ESF Strike Force Finished!

I finished up this Earth Security Force Strike Force today.  I know it's small but I don't yet have all the models for this force and as it stands I think this is still over a 1000 point No Limits force.  I'm pretty happy with the way it is turning out so far.  The drones were a pain to get right.  I scratch built their stands then had to epoxy them to them.  It was hard getting the epoxy to set fast enough.  
Next up I plan to add a squad of robotic troopers.  I'll probably go with 6-8 robots for the squad.

Closeup of Ghost Troopers and Wraith Battlesuit WIP: Solar Empires

I'm working on more stuff for my Earth Security Force.  This is a Wraith battlesuit.  It is made from a M.A.R.S. robot toy and is almost five inches tall.  The base is actually some kind of stop plate to keep doorknobs from breaking holes in drywall.  I picked it up at Lowels for two and a half dollars and it is takes paint just fine.  It's solid plastic and looks just like a large model base from GW when painted black.  They also had a larger diameter one that would be good for a larger mecha model.  

Here is a close up shot of one of the Ghost squads.  I'm only adding it here because I got a few request for a larger shot.

Earth Security Force Ghost Troopers

Probably the most feared unit in the entire Solar System the "Ghost Troopers" of the Earth Security Force are highly skilled special operations jump troopers and the only living members of the ESF.  Like everything else associated with the Earth the origins of the Ghost Troopers is a highly guarded secret.  Some speculate that they are all clones or highly advanced androids and it is almost certain that they are cybernetically and or genetically enhanced.  Each trooper wears a holographic suit and a helmet armed with a pair of mandible blasters for close combat.  Regular troopers carry a light rail gun and each squad is supported by a trooper armed with an advanced scatter laser.  Each trooper is also equipped with a jet pack and are trained to be experts in their use.

Heavy Tank for M.S.S.R. WIP

I've had this Batman toy tank for a while now are recently picked up another copy of it at a Big Lots.  It converts from a tank to a flying machine but oddly enough in tank form it has no weapons.  I've been looking for something to do to it for a while now when I spotted some toy military trucks at Dollar General with missile racks for only $3.00.  A little kit bashing later with some other bits from my bits box and this is what I came up with.  Fortunately I have enough bits to make the other tank as well.
We are going to use this tank for our Martian Soviet Socialist Republic force as a heavy fire support vehicle.  I just have a few more details and a paint job to add.
 

Wolfhound Infiltrators build.

 I spent part of the weekend putting together a few more figures for my Wolfhound Freikorps army.  The assassin is a Reaper miniature with a SMG from the Wargames Factory Male Zombie Survivors boxed set.  The Jägers are built from Wargames factory Shocktroopers using the flat cap head for every member of the squad.  They will be infiltrators for the army serving as scouts but they will have veteran stats so they will be more like Rangers or Commandos than Scouts.

I used entirely too much kit for these guys and used entirely too many kits to scavenge the pieces.  I even scratch built two sets of grapple lines out of green floral wire.  They are kind of ruff and I considered ordering some better bits to customize these guys but I decided I should stick with some stuff I already have because my game budget seems to get tighter every month.
These guys will probably be a pretty expensive squad since each member has a rifle, pistol, and hand to hand weapon as well as grapple lines but I think they will be effective.  They are also going to be a pain in the butt to paint.  I will probably paint their coats in some kind of Germanic looking camouflage.

Tanksgiving: Project Wrap Up!

Well I went a little over my deadline wrapping this up but I'm okay with that.  I managed to get 9 tanks and armored vehicles finished in one month for my Tanksgiving project and since I didn't start till the end of the first week of November and I just finished these at the end of the first week of December I'm still pretty happy with my progress.
I finished four vehicles for my Hell Knights Mercenaries bringing their vehicle total up to 13.  Three of the tanks are for my Wolfhound Friekorps which is my next big army project.  Two of them I just painted up as generic mercenary tanks for general use.

Tanksgiving update: Well Crap!

Well today didn't go as planned.  This is all the progress I made on my Tanksgiving marathon.  Not exactly what I had hoped for.  I just had too many things pop up today and I got too distracted with other task one of which I will detail tomorrow.

Tanksgiving Update: 5 Vehicle Mix!

