Small Scale Sci-Fi: Drone Army Progress

In the current spirit of 'getting on with stuff', here's a few photos of an old project now almost complete; namely the Small Scale Sci-Fi Drone Army made up of the 3mm AFVs by Germy available from GZG.

In line with my previous efforts, they are mounted up on 50x40mm artist's card bases backed with magnetic sheeting - the general idea is to produce a number of army factions on roughly company-sized unit bases, that will then battle it out under the auspices of some Homebrew rules.

Bases will be divided into a number of classifications, from Super Heavy through Medium to Light via Scout, Attack, Aerospace and Infantry, etc, giving a quick play basic system of combat. In theory, bases will be identifiable by the number and placement of the miniatures thereon, as much as by their size or appearance.

The only exception so far, in typical fashion of course, is my version of the Germy Cyber Tank, which is intended here as an Ogre-type vehicle, in the guise of the Drone controller unit.

Then again, I haven't yet sorted out how Aerospace units - VTOL, ground attack, shuttles, drop-pods will be based yet either......

The base colour is provided by some Homebase sample-sized matt emulsion named "Delicious", to give a sort of Martian dust look; I have a vague and somewhat experimental notion of using a playing surface that is not flocked or even coloured - so the unit bases themselves will be the only colouring - each faction sort of taking their background along with them as it were - not sure how much play this will actually have though, in the long term....

Moving on to one of my favourite notions when handling Sci-Fi, namely the all-scale 'mash-up', where mixing and matching various minis can provide some interesting effects - let's see the Drone scout machines alongside some 6mm USNC Hardsuit Infantry from GZG:

I think that they would make some pretty good mini-warbot type machines to accompany 6mm troops, kind of like some of the robots currently under development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIuRVr8z_WE&feature=related

Next, the Germy Cyber tank alongside a couple of items from Brigade Models in 6mm, the German Thrall Hover Truck and SAC Wildebeest Command APC:

Given the size of the Germy piece, it would certainly give most 6mm a run for it's money, if not an Ogre, then at least a pretty big mega-tank thingie:

My plan is to go back and flesh out some of the other factions for this project, namely the Alien Telosians and Krevlak, the Humanoid Mid-Tech Rimworlders and Federation - looking in particular to add in further units and make-over the somewhat sparse bases, and then do a couple of other factions that have a movie theme, then work on the rules themselves - so hopefully more to come on all of this in the near future.

Small Scale Sci-Fi Reboot: 2mm Drone Army

A re-visit to an old project now, thanks mainly to the Lead Mountain trade with David Crook of A Wargaming Oddysey, that enabled me to bulk out the available forces in teeny-tiny scale. These came in the form of some of the excellent 2mm minis designed by Jeremy 'Germy' Claridge, available from GZG.

Having had a look at some traditional Alien and Human protagonists previously, I thought it might be fun to have a go at an army of automatons or drones - I was recently re-enthused by the great work being done by Andrew Beasley and his 'Earth vs. the Flying Saucers' project:

http://2mmwars.blogspot.com/search/label/EVFS

His own Human armoured units had me reaching for the brush to do a necessarily basic, but I hope effective scheme to represent automated armour and support, that would be used to counter the heavier weapons and capabilities of an Alien enemy - sort of a 'quantity overcomes quality' type of strategy.

Germy's 2mm is, in spite of its diminutive scale, very clearly sculpted and has bags of character, without looking too cartoonish or overblown. A great example is the GMM10 Medium hover APC - I'm going to use it as a type of 'swarm' light vehicle - here in a couple of colour schemes, so I can do a sort of two-echelon army, brown and green:

Next up some support units - I did little more than the base colour, grey hover skirt outlines, and pick out the weapons; a rather skew-whiff attempt at a sensor window with red stripes over white stands as the marker of their homogeneity:

Moving on to the meat of the units, namely the GMM02 Heavy armour, which on my terms serves in a more medium role:

These are backed up by the GMM01 Super-heavy, probably closer to heavy for my purposes:

