Little Dudes for the Motherplanet!

Hey,

 So back in the mid-90's, we got into a game called Legions of Steel by Global Games. You played a team of space marines who invaded an underground complex to take out malevolent AIs from another dimension. In the process you had to kill off a bunch of Terminator-looking robot enemies. We all enjoyed the game and we thought it was quite a step up from Space Hulk (which we loved so that's saying something).

 Like all good game companies, the line of miniatures was expanded to include other alien races that were hoping to stave off the Machine invasion. One such race was the Fantasians. They were straight up Soviet Aliens. They lived in a Communist dictatorship and it was even hinted at in the fluff that they'd visited Earth and inspired Lennin. I really liked the figures (I liked pretty much all the figures for this game) and I liked their panache and so I had a small squad painted up. Later on, when the game expanded to more wargame-y open terrain skirmish battles, I got a number of their regular line troopers and painted up a force for them.

 Then Global Games disappeared down a black hole and were never heard from again -- or rather there were rumors of a reboot that never happened. I was very pleased to see that Legions of Steel was released as a game for PC, Android, and iOS.  The implementation is quite good, but there's been almost no support for it since release and they only have Humans vs. Machines and not my beloved Fantasians.

 So I'm going through the scree of Lead Mountain and I came across a few packs of Fantasians that I'd purchased but never actually painted up. So I decided to rectify that:



Rejoice, Brave Soldiers of Fantasia! The Mobile Artillery Squad has arrived to help you win the day!
I don't believe this is an "official" formation for Legions of Steel, but it's what I had on hand and it makes for a fun little group. You've got three heavies in power armor backed up by a pair of troopers who act as a security detail or forward observers. Definitely a group for open battlefields and not underground bunkers, but they provide much-needed support in the field.

We'll start with the power armor:



Above is a T85/36 with AT-4 (you might notice a Soviet flavor to their weapon system names). The AT-4 is an anti-armor cannon and the main weapon carried by this unit. It's got a machine gun on the other arm for softer targets, but its main job is to kill tanks dead.



Here's a side view so you can see the AT-4 a bit better. Also, you'll notice the design on the shoulder pad. This was part of my "try something new" task when painting these guys up. I decided to experiment with water-slide decals. In this case, I had some 15mm WWII Soviet tank decals and couldn't imagine a better subject. I put markings on both shoulders of the power armor guys and put a star on the helmets of the troopers. I was a bit worried that this was going to turn into a frustrating chore, but I was pleasantly surprised and how smoothly it all went. It was a little fiddly getting the decal properly sited on the mini, but eventually it got where I wanted it and then I carefully removed the excess water and everything turned out ok. I'm not looking to do this for every mini, but I can see where it'll be helpful for some projects and I'm happy I got a chance to practice it.

Now for the big boom-booms:



This is the T85/43 with K2-Shaw rocket racks. Yeah...the designs are very heavily influenced by WWII Soviets. What else can I say? Power armor with rocket artillery and the arm-mounted machine gun. I don't have the rulebook in front of me so I have no idea how good those rockets actually are. The Fantasians generally worked off a "quantity has a quality all its own" so high rates of fire, but less effective at actually killing things. I suspect the same would be true here, but if you caught the enemy out in the open, this would do a number.

Rounding out the squad, the troopers:



Standard Fantasian troopers armed with spray-n-pray PPSH and a bandolier of Gauss Grenades. Not as heavily armored as the troopers of other races, the Fantasians are faster and they do get the lead down-range in a hurry. Honestly, they're probably better suited to open battlefields where they have more room to maneuver. Still, I love my little alien Commies.

Finally a couple of photos comparing paint jobs:





So we have power armor and troopers. The figures on the far right were painted by my friend Chris who got me (back?) into miniatures gaming in college. I don't think Chris actually won a Golden Demon, but he has placed in several GD competitions so he was the gold standard of painting we all aspired to emulate. Eventually I figured out that was a mug's game and that I should be looking to paint figures well enough to please me and get stuff rolling on the gaming table.

The figure in the middle were all painted by me a year or two out of college I believe. A basic three-color scheme with a hint of inking and that was pretty much it. Still, I've got three squads of those troopers waiting to prove Fantasian superiority.

And obviously, the figures on the left are the ones I just did. I went all in on the Russian theme and used appropriate colors. There were washes, highlights, and decals. The overall effect is more muted (though I'm not opposed to more colorful sci-fi minis), but I do like how everything came out. I was even able to do a bit of detail work that didn't leave splotches all over everything.

So that was my little Legions of Steel project. It was a lot of fun and I'm kinda hankering to see if I can score any more figures off eBay or something. I am also reminded of just how nice those minis were. Not too much flash, weighty metal, fun designs...it's really too bad those designs went out of print. Nothing new on the horizon, although I've got some small projects left in lead mountain. I also have a heap of plastic WWII vehicles that need some sort of paintjob, but I need to track down some Army Painter spray paints in appropriate armor colors. We'll see what happens.

later
Tom

Far Future Little Dudes

Hey,

So a year ago I got really interested in Gates of Antares by Warlord Games. I liked the figures. I basically liked the games system it was built on (Bolt Action) so I picked up the starter box.

