3mm GEV Armored Task Force and Anti-Grav Armored Battalion, by The National Cheese Emporium (Shapeways)

As I mentioned last week, I received a package from Andreas Udby, AKA “Javelin98”, proprietor of The National Cheese Emporium shop on Shapeways in mid-May. In it was a nice selection of Andreas’ 3mm science-fiction stuff, which I have finally gotten around to painting up.

As I also explained last week, TNCE’s stuff varies wildly in quality. Andreas’ began making figures years ago in 1/900 scale for Ogre Miniatures players. When Oddzial Osmy’s 3mm (1/600) stuff started becoming popular, he re-sized some of his production and started in on new lines. As the years have gone by, his 3D sculpting skills have drastically improved. So you can kinda say Andreas has sort of a “the good, the bad, and the ugly” dynamic going on.

Last week, I presented the vehicles of TNCE’s Wheeled Taskforce, which I found to be quite good. These, of course, are a relatively recent sculpt. I thus decided to do some “ugly” vehicles this week: the hover and grav task forces.

These are “more recent” sculpts: not as nice as Andreas’ newest stuff, but not as basic as the re-sized 1/900 line. I do not like these sculpts, but I must say, the hover vehicles  ended up looking much better than I thought once they were painted! I am still not into the grav vehicles, however.

Lets take a look…

The hover vehicles are obviously inspired by David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers series, so I painted them up as if they were from that universe. I think the silver paint scheme turned out quite nicely! I am not so sure about the grav vehicles, however. I wanted to go for a US Air Force basic gray paint job. It doesn’t seem to have worked as well as the silver scheme and that might be one of the problems  with these vehicles.

 

The main problem with both lines, however, is that I think they are too small for 1/600 scale.

Here we see the hover tank and grav IFV models in relation to an O8 Caesarion (from that company's sci-fi line) and a TNCE wheeled AFV. See the difference? It is particularly noticeable in the grav vehicle. These figures need to be at least 25% larger, in  my opinion.

To top it all off, the packs have the same problem as the earlier vehicles I reviewed: they come in  a pre-established mix and you can't buy the sculpts you want seperately. This is particularly problematic for the hover line. O8 has also produced some (much superior, IMHO) hover tanks based on the Hammers’ franchise, but they stopped expanding the line, apparently due to fears that they were infringing on John Treadaway’slicense for HS miniatures. We thus only have the blower and combat car for that line. It would be nice to get artillery, command cars and maybe some other vehicles and TNCE’s figs could fill that niche… if we could actually buy only the figures that we need. As it is, we have to buy the whole selection at 3-4 times the O8 price.

 

O8 hover tank.

TNCE’s combat car is particularly bad in my opinion. I’ve stuck one of O8’s Heavy Infantry troopers in there, just so we can see how it scales. Not very well, as it turns out. There’s barely room for two troopers in the back, let alone the canonical three. And where is the driver and engine on this bloody thing?

TNCE combat car with O8 heavy trooper in back
 

This brings up another point: far too many GEV-style futuristic tanks - from almost all the companies producing them - don’t make adequate space provisions for the vehicle’s drive train. Many manufactures seem to think that the way to model an air-cushion vehicle is to chop off the treads and stick on a ground effect skirt. GEVs, however, need air intakes and enough space UNDER that skirt for fans or jets or what not, not to mention what needs to be a pretty robust powerpack. They thus shouldn’t be lower to the ground than treaded or wheeled vehicles. TCNE dosn't sin particularly worse than other manufacturers here, but it's still annoying.

My grades for these vehicles are: B- for the hover combat team and C for the grav combat team. Resizing the hover vehicles and making their mix geared to the kinds of models we can’t get from O8 would raise that team’s grade to a B+ for me. Resculpting them slightly to let them fit in better with O8’s vehicles (i.e. higher chassis and add intake fans) would move them into the A range.

 

The grav vehicles, however, aren’t worth redoing, most particularly because TNCE has recently sculpted two far better grav lines, so why waste your money here?

We will look at those new grav lines in a future installment!

French Army for Black Powder: 3mm Oddzial Osmy

The core of my French Napoleonic Army for Black Powder is FINALLY finished! I rebased it during the World Cup and painted up the last few units.

