6mm Dalek Heavy Metal Update

Some progress photos of the 6mm Dalek Heavy units for you now, just to show how things are getting on. The units are yet to be based, and I'm not totally satisfied with the colour schemes as they are, but it's a start, anyway!

The walkers went together quite nicely with their 'drivers', and I thought I'd go with a sort of futuristic-looking camouflage scheme, but so far, this has only evolved into a few splotches of random colours - these are echoed on the Dalek units themselves, but given their size, have ended up making them look a bit grubby, rather than sleek and menacing!

The Naval units were a bit more straightforward, although again the scheme is not 100 percent; I had toyed with the idea of doing them in Pre-Dreadnought colours, but the this got me thinking of a whole new project involving 'Victorian' Daleks taking on pre-1900 Martian Invaders, and I had to go and have a lie down in a darkened room before I got distracted into new territory yet again......

These make some good riverine units, I think, although they could do with a bit more detailing, as well as an ink-wash to pull things together.....maybe some more added antennas/radar dish type thingies would give them a more workmanlike look, and...well...make them seem less like metallic ducks? (!).

Exactly how would a Dalek say "Quack"?

I've also been thinking about taking these units further, by playing around with some Marine Daleks to work alongside them - this has so far only got to adding a blue scheme to the standard grey, but might yet evolve into more camouflaged types.....or will I be drawn back towards those Colonial landing parties ideas yet again?

Some close-ups of the walking Daleks next - I like the proportions as they are, so not sure if I should go with an 'up-gunning' with various weapon pods or arms, as yet:

The bases, of course, need finishing,these will probably end up being mounted on UK 2 penny pieces, for ease of storage. (The newer coins have a ferrous core, so handily stick to magnetic sheeting)

I suppose if I'd been really clever, I would have chopped one off at the legs, and had it emerging from the river - being this tall, units like this could merely wade across such an obstruction - an idea superbly carried through here, with Martian war machines:

http://justahandfulofmen.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

So, coming along slowly then, anyway, but these have got me thinking:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqW0hQdhNXXT6nyZTyUtfIQofUPkCNuo7doR4SNE5GMYjIL1fey5l3XOrgVIMYq2YSvJyrJRhLRDoGpOQE2-BuwsQEpNs6myJZ_n2vcG9qa5Tt6vwiArLcDq5esMRVn90EUcFW8N9hiA96/s1600-h/Dalek-Tank-Inks.jpg

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2008/06/steampunk-dalek-has-wheels-cant-climb-stairs/

The second link is from a blog which has loads of VSF/Steampunk goodies, BTW, well worth a look.....meanwhile, where did I put those spare 1/300th tank chassis?

6mm Dr Who: Dalek Heavy Metal

Thoroughly inspired by my recent reading of the fantastic narrative and pictorial work over at Mechmaster's CG Lair, I thought I'd re-visit an old project, and add some new Heavy Units to my Dalek army.

http://www.cg-lair.co.uk/daleks/secemp-index.htm

The online graphic novel adventures of 'Daleks- Second Empire' are are an absolute creative tour de force, and cannot help but get fans like myself thinking of the various possibilities if you lay the traditional 'canon' story arcs to one side, and go wild with the inherent potential of those tin-pot dictators playing out their meglomaniac plans.

I heartily recommend reading the online novel from the very beginning; yes, the humour can be a bit off the wall, and purists may shudder at the interpretation, but I think it is highly entertaining and well worth a visit as it continues.

Having in the past added some flying saucers to offer an air capability, I thought it only fair that any expansion of the force should see some naval craft; we've seen on screen, at least, that the Daleks can move underwater - there is that iconic image of one emerging from the River Thames - but I don't think we've ever come across them speeding about in boats.

My starting point, as you can see above, was the slightly unusual candidate of the IKBO4 Monitor from Irregular Miniatures' 2mm 20th Century Boats range. The sculpts in this group are quite quirky and enigmatic, and perhaps are not that closely representative of actual vessels, but for some reason the shape of this particular craft has always caught my eye.

