15mm Terminator: Civilians

 

I wanted to add a bit of extra ‘flavour’ to the 15mm Terminator project, so thought it would be good to have some civilians that could be either NPCs or act as plot points or objectives - Terminator must kill, Resistance must save sort of thing….. so delving into Alternative Armies’ extensive catalogue, I invested in some ‘Stellar Refugees’:

https://www.alternative-armies.com/products/hof58-stellar-refugees

These are a nicely characterised family group of four with appropriate impedimenta,  the only caveat is that I didn’t particularly like the look of the male figure and his ‘standing up in shock’ haircut, so felt with a different paint job, the adult female would be a decent stand in…. I very much had in mind the man and his son from The Road, particularly with the option of the useful cart:

 

So after converting the hover cart into something more ‘near future’ by the simple expedient of adding some wheels chopped from a 6mm vehicle, I came up with this:

The female is now sporting a painted-on beard/stubble, and being tall, I think looks the part - she originally had a sort of sci-fi harness as part of her clothing, but this filed off easily enough, and the gouges I made just added to the overall ragged appearance !

The child figure is leaning forward as it is supposed to be pushing/paired with the cart, but I based him up separately to be of more use - I wanted a wan, worn complexion for them both, but seem to have overdone it somewhat on the kid, who is looking pretty ghostly… maybe appropriate given the shock of the post-apocalyptic lifestyle…….

The girl was a bit more straightforward, with the added bonus of her evocative toy rabbit - the pathos of the refugees trying to hold onto some sort of normality amidst the chaos….

I also added a pet dog in the form of Alternative Armies’ Guard Dog from the Laserburn range:

https://www.alternative-armies.com/products/118-guard-dog

I wanted him to look quite the mangey cur, and thought he might be useful either as friend or foe - and of course perfect for sniffing out any T-1000s disguised as humans:

Here he is snuffling after Scooby Snacks, or alternatively threatening the refugees last food supply:

He joins the family on the road:

I was pleased to see that these new figures scaled up pretty well alongside the CP Models’ Resistance, given that they would be comparatively well fed in comparison to the strung-out civilians….

“Come with me if you want to live….”

Although the chap with the radio and pistol seems a bit worried about the girl and her toy rabbit - maybe it’s a new kind of disguised Terminator ?

Next, let’s see how they look against the Terminators themselves:

Again, scaling pretty well alongside, so I’m pretty happy overall - next up, when time allows, I’ll be moving on to thinking about scenery and terrain - maybe a small skirmish board or similar, populated with ruined buildings and scrap piles….. talking of scrap…..

“You can’t park that thing here mate…..”

The Terminator was obviously a traffic warden in a previous life…..

15mm Terminator: Humans vs SkyNets’ soldiers

 

Comparison shots, now, to see how the Alternative Armies’ Terminators match up against the CP Models’ Human Resistance - pretty well as it turns out !

As the Resistance are mainly in ‘tactical’ poses - running, crouching, firing etc, and the Automata are stiff and upright - jut as they should be, they scale really well, I think - the CP Models’ Human sculpts are of course, somewhat well-fed by comparison - but the Terminators are just animated exoskeletons, after all, so that works, too… 

So let’s take a look at some photos - first, a face-off !

Wouldn’t want to be up that close and personal in real life, but gives a good idea of the competing heights and heft…

Next a closer look at some heroes:

“I’m John Connor - No, I’m John Connor…”

I’ll let the pair of them battle it out as to which sequel/prequel/re-boot they come from….

“John Connor ? - never heard of him….”

“John Connor ? - yeah, he went that-away ……”

“Careful Human - you’ll have someone’s eye out with that….”

“Call that a Machine Gun ? - this is a Machine Gun….”

“I need your boots, your clothes….and your sunglasses…..”

So, overall, a pretty successful line up - quite happy with how these are turning out - I’ll be moving on soon to some terrain and scenery, as well as some other, special items….

Hopefully then, I’ll have a skirmish set-up that should see plenty of this:

“Hmmm - Time Travel, you say……?”

But in the meantime - Keep Resisting !

A Diversion: 15mm Terminator !

 

A bit of a curve-ball here, in as much as I was looking at something different from the hordes of 2mm that I have been concentrating on lately…… I wanted a small diversion that would be self contained, and relatively straightforward in terms of painting, so took advantage of Alternative Armies’ recent sale and took the plunge in obtaining some of their characterful Automata.

 https://www.alternative-armies.com/collections/15mm-hof-science-fiction-range/automaton

These are of course, wonderful stand-ins for the cinematic Skynet-produced cyborgs, and I for one, given the recent media buzz about the advance of AI, hope these small renditions will go some way in pleasing our new Robotic Overlords……

The range has a lot of very useful types, with heavy weapons, a variety of small arms, and some interesting command figures alongside metal-shape-shifting polymorphs - as you can purchase them individually as well as in value packs, I picked the ones I liked the look of, giving me a mix of things to work on.

First up, from left to right, a T-1000-esque Polymorph, the Command pack figure ‘C’ and the mini-gun bearing Heavy Weapons ‘bot - all great sculpts, and as with all of the automatons, came with no flash or clearing up required from Alternative Armies in the UK, with their usual fast service and turnaround on orders, as well of course as their renowned ‘free’ gifts with every order ! - result !

Painting-wise, I went for a quick drybrush of silver over a black undercoat - not very inspired I know, and the detail on these figures would definitely reward a more considered approach - but the sculpted depth of each was quite forgiving to my paintbrush thrashings - quick and easy…. The heads in particular have great recessed eye orbits that are just crying out for a red glow !

For the bases, I went with the plastic tiddly-winks that I used on my 15mm dungeon denizens, and built them up with some basing sand and Mod-Podge white glue, along with a mix of rubble - this was made up of tiny cuts (with nail clippers) of defunct store and loyalty cards, snapped-off shards of MDF sprue, and some offcuts of blue foam and metal sprue left-overs, with some small metal staples added to the mix - the credit card snippings in particular are effective at this scale, as they offer different colours and patterns/discernible lettering etc that look like a good modern urban junk.

 The T-1000 got a splodge of silver ‘puddle-ing’ to his base to give the idea of him re-forming, but I think I was a bit conservative with the size of the puddle, so it looks a bit underwhelming - ripe for a re-do, methinks…

Rather than making them silver as well, I decided to paint the hand weapons mostly in an ‘army’ green to give a bit of contrast - just a block colour for the moment, they would benefit from a highlight - the packs from AA offer you SMGs, Assault Rifles and heavier MGs, as well as a pair of menacing-looking flamers:

I fear for the Human Resistance when they meet these !

It was perhaps inevitable that my quick and easy project would encounter a bit of mission creep, in that I realised I didn’t really have any suitable skirmish terrain that might go alongside the Terminators -  I needed something to scale that would be suitably post-apocalyptic and ravaged - so went looking on the inter webs as you do…..

I was pleased to find how more and more small-sized 3D designed and printed stuff is becoming available,  and bought some great walls and rubble piles from an EBay seller who does smaller-scale stuff alongside the usual 28mm offerings:

The pack of 15mm walls and detritus from HeadBunny Games was exactly what I was after:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/headbun59

I thoroughly enjoyed painting these up, and the detailing on the walls in particular is amazing, with all sorts of cobbled together materials, tyre stacks, brick piles, oil drums etc in evidence - so will really look the part.

Now, having had so much fun with these destroyers of Humanity, I of course have hankerings to look at doing some Resistance fighters as their adversaries - so to coin a phrase, if you are wondering what will happen next - 

“I’ll be back”……