Orcs v Tactical Nuclear Penguins

'Moderns Month' is slowly progressing and I've almost finished a US Mechanized Infantry Squad which you can see here, hopefully finished tomorrow...

As the dip was drying I decided to  stick together a couple of the sprues of Mantic Orcs we picked up at Salute - and I decided to slap a bit of paint on them.

These are by far the best models Mantic have released and a good mix of possibilities tempered with not too many pieces to stick together. I am so impressed with them I've ordered a box of thirty from Wayland Games which at £22.49 means they're only 75p each. What I really like is that they'll fit in with my old Citadel Orcs and don't look too comic. Ok, I'd prefer they were armed with scimitars and I'm not 100% taken with the shields but I do like them...

Painting was a doddle, black undercoat, drybrushed with Tin Bitz then Boltgun Metal. Repaint the non-metal areas black, then Dark Flesh, then Bestial Brown or Terracotta over that. For Orc flesh I mix yellow with black which makes a swarthy green, eyes are dotted Blood Red and teeth painted in with Bleached Bone.

I also finished off these two 'Tactical Nuclear Penguins' from the Critter Commandoes packs I painted Saul for Christmas, which had been 95% finished since January...

Duck Wader

The final figure of Saul's Critter Commandos collection is Duck Wader. He must have been available separately a while back as now he only appears to come in a back of 'stormbunnies' that I really don't like at all. One day I'll order the Jettdri Knights - Duck Swampwalker and Benji Canoby, to go with him, but as a stand alone figure he's quite fun.

Sergeant Duck & Fleecy Company

With the Killer Death Penguins sorted I needed to get some OpFor figures and decided to go with ducks! Team Frog's Duck squad contains four figures, but (like the penguins) I haven't had a chance to paint the power armour/duck robot yet.

I was a bit stumped initially on what colour to paint the ducks, brown or maybe black like Daffy? In the end a bit of Googling of cartoon ducks (obviously) brought up Donald and I settled on the white feather look as providing the best comic look and good contrast. The uniforms are vaguely American looking so I went with a faded 'Nam style green.

The ducks were a lot of fun to paint and I love the one throwing a pineapple grenade that literally is a pineapple! Unfortunately these are all that Team Frog do, so I may have to look at doing do some conversions to beef up the unit.

Special Penguin Light Assault Team

Naturally, no Killer Death Penguin Commando leader would dream of going into battle without a recce unit and fortunately Team Frog have included such in their range in the form of the S.P.L.A.T. (Special Penguin Light Assault Team), four Killer Death Penguins on skateboards!

Whilst the figures themselves were quite straightforward, being in a mix of helmets and berets it was obvious they had to be painted up as paras, the skateboards did cause me a temporary mental painting block. Despite some interesting (and very colourful) suggestions to a request for ideas on TMP, I did have a "eureka!' moment and painted them in the British WW2 'Mickey Mouse ears' camo pattern (Mickey being a cartoon character etc), and I think this has worked very well...

Killer Death Penguin Commandos

Those of you with children (or grand-children) may be aware of Club Penguin, a "free to play" online game run by Disney. A lot of fun for kids of all ages, there are those that take it more seriously than others and form unofficial groups which "battle" against each other, first amongst these is the Army of Club Penguin!

Whilst Saul has moved onto the likes of Black Ops and Red Dead Redemption I thought he'd find it fun if I bought him some penguins to wargame with and so for Christmas he received a painted squad of Team Frog's Critter Commandos penguins (and what wargamer hasn't ever wanted a unit of the elite Killer Death Penguin Commandos?)

You get twelve figures in the squad including officers, grenadiers, troops and power armour (the latter not quite finished) and I must confess that after some false starts I had a lot of fun researching (Googling cartoon penguins!) and painting these models.