Sale time! Ion Age & Alternative Armies sale

More sales, this time Ion Age and sister company Alternative Armies AKA 15mm.co.uk.

To quote:

"It is the big weekend and the mega event is underway here at The Ion Age until 9am GMT Tuesday 28th November 2017. We have automatic Free Worldwide Shipping on all orders over 15GBP of product placed in the cart and we have the brand new IAF148 Beotan 2nd Tesseran space werewolves. We also have, for the duration of this event only, the return of the Havelock Battlesuit pre-order bundle which gives you three battlesuits plus a free fallen battlesuit as well as a saving of 15% off list priced (one of our most popular Early Supporter Bundles ever!).

This is a big event for us and of course you get your Reward Points on orders AND you can spend them on your event orders. We end with a Cyber Monday (27th Nov) mega offer on the three books in the Patrol Angis series as digital downloads for 24hrs only (the other offers are still on during Cyber Monday). Enjoy and here are the details. 

New Release! On the website now HERE.

IAF148 Beotan 2nd Tesseran (8 Lycanthopes with Mia Mpi) 6.00GBP 

Black Friday Event Offers! (Save on these) 

These are on our Early Supporter Offers page. 

IAF020 Havelock Battlesuit Bundle (3 Battlesuits, 1 Free Fallen Battlesuit and 15% off) (above)

IAF064 Geo Shelter Bundle (5 Buildings) (20% off)

IAF015 Hab Dome (25% off)

Cyber Monday Mega Digital Event! (25% off all our digital download books for 24hrs) 

For one day only we are going to reduce the prices of our three Patrol Angis paid for PDF books by twenty five percent on our 15mm Publications page. Cyber Monday 27th November only.

Lastly if you wish to combine orders with our mother site Alternative Armies then you can and you get access to the offers and free shipping there too. Send an email to info@theionage.com and list out all the codes you want from both websites along with your address and your paypal email. We will respond and send you an invoice to pay. Easy!"

I have some of the hab domes which are great, especially at a discount.  Even without the discount there's loads of great stuff, I have some Skylark flyers too.  Alternative Armies also have lots of great 15mm bits, I have some zombies, tents and more.

Fantasy zombies painted in a more modern style.

Sale time! Ravenstar Studios

Although I've never bought any of their stuff, Ravenstar Studios have some really nice 15mm vehicles and all sorts of starships.  I partcularly like their Stalker Walker tanks.

Stalker Walker Tank photograph from Ravenstar web site

Anyway, they've got a sale on, 30% off until November 25th then 25% off until December 3rd plus lots of freebies.  They've posted on the 15mm Facebook Group asking people to spread the word so that's what I'm doing!  I'm very tempted to make an order but I do already have a lot of things waiting to be painted and I probably shouldn't spend any more at the moment so maybe not this year...

GZG Federal Stats Europa Colonial Legionnaires

 More recent work, some FSE troops who will be the faceless enforcers of some unscrupulous colonial company, undertaking asset realisation operations to reclaim value from their off-world projects.  Anyone who has read Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton will know the sort of thing I'm talking about.  And if you haven't read it, please do!

I've gone for a fairly simple colour scheme, Humbrol 104 Oxford Blue with a highlight of Humbrol 24 blue. Shading is a wash of 1 part Vallejo black ink to 4 parts future floor polish.  This was drybrushed with Humbrol 24 blue followed by a final highlight which was 5/50 Humbrol 24 + GW enchanted blue.

Weapons, webbing, boots, gloves, respirators and shoulder pads are matt black with Humbrol 32 dark grey drybrush.  Visors are GW mithril silver.

All received a final coat of future floor polish for protection.  I started to give them a thinned coat of Vallejo Matte Varnish but this did not turn out well!  The 2 pointing officers have the matte finish, the one using binoculars doesn't.  It doesn't look too bad here but keep an eye out further down the page...

Support weapons are present in kneeling and standing poses.

Sniper and 2 firing poses.  The sniper has the matte varnish, you can see here how pale it makes the finish.  Despite the thinning it has settled in a milky layer in the creases and looks even worse in reality!

2 missile troopers provide anti-tank punch plus someone from the command pack with computer and comms pack.

Perhaps they'll end up fighting a few locals who don't want their assets realised.

Finally, in case some of you were thinking "that colour scheme looks familiar", here is the inspiration.

I'm sure many of you already guessed it!

GZG Mercenaries

 I've been busy painting some of GZG's mercenary range recently.  The following come from packs SG15-M01-6  which includes Merc rifles A, B & C; support pack with LMG and SAW; RPGs and LAWs; snipers.  I also have a couple of figures from SG15-P24 Pan African Union special forces squad B.

Not everything is painted yet, the prone figures are awaiting basing as weapon teams for Tomorrow's War and I just threw together a batch to try out some colour schemes.  My mercs won't have a "uniform" as such but I've tried to stick with the same few colours throughout, with the odd camouflage effect thrown in for variety.  I did use 5 or 6 different greens but after shading you couldn't tell the difference between some of them so it will be reduced to about 3 greens in the next batch plus a sandy yellow and a couple of browns.  All had a wash of sepia or black ink for shading followed by a drybrush of the base colour on top.  Future floor polish should add a bit of protection and the final step was some Vallejo matte varnish to kill the shine.  The last stage hasn't completely worked and it's left a pale deposit in some of the deep creases, but more on that another day!

First the support weapons.  The female figures' heads seem slightly small and dainty compared to the male figure and the bandanna is quite chunky.  Otherwise they're fine, the male figure has a spare drum magazine in the small of his back and they all have a nice assortment of pouches etc.

LAW, RPGs plus the machine gunner from the PAU special forces squad.  Nice poses but no-one seems to be carrying any reloads for the anti-tank weapons so they'd better hit with the first shots!

Close up of the LAW and the PAU gunner.  Unlike the mercenaries, the PAU figures all come with webbing and field packs.

I particularly like the LAW gunner, great pose and a very focused expression on his face!

Snipers.  I like the crouching and kneeling poses, these could easily be used on a multi-figure base as a sniper team or individually as marksmen within a squad.  The kneeling figure with the blue cap has very good facial features.

Rifles.  Given the wide range of different weapons in use, ammunition supply must be a nightmare...

More rifles plus the second PAU figure, again with additional webbing and backpack. I've painted the boots of the chap on the right with green gaiters and he has a green vest over a grey jacket.  Detail on the boots and jackets gives you the choice of painting all in one colour or splitting with different colours to suggest different types of garment.

Detail of a couple of the figures.  The PAU trooper has superb detail, especially his face.

The female merc has slightly soft features but is otherwise a great figure, good for a line trooper but could also be painted to stand out as an officer if desired.

More rifles. Chap in the centre has brown gaiters over his boots.

More detail of the faces.  I think the mercenaries are probably the best I've come across in all the GZG ranges for variety of heads and there are some excellent expressions amongst them.

All in all I'm very pleased with these.  They'll add some extra firepower to my armed civilians and colonists and the range of poses is excellent.  The next batch I work on will probably include a few head swaps and I might go back to the female machine-gunners to replace at least one of their heads too.