Space: 1999 Eagle and GZG 15mm EVA Suited Astronauts

OK so there’s a bit of a backstory behind this one, bear with me…

On my recent trip to the UK I stayed in Notting Hill at a place that just happened to be up the street from the Museum of Brands, a very cool little museum of… retail brands, that had some very cool stuff in it, including lots of old board games and toys. Here are some of my favourites:

If you say "it's popular," it's popular!

Not exactly Formula De I'm thinking

Frightening

"Hey who's up for a game of Sanctions?"

Well whoever decorated Goering got his armband on the wrong arm, for starters...

My absolute favourite. Mum is obviously drunk

Anyway the other very cool thing I saw at the MoB was their special exhibition featuring toys and collectibles related to two Gerry Anderson properties: Thunderbirds and Space: 1999. All the stuff in the exhibition reminded me how awesome a ship the Eagle was!

So I thought to myself, I should get an Eagle model to game with - it would fit great into the Lunar game! A few years ago a company called Round 2 designed a 1:48 scale Eagle (22 inches long!) that I figured would be great for Lunar. So I sought out and found a built and painted example on eBay. Unfortunately when it arrived it was definitely not the 1:48 Eagle as it was advertised to be - it was ancient MPC model, purportedly 1:72 but actually closer to 1:96 scale.

After getting a substantial refund from the seller, I pondered what to do. Hmmm, I thought, this Eagle is pretty close to "15mm scale"… I wonder if anybody makes 15mm astronauts? Well it turns out that Ground Zero Games makes lots, and I promptly ordered a bunch. These are the first of them - astronauts in heavy EVA suits. They look good with the Eagle don’t they!

Pretty simple paintjobs on these models. They were "overbrushed" with Celestra Grey to begin with, then Corax White. I used Agrax Earthshade to tint some specific parts of the suits, and then highlighted the white parts with a heavy drybrush of pure white.

 

I also painted six armed EVA-suited astronauts. Ironically after painting these models I started looking through a bag of 15mm SF stuff I had been holding onto for years... and found these same two packs of models. No harm though as they are easy to paint and I can always use more of these guys.

Paint style was similar to the other astronauts, I used Coelia Greenshade on these suits and I like the look.

I really like the look of the Eagle with these models and it'll be great "terrain" for 15mm lunar gaming. Of course the Lunar rules themselves are a bit too involved for larger games but I did find a mod for Bolt Action on the Internet that might be worth a try. And if we have a game with 20 or 25 models a side maybe we use Kill Team, Necromunda, Rogue Trader, or even good ol' Lord of the Rings as a basis for the game. Of course there needs to be some specific mods for low-G and suit penetration but that can be figured out.

I also bought a ton of GZG's Moongrunt models to paint up for a larger game, and am pondering what kind of 15mm "structures" to buy for lunar terrain. As you can see here I've already got a bunch of craters so that's covered, but some little domes or industrial structures would look good in a game as well. Suggestions in the comments please. Also I'm still on the lookout for a 1:48 Eagle or 3D printed model in that scale. I still think it would be awesome to see on a Lunar game table!

Khorne Bloodthirster!

Well here's another massive metal model from the before-times... a Bloodthirster of Khorne. This one is definitely a must-have for my 40K Khorne army.

                                                    

Assembling these metal models can be tricky due to parts fitment. Fortunately this one wasn't too bad, it was painted (badly) when I got it but stripped down a treat as they often do. The model was assembled with superglue but no pins (I hope I don't regret this later) and it needed a bit of greenstuff work on some of the joins.

The wings are massive pieces of metal aren't they!

Cheeky as always! That chain-thong looks fairly uncomfortable. Khorne cares not from where the chafing flows!

Colours used were the same as the Bloodletters. Skin is Khorne Red - Mephiston Red - Evil Sunz Scarlet, horns, nails and hooves Kantor Blue - Thunderhawk Blue, wings highlighted with Dark Rubber.

The Bloodthirster is a big boy, even when sat beside a metal Bloodletter, itself a decent sized model!

I'm glad I've gotten this one done for the game coming up. In the 5th Ed. Chaos Space Marines codex all of the greater daemons have the same stat line and cost 100 points. Of course they are summoned onto the battlefield and actually take the place of a unit champion or character model. But what would you rather have on the table, a Berzerker champion with a plasma pistol, or a Bloodthirster?? It will certainly be fun to find out in a few days. Might even get a couple Rhinos done before that too! 

Last Batch of Berzerkers

People who know me know two things about my hobbying: I enjoy rehab projects on models other people have tried to paint or started painting, and I love a good deal. This lot of Khorne Berzerkers checked both boxes. I picked them up very cheaply on eBay and they needed some work to get them into tabletop shape. You can see the "before" at the bottom of this post.

