Rogue Trooper: Nort Infantry II

Here is the second squad of Mongoose Nort Infantry...

The only difference to the first squad is that I snipped off the squad leader's pointing arm and repositioned it down by his side.

Looking forward to the Souther infantry now, hopefully they won't be too long in ariving...

Painting Target: 16/1000

Rogue Trooper: Nort Infantry I

I finished the first squad of Nort Infantry this lunchtime. These are the new Mongoose miniatures for their Rogue Trooper game, part of a much delayed Kickstarter. Though they took a long time to get here, they are very nice figures.

The uniform is slightly different than the one Nort released many moons ago with Rogue and a Souther, the most noticeable difference being the knee length not thigh length boots.

Despite this I stuck to the same "Soviet" style paintjob, block painting, dipping, then painting a highlight top layer. They won't win any prizes, but they will look ok on the tabletop.

Lighting permitting I hope to finish the second squad later today.

Painting Target: 8/1000

Rogue Trooper: Nort to Post...

Hurrah! I managed to get some painting done at lunchtime and I was hoping that I might grab some time in the afternoon to finish the first of my two Nort infantry squads for Rogue Trooper. Unfortunately after almost a week of great sunny weather, today was as dark as sin and by 2pm it was almost pitch black outside - so much for natural painting light!

I only have the bases to do and the lenses on their masks so hopefully tomorrow should see the first finished figures of 2015! In the meantime I grabbed this image of a green of one of the forthcoming Souther troopers, which hopefully Mongoose will be releasing soon...

This Kickstarter has been bedeviled with delays and problems, but is slowly getting there. Matt Sprange has posted that due to the delays we'll be getting some freebies figures that didn't get unlocked during the campaign, which is cool. Hopefully 2015 is the year of the Rogue!

Rogue Trooper: The Further Adventures of...

Today has been a day of converting and undercoating, with two squads of Rogue Trooper Norts, a section of 28mm WW2 Hungarian light infantry, one ArcWorlde Jungle Troll and four modern 20mm Soviet infantry all sitting on the workbench, covered in black paint.

The arrival of the Rogue Trooper Norts from Mongoose has co-incided with my reading two new graphic novels set in the world of Rogue - Rogue Trooper: Last Man Standing and Jaegir.


Rogue Trooper: Last Man Standing is IDW's reboot of the GI's story and only lasted four issues before being cancelled. With such a history I was not expecting much, but it isn't too bad and has some interesting ideas in. The only downside is the poor redesign of the GI helmet which looks naff (and is not shown on the cover).

Jaegir is very different to the previous Rogue universe fare chronicling the adventures of Nort officer Kapiten-Inspector Atalia Jaegir in a detective adventure in Nort society. without spoiling anything is is very good and far superior to Last Man Standing, despite the limited military action. If you enjoyed the old Rogue Trooper stories, you will like this.

Rogue Trooper: Genetic Infantrymen

The first white metal models from the Mongoose Rogue Trooper Kickstarter arrived the other day and haven fallen woefully behind on other Kickstarters I have resolved to keep on top of this one, painting stuff up as it arrives.

The three GI's have been sculpted by Gary Morely and, as you can see above, fit nicely in with the one that was released in the Judge Dredd range. In deed, the models are better sculpted and have details such as the biochip on the las-rifle sculpted on (I had to paint it on the original).

I used the same base paint, dip, highlight approach I did earlier this year and it works well enough for wargames figures (the blown up pictures show the roughness of the technique but they look fine in real size).

Mongoose have shared pictures of half the Nort infantry squad on the Kickstarter so hopefully not too much longer before we get another fix of Nu-Earth goodness...

Painting Target: 459/1000

Rogue Trooper: Nort Hammerfire Pillboxes II

Here are the remaining four Nort pillboxes, these with the numbers slightly converted due to the number 9 issue mentioned yesterday...

I have made substantial progress on the three new Mongoose Genetic Infantrymen so hopefully they will be finished this evening or tomorrow lunchtime.

Painting Target: 456/1000

Rogue Trooper: Nort Hammerfire Pillboxes I

After many delays Mongoose's Rogue Trooper Kickstarter has begun to deliver the goodies. Oddly the first delivery was something that didn't get unlocked in the funding, the Nort Hammerfire Pillboxes set...

The eight models are one piece resin castings with separate white metal weapons, two each of a Firebeam, Rotary Cannon, Missile Launcher and Barrage Mortar. I finished half of them today...

Whilst the models are very nice, Mongoose have dropped the ball somewhat. The pillboxes all have individual numbers (see picture below) whereas the model comes as a number 9. I appreciate that it would not have been cost effective to produce eight differently numbered models but surely the best option would have been to produce a model number 8 which would have made converting the numbers to 0 to 9 all the easier?