Perhaps it is the flat forward turret and its guns that are so suggestive of the mid body accoutrements of the Daleks, but after a bit of surgery on some of the NSF7 'attack robots', I couldn't resist popping some on top:

I envisage these as a form of fast patrol craft that enable the Daleks to conquer even watery worlds, speeding along hovercraft-like as scouts or interdictors.

You can see them above next door to a Germy-designed 'GMM-42' 18mm Mecha from Ground Zero Games, that I was contemplating working on, when the influence of 'Second Empire' really took a hold of me.

If the artist/creator there can come up with everything from special sniper units to pink-coloured TV Reporter Daleks, why couldn't I go the extra mile as well......the only downfall of the pepper-pot dictators has always been their inability to climb stairs, due to their obvious lack of lower limbs, so I thought, why not terrify the Universe out of its complacency, and give them legs?

So now nowhere is safe from their depredations:

The Mech head was left off, and replaced with a piece of plasti-card bridging, topped by a steel spacer from my bicycle brake pads (Hope these won't need replacing anytime soon...!), to give an invincible walking Dalek.

I may well add in some weapon packs for extra fire-power on these, as well as toying around with the idea of modelling hover cushions to go under the water-craft, but you can see the general theme emerging here; the Daleks are going to be an all-arms, all terrain force from now on...stay tuned for some updates as work on these and other insane creations progresses!

Dr Who in 6mm: Alien reinforcements

Having recently provided U.N.I.T. with Heavy Weapons and Transport, I wanted to augment the Dalek and Sontaran infantry with some 'heavy metal' of their own; even though such things are not very often seen in the TV show, I felt a bit of tweaking wouldn't hurt. The fact is that the search for suitable look-alike minis in 6mm has been difficult, whether thinking in terms of Sea Devils, Silurians, Ice Warriors, Yetis or Cybermen, and with nothing really to hand, I was itching to add something to the forces available.

As you can see in the photo above, a Dalek Commander, in the form of Davros, was roughly scratch built from some plastic and half of a Heroics and Ros WWII Artilleryman, but I needed to cast my net wider to come up with some other items to bolster the Doctor's enemies.

Trawling through some old posts over on TMP concerning 6mm Sci-Fi, I came across a link that had some photos of the vehicle ranges from Scotia, and I knew at once that I had found a likely Sontaran AFV, to whit the SF7 Heavy Scout Vehicle, which has an excellent bulbous cab/cockpit, so redolent of the potato-headed warrior's own helmets!

The TMP discussion is here,

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=160349

The photos, which are so lacking on Scotia's own site are here, at least those that are still working links:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051030205501/www.scotiagrendel.com/scotia/scotiasf.html

and Scotia Grendel can be found here:

http://www.scotiagrendel.com/page110.html

So this lucky find gave me my Sontaran 'Weapon Sled', which of course could be used as a transport, but I took the liberty of up-gunning them with two more useful additions from Scotia, the SF16 Medium Field Laser, and the SF17 Twin Light Support Laser.

The former is a meaty looking cannon, which comes with a separate wheeled carriage, whilst the latter is a nice twin-barreled sculpt that also comes with a small separate base.

I decided not to use these, but rather mount them on plastic sprue in the cargo bay as turreted weapons as you can see below. The paint scheme is not very inspiring I'm afraid, being based on the Sontaran uniform, but perhaps I'll tweak it later.

The Sontaran Scout Force was then complete, although I'd still like to have a go at doing a couple of their distinctive ball-shaped sphere ships, so perhaps room for some improvement here in the future:

Having given the potato-heads some better weaponry, I couldn't neglect their 'pepperpot' cousins the Daleks, so I again turned to Scotia for ideas. If I remember rightly, Dalek ships appeared in the form of saucers for the TV version of the Dalek Invasion of Earth, and were seen more recently in fleets massing during the 'Bad Wolf' story arc, so I knew I wanted something along those lines, giving the earthbound enemies of the Doctor some chance at levitation on the battlefield; (why bother climbing stairs when you can obliterate the whole building from the sky?)

SF13, Large Flying Saucer, was just the ticket:

These saucers are relatively plain, apart from the nice inscribed pattern on one surface, and come with a traditional bulb cockpit to the other side. Deciding to mount visible pilots for a bit of close air support, I filed down the bulb somewhat to enable the addition of some rare earth magnets, and mounted some cannibalised Daleks on the reverse side.