I reserve the moniker Super-heavy in this case for that other amazing sculpt from Germy, namely the GMM CYB1 Cybertank - I figure this army of diminutive drone vehicles will need a Drone Controller - it could even, in an Ogre style, be an artificial intelligence in itself, not necessarily crewed, but would obviously need to be much more hardcore than its tiny minions:

As you'll notice, I've made my own interpretation of the Cybertank - Germy's version can be found at the GZG website, but they kindly provide the whole in what is effectively kit form, with all the various turrets and weapons separate, allowing you to go wild with your own versions:

I threw in some plastic tubing from an ink pen, and a radar/comms dish from who knows where to mark its role as controller, oh and plenty of guns and of course the land-train style missile carriage to go along too:

It will be a while before I have time to get these guys based and furthermore re-boot the original small scale forces I did some time ago, but I thought a quick effort would encourage me to get some work in wherever I could - obviously the Cybertank is next on the list.

Just one slightly left-field idea occurred to me whilst I was working on these - the shape of the Heavy Tank in particular got me thinking.... a very quick and rough paintjob later, and we maybe have some re-booted maniacal pepperpots on the horizon too.....?

Small Scale Sci-Fi: Walkers and an APC

Some more small-scale Sci-Fi ruminations now, and a look at a few more miniatures that might feature in the final line-up! First off, I've been toying with the idea of expanding the use of 'Walkers' within the various forces, beyond the current use of the 2mm bi- and quadra-ped types from Irregular in 2mm.

Obviously scale/size becomes somewhat of an issue here, in that I want to avoid going into Japanese Anime territory with 5oo foot high Megazoids storming about the battlefield, and rather keep them to more modest proportions.

Having bought some of their excellent 6mm scale Vikings, I was tempted by the Graviton range from Kremlin Miniatures, and invested in some of their walkers, as you see in the photo above.

http://www.kremlinminiatures.co.uk/gravitonwarrior.htm

These consist of a very bulky looking type with somewhat human proportions, bulging with various protrusions and weapons, and a more insectoid looking one, with numerous sensor/weapon items concentrated around its 'head'. In spite of appearances in the not-so-great photo, the castings are nicely detailed and clean, and I think will work well up against the 2mm Sci-Fi, being definitely b-i-g, but not unfeasibly enormous!

For comparison, here's one next to another entry in the possibles list, the GMM42 Medium Mecha unit from Germy's range over at GZG, which stands 18mm tall:

The Germy Mech is very RoboCop ED209 in style, and like the rest of his range, nice and crisply clean in both design and sculpt. Looking at the website photos of the Kremlin Miniature's range, I feel the majority of their items look a tad expensive, when compared to other manufacturers, but the walkers are definitely good value at 0.60 pence for the two.

Next up a pic of the Germy walker against the 2mm version from Irregular:

and then against the Alien APC/SPGs:

So I think the walker/warbot/mecha units above should merge pretty nicely with the smaller scale vehicles; I think the only problem is that the variety available has me hankering to depict more factions on the table top, some entirely Robot armies perhaps? :-).

Next, I wanted to have some alternative vehicles that might serve as Assault or Infantry Support for a Human faction, that would look bulkier than a standard APC, yet would still suggest that troops could be carried inside.

For this I picked the DSM 123 Virnazh Medium Grav APC from GZG's Dirtside Range. This has a nice APC style body topped by a business-like support weapon turret that has a flavour of WWII-era French tanks about it; seen here alongside Brigade's Baldur Light Tank:

The casting and detail on this vehicle rates as excellent, and I mean excellent, given it's size, and far exceeds the small monochromatic photo available on the company's own website; these really are much better in the flesh! The only caveat is a bit of flash to the rear, I guess from the mold, and this does detract somewhat from the otherwise great quality, but would clean up easily enough:

What is interesting about this model, if not unique, is the level of detail underneath the mini; of course this is hover/grav, but even so, it is unlikely that you would see the bottom, even 'in flight', so hats off to the sculptor here, as it gives the option of fielding a completely different vehicle:

Finally, and probably somewhat dangerously, this got me thinking! The more I looked at this undersurface, the more it seemed to resemble a larger-scale starship; putting it alongside a fleet-scale Folgore fighter from Brigade Models:

Wouldn't make a bad spacecraft, would it? That's all I need, the temptation to go into a whole new arena of Spaceship gaming.....(groans)......