I've been trying to finish up a few more tanks for my Tanksgiving marathon so I spent the last two days trying to build up several of my half finished projects.
My wife built the grey APC from the body of a cheap "Army Man" Patton tank.  We are going to be using it for the Wolfhounds.
The green 6x6 is from Secret Weapons Games and it is the only "kit" model I have done for this project.  It also cost about what the rest of the tanks in the project cost combined but it is a very nice model.  If I had the budget I'd buy at least a squadron.  I may pick up some more in the future.
The two smaller hover tanks in the front are based of a Matchbox toy.  These "Douglas" Medium Hover tanks are for my Hell Knights.  I already have one of these completed so this will bring me up to a full squadron.
The large hover missile launcher is a variation of my Landshark AFV called the "Hammerhead".  It is also for my Hell Knights.   It is built from a toy LAV-25 which came in a set from Dollar General and included the missile launcher as a tow behind weapon.  I simply converted it into a missile turret.
Hopefully I will get these painted by tomorrow night.

Tanksgiving Update: Two heavy tanks finished!

I finished these two tanks up today for my Tanksgiving Marathon.  This brings me up to four finished tanks.  Both are based on a $3.00 toy tank I picked up at the Dollar General store.  The green one is pretty much just a paint up and the camouflage one has had it's tracks removed and replaced with hover drives I scratch built from cheap razor handles.
Obviously the design owes a lot to my M1 Abrams MBT but it is a bit more narrow in design.
In my setting these tanks are produced by the same company.  The hover tanks obviously has less armor but greater speed.  The design designation will be the Laird MBT and Laird HHT respectively.  I've painted the hover tank up for my Hell Knights army with the company markings.  The tracked version I have painted up to be a part of a generic mercenary motor pool I am building so I have gone without giving it a company or national marking and have instead simply given it a name and number.
I intended to photograph these with some miniatures to show their scale.  They are pretty big.  Defiantly "heavy" tanks although they are not as big as the two Ligers I just finished. I'm happy with the way they turned out and they will likely be making an appearance in my campaign very soon.  

Tanksgiving Progress Report: Heavy Anti-Grav Tank built!

I've been working on converting this $3.00 Dollar General tank to a hover tank for the last couple of weeks and it is basically built.  Enough to show it off anyhow.  The underside is a bit of a mess so I'm probably going to do a bit more finish work on it.
The drive is made from cheap shaving razor handles also purchased at the Dollar Store for $1.00 per 12 pack.  I used 8 to build the drive.  I used the same system on my "Hobelar" light anti-grav tank also for the Hell Knights.
The tank is shown here with my Hell Knights Mercenaries who use anti-gravity or "hover" vehicles exclusively.  This tank will probably be designated the "Laird" and it will likely be the heaviest tank in the Hell Knights arsenal.  
Hopefully I will have it painted up and ready for the table in a day or two.

Tanksgiving Update: Wolfhound Super Heavies Finished!

Well my first two tanks for the Tanksgiving Marathon are finished!  I just finished up these Wolfhound "Liger" super heavy tanks for my Wolfhound Friekorps army.  Here you can see them both with a unit of Wolfhounds for scale.
I'm pretty happy with the way these turned out considering they are just $5.00 toys from the Dollar General store.  Hopefully the rest of my projects will go this smoothly.

Hell Knights Medium Hover Tank Finished!

 I finished the medium hover tank for my Hell Knights.  The model is converted from a Matchbox toy. The missile launcher is scratch built from different sized zip ties.  I have two other toys I've started converted so I will have a full tank squadron.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out and hopefully I'll have the other two assembled and painted shortly.

Medium hover tank for Hell Knights and two new Mecha toys!

 So I picked up three Matchbox tank toys over a year ago with bog clunky wheels and started messing around with one of them to try and turn it into a hover tank.  Here is the original thread. Progress went pretty slow on it but I finally finished it.  This was one of those projects that got put on the back burner for no particular reason.
The original toy had a fixed turret but I managed to fix that problem.  The turret still hangs up a bit on the pilots hatch but it won't really affect it's play ability and it's still much more useful than having a fixed turret.  I had to glue a piece of plastic pipe into the top turret and then I glued a piece of heavy cardboard under the turret hole with a hole in it to make the turret turn.  Nothing on the conversion was all that technical so I'm not sure why I kept putting it off.  It's going to serve as a medium hover tank for my Hell Knights army.

