In Soviet Russia, Little Dudes Paint YOU!

Hey,

So I started in on the small mountain of 15mm modern-day Soviet figures I picked up at HAVOC this year. Here's the first platoon:


These are from Irregular Miniatures and while they're not the best castings in the world (and had a ton of flash to get rid of), they did actually paint up pretty well. The only problem is that the packs came with 9 guys with light machine guns, but only 8 guys with RPG launchers. So our of the 9 squads, one of them came up short on RPGs. This particular platoon has the shorted squad. Annoying, but probably not the end of the world.

But, like I say, it's a whole mess of troops (and the pack includes HMGs, Mortars, Snipers and Anti-Air missile troops) so once I finish painting up all the guys I got, I'll have a respectable Soviet force for some "what-if" WWIII games.

later
Tom

Hey,

I painted up some more little dudes...and a building. So this is another boxed set from RAFM's Shadows and Steel line produced in the early 80's. This time out, we have The Wizard's Adventuring Party. Here's their group shot for their marketing collateral:


A steady bunch. First we'll meet with the leader:


This is (Rock me) Amadeus, the Wizard in "Wizard's Adventuring Party". How bad-ass is this guy? This guy is so bad-ass he's got a monster to ferry him around. Monster's name is Ross and while he can bring the pain, he's mostly just there to carry Amadeus around in style. Seriously, Adjo would've loved this.


Desirei here serves as the group's on-call ranged attacker but she's also got a magic shortsword and is proficient in a wide range of small arms. So I figure she hangs back with Amadeus and acts as the meat-shield of last resort. A fun little figure and a female adventurer who actually looks like she's about to go adventuring so full marks for that.


Puc the Pious is the spiritual adviser and moral lynchpin of the group...or they put up with him because he's got magical healing spells. No, probably the former. Puc has a +1 mace and the ability to Speak With Dead. So he tends to bash first and ask questions later.


Icewolf. Because every adventuring party needs a Viking. Not to be confused with Airwolf but there's little chance of that I'm afraid.


Maximylon of Gloreon. Because every adventuring party needs some elf with a convoluted back-story no one cares about. Maximylon has loads of magic doo-dads, but is not, technically, a sword-mage so there are some small mercies.


Gomer Thief the Half-Gnoll. Well, he's probably not a half-gnoll, he's just that ugly. He's also less of a thief and more of a 4th level fighter if his stat block is to be believed...which I don't I think it's a typo. But he sneaks around looking for problems and runs away when he finds it.

You'll notice that I've actually textured the bases of these figures ("flocked" them is the jargon). This is something I don't usually do because it's a complete pain in the ass. This time around...it was a pain in the ass but it seems to have worked out.

Finally, I also put this little beauty together:


This is a 15mm Afghan Compound put out by GameCraft Miniatures. I need one for the game I'm running at the end of the month and I've been interested in their range of products and wanted to give it a try.

The model is made from thin pieces of laser-cut MDF board. So it's light but sturdy. The whole thing went together pretty easily but I wish there had been a one-page assembly diagram. I had to refer back to the catalog photo to make sure I was assembling the pieces correctly. I'm also trying to figure out how to best cover up the tabs/slots/joints. You can see them in the photo even after some heavy base-coating and painting. I don't really want to have to spackle the whole thing though.

However -- I really like the way the model looks, it wasn't a pain to assemble and compared to the resin-cast stuff I've worked with before, it's as good or better in most categories. So I may be doing a few more of these. I'm hoping that next year is mostly a "make terrain" year for me. We'll see.

So getting the building done means I'm all set for my game later this month. The Wizard's Adventuring Party was just a fun bunch of guys to paint up. Next on the block are a batch of 15mm Soviet troops. I was looking them over this morning...these are some of the most poorly cast minis I've ever seen so I'm a little dubious over how they'll turn out, but having some cheap WARPAC fodder on hand will get my WWIII games jumpstarted.

later
Tom