Marines storm building

"Entry team in position, waiting for go signal..."



"Blast doors open, assault team moving inside..."

Some of my GZG marines assaulting my garage building made of Hirst Arts sci-fi blocks. The top of the doorway lift off so that you can remove the blast doors as required. In this case, they are entering through the airlock at the side of the building. More pics to come when the structure is completed!

Grumpy's Shack update

Grumpy the colonist is slightly less grumpy today as he proudly shows off the latest additions to his grotty shack.

First, we have the lovely rusty fence which now surrounds the outbuilding where he intends to conduct his zombie experiments...

It even has an opening gate - a must for quick getaways when experiments go awry!

Here are the ammo crates where Grumpy stores the "Zombie killer" rounds for his autorifle.

Here are the drums of toxic bioplasm which Grumpy uses in his experiments. Hmm... should they really be leaking like that..?

The fence is plastic mesh that I got in a model railway shop many years ago. It's had a coat of black acrylic, followed by patches of brown and terracotta for the rusty effect, and finally a drybrush of GW chainmail.

Oil drums (resin) and ammo boxes (white metal) from Continental Model Supply Company.

GZG Fast Recon

My NAC Marines obviously need some sort of reconnaisance elements. I have a light gunsled, but I fancied something else for a little variety.


When I spotted the Slammers infantry on skimmers (SG15-HS3) in the GZG catalogue, I decided to add a pack to my order to see what they were like. They're great! You get 4 one-piece castings of skimmer & rider. All 4 are the same pose, but it would be pretty easy to do a headswap or two if desired. I've painted mine to match my NAC Marines. Although they aren't quite the same as the NAC troops, I can just use the excuse that these little chaps have lighweight recon armour and cut-down carbines instead of the standard-issue combat gear. When they're painted, you don't really notice the difference much anyway.

I've already got another pack ready to paint, and I may add a squad of dismounted slammers infantry to my next order too.

Badger

The BADGER is an old Matchbox "rollamatic" vehicle. All the Rollamatic vehicles had some feature which was activated by a a cog as the wheels turned. In this case, the radar dish on top rotates as the vehicle drives along. Matchbox produced several fictional army vehicles, some of which were loosely based on real vehicles (the "Weasel" scout car is a vague approximation of the British Fv700 series "Ferret" scout car). No two vehicles from this series are quite the same scale as each other, but this one looks especially good with 15mm figures.

This was from my childhood toy car collection. It originally came in a metallic brown colour, but had been repainted by my Dad in Humbrol matt brown with WWII allied white star roundels, giving it a more military appearance. It served with distinction alongside my 1/72 scale WWII figures for many years.

The rivets were drilled out, enabling me to disassemble the whole vehicle. The green plastic windows were given a good clean to remove any errant brown paint spots and decades of sticky fingerprints. Large amounts of carpet fluff were cut away from the axles (which were also straightened with a pair of pliers where necessary), and the body shell was cleaned back to the bare metal with paint stripper & an old toothbrush.

Painting used Humbrol matt enamels. All the metal parts received a base/undercoat of 33 Black followed by a very heavy drybrush of 29 Dark Earth. A splotched camo pattern of 27 Sea Grey and 86 Light Olive was drybrushed over this, then the vehicle was reassembled with a spot of araldite epoxy resin and ready for action!

It now acts as a command or patrol vehicle for my NAC Marines.

Robots!

Grumpy the colonist has a couple of new robots to make life easier round the scrapyard. He has a small astromech style droid for general maintenance work, plus a much larger heavy work robot for waste processing and loading. He found this latter droid at a reduced price (£1) on a recent trip to the planet "Tesco", and he will soon be repainting it to try and make its origins a little less obvious!

Shack

Looking at the various shacks and other wasteland scenery that's been cropping up on other Blogs recently (Dropship Horizon and Black Primer Paint, I felt inspired to add another little building to my collection.



