Rocket Lessons, Part the Second

Do as I say, not as I do.  I did as I do, and it was a mistake.  So from here on out, I will do as I should have done and would have done, if I had somebody making these mistakes for me the way I'm making them for you.

I'm still convinced that these ladders, made from zip-ties, are going to look great; however, they could have looked great with a lot less effort if I was a bit smarter about things.  Instead of building and then painting, I really should have painted and then built.  

I cut my ties and glued them onto the structure, and that forced me to hand paint each of these little devils.  That took a really long time.  I should have painted them matte-black and then glued them to the walls, it would have meant an extra five minutes to prime them separately from the tower, but would have saved me the four hours of hand painting.  It also would have meant a lot less black smearing around the edges of the ladder.

There is a fix for the smearing.  I just have to mix my acrylic paint to the exact same shade as the tan primer, and then spend more time carefully edging the ladders to cover the smears.  It's not perfect, and it takes time out from other projects, but at least it's a solution.

Who Is Number One?

Notre Dame, for the next month at least.  But on my table, this warboss is number one:

That power sword turned out pretty good.

The 28mm grenade becomes a big frackin' bomb at this scale.

Sporc Boyz

Quick update with some painted GZG Space Mercenaries.  Brummie pointed out that they look more like the Mangalores from Fifth Element than orcs, but let's be honest here.  Mangalores are just orcs by a different name.  Big, green, ugly warriors? You could call those ugle mugs Cutieponies and they'd still be space orcs.

Meet the crew of the White Fist.  The numbers are there for record keeping purposes.  I'm toying with the idea of putting together a boarding action skirmish game built off the Necromunda engine.

And the heavies.  The guy in the middle is the one with the Imperial Guard breather.  Turned out better than I'd hoped.

So these are my first 15's and they aren't half bad.  I made a few mistakes, and need to develop some new techniques for these guys.  Mostly, what I've done for 10mm and 28mm works, but this size presents some unique challenges.  It's like the same language, but a different dialect.  

Kind figured - that's why the leaderorc was saved for last.

Cheese it Boys, It's the Copse!

This looks like your normal wargame tree stand.  Art posterboard cut into a circle, a few dollar store plastic trees, some rocks, sand, and paint, and it's an instant forest.  In my world it becomes a low-cost oxygen generation machine.  This is designed to fit right into the heart of the spaceship, as seen in the third photo below.

Damn that looks good if I do say so myself.  The small stand of trees will be glued in place once the ship is painted.  Gluing it in place right now will just make it harder to paint the rest of the ship, so that is just going to have to wait.  Note that the whole spaceship has been primed at this point, a nice rich creamy almond color.  It took almost a full can of primer, but the whole she-bang is primed and ready for...more primer?

Yep.  The color is great, but the finish is gloss - the kind of gloss that won't hold the craft store paint on hand.  That means it needs a full coat of clear flat sealer before I can really start in on the painting.  Whoops. Ah well, one more coat won't hurt, and since this color really is perfect for the ship, it's well worth the extra step.

Meditank Complete

Wampas got you down?  Spent the night inside a Taun Taun?  Maybe Dad just hacked off your lightsabre arm.  Whatever has you down, this little number will fix you right up. Filled with the finest nano-enhanced bio-regenerative slime, this medical tank is a must have for all deep spacers.

This is a case of making a virtue of necessity.  For the life of me, I couldn't get the dark green paint to take.  After five coats, it still looked really streaky.  So I rolled with it.  Bright green paint on the bottom darkens towards the top, and all those places where the paint looks lighter now look like an extension of the flare effect of the slime inside the tank.  A splash of yellow brightens the piece and makes the bottom look even brighter.

Sporcs!

Ground Zero Games makes these spiffy little figures they call "Sci-Fi Mercenaries" or somesuch, but they're really space orcs.  We're gonna go with the 'black primer/white drybrush" method on these bad boys.  As my first 15mm figures, I'm not sure how well it's going to work, but it's hard to mess up space orcs.

Already I'm reminded of the benefits of the bigger scale.  It's so much easier to modify and customize figures.  That sporc warlord now holds a knife taken from an (28mm) Imperial Guardsman.  In its owner's hands it is a small knife; in this guy's hand its a great big powercutlass.  These sporcs are going to be the pirates of the Aboxverse, so he's gotta have a cutlass.

Here's another quick customization.  The gasmask on this guy is another plastic piece from the Imperial Guard sprue.  It's just the teeniest bit off-kilter, but it'll do.  These little touches give the heavies a bit more variety.

Last but not least, the grunts of the sporc-pirate raiders.

First Fifteens

Remember that Silent Running gag I pulled a couple of days ago that nobody really understood because Joan Baez sings a lot of songs about trees and that movie is pretty obscure and older than me and I'm no spring chicken my own self and the post had no context other than a bog standard stand of trees?

Yeah, well, now I've got a couple of Silent Running-esque robots to go with the 'space forest'. (For those of you for whom Pokemon is a golden oldie, I'm talking about the two bots in the middle.)  Only two drones means that those guys in the middle must be Huey and Duey, plucked from their ship centuries after poor old Louie died in the rings of Saturn. In the Aboxverse Bruce Dern died treeless and alone with nothing to hug back on a paved clean Earth.  Poor bastard.

The other two bot styles should be obvious.  My daughters have each called dibs on painting the duplicate models.  Which is awesome.  Can't wait to see what they come up with for them.