Defiance Marines came in today!

Well after a very long wait my Defiance USM....  ehh UAMC Marines finally came in.  This new game company had a lot of trouble getting these off this ground.  These Marines are their first offering and they came out months after their release date.  That wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that they took pre-orders in late November of 2011 with a release date of January 2012.  Well they kinda missed the mark and that made a lot of people angry.  Myself included. 

I pre-ordered.  I put down my own money up for these and had to wait quite a while longer than expected to get my product.  I certainly vented a bit about that on some of the forums I went to but I was surprised a bit about one thing.  A lot of people got really angry at Defiance about just about everything. 

However it seemed that the people who got the most upset were people who had not in fact put any money down on the pre-order.  It seemed some people were determined to hate these minis no matter what.  Again most of these people were not they people who actually pre-ordered.  Every complaint in the book was lodged against these minis by people who hadn't invested a dime.  They hated their design. They said their proportions were off.  They said they looked like shit because they were computer renders. A lot of people hated the helmets.  They even hated the fact that you got extra legs and arms.  I think a lot of them even hated the fact that the company was U.S. based.  Mostly the hate came from people with no money invested. 

In my opinion most of their complaints were complete bullshit.  They are certainly entitled to their opinions but that doesn't make their opinions any less bullshit. 

Most miniature companies are not Games Workshop or even Reaper.  Most of them are very small companies with very limited capitol.  I'm certainly not letting Defiance off the hook completely but sometimes a small business can't recover from set backs so easily.  People are used to big business in every day life.  They are used to prompt service without delays and big companies with deep pockets that can fix things much more easily than small companies. 

Now all bullshit aside I think these are nice minis.  A set of non-gothic, non-Nazi styled sci-fi troopers.  They are a good value too.  I'll post a better review when I get them together but I'm plenty happy to finally have these minis.  I'm planning on getting at least one more box to assemble as is and probably another box or two to assemble with some Pig Iron heads.   

Hell Knights Mech Build "The Guts"

I'm working on this Iron Man "Assault Armour" to use as a mech for my Hell Knights.  It's a really cool. toy and it only cost me about $20.00 U.S. which is way less than any similar game model would cost.  The biggest problem with the toy is that they middle of the torso and legs are basically hollow.  The idea is that you put the little Iron Man action figure inside the armour.  Well that's all good but it makes for a pretty silly looking mech.  What I needed to do was figure out a way to make the guts to fill out the torso and legs. 

I had some other considerations.  I plan to get several of these so I didn't want to use model kit bits because I only have just so many of them.  It would have looked really good but I would have had to have made the guts of each mech different or track down several model kits of the same kind which would have made this project much more expensive.  What I needed were cheap bits I could pick up almost anywhere.  I used a bottle cap to fill out the main part of the torso and a little weapon bit from the toy that hung under the arms and looked stupid.  The "gyro" is just a wooden barrel you can get from various craft stores or craft suppliers on line.  The leg structure is made from half a plastic cloths pin cut in half.  The nylon cord will by the myomer muscles I will wrap around the legs and inside the torso.  The network cable will be stripped of it plastic coating and the smaller wires will be used as wiring. 

I think this will go together pretty easily.  I'm going to paint the guts silver then give them a wash.  The wiring I am just going to give a wash.  Then I'm going to put the guts in after the mech is painted.  I think this will produce a much more real looking mech than just painting up the toy as is.

Oh and this is post 200 for my blog!  

Avengers toys for the Hell Knights

 Well I went ahead and picked up two of the Avengers Toys.  Here is a shot of the Iron Man "Assault Armour".  It's about 7 inches tall so I think it will make a nice light/medium sized mech.  The torso and legs are hollowed out so I'm going to have to come up with something to fill those gaps but I have some ideas already.  I've got the toy shown here with all the weapons but I'm only going to use a couple of them for the final version. 

The other toy I picked up was the Iron Man "Firestrike Assault Jet".  Apparently Iron Man likes to "Assault" things.  It does in fact come with some landing gear and an underbelly turret with a pair of really big guns.  I think this would be a great support VTOL for my Hell Knights for the Mech/Tank hunter role. 

Avengers Toys for converting to 28mm Sci-Fi vehicles.

 I recently picked up an Avengers Quinjet from Walmart to convert to a Sci-Fi drop ship.  I haven't done anything yet but since then there have been a number of cool Avengers toys released that could be useful for miniature gamers.  I hope to get another one or two of these ships to use as transports for my Hell Knights mercenary army. 

 These little VTOLs look really interesting.  I can't tell from the packaging if they have any landing gear but I can probably manage some if they don't.  I think these would be great for Shadowrun and a number of other Sci-fi settings.  I'm planning on getting at least two to use as air support units for the Hell Knights. 

 I'd like to get at least two or three of these "tanks" to use as self propelled guns for the Hell Knights. 

 My setting has Mecha in it but it's hard to find good robot and mech toys.  These look pretty good and I think with a little modification they would work nicely.

Most Robot toys are either too tall or two short but these look really good.  I think these would make good medium sized mechs.  I'm planning on getting one each for my Hell Knights mech forces but I'm going to change up the armaments so they don't look the same.  The little holes in the chest are for the figures heads to show through but I will be filling these. 

I hope to pick up one of each of the mechs and the tank and VTOL tonight after work.  This is one of those cases where I may still get in trouble for buying all this stuff even though I have a wargame wife but I think she will change her mind when she sees how cool they look. 

Hell Knights Scouts skin and hair WIP

I got the skin tones and hair done on the scouts.  Now I just have the weapons and bases.  I'm pretty happy with the way they are turning out. 

Hell Knights Scouts and Sniper WIP

I got the drybrushing done, blocked in the skin tones and applied the wash.  Now I have to highlight the skin and finished the details.  I really like this stage because it always feels like I'm almost done. 

Hell Knights Scout Squad and Sniper

I've been working on this squad for my Hell Knights mercenary army.  We are using No Limits for our rule systems and infiltrating squads can't be any larger than 6 models but I am also making these guys up as an Imperial guard army so these guys will just be used as a veteran squad for that version of the army. 
I'll be putting more up about the background of the army for my own setting soon.  These guys will soon see action in the Station 42 setting.