Painting Target: 452/1000

Rogue Trooper: Nort Infantryman

The "bad guys" in Rogue Trooper are the Norts, a human power bloc with a heavy Soviet concept influence. Accordingly I used a Russian palette when painting the Nort, block painting, dipping then highlighting as previous.

I was not sure on the boots and gauntlets and had originally planned to do then a dark brown, but re-reading the first Rogue Trooper stories, whilst the art is black and white, they appear to be a black leather. Whatever, they provide a better contrast to the main brown uniform.

I did tweak the base this time, I've kept the groundwork the same, Black Grey drybrushed Buff, but painted the base edge London Grey which seems to work better than Black Grey.

2014 Painting Target: 103/1000

Rogue Trooper: Souther Infantryman

The radioactive and chemical wasteland of Nu-Earth requires all troops (other than the modified Genetic Infantrymen) to wear full protection on the battlefield and this Souther trooper is equipped accordingly.

Uniform colour schemes for Nu-Earth are very few and far between so I decided to use the same Vallejo Reflective Green I used on Rogue's helmet and backpack for the Souther NBC suit. As with the GI he was block painted, dipped and then highlighted. I painted the visor the same Dark Sky Blue as Rogue's flesh to provide some additional themed link.

I'm quite happy with the end result, the scheme is very quick and simple to paint so when Mongoose start shipping the Southers, they shouldn't take long to get ready for some tabletop action...

2014 Painting Target: 102/1000

Rogue Trooper

Last year I pledged towards Mongoose's Rogue Trooper Kickstarter, I have always loved the Nu-Earth stories and thought it would make for a great skirmish game. Unfortunately the Kickstarter has been bedevilled with problems and Mongoose are getting a kicking for it. In retrospect they may have been a bit optimistic launching this so soon after the Dredd one which they had not finished shipping stuff out on and to be fair they have been let down by the same sculptor who let me down with the Geheimkrieg miniatures.

However things appear to be moving, photos of greens have been seen so fingers crossed 2014 will be the Year of the Rogue!

Ironically the Dredd Kickstarter included a set of Rogue Trooper miniatures comprising of Rogue, a Souther Trooper and a Nort and these arrived recently. I'm not sure how compatible these will be with the eventual releases but I decided to slap some paint on the three figures starting with the blue-skinned Genetic Infantryman himself.

I tried the block paint, dip, then highlight paint approach to speed things up and think the result is reasonably good. I'm not sure on the base effect, I want to do something different for the radioactive wasteland of Nu-Earth and have drybrushed Buff over Black Grey. Not sure on this but it will do until something better suggests itself.

2014 Painting Target: 101/1000

Rogue Trooper Kickstarter Underway and Funded

Mongoose's Kickstarter for their Rogue Trooper Miniatures Game is underway and the basic level already funded. Of course the detail is in the stretch goals with projects like this and as a fan of the blue-skinned GI every since he burst onto the pages of 2000AD I shall be watching them with keen interest.

The only question now is what level to pitch in at?!

Judge and Rookies

This lunchtime I polished off the final bits of work on the first of my Judge Dredd Kickstarter miniatures, Judge Dekker and two Rookie Judges.

I found researching Judge uniforms to be as arduous as Napoleonics, a situation made worse by the lack of a Justice Department Uniforms 2099 to 2135 from Osprey!

Not only are there various artistic differences between the artists who have drawn the series over the decades and uniforms changes (especially for Rookies), even the colour of the uniform ranges from black to royal blue! In the end I went with Carlos Ezquerra's black uniform, after all, he designed the character so his version should be the most accurate!

Actually I made a mistake with these particular miniatures. Not appreciating they would be in the Justice Department II box in the Kickstarter I purchased them as singles so have neded up with duplicates. However I have converted the extras to give me some more miniatures variants and they are next on the painting table.

Lurgy 1 Miniatures 2

Returning from Paris with somekind of Gallic lurgy I have been confined to barracks, annoyingly missing out at a music festival I had tickets for in Leicester yesterday and the Reveille wargames show in Bristol today...

However, in between horrendous bouts of sneezing, sniffing and coughing I have taken the opportunity to sneak out and do a little bit of painting for my forthcoming Judge Dredd project (the first boxes of which arrived on Friday).

The first figure is a Heroclix DC Super-Adaptoid converted to be Johnny Falcone from the 2000AD series Marauder (don't worry if you haven't heard of it, there was only one series back in 2009). It was a fairly simple conversion using a bit of Liquid Green Stuff and a pretty distinctive looking miniature.

The second is a female with gun which I think came from Alternative Armies in the eighties. I had planned to use her as the beautiful but deadly Angelina in some Stainless Steel Rat 28mm adventures but have never been really happy with the face. I added a Green Stuff mini-skirt and painted her up in a generic SF fashion so she can be anything from a gang member, some Mega-City socialite's bodyguard or Wally Squad Judge.

Hopefully I can see off this cough and finish some Zulus!