Here are some pictures:

 
I learned  a lot doing these.

In the first place, as with all microscales, you need to exagerate your paint jobs and use the brightest colors possible: medium gray for black, bright crimson for red, bright blue for blue, etc.

I originally began painting far too dark and had to go back and touch up units.

Furthermore, I put a blue pom-pom on each infantry figures head (red and gold for grenadiers and voltiguers, respectively). I know that French infantry had color-coded pom-poms by company, but at this scale, you need something to catch the eye at arms distance. With their white surcoats, the French looked too indistinct from the Austrians. With a blue pom-pom added, however, the blue bleeds through to the eye, even at this distance. (Close up, they look a bt more like Bavarians, perhaps, and if I ever do that army, I am going to have to make them baby blue so that they contrast).

Finally, I orignally gave these figs a medium green flocked base. Bad idea: they didn't stand out enough. I thus went to fine yellow flocking with some light green coarse flocking tossed in as bushes and the result is as you see it. I am quite pleased with it.

What you are looking at here is some 80-90 dollars worth of Oddizial Army 1/600 scale figures, bought through the wonderful guys at Pico Armor. They took me a year to paint, but only because I went very slowly and rebased and repainted several times, trying to get the proper effect. 3mm is a new scale and needs new techniques when it comes to basing and painting. I hope to find time to write a painting and basing primer for Napoleonics later this year.

What we have on the board are:

6 battalions ofline infantry
2 battalions of light infantry
1 battalion of veteran light infantry

2 foot batteries
1 horse battery

4 squadrons of cuirassiers
4 squadrons of chasseurs a cheval
4 squadrons of hussars

Sundry skirmisher and regimental and brigade command stands.

Doing this same army in 28mm scale would cost around 600 dollars or more. Although it would be much more visibly impressive, it would take much more time to paint and a huge amount of room to play and store. This army fits in a cigar box, plays on my coffee table, and cost about 1/8th what a comparable 28mm force would cost.

Still to come for the French are:

More limbers and commanders
2 Old Guard Battalions
2 Middle Guard Battalions
3 Veteran line battalions.




I eventually plan to buy another 12 infantry battalions, a heavy Guard Cavalry regiment, a light Guard Cavalry regiment, a dragoon regiment, a Carabinier regiment and 4 battalions of Young Guard.




The French will also get some allied forces: 3 Polish infantry battalions, 2 Nassauer infantry battalions and 3 Saxon infantry battalions. There will also be a Polish Lancer regiment and a couple of squadrons of Saxon Cuirassiers and German Chevauxlegers.

As always, my "historical" gaming presumes that all this is going on in an alternate dimension "just next door": I don't strive for absolute accuracy, just reasonably plausible forces. This allows me to paint up forces which I probably shouldn't, were I to stick to stirctly historical OoBs.

When finished, my French force should allow me to "bathtub" any Napoleonic battle up to and including Leipzig 1813, at roughly 8:1 scale (i.e. every 8 battalions/squadrons are represented by one on the table top).

1942 Soviet Tank Brigade

Cue "Katyusha".

Here's a Soviet tank brigade from early 1943. The figures are O8 3mm and each stand represents roughly a half company.

This brigade contains:

7 T-34/43
1 T-34/41
3 T-60
4 GAZ Trucks
4 Infantry
2 SMGs (tank riders)
1 82mm Mortar
1 76mm ATG

Again, I've based these figures against their color scheme, so it's brown/yellow/light green bases versus dark green vehicles and brownish infantry.

Urra!

The People's Revolutionary Industrial Council and Syndicate takes the R5 Refinery

The People's Revolutionary Industrial Council and Syndicate is an armed workers' movement on Smade's World which fights to take direct control of the means of production away from the Noble Houses and Corporations which currently run unobtanium mining and hyandwavium processing facilities.

Following a surprising string of recent victories, the PRICS have recieved off-world support in the form of the New Vistula Legion. The Neo-Poles hope that by supporting the revolutionaries, they will gain a foothold on Smade's World and a small but lucrative chunk of the handwavium trade.