I bought a job lot of 13 models. One of them was the original plastic mono-pose Berzerker that I don't much care for, so he got left out of the revamp. Of course I also had to convert one into a standard bearer because reasons (well, summoned lesser daemons).

They turned out reasonably well I think, they certainly fit in well with the previous ones I painted. And as far as plastic Berzerkers for this army, I think I'm done. This makes enough models for five squads of eight, less two models - 38 in total. If I can dig up a couple metal Champions that would be great. 

Here's the before shot. The models were actually not bad, some of the painting was kinda sloppy though and I don't think the models were primed - there was actually some bare plastic showing through in a few spots. But this was pretty much all corrected and they're ready for the tabletop.

Next up I have to finish the Bloodthirster and maybe some Rhinos. There's also a Terminator squad and Havoc squad to get ready. We'll see if they get done before the game planned for early May.

In the meantime... SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE OF KHORNE!

MOAR!! Khorne Bloodletters

OK this will likely be the last you'll hear from me for a week or two... I'm off to Salute this weekend and for a bit of a holiday in the UK. But I finished up these chaps last night and wanted to post them before I leave.

This of course is a box of the "new" plastic Bloodletters... "new" being relative, as these were first released over a decade ago, in 2013. They're quite a different aesthetic from the others I've painted as these ones are quite lithe and slender, as opposed to the hulking metal brutes that preceded them. But I like these ones too as they really harken back to the OG Bloodletters from Slaves to Darkness:

Anyway I painted them very similarly to the metal ones - bodies Khorne Red/Mephiston Red/Evil Sunz Scarlet, horns and nails Kantor/Thunderhawk Blue, and swords Corax White finished with Biel-Tan Green wash.

The poses on these models are generally quite good. I especially like the daemons wielding their swords two-handed. But care must be taken to match sword arms and left arms, don't just cut them off the sprues and put them in a pile!

You get a nice champion-head in the box.

Standard-bearer and musician too for those inclined to do a fantasy-battle unit. Since the sacred number of Khorne is eight and you get ten of these daemons in a box, I reckon that the standard and musician will mostly get LOB in 40K games. But it's nice to have the options.

Cheeky chappies! Unlike the older metal models that sport loincloths, these daemons are fully unclothed. Fortunately they're smooth like Ken dolls :-) 

Anyway that's all for now, I'm sure I'll have a report from Salute in due course! And I almost forgot - Blood for the you-know-who!

Khorne Blood Slaughterer “Impaler” and Friends!

Some more escalation in the Khorne 40K project. This is a Khorne Blood Slaughterer Impaler (a mouthful), it's a resin model designed by Forgeworld. And I say "designed by" deliberately.

The Blood Slaughterer looks like a cross between a Brass Scorpion (cool) and a Defiler (ugh) and there are two versions: the standard Slaughterer with two close combat cleavers, and this Impaler variant with a harpoon on a chain.

The model comes in a bunch of parts, the legs being particularly confusing and tricky to assemble. But I found a blog post that gave some helpful tips and better than that, included photos of the assembled legs. So I just put together the legs to look the same as the ones in the pictures, then assembled the lot. While the other blogger painted the parts as components, I put most of the model together before painting and just did the "arms" and shoulder plates separately. I also didn't glue the model to the base till it was all painted, which allowed access to the underside.

I knew that there was no way this model would survive sitting on a shelf, let alone gaming, without a base, so I got a 100mm round base from GW. It was just big enough.

 

This is a really characterful and cool model. We'll soon see how clever it is on the battlefield.

The other models I've finished for the army are three icon bearers. Back in fifth edition, daemons were summoned to battle, and appeared within a short distance of a chaos icon. If you had no icon still on the table, your daemons didn't appear - an undesirable outcome to say the least. So I had to paint one icon bearer for each of the three Berzerker squads.

This is the only metal icon bearer GW produced for the army, it came out in 1996. It's a great little model too, I like the bareheaded Berzerker. Really fun to paint.

 

I had to convert a couple others, for two reasons. First, I didn't want multiples of the same model, and second, said model was friggin' expensive. So I converted a couple plastic Berzerkers to carry icons. This icon is from the Bloodletters box.

This icon is another random plastic bit, not sure what Khorne kit it's from, but it looks fine.

Here's a picture of the Blood Slaughterer with the Berzerker icon bearer, just to show how big the model is.

And lastly, here's something to make collectors' heads pop off. Yes this is how I got the icon bearer I painted for the army.

                                                

What can I say, it wasn't the first time and won't be the last. Models are meant to be painted!

So until next time... Blood for the Blood God!