Pre detailed plastic bases by Champ Industries

In the back of my mind for years now was some cool bases I always thought would go well with my Colonial Marines I'd seen a review from Dr Faust's Painting Clinic (remember him?) Of course my marines were in the back of the cupboard at the time... 

With the revival of my project with all the new vehicles and lovely Hasslefree guns got me thinking about how to base all the models. I was considering the rather nice Sulaco bases by Fenris Games but being resin it gets rather pricey. But I remembered to look up Champ Industries again and see what they had on offer. After a simple paypal transaction my order was off and a week and a bit later they arrived in Oz.

I ordered a big bag of 150 industrial bases which will see out all my marines, aliens, and probably any Infinity stuff I do in the near future. I also grabbed 30 of the urban bases for zombie survivors and stuff, though I think it would fit 40K stuff pretty well or Infinity.

Here are the 4 different Industrial designs. I flipped a row to let you see how the facing changes the look. 

Here are the 3 different Urban designs.

And with some minis blutacked on to see how they look, I think I invested pretty well in these. It's kind of surprising but apart from the occasional pre detailed base by GW no one else out there has made plastic pre done bases. The detail is very crisp and unlike resin bases you still have the void at the bottom of the base so they sit on the table really easily you can also use plastic glue to stick down plastic minis instead of pinning down with super glue. Dr Faust seemed to think you can get away with just super glueing down metal minis without pinning as well, I'll give it a try.

Borderlands Buggy - CNC Buggy

You may have spotted the buggy in the background of my smartgunners photo and wondered what it is. I recently picked up the CNC Workshop pair of buggies lasercut kit.





The inspiration for the kit was rather obvious to me ;)



It's very unusual for a lasercut MDF kit. Every other kit I've built has been a slot together box of slots and sockets. This one was mostly layers and layers of shapes glued together and then trying to putty up the gaps and sand it it all smooth.  As you can see I put in a LOT of work puttying up gaps and sanding shapes into curves from the blockyness of the kit.



















So was it worth all the effort. On one hand hand my carpet is a mess after all that sanding :( but the final result is rather pleasing. I still need to add a heap of grab handles and the guns.











The question after finishing it is do I even want to build the 2nd buggy? I guess I'll decide after I paint this one and see the finished result.

Welcome to the Corp - Making better Colonial Marines from EM4 and Copplestone Castings Troopers

"I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A pulse rifle. 

Ten millimeter, with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher."
―Cpl. Hicks (from Aliens)

It's hard not to think back to the awesome action movies from the 80s especially being a wargamer / board game player wanting to recreate so many of them as games, especially ALIENS, which GW must have thought too when they created Space Hulk. But like quite a few other gamers out there I always had in the back of my mind the idea to swap out the genestealers for proper xenomorphs (or leave off two of the arms) and to ditch the terminators for Colonial Marines. I know that was my idea when I bought the Grenadier Future Warriors range of troopers by Mark Copplestone many many years ago. Unfortunately I only ever painted a couple of them and didn't use proper reference so my momentum stopped as I was unhappy with the results. Though I did add to the horde over the years when EM4 brought the molds out again and then Copplestone Castings did new varients. One problem was the guns always annoyed me with their inacuracy. Sure they immediately evoked the movie guns but they weren't right. This was very obvious when I recently bought the troopers available from Hasslefree miniatures. Though the armour is even less accurate to the movies than the old Copplestone sculpts the use of 3D printed movie accurate guns just made you excited to paint them up. I then got it in my head to update the old models. Hasslefree sold sprues of Pulse Rilfles. I didn' t quite anticipate how many hours of clipping and cutting and hacking would be involved to convert these one part metal models but damn it over a week I did it.

Before and after hacking the old gun out. To get rid of the old gun I used a pair of side cutters which was easy to snip off the top section of the gun and then it gets tricky getting rid of the magazine and the grip in the forward hand. Cleanup was done with a heavy hobby blade.



progress continues...

All Done :)



Damn missed one in the 2nd bottom row that was hiding out with the missile launchers and Hasslefree minis. I fixed him after I took the photos. Though the fully painted guy up top will stay as he is, I think the partially painted ones will get stripped and painted with the rest.

Now of course after giving all the troopers movie accurate guns I feel I need to improve my Smart Gun heavy weapon troopers. 





The movie guns most iconic things were the way they were held with the steady cam arms and those triangular motorbike part frames on the sides of the barrel. The EM4 marines have the pose and the support arms but lack the detail on the barrels. So after tracing the frames from a dismantled photo of a replica I printed out several sizes on a sheet of paper to compare with the miniature for the right look. Then cut thin plastic card and used plastic rod to make the frames. After making one set I made a press mold and cast some more from green stuff. I also added the large cocking handles on the sides of the receivers, the wire underneath the gun and new muzzle breaks. I cut a slot across the front of a bit of aluminum tubing and scored some lines around it and glued it over the tip of the guns.





My line up of smart gunners from EM4, Copplestone and Hasslefree. I may cut the hands holding up the front of the Hasslefree ones so they are holding the gun on the side instead.

New goodies :)

Hasslefree recently had a May the 4th be with you sale so couldn't resist the timing of ordering a full squad of their very nice Colonial Marines (and Sally threw in a lollipop :) )



These will get to ride around in the new Caimen from Khurasan when they arrive. Also I may have 40 or so Copplestone and EM4/Grenadier Future Warriors Colonial Marines from many years ago. I really will have to try and do them all up. Then the challenge of finding or making a pile of appropriate Aliens for them to shoot at.



Oh I also recently got these rather nice minis from the Bombshell Babes kickstarter. I kind of wish I'd gotten more now, Oh well.

I also got a really bizarre plastic kit, I'll post that after I build it.

Finished photos of the Nomad and all my Pirates

Ah forgot to post the finished pics of the Jack, got distracted by MOAB and painting for GD





then of course I got inspired to do a little sister to go with him made from a Eureka street urchin and a dead pirate


and the rushed paintjob so I could get to my GD stuff




Oh and here is the jack with my completed pirates so far

Making a big Cutlas

I decided to have a go at making a jack cutlass out of a few resin bits, a mini tab and a bit of thick plasticard





pretty happy with the result, just need to prime these guys and start painting.

Riviting

Here's a couple more shots of the Nomad showing all the rivets that took so damn long to do




also took a group shot including the assembled Mariner, Shae and a couple of likely little sisters from Hasslefree