From DavidB: Spectre Ops (80 points)

Modern Wargaming has never been an interest for me. I'm not superstitious, but it is too close to life. I could blame Curt for the several posts he has done with Spectre and other brands. I could also blame my kids for the superhero and zombie games. I will blame the fine folks at Spectre Miniatures for the models and game they made. The game is pretty simple and fast and has more scenario angles than just Middle East scenarios. I chose to collect the Cartel and other models going for vibes of John Wick, Sicariono, Shooter, Jason Bourne. Since it is a skirmish game I can drop geopolitics and politics in general.

The game creators are a nice married couple who have family connections in the SAS. The models and rules had input from real life trigger pullers. It shows when you see the difference between experienced and elite soldiers as opposed to the militia and criminal models.

This is the model that sucked me into the range. A supressed marksman/sniper rifle and he has a silenced pistol

His forward lean and heel toe stride show a sniper doing a security check before setting up for work.

I only have a few cartel models and plan on getting others as well as some Insurgent forces for more elite hit teams.

Even the Cartel have some who with a change of paint could even represent other extremist groups.

I like the middle model quite a bit. he is an enforcer for the cartel with a ham fist hiding a small for him pistol. He is shooting"Israeli" style but seems more like he is trying to" throw" the bullet

The well dressed "Jeffe" on the phone flanked by two well dressed guards one is an older fellow while the fellow in orange has a military style haircut

The covert ops I painted in neutral tones as they can be Law enforcement, survivors, criminals, goverment contractors, or just a crew of veterans.

These were all painted in my standard form of black undercoat to many highlights, but I did use the contrast paint( the paler shades) as glazes in a few spots. There is a Cartel Flame trooper that missed the photo.

Counting him it's 16 modern for 80 points!

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Wonderful work on these operators and cartel soldiers David. I'm quite addicted to the Spectre range and have waaay too many of their models for a game that should only need a couple dozen for the tabletop. 

Your professional operators looks suitably 'hard' in their natural, more muted tones, but the cartel guys are where the fun is at, with their somewhat gawky poses and bright civilian street attire. Very cool and very well done.

-Curt

ByronM - 28mm Modern Operatives (20 points)

Today I have a few posts going up as I have been working on several different things over the last week and a bit, since I had some time off from work that I had to use before the end of March (end of fiscal year).

First up is a small unit of modern 28mm Operators.  These are from Spectre Miniatures and are part of the Kickstarter I back a year or so ago.

 As commented on before, the Spectre Miniatures are really good with excellent detail.  The only issue with them is the true scale of their weapons, which while correct makes them a little flimsy and appearing too small even though they are correct. 

These Operators were painted up in a very generic colour scheme so that they can be used for almost any nations forces.  They could also be used as deniable operatives or private military contractors (mercenaries). 

This small unit of 4 guys should give me 20 points to my total and to the modern challenge.

Also completed this week was a trip to Ikea to finally (after 5 years of debating over what to do for display in my painting room) put in some cabinets for display of painted figures and storage or terrain.


Here is what I came up with, half display and half storage.  Cabinets were easy to build (10 minutes each) but the lighting was the complicated part.  While simple in theory (drill hole and wire) doing it in a clean organized way took a while, probably an hour per cabinet, meaning 6x longer than building the actual cabinet itself.  Then a few minutes to put the doors on.

I am still in process of filling the cabinets, and will already be out of room, as I have way too many armies in storage to actually put them all out, but wanted to put a picture up to show what I have been up to.

I posted pictures last year of my work space, but while working on the new cabinets, I decided to change it up again.  I got a bigger counter top for my work area, split up my home made storage drawer system and moved the paints between them.  Sorry, its messy as this was taken as a last minute thing while taking pictures of everything else this week, but it shows the space pretty well.  The table is 5' wide and 2' deep giving me lots of space to work.

I really must check out the Spectre minatures, you have tempted me with these cracking chaps. Your cabinet area looks ace - all painters desks should be messy - its compulsory...

ByronM - 28mm Spectre Modern SAS troops in Digital Camo (20 points)

Continuing with my foray into modern figures I have been working on more of the excellent figures from Spectre and their Kickstarter I backed a while ago.