 I went out today and picked up two new Mecha models from the new Pacific Rim movie.  I know almost nothing about the movie but the toys looked like they had potential.  They both stand about 7.5 inches tall which puts them in about the right size for medium mecha in my setting.  I'm going to do some conversion on both of these models.  The extra arm on the red one will be turned into some kind of over the shoulder weapons mount and I will probably add some weapons to the blue one.  The models cost $19.95 each at Hastings which I thought was a pretty good value.
There are some down sides to these toys.  There seem to be made with quite a few vinyl parts which will make them difficult to paint without dealing with off gassing.  I think the Krylon "Fusion" paints may work the best.  They are a good selection when painting any plastic toy and they seem to have worked out fairly well when I have used them on similar projects.  Another issue is that they have very odd articulation.  It's likely I'll pick a pose and glue them into place anyway but it's still annoying.  They are also lacking in weapons so I will have to add a few to them.

I think they blue one has a striking resemblance to the Quasit Militia Mech from the Battletech setting.  I've been wanting to do some 28mm Battletech mechs so I may pick up another one or two for that purpose.

Hotwheels Batman "Bat" toy

I picked up this Hotwheels "Bat" speeder from Batman to use as an air speeder for my Hell Knights army.  The cockpit area is just barely large enough to be considered for a 28mm scale pilot but I may paint over it anyway and just use this thing as a kind of drone.  I think either would work reasonably well for this design.  One weird thing about the toy is that the army mounts are positioned asymmetrically which isn't so bad because they are clearly designed to be able to sweep back and forth to track targets.  It does come with a flying stand which is nice but it is awfully short for an air speeder type craft.  I will probably upgrade it eventually.

 Another thing about that model that is kind of strange are these roto blades on the bottom.  They are however made of soft plastic so they were easy to clip off.

This is a pretty good model as is.  It's a bit on the Iconic side of things but I think painting it up in Hell Knights cammo will make look different enough to make it work.  I may add a missile launcher above the cockpit areas to change it up a bit and add a bit of fire power but that's something I can do anytime or even as an upgrade.

Infinity Terrain Challenge: Apartment Building WIP

Last night I glued corrugated cardboard rectangles inside two of the plastic crates then I glued the crates together to make one apartment building.  I used Aleen's Tacky Glue which seems to have bonded fairly well.  I would suggest a tacky craft glue over a regular PVA glue or perhaps some wood glue for this.  The cardboard will provide a base for me to glue details on like doors, windows, and tech bits.  Normally I would try and make a building like this playable and use clear plastic for windows and add floors and doors but this is suppose to be a simple and cheap terrain project aimed at new players so I decided that would be too complicated.    

 I picked up a few more supplies at Dollar Tree.  Six plastic crates, some floral wire, and two packages of plastic hair curlers for bits.  This cost another $5.41 so I am now up to a grand total of $53.49 on the project so far.  I still want to pick up a package or two of ping pong balls but after this I think the rest of my budget will be paint.

 I glued some rectangles of poster board inside the green crates.  This will be a penthouse or equipment storage area on the roof of the apartment.

 I constructed the roof from the foamcore I picked up at Dollar Tree.  I left enough of the lip so I could position miniatures on the roof and give them some cover.

 Here is a shot of the whole building as it is right now.  I only have 3-4 hours of work in it so far and since this is my prototype I expect the others to go much faster.

Here is a closeup shot of the roof with my Ariadna.  I got a little close on the sides but they still fit just fine.  My goal is to get this building done tomorrow and also get the other apartment buildings to this level.

Infinity "How low can you go?" terrain challenge: Layout and stuff

 I'm working on the Layout of my main buildings for my infinity terrain challenge table.  I think I'm going to go with two factories instead of the strip mall The boxes I'm using just as a general guideline.  There will be streets and the factory yards will be fenced in and there will be a lot of things in them.  I'm also going to fence in a "parking area behind the workers dormitories and I'm going to have advertisements and planters running down the middle of the streets to break up those large kill zones.
 

Here is a shot of some of my minis next to the crates to show their scale.  Not all of the openings will be windows.  I'm going to block some of them off and add some tech bits and doors of course.