Here we see the rebel column of Commadante Ima Ben-Dayo as it forms up in front of the recently occupied R-5 refinery:

The column's infantry is equipped with serviceable extruded plastisteel body armor and small arms. It's backed up by a large Plasma Infantry Gun. Re-purposed heavy trucks with hastily applied armor panels carry the company. Ben-Dayo's trucks are also equipped qith heavy mortars, thrown together in liberated machine-shops and mounted on their roofs.

The column also contains a squadron of rail-gun armed "technicals" and a re-purposed heavy construction mecha, armed with seriously up-graded industrial plasma cutters.

Here's a close-up of the column:

Finally, here's the R-5 refinery from another angle. It was made out of parts of a deoderant stick, a plastic pinbox, chunks of balsa wood, beads and many bits of plasticard, tubes, and greeblies.

The PRIC miniatures are all from Oddzial Osmy's Modern range except for the Mecha which is a Risk "graffiti" piece. When I pulled it from the game, I noticed that the Chinese factory that put the casting model together had obviously stuck its legs on backwards. I had to cut them off and turn them around.

3mm sci-fi set-up

Here's a quick set up for a battle showing my new terrain system and some of my 3mm sci-fi miniatures.

The system is built on half-meter square, 10mm thick "foamies" that can be linked together. One side of the foamie is flocked spring green, the other yellow. My old canvas modules have been dismounted from the frames and cut up. They are pinned to board with tacks and stick-pins disguised as rock piles and vegetation.

Here, you can see me holding the foamie with all the terrain pinned to it at a 90 degree angle compared to the floor. As you can see, this stuff is on there pretty firmly...

 

 Here's a top down shot of the foamie with miniatures and buildings in place....

 

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 A shot of the R-5 handwavium refinery. The Lafitte Regiment's Fire Support Squadron currently occupies it. In the background, we can see a Lafitte titan guarding the road. It's screened by two squadrons of heavy mecha.

 

The Lafitte's titan is a monster. One of the heaviest and best armed in the Human Sphere. In reality it's a 28mm Tau power armored trooper repurposed from Games Wankshop. You can see some 2mm Germy power armor troopers on its base, put there for scale. The heavy mecha are Ground Zero Games 6mm infantry walkers from their "Not-Votoms" line:

 

Two companies of local House Penn-Taylor militia hold a trench line to the north of belt of Ramen Trees.

 

The Lafitte's anti-mecha squadron, made up of four troops of Stalker mecha, hide just below the crestline of the hill. Behind them is their HQ unit, mounted in Sloth command mechas.

 

Titans from the Third Combined Arms Combat Team, preceded by two companies of IFV-mounted infantry and a recon troop, advance on the woodsline.

 

Shot of the Laffite titan from the rear, showing its escort squadron, with Sloth-mounted HQ:

 

Another angle showing the 3rd CACT's main line of battle:

Assault Gun Brigade in Ambush

Here are some pictures showing German assault guns set up in an ambush position along a road in northern France. The figures are all O8 3mm and the terrain is homemade.

Two companies are deployed forwar along the tree line while one company is held back in reserve with the engineers and recon  in a small hamlet. Here's an overhead shot and a view of the main defensive position, from the front.

Making 3mm terrain modules, Part 2

Once you've got the basic flocking down, you can get creative. If you've got a lot of glue bleeding through your initial flock toos, you can go directly to this step. Otherwise, it's time to lay down more glue. Now you toss on a contrasting flock. In this case, Ive decided to go with a finer, darker flock.
 

 

I also throw down some coarse flocking and patches of static grass to break up the monotony.

  

 Here's the result of final flocking on two boards. Occasionally, you'll find, after all this work, that one of your boards isn't as straight as you thought it was. Here, I discovered that one of my new modules had a corner that was about 3 millimeters off. You can just ignore this, if you like, and always make sure that the off side is never jutting up to another board. Here, however, I've built a plastic shim to correct the error. I then painted and flocked it. Good as new!

Above you see the final 80cm x 80cm layout of all four modules. Some of the roads need to be completely painted yet, as I discovered that I needed a few extra ones. All I did in these cases was strip out the flocking with a knife, lay down more Vallejo earth paste, paint and re-flock the margins. My two feet will give you some idea of the scale of all this. Suffice it to say that, gamewise, this is the equivalent of a 2 meter by 2 meter table. And it fits in my breakfast nook.