Anyway, more ideas to throw around; we've got the Alien races of the Venusians and the Telosians seen in previous posts on this subject - alongside the Human forces, let's call them the Terran Federation; but now also the possibility of enhancing their capabilities with walker/mecha units, or even going down the route of a Robot faction of its own, not to mention some ideas I have to make use of the Germy 'Bug' ranges for a whole new team.....lots more to come on all this, I fear......

Small Scale Sci-Fi: Drones

I thought I'd take a look now, at some developing concepts that have recently come to mind regarding the mixed 2 and 6mm Small-Scale Sci-Fi project. Taking advantage of some of the Christmas/New Year sales at various manufacturers (Budget? What budget?), I've been looking to expand the basic forces as they stood.

One area that had been bugging me for some time was the balance or look of the various units. Big tanks, small tanks, APCs, etc, etc, all well and good, but in a way, all so 20th Century!

What the Future needs is some future concepts, well, at least some 21st Century ones.....

So what better to represent a more futuristic battlefield than Drones? Whether AI or remote-controlled, at least they would begin to give a contrast to the heavy metal of earlier eras.

Which minis to use for them though; well if we began from a standpoint of mixing sizes, why not continue in the same vein? I had been enviously eyeing the breadth of choices available to 15mm Sci-Fi gamers, particularly the expanding range over at GZG, and especially the new Drone units. Surely, these would be too big, even though there where some exciting sculpts available? Well, we shall see.....

http://www.gtns.co.uk/store1/commerce.cgi?product=SG15V&exact_match=on&cart_id=5005927.24157

Continuing the theme, I realised that Drones might operate with in-theatre controllers, and the need to represent these in a futuristic way luckily co-incided with the re-sculpting of an item by Brigade models, namely their SFS-492 Surveillante from the Eurofed faction...... Alright so this is a bit 20th Century AWACS-looking, but I couldn't resist it:

(All models shown in this post are straight out-of-the-baggie, so no flash removal, etc, just as they came.)

So how might this 'controller', ostensibly a fleet-scale sized craft for Spaceship battles, compare with the Drones from GZG? Well, here we see it alongside the new winged V15-71 Mini Aero Drones:

Next up against the other Drone type that I chose, the V15-70 Mini Hover Drones:

Of course, the million dollar question was really would these new items match up with the existing, mixed scale units, so here goes with some comparison pics; first up the winged drones beside a Venusian assault unit of Irregular 2mm Alien APC and SPG....

and then against the ostensibly 6mm scale Baldur Light Tank from Brigade:

Moving on to the rather beefier-looking hover unit from GZG, and the 2mm Irregular again:

Well, to my eye, at least, not so disproportionate, certainly they could represent some pretty heavyweight robot/AI weapons, in that the removal of the human pilot means extra space for systems, and 'oomph' in terms of weaponry and capability.

I suppose at a stretch, they might also be used in a more aerospace sense if based individually, certainly they look as if a 2mm crew could fit inside. Talking of conventional fighters then, how would they compare to the fleet scale efforts, of say, Brigade Models, that might be more in proportion for a teeny-tiny crew?

Next to the SFS-464 EuroFed Folgore fighter:

Well, a pretty good match really, and if you were to go down this route, and move away from the plastic EM-4 miniatures types I showcased in a post last year, then how would more 'in-scale' (in the visual sense) sized craft compare to the ground units?

Well, not a million miles off, so, lots to think about here, as I spin around in ever decreasing circles of mixing and matching size and scale!

I suppose the base-line of the whole thing was to take advantage of the breadth of different models and concepts available from differing manufacturers and scales, whilst retaining a visually pleasing balance; something that would look good on the tabletop whilst remaining true to my liking for the littlest of minis!

I'll reserve judgement for now, but expect more to come on these strange experiments in defying the holy commandments of 'Scale'......