I picked up a couple packages of cheap razors and plastic cloths pins at the Dollar General for adding details.  They were each a dollar so it was about $4.20 with tax which brings my total up to $48.08.  That's almost half of my target goal and I still have some other expenses to look at.  Hopefully I'll stay on target.  

Infinity "How low can you go" terrain challenge. Supplies!

I've started my Infinity Terrain “How low can you go?” challenge and I'm already at $43.88 US For my supply cost. I do however have most of the things I plan to use for the table that I am not going to make from recycled junk. I'm trying to keep the terrain set under $100.00 and I hope to go lower if I can manage it. I'm going to need to leave some budget for some more paint and a few other bits.

I went to three stores today and this is how it broke down:

Lowe's: I picked up a 4'x8' sheet of 3/16^th inch masonite (MDF) board which they cut into two 4'x4' sections for $13.99. I am planning on using one section for my table top and one section for basing some of my other terrain elements and possibly for streets.

Walmart: I picked up four cans of cheap store brand spray paint. Two cans of primer grey cost $1.38 each and two cans of flat black cost $0.96 each. I also bought a package of cork tiles that cost $5.94 and some plastic canvas “Granny Grating” for $2.97. The total at Walmart with tax was $14.76.

Dollar Tree: Everything at Dollar Tree cost a dollar except the two sheets of poster board that cost $0.50 each so I'm not going to break down the prices. I picked up two sheets of poster board, two packets of alphabet and number stickers, eight plastic crates, and four sheets of foamcore even though I was only charged for three. My total cost was $15.13.

I'm going to use the foamcore to build a small factory or two and a three or four building strip mall as well as using it for other details on the crate buildings. If I can work it in I'm going to go for a small park as well.

As I pointed out I'm going for an Ariadna industrial city look. I'll probably draw from Russian sources for my inspiration.       

Infinity Terrain Challenge "How low can you go?"

I posted this terrain challenge on the Infinity terrain forum just a little bit ago.
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I was thinking about the recent thread “Terrain as a hindrance to new players?” which is about how hard it is to set up an economical table full of terrain and I was thinking that making a simple 4'x4' table full of terrain that is as economical as possible would be a good forum challenge.

If you would like to participate here are the rules:

Contest ends on the last day of November.

You must start with nothing. Not even a table surface. Pretend you are not a miniature gamer. No finished buildings or even a finished table top. No finished hills ect.

Track the cost of everything you spend putting the table together. You can use existing materials and bits if you can show the cost of those materials and bits.

Using free bits like recycled junk from packaging is perfectly acceptable and encouraged.

Use simple techniques. Please no resin casting or techniques requiring complicated tools. Exacto knives, rulers, tape, glues, paints and other easy to find and use tools are encouraged.

At the end of the challenge the table must be finished. Everything must be painted and ready to play on.

Post pics of your progress in this thread or link your progress thread or blog.

Starting Now! Good luck!

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Here is a link to my thread if you wish to participate:

http://www.infinitythegame.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=13786

In The Future There Will Be Robots!

I just wanted to show off some of the toys we have amassed for our Mecha project for Station 42.  I've already shown one of the mechs with the Titania Planetary Guard update.  Here are some of the others.  Many if not all of these will make and appearance in our "Station 42 War" campaign.
We will still be using "No Limits" as our rules which will make it easy to create stats for these models but we will also be adding several house rules and some new equipment which I will publish as the project progresses.  Eventually I would like to pick up some nicer models but for now we are using these to kind of test out our rule ideas.

Hell Knights Regulars Rifle Squad

I just finished assembling a Hell Knights rifle squad.  This is the third squad I have put together with the pig Iron heads which I chose for this army.  These guys take quite a while to assemble because I have to shave off all the Imperial symbols and fit the heads.  I'd say they take almost an hour each.
This squad I am going to paint as a squad of "regulars".  The other rifle squad I have painted and the one I have base coated are veteran squads.  In order to tell the difference I am going to base these in olive green instead of dark brown and I don't think I will be doing these with a camouflage pattern.  Their web gear and other equipment will stay the same color as the other squads which should tie them in.
Eventually I want to have a whole platoon of three Regular squads and three Veteran squads.  I have enough models to do one more rifle squad so I will have two squads of each until I can afford to pick up a couple more squads and at GWs prices that may be a while.