Here you can see two modules close up. The top one has a couple of fields built into it while the muddy area to the left of the river on the bottom one marks the margins of a village. Houses, of course, will be laid down seperately so that they can be moved to accomodate figures during the game. Of course, you could also claim the brown area is muddy ground and hard going, or just ignore it.

 

Two more modules,  marsh and a defile.

...and, finally a river.

Commander series company level rules

 One of the joys of the Commander system is its maravelous flexibility. Recently, I've been playing at company level, where each unit represents 10-15 vehicles and 100-200 men. This is what I've discovered needs to be done to adapt the rules to that level:

1) Divide all measurements by ten: this is the new range, move etc. in inches. Each inch represents around 250 meters.

2) To make things easier, I base my vehicle stands at 1x1 inch and the infantry at 1x 1/2 inch.

3) The basic increment for command range is 4 inches.

4) FAO and FAA are presumed to be in the CO and HQ stands themselves. Add 1/2 the value of the FAO and/or FAA to the cost of these stands if they have them attached.

5) For Artillery and Air Strike purposes, spotting can be traced from any unit within one command increment (4 inches)of a FAO/FAA equipped HQ or CO.

6) Artillery and airstrike drift dice totals are divided by five and rounded up. This is the number of half-inches they drift.

7) Command can be measured to congruent groups (adjacent stands) by tracing it to the closest unit.

8) Artillery and air strike aim points are the center of their respective targets. A unit is only hit by an artillery or air strike if the template covers its center.

Here's some eye-candy from yesterday's game. Here, a Krasnynorad Tank division takes on a mixed Azurnerreich task force in an assault scenario. I let the game run 10 turns, due to the map being so big (a 2ft by 2ft map in company scale is the equivalent of a 2.4m x 2.4m map at regular scale), but by turn 8, it was obvious that Big Red wasn't going to take the prime terrain objective (i.e. the village), in spitee of shattering most of Great Blue's armor.

 

The game at start: Blue occupies the woods, the village and is poised to put most of its armor on the ridge. To the east, Red masses two tank and a motor infantry regiment.

I'm very proud of this terrain feature. It's a piece of cloth, glued to plastic with silicon caulking, then painted and flocked with more silicon caulking. Finally, bunches of flocked bases are placed on top (along with the water tower), to illustrate woods terrain.

Here's the village: Red needed to ocupy this by turn 10 for the win. Blue has placed the better part of an infantry battalion here, along with a close-support company of Centurions.

The situation at the end of Turn 5. Red has engaged all along the front of the ridgeline, bringing on a third tank regiment from the right flank. All of Blue's armor has rushed to meet the attack and is in danger, now, of being flanked.

Turn 7, the turning point. This airstrike saved the day for Great Blue. A squadron of F-100 Super Sabres bombs Red's flanking regiment, following a devastating artillery barrage. This attack killed half a battalion of armor and disrupted the only in-range HQ. The next turn, the Red CO rolled an "11" right off the bat, attempting to move the whole division in for the kill. A short range knife fight then developed to the right of the ridge, with Blue's Centurions taking out an entire regiment of T-54s while the rest of the division sorted out its command problems in the confusion following the airstrike.

 End game, beginning of Red Turn 8. Blues' armor is almost spent and another company will be destroyed this turn. However, Red has little chance of getting enough infantry into the village before Turn 10 to win the game. When the Red CO blew yet ANOTHER command roll on his first attempt to activate, Red threw in the towel.

More 3mm NVL Photos

Here are a few more photos of my new 3mm New Vistula Legion troops, trying out my second Smade's World terrain module.

The Light Attack company and Scout company of the First Regiment scope out a crossroads.

A squadron from the 24th Uhlans backs up the Light Attack company.

Drones lead a mounted Light Mechanized Infantry company down the road. The commander watches from the side.

Task force of the 1st Regiment, New Vistula Legion

The last photo gives you a pretty good glimpse of the terrain module.



This is built on a 60x30cm framed artist's canvas with a styrofoam backing board glued in underneath. This particular board is a plains board, with only one small hill in the center, just to the right of the helicopters.

I now have three Smade's World boards done and a fourth coming up. Hopefully, I'll get a tutorial done before too long!

