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.....?

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: The Fleet limps along.....

Aplogies for the long New Year hiatus in posting here; I wish I could say that this time had been filled with much prep, painting and photography of miniatures, but unfortunately this has hardly been the case - the shameful neglect of the Blog down to 'Real Life' intruding and keeping me far too busy. Not that I am complaining - no real dramas, but definitely a dearth of Wargaming-related activity, I'm afraid....

What has left the workbench is very much in the way of some small progress with the BSG themed fleets, and the happy discovery of my rare-earth magnets has lead to a pulse of activity, including the fighters and various other craft. For what it's worth, I thought I'd share some pics of how this has been going, first up some civilian freighters and transports:

For reasons that will become evident later on, I decided to add the Brigade Models Bantu Destroyer in with the civvies rather than positing it as another military type, and also flipped the Irregular ship seen in the middle of the photo above onto its back - the sculpt is somewhat enigmatic, and I think this way up, it somewhat resembles the Gemini Freighter seen in the original series.

Colour schemes wise, I went for a quite dirty thrashing with various dry-brush colours, overlaid with some detailing of panels, running lights and so forth, hopefully going for a very 'lived-in' and well-used look for these old transports.

The Cylon flotilla is complete for now, with Baseship, two Heavy Cruisers that I am calling the 'Styx' Class, and those GZG fighters masquerading as the iconic Raiders:

The fighters are mounted on the Brigade trio fighter stands, with magnets stuck into the hollow space underneath, and then a corresponding magnet fixed atop the plastic flying base.

I found this was a very frustrating and tricky procedure, as whilst Brigade's own craft mostly have a small depression which matches the upright nubs at the end of each of the fighter stand's arms, those of GZG do not, so much fiddling and swearing with rapidly-drying super-glue was required. I eventually, in fact, filed down the mounting nubs and placed the fighters down flat to ensure a tougher bond.

I had envisioned hordes of Cylon Raiders to accompany the larger ships, but I will definitely need a rest before I attempt this procedure again in the near future..... these will be enough for now!

The magnets themselves I obtained from Dom's Decals, and they are good and strong, and being meant for 1/600th aircraft, are a nice tiny size - the only issue is trying not to mix up the polarity of each pair to be used - I got around this by having a marker pen to hand and colouring the top surface of each magnet as it came off the stack - those for the ships, went coloured side to hull, and then the paired flight stand would have its coloured side fixed upmost to match.

Moving on, we see the two non-canon Cruiser types which I added to beef up the respective fleets, on the left, the Colonial Heavy Cruiser, the 'Charybdis', and on the right the Cylon:

The lighting for these photos has been rather unkind to the finish on both types - the contrast is not really so stark in real life, but you get the idea as to how they match up. I think either craft might have some fighters on board, but to all intents and purposes they are gunships - to take out the opponent's Carrier with heavy weaponry - relatively slow, but very heavily armoured and armed....

Next up, the Cruisers 'Scylla' and Charybdis move forward accompanied by some Colonial Vipers:

These were mounted in the same way as the Cylon Raiders, and were even more fiddly, as the base of each craft is slightly convex, so more filing required. These are nifty little stand-in craft from GZG, perhaps only the downward tilt of the lower wings missing from the original - I quite like them, but those classic red stripes were very hard to do freehand, particularly in order to match up around the tail section - so again, I won't be rushing to do more!

The Galactica Battlegroup, then, in the final days before the Fall of Caprica:

Overall, I'm pleased with how things have gone so far, but am painfully aware as to how much all this has diverted me from my more long term projects, so these will probably go on the back burner from now, given that I haven't even thought about how they might be used game-wise, or even with what rules....

Then again, there are the scratch-built Agri-ship and the Colonial Movers to be done yet......oh well!

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Progress Update

A quick progress report on the Fleet Scale Sci-Fi/Battlestar Galactica ships; as you can see above, I couldn't resist having a look at the Irregular Miniatures' DYC8 'Pre-' Battlestar miniature, and in addition have added a new contender for a proto-Battlestar in the shape of an interloper from Brigade Models.

I was thinking along the lines of a pre-Cylon War early Colonial vessel, perhaps we might call it an Attack-star, which served as a prototype for the larger and more capable early Battlestar, which then developed into the classic BSG era 'Galactica' et al.

Rootling around in some recent purchases from Brigade, I remembered the new Pacfed Faction Barramundi Class Destroyer (SFS-730) that I had bought, which had some nice carrier pod style booms - this, with the addition of a small Drive section made from some scrap, will fit the bill:

The Irregular mini needed quite a lot of cleaning up, before I could be let loose with the paintbrush; both the Bow and the Drive section were pretty rough, as you might have seen in the photos in my previous post, and the longitudinal axis of the hull has a raised mould line, but I left this as is, rather than file away any of the detail in this area.

I also decided to remove the gun-like projections present either side of the nose - they seemed a bit unbalanced to me, and I think she scrubs up rather well without them - the detail elsewhere, and in particular the panelling visible on hull and carrier bays is very good.

Paint-scheme wise, the early Battlestar that I am calling the 'Olympia', began with a base coat of Coat d'Arms flat black, followed by a rough dry-brush of Vallejo neutral grey, then another dry-brush of the grey mixed with white, then a lighter dry brush with just white.

This has seen the addition of various white panel detailing, and I'm going to go on to add some areas in red, as well of course complete the detailing of the bridge windows and various other greeblies overall. So far, so good, anyway!

Moving on, I dug out the GZG candidates for the fighter craft, as you can see below, to whit the ORC faction FT1201 fighter as the Cylon, and the New Israeli FT1501 fighter as the Colonial Viper:

These are pretty much the best stand-ins you can find as 'not' BSG products, outside of the Studio Bergstrom ranges, and if you're UK based, certainly save on the postal charges from the 'States....

As with all Fleet-scale craft of course, the proportions of these are way off in actual size terms, as you can see when posed next to the Olympia below:

However, they will obviously be on stands or bases as representative squadrons, or even fighter wings, rather than individual craft, so will definitely do the job.

Much more to do with all of these, naturally, but thought I'd share the progress so far....

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!

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'......