weapons, a sort of bullpup design with grenade launcher and side picatinny rails. They've got motorbike like helmets and only small parcels and bags on them making me think more of an armed police force than proper soldiers. As always I feel most infantry miniatures, even GZG and others is that they never seem to have any backpacks, now this is very minor as one can come up with all sorts of mundane explanations  and can see soldiers patrolling in Afghanistan with little gear but I rather like the Falklands look with big bags on them saying 'this is all I've got and I'm all the backup I'm getting'.

The lot:

A comparison pic of GZG vs Old Crow:

I'll be hopefully posting progress on some of these vehicles and my 15mm progress...


Ollie