I love the smell of napalm in the morning ... 15mm Aérospatiale LAMA Heliopter

I finished this helicopter to use in my Modern Africa games.  Now it is an Aérospatiale Alouette II Heller Kit, but I wanted some guns or rockets on it, so I added the rocket pods.  The HAL Lancer is a variant on the Aérospatiale LAMA, so that was what I attempted to build.

Here is the kit.

Here is the actual helicopter.

I will say that it is very light, which is nice in building a flight stand.  The problem is that it is a model, which means fragile, not to be touched, etc.  I broke it in three places, just attempting to paint it.  I ended up having to magnetize the blades after I broke them off.

Here is the finished kit.  I should have left the cockpit detached to paint on its own, but this was a bit of a learning process for me.

Size comparison.

The flight stand, a little over nine inches of acrylic rod in a wine cork, glued to a washer.

Here is the finished product.

A detailed shot of the base.  It has 2 large washeres for weight under the cork.

Blue background with some infantry.

Landed, with some mercenaries.

Here it is broken down into its components.

Here is the African Gruntz card.  We will see how the stats work out.

Keep on Truckin ... 15mm Truck with ZPU-1 & DShK

I finished up a 15mm flatbed truck.  I think it is a 2.5 ton Old Glory miniature with a Peter Pig ZPU-1 team, and a Battlefront DShK.  I added caps to the crew so they fit in with the Peter Pig Hardened Militia that I have already painted.  I also added the DShK and made a few extra boxes of ammo for the ZPU-1.

Here is what I was attempting to create.

Here are the finished conversions.

Here is the truck without weathering.  I primed black, airbrushed a base coat of brown, built up the desert look.  Here are the paints I used.

Here is the weathered look.

Here is the final product.

  Working on a helicopter, and I still need to get a post with the professionals.

Here is the Gruntz Africa card.

The Warlord's Boy Band.

I finished 10 stands of 15mm Peter Pig boy soldiers.  It is a bit difficult to notice the size difference without an adult sized figure next to the boy soldiers.  With that in mind, many of the stands have a comparison figure on the stand, so 1 adult/teen with 3 boy soldiers.

The Rebel Mini with the yellow shirt gives a size perspective.  I like the three Peter Pig poses, but some additional variety would have been nice, baseball caps. RPGs etc.

When I painted these, I attempted to mix the shirts, pants and hats to get a civilian look like the picture below.

The shot below has four boy soldiers and no adult sized figure.

Here are two group shots.  I am pleased with how they turned out.

I have finished painting about 20 stands of professionals/elites, I just have to base them.  I hope to have them up in a week or so.

War Chariots! 15mm Peter Pig Technicals

Here are six 15mm Peter Pig Toyota Pickups miniatures for use in modern Africa games.  The Peter Pig gunners only come in 3 poses and 2 of 3 are firing a .30 caliber machine gun.  I did not find any pictures of technicals with mounted .30s, so it seems strange that Peter Pig even made them.  To fix the problem I mounted some Battlefront (Vietnam) .50 caliber machine guns and a Battlefront (Flame of War) Russian DShk.

According to Wikipedia, an African warlord's power could be measured on how many technicals he had in his "army".  Six seems like a 1st level warlord, but I hope to paint some more in the future.  He might then be a respectable warlord.

They do seem to be mostly Toyota Pickups in the Google images.

Here is a scale comparison.

Here is the complete Peter Pig gunner with the .50.

This the a Peter Pig gunner that I cut the .30 cal off and added the .50 cal.

The Russian DShk.

And last a group shot with some infantry.  I do hope to get some pictures of them in a game this month.  I am working on some professionals/elites right now.