Small Scale Sci-Fi Update

Just finished putting together my mix of 2 and 6mm scale sci-fi minis, in this case a Terran Infantry Battalion and supports as well as some Alien forces, all of which were glimpsed in their unpainted state in my previous post on this subject. I'm quite pleased with the results, as they've given a 'small, medium and large' look to the forces which represents the classifications into light, assault and heavy units that I'd been aiming for, and shows that in terms of visual scaling, at least, you can mix and match quite successfully. One point to note , however, is that the 2mm Sci-Fi range from Irregular is built on a much bigger scale than all their other ranges; a sci-fi tank dwarfs a similar one from WWII. A great summary of how they shape up with basing tips can be found at this old workbench article over on TMP:

http://theminiaturespage.com/workbench/382222/

First up then, a couple of 2mm miniatures that I really like from Irregular; here's the Yobbo MBT, IKSF17. the sculpt is a little flat and squashed, but I think makes a great mid-tech tank, with its triangular track set and trailing wheels:

Then we see a couple of shots of the Four Legged walker, IKSF27, which is a possible contender for a small scale Hoth battle; perhaps a future project? :-).

These have good animation, looking as if they are about to pounce! (in as much as a transport weighing hundreds of tons can pounce...)

Next we have a view of the Aliens that I'm calling the Telosians, a desert race that make use of vehicles 2mm from Irregular and 6mm from Brigade. In the rear we have the Pacfed Minigwal from Brigade, and in the front the two-legged walkers from Irregular. I've mocked up a command vehicle amongst the Minigwal having broken one of the weapon sets, seen on the central base.

Needing, of course, a suitable Heavy Unit, I could not resist the brilliant 'Ray Gun' look of the Pacfed Tanami SPG, Brigade SF300-708:

Turning to the Terrans, this is where I mixed 2mm Infantry with suitable 6mm vehicles, giving the transport a really 'beefed up' look. The Infantry arrive in Buffel APCs, and deploy all arms teams, made up of Irregular's Power Armour Inf and Heavy Weapons bases. The Command APC seen in the rear just had a bit of sprue added to the roof to give antennae/aerials, and the 2mm Human Transport had some plastic block I had lying around added to the rear compartment to make a good stab at a Medevac vehicle:

In the right rear you can see the Light Armoured Support formed by Brigade's new NeoSov tankettes. Everything is based on 50x40mm card backed with magnetic sheet:

The infantry, are really teeny-weeny, (although larger than the figures in the other 2mm ranges) but have enough detail to give a good version of armoured skirmishers, and the Heavy Weapons in particular are great fun, with two large tripod mounted weapons and various cables, boxes and power units.

Heavy support comes in the form of the Zhu De SPG:

and finally, the Baldur Light Tank forms the armoured contingent. I went a bit wacky with the colours/camouflage, basing it upon the really interesting urban scheme sported by the British 'Berlin Brigade' vehicles during the Cold War; for a normally conservative institution like the British Army, it was quite experimental!

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/05/stuff_eng_vaiano_chieftain.htm

Small Scale Sci-Fi: eM-4 Plastic Spaceships

As promised, a look now at the plastic spaceships available in the UK from eM-4 Miniatures. These are a relatively new discovery for me, but I realise that they have been around for quite a while, being licensed copies in plastic of the original "Silent Death- The Next Millenium" game starships.

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Science_Fiction.html

The game itself, I believe, is now defunct, and I'm not sure about availability of the miniatures elsewhere, I know Metal-Express were supporting the line:

http://www.metal-express.net/page.php?11

I'd been looking initially for some air elements to support the alien races amongst my Weird WWI forces, and was keen to get my hands on something cheap and cheerful that could do the job. Whilst there are some awesome small-scale craft in metal out there, they tend to be on the expensive side, so I hit the mother load for cheapskates when I came across the eM-4 plastics page!