Then I read through it and I was reminded why sci-fi rulesets are so problematic for me. Each race uses a different technology (or a different application of the same technology) to do stuff. But in the crucible of war, especially between two forces of relatively equal technical sophistication, either one type of technology would turn out to be better (a laser gun is always better than an automatic rifle) forcing both sides to use the same tech or there'd be no functional difference between them (so both laser gun and automatic rifle would be the same stats-wise from the game's perspective). This means there are potential balance issues and, of course, you're locked into a particular manufacturer's minis (unless you proxy them). I dunno...I got it and then kinda lost interest.

But I had a pile of plastic and felt like the minis were interesting enough to paint up so over the past couple of months, I have been. Let's look at what I've done.

First up, we have the forces of the Ghar, vicious little goblin-like creatures that wrap themselves in powerful, slightly unstable battle suits and wade in for the kill. You get six the in the starter kit:



These battle suits come in two configuration. You have the Scourer Cannon:





For close-in work, you've also got a group equipped with a plasma claw:



The fact that a power claw is a viable choice for a military force, kind of underscores my point about wonky sci-fi rulesets. I'm not saying that close combat won't be a feature of combat in the future, but no one's going to have major formations of guys equipped with a can opener. Maybe if you're fighting in a space unfriendly to projectiles such as a ship in space. But then, assuming the suit fits in the hallways, you're not likely to think a plasma-powered claw is a good idea either. Still...they look pretty cool, I do admit.
So that's the evil aliens. How about the humans?



These are the basic Strike Troopers for the Concord (human) force. Each squad is composed of five guys that includes a leader and a heavy weapons trooper with plasma lance:



And three Strike Troopers:



But because this is the far future, these squads get some robotic assistants (and this, by the way, is one of the things that really drew me to the game initially, most forces have or can have various helper drones). These primarily consist of Spotter Drones helping to find enemies and direct fire:



Your squad can also pick up some heavier Combat Drones with a plasma cannon for a little more support:



Oh and the second one on the left has a subverter matrix to hijack enemy drones (and again, this cyber-war component was another draw to this game for me).
Anyway, a typical strike squad will have the troopers and their spotter drone along with a combat drone and its personal spotter drone:



A rather nice looking group even if I do say so myself.

I took this opportunity to try and practice a couple of different painting techniques. In particular, I normally use a dip shader to shade/shellac the mini with maybe a hint of highlighting after. Here, I used some colored shades (black and green) and then tried harder to do more highlighting afterwards. I need to work with this technique a bit more, but I am pleased at the way all these guys came out. 

The Ghar probably could've used a bit more highlighting to brighten them up a bit, but again, it all came out pretty well.

This was also the first time I tried painting figures on flight stands. Honestly, I should've white glued the drones to a stick, painted them on that and then transferred them to the clear flight stands, but I was feeling lazy and masking the flight stand worked out pretty well.

The biggest experiment was detailing the lenses. The Ghar suits in particular have those glowing blue plasma cores and a face full of lenses. Usually, I paint those kinds of things black (or one other color) and let it go at that. I still can't paint eyes to save my life. But this time, I wanted to give the lenses a shot and I'm really happy with the way it all turned out. I'm hoping to keep working on these detail bits and improving those a bit. It doesn't take much and it really makes the model pop.

Anyway, these guys are unlikely to hit the table (at least not in a game of Gate of Antares) but I'm glad I got them painted. I got to practice a few different techniques and I really do enjoy painting these little dudes even if I'm not a Golden Demon.

Next up: a blast from the past.

later
Tom

A Big Little Dude

Hey,

 So it's been quite some time since I last got any projects to the painting bench. Trying to sell the house meant everything was packed up. Now that things have settled down a bit, we can get on with some long-overdue projects.

 I'm in a gaming group that cycles through RPGs/GMs and last summer we started a game of Shadowrun 5th ed. We stopped after one or two sessions because the math involved in trying to work out whether or not your shot hit someone was so cumbersome it wasn't fun anymore. So that went on hiatus but we're going back to it and this time we're using GURPS as the sub-system to run it on. Of course, I always like to have a mini for my games, especially ones where the position matters. Not much in the way of Cyberpunk Trolls out there. This model by Reaper (Caine, Cybertroll #50287) was pretty much the only thing that fit the bill. So I picked him up, started him, put him down when the game went on hold and only just now have resurrected him to finish off the paint job.

 Here he is, front and back:
 



Pretty standard fair for me. Base colors, dip shade, and a bit of highlighting. I also found a bunch of "shell casing" miniatures that I clipped, painted and glued to the base. The casings aren't "to scale" with the mini-gun, but it would've been a real pain to clip, paint, and glue the smaller casings and this makes him look like more of a bad-ass anyway. The good news is that I'm also painting up some more figures so hopefully this blog will see some life again this year.

later
Tom