This entry is a small group of SAS recce troops that I have done attempted to do in a digital camo pattern for desert warfare. This proved to be a major pain in the ass.

This is the basic look I was going for.  Easy, right?

I found a few tutorials out there on various ways to do it, and didn't really care for how most of them turned out.  In the end I found a video tutorial that showed a method to paint the base colour first and then use square toothpick tips to apply the pattern. It actually worked fairly well, but then I went and did something stupid and washed them to give some depth, and it completely washed out all the light colours. DOH! Back to the starting point and I had to redo all of the camo.  So, at least one of these guys has 6 layers of methods on him. Luckily the figs has so much detail that it still shows through.

Overall, I am still not very happy with how the camo turned out, but after painting one of them multiple times and starting to get very frustrated I had to just take them as they were before I lost it.  I may look at trying some more digital camo sometime in the future, but it will not be any time soon.

I am pleased with how the figs look on the table, but close up they just fall apart to my eye.  Maybe it is due to the fact that the camo hides the detail and I just want to be able to see it.  I tried to pick out some details like straps, barrel tips, etc, but in general everything I find online shows almost everything being the same colours to help blend things in, even my barrel tips and sights would not really be black/grey but would be camo coloured.

Before anyone points out the fact that SAS does or does not use USA digital camo 5.11, I am not painting these specifically as SAS, that just happens to be the figures base.  I picture these as any elite recce force, not specifically SAS.

So, points wise these 4 face off against the 20+ militia I painted up previously, so it is time to see how that works on the table.  So, 4 28mm figures at 5 points each gives me another 20 points to my total and to the Modern Challenge I am in.


A very nice set of elite special forces types Byron. I think the camo has worked fine, but as its your army if you want pick out some bits why try it and see? Now it reminds me i have not watched Blackhawk Down for a while.. weekend viewing i think.

ByronM - Spectre 28mm Modern African Militia (100 points)

These figures have been sitting around here for a while since the Spectre Kickstarter ended sometime last year and the figures arrived.  I had been holding off painting them until this challenge rolled around, and until I could come up with some cool looking African / Middle eastern buildings to use them with.

Spectre Miniatures is a small company that focuses on modern 28mm figures and did a few Kickstarters in the last little while.  Since then they have also expanded their ranges significantly and have a whole pile of ultra modern miniatures for use.  The detail on the figures is extremely good and the figure quality is very high.  If I had one complaint about them, it would be in their attempt for detail and accuracy they have kept the guns the proper scale.  While fine in theory, in practice it makes them look really small as well as very fragile.  I did have a few show up broken though, and they were quickly replaced, so hurrah for customer service!

20 varied 28mm Spectre modern African militia

Anyway, I have done 20 of the African Militants / Militia up so far with more African and Middle East militia to follow shortly.

Since most modern games that these are involved with will have a huge number of militia vs a very small number of professional or elite soldiers, I chose to do these as a very fast and basic table top level.  I will spend more time on the 4-6 elites that face off against the 30-50 militia, but just couldn't justify a ton of time on all the cannon fodder.

All I did for painting them was prime black, base layer all the colours, wash with a dirty brown/black wash, and then highlight.  I then went in and did a few small details like the NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) shirt which I thought appropriate, some shiny white / bright colour hightop runners, and bright coloured flip flops and Croc's since that is obviously the proper footwear to enter battle with.  To finish off the crew I painted the leader of the militia in a purple suit with matching purple hair, as it seemed a very militant thing to fly in the face of all fashion sense.

I love the different poses, clothing, expressions that Spectre put on all of these figs, it made them a blast to paint.

For all of these and my upcoming professional soldiers I also designed and laser cut a pile of Middle East inspired buildings.  I kept them fairly generic so that they could be used for the Middle East, Spain, or even Mexico, so that they could see multiple uses.  For anyone interested I have them up on my site at: www.sg2creations.com in the Middle East Buildings section.

 20 militia should net me 100 points for my total and towards the Modern challenge that I am in.

Very nice Byron, you can almost hear the chants as they work themselves into a frenzy. Great mix of colours to give variety. Now will they be backed some "technicals"? I have not seen this range before they are tempting... must resist,,