Books&Models

Since finishing Embeded by Dan Abnett I've gone on to The Lost Fleet by Jack Cambell and have quite enjoyed the series (six of them in all). It's easy, morish and has quite a lot of ideas that are very interesting relative to starship battles an tactics. I'd recomend it to any body that like military sci-fi.

On the modeling front, I've been slightly busy basing and priming. I've allso added a small Mech to my colection. Here are the photos:

Mech made using,  At-43 red block walker + GZG tank barrel (right arm) + Plaster board screw (left arm) + FOW ladder and top hatch (left side and top)

Other view of Mech

Undercoated minis

I'm still not shure wich army to put the mech with. I don't think he suits the UNSC guys from GZG, so I'm thinking of puting him with the controll batalion from Khurasan Miniatures. Till then it will be a mercanary Mech. I'll try to get them painted soon ! 

Ollie

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