Action Force - Muton

 The Muton was one of the original range of Action Force "The Enemy" figures.  A repaint of the original "deep sea diver", this sees the characteristic heavy diving helmet and weighted boots repurposed as an almost indestructible deadly killer robot.  A special head insert provided the action figure with attachment points for a communications antenna, head-mounted guns and a translucent orange visor.  The Mutons didn't make many appearances in the Action Force comic, presumably because they were so powerful.  As a result, whenever they did appear, they were always defeated by cunning rather than brute force.

Mutons on the march.

I've seen some great Mutons converted from large cargo handler robots made by GZG and I might have tried the same except for my discovery of Random Miniatures and his excellent range of "European GI Bros".

The "lost accessories" pose.

 Random Miniature's Mutons come in 3 poses, visor down, visor up and "lost the accessories down the back of the sofa" unarmed pose.  I do still have all the parts for both of my Mutons.

Armed and ready for action.

I tried out my new Army Painter Speedpaint for the red of the uniforms.  Plain Vallejo black for the boots, helmet and armour.  Green antenna and weapons, Vallejo orange visor with an orange ink wash to intensify the colour.  The last few details were added in with white.

Firing mode.

 I was so eager to get these painted that I finished them before I had bases ready.  For the bases, I used some steel washers.  I cut out some small circles of paper and superglued them over the holes, then added more superglue on top.  The figures were glued on, then I textured the base with PVA and a sprinkle of sieved sharp sand and tile grout.

Is this the end for Z-Force?

After painting the bases, I gave another coat of red speedpaint and repainted the boots black to conceal any stray patches of the terrain colours.

Size comparison.

 Although reduced from their 28/32mm starting size, my Mutons were printed slightly larger than required, to give them a bigger presence on the battlefield - as befits their intimidating nature.

Alien Attack Repellant Force - Infectors

Gonna need a bigger flamethrower!

These Alien Attack Infector creatures are from Random Minis on Patreon.  I 3d printed them at 56% the original size to use them in my 15mm games.

 I can recommend this Patreon, only £2 a month (+ VAT etc as applicable) at the lowest tier and you get access to all the back catalogue of miniatures.

These are in the December 2020 release, 3 poses of fearsome alien creature that will be great for games like 5 Parsecs from Home or Rogue Stars.

 Random Minis also specialises in "GI Bros" (GI Joe clones) and "Kings of the Cosmos" (Masters of the Universe).  More on those another day...

I used repeated washes of Vallejo flesh wash to get the tone I wanted.  I find that this has too much of a red-orange tone to use on normal flesh (I tend to mix it with sepia and dilute it considerably), but gave a nice cooked-lobster look to the Infectors.

The ink settles into the crevices and gives all the shading and highlights in the same way that a contrast paint would.

Teeth, claws and pincers were painted with Vallejo acrylics: khaki base then highlighted with bonewhite, finally a little dead white on the ends.

I wasn't sure how well these would come out, whether the legs would be too fragile reduced to 15mm, but they seem fine.  The print lines aren't too noticeable either.  The only real issue is where I could have positioned the supports better, but I can work on that the next time I print some.

I can mirror these models to give 6 poses in total, which will be a good number for creating small units with minimal duplicates.

Although my printer is temporarily packed away, these are definitely something I'll be printing more of fairly soon.  They'll be excellent generic alien monsters.