This shack is based on a piece of 3mm 10x10cm MDF textured with fine sand. The back wall is a Hirst Arts door, obviously scavenged by the occupants. The corner support pillar is another Hirst Arts block, and the side wall has been made from a toy car which has been gently hammered into a flatter and more wall-like shape. The other 2 walls are sections of a plastic punnet which contained supermarket mushrooms. The roof is an off-cut of fine-corrugated cardboard.



I deliberately left the area at the back open as a sort of storage area, giving a few more places to hide in a gunfight. I have added quite a few bits of scenery round the edges; 1/76th scale oil drums and stack of ammo boxes (120mm Challenger tank rounds to be precise) from Continental Model Supply Company, plus a couple more oil drums rescued from an old airfix battlefield accessory kit. I had been leaving them as loose scatter scenery, but I've found that it takes ages to find and pack them all after a game, and they keep getting lost/damaged, so I've decided that I may as well just stick them in place on the other scenery anyway.



Painting used assorted Inscribe acrylic hobby paints:
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber
Forest Green
Ultramarine Blue
Snow
Raven
Holly Berry


The roof was painted around the edges with the red-brown burnt sienna for the most rusted parts followed by dark brown burnt umber added for less rusted areas. A couple of extra rust patches were added towards the middle of the roof and around the patch. The white snow & black raven mixed in 2 shades for a basic grey followed by a lighter drybrush to bring out the ridge detail.



Walls were forest green with a quick highlight of forest green+snow. A drybrush of burnt umber added rusted weathering around edges of windows, doors etc, with a few touches of burnt sienna to create fresher areas of rust.



The car received 2 coats of snow to hide the original paint job, then 2 coats of Holly Berry red. Some burnt umber/burnt sienna rust patches were dabbed on to complete the car.
The door is ultramarine blue highlighted with blue+snow plus rust patches. The pillar is mixed raven/snow grey highlighted with extra snow, plus a few patches of green algae.
Once finished, the whole lot had a gentle drybrush of dusty grey around the bottom of the walls etc. to help blend it into the base and bring it all together. When I find my bag of static grass, it'll get a few scrubby patched of that too.

Industrial building

This is a little something I've been working on for the past few evenings. It's going to be a vehicle garage/small hangar of some sort. I've included a couple of figures for scale (Rebel Minis military contractor with replacement GZG head and a GZG armed colonist).

The base is 3mm MDF, cut to fit the same 10x10cm grid that I use for all my buildings. In this case, it's a 20x20cm base, giving a bit more room to play with. It has been designed so that if/when I make other buildings, they can connect together into a larger complex as desired.

The building itself is constructed from plaster blocks cast from Hirst Arts moulds. Although designed for 25-30mm scale miniatures, they still look pretty good with 15mm figures. I use parts from these moulds for a lot of my buildings. Some are almost completely built from plaster blocks, but others are mainly foamcore, card etc. but with the odd clock added to represent ducting, plant & machinery and other functional looking items, adding character to the buildings without too much effort.

The doors are removable - the top of each doorway has been left separate, enabling me to lift it off and slide the door out.

The yellow "Dragon's Teeth" at the front are intended as a safety feature as found on many modern industrial buildings - large vehicles entering the garage at the wrong angle would hit one off these first, rather than colliding with the wall of the building. They also provide a handy bit of cover for anyone defending the building from attack.

I need to cast a few more blocks; I was using up some of my existing stock, and ran out part way through construction!

There will be a first floor for the building, which will most likely be made from foamcore.

New UNSC Troopers

This is a somewhat experimental colour scheme using a couple of the new UNSC troops from GZG.


This is based on a "Wimbledon" style colour scheme using white, purple and green. I had some old GW Epic scale Imperial Knights which had been painted in this "House Warwick" colour scheme. Although they have long since been re-painted in the "Warp Runners" Titan order colour scheme, I did like the old scheme, so thought I'd give it another try.





I'm not really sure that it has worked! I might go for something more conventional on the rest of them, or perhaps a traditional white and blue UN scheme...