These minis are the best kept secret on the web in terms of value, being a set of twelve individual ships for £2.50, that's right, £2.50 - around 20 pence a ship! Now I hadn't used plastics before (at least not since the Airfix models of childhood), so I wondered about the quality of what would arrive when I made my order. Let's just say I was very pleased; the sculpting detail on these is crisp and fine, and eM-4 even throw in the plastic flight stands for the ships, so you're ready to go. They are sprue-mounted, so I washed them carefully in soapy water, allowed them to dry, and then went for a black undercoat. The ships you see here are a work in progress, but so far I've found that they take acrylic paint really well, and although I'm not such a hot painter, give good results.

The ships were obviously originally intended to be used as deep-space fighters, but the multiple designs mean that some have a distinctly aerospace flavour, as well as a couple that to my eye would make good VTOL/ Ground Support types for either 2 or 6mm figure ranges, given that they measure from around 10mm to 37mm in length.

This abundance of types soon tempted me away from my original 2mm/ 1/900th Weird WWI ideas, and transmogrified into a need for a new generic small scale-sci-fi project.

I believe that in the original game, the ships were alloted type names, but I've gone with my own ideas on that, so will refer to them in my own way below:

First up, we have what I term 'needle' fighters, these could either be space or atmosphere craft, and have a great jury-rigged look about them, as if cockpits have been welded onto the drive engines of a much larger vessel, thereby creating a sort of hot-rod capable of high straight line speeds. perhaps they might be used by mid-tech colonists or rim-worlders, as pirate craft, or as a response to superior alien forces:

Talking of pirates, that is the scheme I went for with these next craft, again which might be comfortable in the atmosphere or in orbit, maybe these are older versions of the current technology available to the military of a planetary federation:

Next we have what I term the 'Phantom 4K' in that without a doubt, these have the look of a future-tech version of that venerable fighter bomber, the McDonnell F4; again, great for a force that has lower end technology, perhaps not operating beyond the planetary atmosphere.

These guys are still in their undercoat, not sure whether to go with an old school 'wild-weasel' type scheme, or something more futuristic.

Next, a somewhat more advanced craft, that I call the 'hawk' fighter, again, more of an atmosphere craft, although getting further toward the high tech end of things:

Then we have perhaps the first of the more alien-looking types, perhaps a direct competitor to the 'hawk' above, with a nice little top turret, or is it a droid co-pilot that is visible? These could even pass for much larger scale craft, if it's actually starships that you're after, they sort of bring to mind the kind of ships you might see in some B-movie sci-fi by Roger Corman Productions, perhaps "Battle Beyond the Stars" or something similar....

Now we have the first of the possible VTOL/Support or Gunship types, these I term the 'bug' fighter, and to me have a flavour of a future A-10 warthog, small, chunky and hung with guns!

Similarly, enter the 'black widows', a definite gun bus if I ever saw one! These would work well in all theatres, whether low over the planetary battlefield or cruising in deep space:

They might be accompanied by the 'salamander', a patrol craft that is just a tiny bit 'primitive Klingon' to my eyes, perhaps before they developed warp technology? :-).

Next we have another planetary fighter bomber type, it must be the next stage in evolution from the 'Phantom 4K' above, with some heavy duty missiles slung beneath the wings:

Next we have what I term an 'Alpha' fighter, these I see as being the standard small scale craft of an interplanetary fleet, clouds of them issuing from a carrier, manouverable and lightly armed:

Then we move to a distinctly more alien place, these long range fighters have a slightly organic design, with their arachnid style pod cockpit slung between two weapon/propulsion booms; might be seen in orbit or in the atmosphere, these look well armed and pretty fast, too:

Finally, the Weird WWI Venusians present their 'Frog' fighter; (What, you've never heard of the Vensusian Killer Tree Frog?), small and quick at dealing death to all those who oppose the Green Empire:

All in all, there are plenty of designs here to run with, that could be applied in a number of ways, and being so cheap, mean that you can easily build up a decent set of combatants; of course it would be great if they were individually available, but perhaps some might be found floating around on E-Bay or elsewhere.

I think if you're looking for a 'weekend' project, or just fancy painting something different, then you can't go wrong with these, and at the price- what is there to lose?