Tuesday 29 October 2013

Gruntz armour support

Have been working on turning some matchbox Strykers into some armour support for my 15mm Gruntz force. I picked a couple up from Target for $9 each, a bargain. They aren't a bad looking model. A couple of minor faults that are easily covered up or ignored..
 
 
Glued the moving parts down and used the top hatch to make a radar, it is in the future after all. My dust pan brush kindly sacrificed some bristles for the whip antennae.
 
Give them a quick base coat of dark grey then laid on some diamond stripes with Tamiya masking tape. Then a coat of black green and some more masking. Finally coat of neutral grey...Then time to peel the masking tape off to leave behind a spiffy cam job ??
Washed with straight from the pot GW black oil or what ever its called these days...and a quick drybrush with london grey and a hit with grey tamiya weathering powder. 
Yep...Happy with that so far.
 
Picked out the tyres in black and cut some MDF bases for them...Tended to roll away. Can't have that in a game, give new meaning to tabletop "Shoot & Scoot"..
A bit of texture on the bases and some weathering to try and match the base...a couple of tufts and "Ta Da"
 
 
 
 
 
Happy with the result. Now I have to do the third one which I got later so that it matches these two..
Can't wait to crush some Gruntz under these babies. :)
 

Saturday 30 March 2013

    I'm back ! Long ,long , long absence from the blog..... Understatement I must say. In this time there has been a subtle shift in the game play dynamic in our gaming group. To the wayside has fallen Flames of War, much to the chagrin of our youngest member. Only to be replaced by Battle Group Kursk. There goes my substantial investment in a Hungarian army! At least when they bring out Battle Group Normandy, my poms will still have a place to fight !
    Unfortunately , myself and co-conspirator, have done the typical gamer trick... That's right. We changed gaming systems, which involves re basing , extra figures... the usual rigmarole.... Then let another system / period / figure scale capture our imagination..not hard to do, as we are gaming whores after all ! Again upsetting the padawan of the group, who has an income that is substantially lower than the "whores".
    The cause of this mess.... Firestorm Armada. Yep that's right, space ships. Beam me up scotty ! Now it not like we don't already have at our disposal several Full Thrust fleets... But have you seen the the figures from FSA ? They are awesome !

    See ! And to top it off they are also huge...
      The games and figures are from Spartan Games. That's right, the guys who do Dystopian Wars. They are made of the same resin and cast quality as the DW gear, which is brilliant. The rules would be familiar to anyone who has played other Spartan games rules....apparently ! I've not actually played any, but that's what I've heard. At the first read through they seem simple enough, yet with enough good / familiar game systems to convince us to give them the run over Full thrust. we liked the idea of less prep time and no order writing each turn... What can I say ? We may be becoming lazy gamers.... or just getting time poor and want to get more games done in our one evening a week of freedom to take over the country/world/galaxy...
    Needless to say there are two substantial starter fleets + extras already in the post, so we are committed to the course. I went for a Sorylian fleet...because I loved the look of the ships. What better reason is there ? Fridgey went down the RSN path. Their ships resemble the Macros saga ships from the cartoons in our long distant youth..... Basically he picked his fleet the same way I did.... He like the look of the ships. All highly technical...lol.

    That's about it for now. Will drop some pics when the fleet arrives.. Until then may your dice roll high and your paint not chip !      And if anyone one in the Adelaide S.A. area reads this who plays Firestorm, shoot us a comment . Would be happy to catch up for some death amongst the stairs !