Company A, First Regiment, New Vistual Legion Deploys

Well, here's Company A of the First Regiment of the New Vistula Legion, deployed on Smade's World. You see them here with a squadron of the 24th Uhlans, along with the attack component of the regimental air company and a flight of ground support aerospace attack craft.

(Also in the pictures, one can see my first terrain module done up especially for Smade's World. It's based on a 60cm x 30cm pre-framed painter's canvas, with expansion-foam hills and scratch-built buildings. These terrain modules will be the subject of a future post when I get a couple more of them made.)

These troops are 3mm modern and sci-fi figures from a variety of manufacturers, based for playing Future War Commander at platoon scale. FWC players will wonder why each platoon has two stands instead of the one which is the norm for platooon scale. This is due to the fact that the NVLs platoons are heavily over-manned by Human Sphere standards. Most infantry squads have 6-8 ground soldiers, for example, while the NVL's have 12. Likewise, NVL's vehicular platoons contain 5 vehicles instead of the normal 3, while its artillery batteries have 6 btubes instead of 4.

These large units allow the NVL to deploy a combat-capable force off-world for extended periods of time without replacements.

Here's the company, deployed to defend a ridge. The Wolverine II wheeled APCs are stationed behind the ridge, able to offer smart missile support via the target designators mounted in the company's recon drones (seen atop the ridge, left of center).

Alongside the APCs are the 6 tubes of the company's mortar battery. All the troops in this photo come from Oddzial Osmy via Pico Armor in the U.S. The foot soldiers are modern Soviet infantry and the APCs are Polish Rosomak APCs. I added a smart missile launcher to the Rosomak's turret with a bit of PVC tubing I had lying about. The drone, of course, is hand made.

Here's a close-up view of the center of the company's position. Each stand represents about 25 men in 3mm scale and two stands make up a platoon. This shot also shows you the recon drone, with the Wolverine IIs far in the background.

A close-up of the Wolverine II, drone and infantry. As I mentioned above, the APC has been customized by the addition of a smart missile launcher, seen here to the left of its turret.

Here is half the Regiment's air company (the other half is made up of heavy transport helicopters). Yes, I see the little fuzzies stuck to the bottom of those rotor disks. A couple of years ago, O8 moved to  "stick-on" rotors and the residual glue attracts dust. I'm going to need to clean them with a cue-tip. Would alchohol work, though? I don't want to use acetone for fear of desolving the rotors themselves.

The NVL is organized as a light, star-mobile force and thus has no organic heavy armor resources. AFVs are limited to the Wolverine IIs and the armored cars of the Light Attack company (not pictured here - one vehicle still needs to be painted up). Each regiment does have a heavy power armor platoon attached to its headquarters company, however. This can be seen in the picture above.

These figures are 6mm Scotia Power Armor troopers, regonfigured here to be 5 meter tall infantry support walkers.

When circumstances permit, the NVL deploys with units cross-attached from regular military formations. Here we see a squadron of the 24th Uhlans Mecha Regiment holding the infantry company's flank. It is made up of three line troops, a heavy support troop and a headquarters troop (farthest back, on a round base).

The figures here are from Dream Pod 9's "Fleet Scale" line and are Terran Gears (which, unfortunately, don't seem to be available anymore). This figure has a problem in that the barrel of its rifle (the silver bit on the left side of the figure here) is too thin and often snaps off. I "fixed" that by making the support and command mecha carry "carbines". The support mech has a bit attached to its shoulder from a Games Workshop Tau pack. If I ever do the entire 24th Regiment, this unit will probably be remounted as the regimental commander, as I only have the one bit. I'll have to come up with a different solution for the support troops. The command mecha is kitbashed by having an EW dome (a small bead, actually) glued to its right shoulder.

Finally, here's a flight from the attached 8th Tactical Aviation squadron, making a recon run ahead of the task force's position. These are Slayer micro-fighters from Iron Wind Metals. They scale perfectly to 1/600.


So that's it so far. I have most of the Light Attack company and the other two Light Mechanized Infantry companies painted, as well as the supporting units, but I need to kit-bash more drones and a few more mortar vehicles. Hopefully I'll have all of this up soon!

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