I suppose I ought to paint in some of the Dalek sphere sensors which traditionally adorn their lower casings, around the outer rim of the saucer, but decided that my painting skills weren't up to doing that many perfect circles, so I chickened out!

I filed off the support peg atop the plastic flight stands to enable the addition of a corresponding magnet, so that these stands might do double duty with other craft or fighters from different projects. Being me, of course, my filing down on both saucers and stands was not entirely level, but this had the side-effect of creating some variety in the flying angle of the saucers, so was no real problem in the end.

I obtained the magnets from Dom's Decals, who give excellent service with their unparalleled decals for small scale aircraft as well as stocking Tumbling Dice Miniature's aircraft ranges.

So, overall, a good start on beefing up the table-top forces of the protagonists so far, just hope that I will stumble across some more minis that might stand in for my other favourite villains from the show!

*Note: I just wanted to apologise to regular readers for the lack of posts recently, but down here in S.E. England over the last week or so, it has been definitely too hot to Blog, or more specifically too hot to paint! I use a wet palette when painting with acrylics, but was finding even this was drying out within minutes of the paint coming out of the tube. For those of you who live in hotter climes, the 'scorching' nature of 32 degrees Celsius might seem ridiculous, but for us Brits, that's plenty hot! Anyway, normal service has resumed now, with cooling temperatures and outbreaks of rain, so things should be back to normal from now on.....

Doctor Who in 6mm

I was inspired recently to return to an old project by a post over on the excellent Firezone Studios Blog, that made a similar use of some 'Not' Daleks, otherwise known as the NSF7 Attack Robot from Irregular Miniatures:

http://www.firezonestudios.com/blog/?p=724

I've been a fan of the BBC show since I saw my first episode way back in 1975 or so, probably the Green Death (I'll never forget those giant maggots!), that was shown on the cusp of the Tom Baker-era, he who will forever be 'my' idea of the Doctor. I was absolutely charmed, then to discover that Irregular did some interesting look-alike models in their 6mm Sci-Fi range, and just had to get some to paint up as various versions of the arch enemy of all arch enemies, the Daleks!

Unfortunately, there were no other 'Not' miniatures available, so I had to persevere and trawl various ranges to provide other characters from the show. The Riot and Civilian ranges provided a couple of figures that would serve as Tom Baker and his companion, and a quick and somewhat rough-looking scratch build (Very small effects budgets on that show- don't you know!), provided his means of transport, the T.A.R.D.I.S., as you see above.

Next, of course, bearing in mind that the Doctor would need some armed backup, I invested in some of VN9, the Green Berets from the Vietnam range to stand in for the beret-wearing 1970s era U.N.I.T troops, although, I'm yet to find a suitable 'Brigadier' as their leader; perhaps a figure from amongst their WWI miniatures, I wonder...

At least I had to have the ubiquitous Land Rover for the Command Stand, and here, in terms of scale, I found the Navwar BM32 the best fit, Irregular's own offering being rather squashed and ugly:

Just like Phil over at Firezone, I wanted to cast the net wider for other villains that the Doctor might face, and was reinvigorated in my search by his work with his own Daleks; skimming the GZG website for another project, I knew I had found my Sontarans; those clone-warriors could only be depicted by their DM135, UNSC Marines in HardSuit, the best fit for those helmet wearing potato-heads, if I ever saw one:

Commander Lynx leads his troops into the quiet of the English Home Counties:

Now a look at my own meglomaniac pepper-pots, here in their Tom Baker 'Genesis of the Daleks' grey livery:

again, here in their newer outfits for the recent series of the show:

and appearing on behalf of the Imperial Faction, some white ones alongside a scratch-built (well, filed down) Heavy Weapons Dalek:

Next, the Doctor and his companion wished they had turned left instead of right after leaving Gallifrey, and come face to face with Daleks of an earlier era, those who needed a metal surface to travel on!
Finally, framed by two of his enemies, the Doctor wonders just who will appear next; depending of course, if I can come up with some other likely stand-in minis.....Cybermen anyone?