It's like Christmas in August!

So today the delivery guy dropped off what may be must last serious game purchase in a while. My shiny new copy of AE Bounty and a box of Wargames Factory Shock Troopers. I'm not normally one to pick up things brand new to the market but like many burnt out fans of a certain company and game who will remain nameless I was eager for some new Sci-Fi gaming alternatives. Something less Gothic and more space opera. :) Although you could argue that the Shock Troopers are kinda Gothic at least they aren't dripping with spiky bits and skulls.

The first thing I did was un-box the Shock Troopers. The pictures on the web do not do them justice. They are solidly in the 28-30mm category. Not too big or too small. Just about average in size and they look quite compatible with many of the other Sci-Fi lines. I was concerned about this because I had picked up a package of Wargames Factory Zombies a while back and felt they were under scale compared to most of the lines I use. The box comes with six sprues that each have three troopers and a ton of options.

Just check out all these heads. A couple of helmet options, several gas mask heads. A sergeant head with a side cap and even one head with just hair. There is also the alien head option which looks very Cthulhu inspired.

Here is a shot of two sprues from both sides. I like the level of detail Wargames Factory achieved on this set. Seems pretty crisp and comparable with some of the better multi part plastics out there.

I haven't really had a chance to read the AE Bounty book. I'm writing this blog entry perhaps 45 minutes after the box hit my door step. The book however looks nice. It's got full color illustrations and several nice shots of miniatures from the AE Bounty line although the game makers stress that you can use these rules with any minis and any setting. Darkson Designs do provide a setting for the rules and their miniatures which seems interesting and well thought out but the rules are designed to be generic. I've very excited to see how this game plays out and I hope to have a battle report and better review in a couple of days.

Venture Star Prospecting Company: Team 1 painting WIP

I started painting up Team 1 last night and I think they are turning out pretty good despite the crappy base cote. These guys are basically NPC mooks so they aren't getting my best painting effort. In fact I'm going try a new speed painting technique with these guys. I plan to give them a light wash of medium brown after I finish highlighting them and then I'm going to do a dark glaze in the deepest recesses by hand to add some contrast.

Stupid painting mistakes or how to ruin hours of converting.

This is Missouri in August. The heat index today is suppose to hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is insanely high. My garage is even hotter and more humid than the outside. These are not good conditions to spray paint in. In fact they are almost the worst. So after spending a good deal of my Sunday converting these guys I managed to just about ruin them in less than an hour trying to base cote them in really bad conditions. To top it off I grabbed a can a paint I only use for terrain. Although in my defense the terrain I painted with it yesterday came out dead smooth. I thought "hey this will be fine for painting some NPC type minis I don't plan to go all out on anyway".

Man was I wrong. These guys came out really rough. Almost unpaintable and there really isn't much I can do about it. With the kind of converting I did they would be hard to strip and I'm not a big fan of stripping plastics. I feel like and idiot since I've been painting for almost 25 year and this is a pretty newb type mistake.

I'm going to try using some GW foundation paint and probably put it on a little thicker as a base cote than I normally would. Hopefully that will salvage these guys enough to be playable. I've done similar things in the past when I had this issue. It's not ideal but these aren't the most important figs on my table and I didn't expect them to look top notch.

I guess we'll find out.

Venture Star Prospecting Company: Team 1

I started working on crew members for the Venture Star Prospecting company. This is Team 1 most converted from Game Workshop plastics. It is kind of hard to make military looking miniatures look like civilian workers but I'm going to paint these guys up in bright orange pants and jackets with blue t-shirts which should help sell the fact. I went ahead and decided to give them weapons because as prospectors and not regular miners they are more likely to be in dangerous and contested areas.
Ideally I would rather have specialized miniatures for this project but I don't really have the money at the moment to go out and buy whatever I want so I'm trying to make due with what I have.

Black Dog Nose Art

Last night I finished the "nose art" for the Black Dog. I chose a cartoon Doberman because I felt the long narrow nose of the ship reminded me of a Doberman muzzle.

Next I'll be painting the name of the ship either under the cockpit or just above and to the right of the nose art.

Venture Star Prospecting Company

One of the first things I'm going to build for my spaceport/colony project is a prospecting facility. My first thought was to do a full blown mining operation but I decided that would be far too involved and costly at this stage. A small prospecting company doesn't need nearly as much equipment or crew members to be viable.

Here are a few of their vehicles. The large mole machine is a G.I. Joe “Cobra Mole Pod” which I picked up at Wal-mart for about $15.00. I've seen them on-line for a bit cheaper than that but of course you have to pay shipping. I also don't mind spending a bit more on the mole machine because it will be kind of the centerpiece for the whole operation.

The dump truck and excavator are from a “construction” set I picked up at the Dollar General store for about $8.00. It also came with a flat bed semi truck and a couple smaller bobcat type machines. These are not particularly exotic or sci-fi looking but the background of my space colony project is based on our solar system and a future Earth so it's somewhat more practical. I plan to have some hover vehicles but the wheel works quite nicely especially for heavy equipment like this. I feel future Earth style sci-fi should have familiar elements and these will also be able to do double duty in zombie games or other modern games. The cab on the dump truck is a bit smaller than I like but I think it will work out. I plan to pick up one more construction set so I will have two trucks and excavators.

I plan to build a base facility with an office/lab, barracks, a vehicle garage, and small smelting facility. The employees will consist of 10-12 people including crew, administration, and scientist.

Finished Shots of the "Sky Sweeper" and some other stuff.

I put the finishing touched on the "Sky Sweeper" a couple of days ago. Here is a shot of it in a Star Wars setting. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It is converted from a 3 inch scale G.I. Joe toy if you missed my previous postings about it.

Here is another shot with a couple of my other finished toy ship conversions. This terrain is some stuff I made years ago for a Star Wars skirmish game I was working on with a friend based on the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG rules and Necromundia.

I just thought it might be a good time for me to post a pic of my current ship collection; finished, unfinished, and work in progress. I have a few others that will be set up as wrecks and junk ships.