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!

Conscripts at PrairieCon 43!

Well the Conscripts didn't have a ton of quantity at Prairiecon this year but I think we had good quality. The scheduling was a bit... unusual as there were too many games scheduled (lots got cancelled for lack of players signed up) but since I waited till the last minute as usual I only got one on the schedule - Otherworld Miniature Skirmish Dungeoncrawl, same as I ran years ago. I had five players for it (including Conscript Mike F), only one no-show.

Mike took the Orcs of the Porcine Visage and their buddy Phil, the two-headed Ettin. Unfortunately Phil met a sticky end at the hands of the Vampire gang and Mike's Orcs subsequently bottled out of the game.

I had a surprise in store for the players who made it to the Wizard's conjuring room at the centre of the dungeon... an "Eye Tyrant". Unfortunately while it used its Web spells to good effect, the pesky assassin with the crossbow was able to sneak out - twice - and killed the monster with shooting. Damn!

Anyway after the Eye Tyrant was killed the last two players battled it out for access to the treasure room. More shooting did for one of 'em but...

                                            
A "Wandering Monster" card was drawn in the treasure room and whoops! Giant spiders!!

Anyway Mike ran a game there too - "The Doomed"! It looked really cool, some post-Apocalyptic monster-hunting. The guys playing really had a blast and it seemed to come down to the last die-rolls!

 

On Friday night I ran an extra-curricular game of Lunar for founding Conscript Curt and his buddy Jeremy, who drove out from Regina.

Lunar is a really fun game and I think Curt and Jeremy had a good time. 

Curt also ran a beautiful game of Hametsu (also from Black Site Studios!). Curt did send me a pic he took of me and Jeremy with the table, the terrain and models were off the hook as usual for Mr. Curt :-)

Other than playing and running games I also put in a couple hours at the registration desk and auctioneered as usual. The Prairiecon auction is an institution - a great place to move along games you no longer play or pick up some that you think you might, someday. I think the oddest item this year was a copy of the Barney Miller board game. It got no bids as it crossed the block but I was told later that it sold. Somebody got a beauty there :-) But three hours of standing, waving around 10-lb Kickstarter boxes over my head, and constant loud talking (I ditched the mic as it wasn't working well) was plenty for me. But I always have fun doing it and will be back next time, if they'll have me.

See you in Brandon next year!

More Astronauts, Cosmonauts, Craters and Squats!

                                         

OK so I've got a little bit of painting done - mostly on the new hotness here which is Black Site Studio's Lunar. Today I've got my last two models (astronaut and cosmonaut) plus some craters, and a vehicle from an unexpected source!

Here are the two spacefarers. They're from the "Heroes and Icons Vol.1" pack from Black Site, but each has been converted... the cosmonaut (left) originally carried two geology hammers, and the astronaut (right) had two pistols... that didn't make much sense to me, so I did a bit of converting to give 'em a pistol and hammer each. I also had to replace the shafts on the geology hammers as they were twisted resin that manfully resisted all attempts at straightening. Worked out well I think.

I used the last small CCCP decal from the sheet on this model, I like the look of the tan suits with white helmets and boots. I used GW Rakarth Flesh as a basecoat, highlighted with Pallid Wych Flesh, washed with Agrax Earthshade. The helmet is Corax White with Vallejo pure white on top.  

The NASA astronaut is painted just the same as his colleagues too - basecoat Celestra Grey, highlighted Corax White and Vallejo pure white. 

The stars-and-stripes flags on the sleeves are done by hand. It's easy - paint a few long parallel stripes in Mephiston Red and then the canton over top in dark blue. Even in this larger scale, I call that done.

Recognize this? It's the Escape Pod from the Star Wars: Legion "Crashed Escape Pod" Battlefield Expansion. I couldn't imagine when I'd be using this in a Star Wars game but the style and scale seemed perfect for Lunar, so that's how it got painted!

The model was basecoated Celestra Grey then Corax White...

...then the Vallejo pure white over top. The Soviet flags are Mephiston Red highlighted Evil Sunz Scarlet.

The decals are from the Lunar decal sheet and really finish off the model well. I reckon this space pod looks a bit cobbled-together and janky so that means Soviet to me. I did some sponge chipping with German Camo Black-Brown, despite some misgivings... if this pod is going straight from the Earth to the Moon, how does it get weathered in a vacuum? I suppose there will be some bits of space dust to chip away at the paint, but I imagine that the Soviets with their sense of economy may get these things back down to Earth and reuse them.

 

Here are all the models I've painted for the game so far. You can see on the Soviets that I've repainted to give white helmets and added the CCCP decals, I think they look much better with that contrast.

I've also painted some craters this week. These are all vacuum-formed plastic items that have been kicking around for years, but they did take a bit of work. The vac-formed plastic is pretty thin and tends to warp at the edges - remember that these were all originally cut from a sheet, there was no 3D printing back then! So I cut some plasticard to shape and superglued the craters down to it before painting them. I reckon that's half a cube, the ruler is 6" long.

Lastly here's a couple of models that have been around awhile - they're Squats in Exo-Armour, metal models from the old days of 40K.

I wanted to get these dudes painted to round out a squad of five - I had already painted three "Termineggs" from Wereweevil for my Squat army and these guys fit that bunch to perfection. They'd been sitting primed on the painting desk for ages so it is good to get them up in the cabinet.

There will be a bit more Lunar terrain coming soon (Conscript Byron has printed some for me from the Black Site Studio STLs) but once that's done it'll be time to have a game!

Astronauts, Cosmonauts, and a Rover for Lunar

                                         

Like many children of the 1970s, I was obsessed with space and the Space Race. Armstrong landed on the Moon only about two years before I was born and even in the late '70s the competition between the Soviets and the Americans for space superiority was a matter of the very recent past. And with all the secrecy surrounding the former Soviet Union, speculation about what happened in their space program was rampant. So it was almost inevitable that I'd be interested in the Lunar miniatures game from Black Site Studios.

Lunar is basically a miniatures game where astronauts and cosmonauts (and taikonauts if you're so inclined) fight it out on the Moon. The alt-history background diverges from our own in that the Soviets were first to land a man on the Moon, and NASA was not to be deterred from continuing the space race onto the very lunar surface. You can see how that would go. 

The basic game was reissued and updated in 2023 and the two-player box includes 6 resin models (three NASA astronauts and three Soviet cosmonauts), the rulebook, cards and tokens, special dice, and a small decal sheet. I also picked up some more models (the "Heroes and Icons Vol. 1" set) that includes four more figures and a cool unmanned rover. My set had unit cards for the four humans but not for the rover - I've emailed Black Site about that. (And yes, the astronaut above is wielding a pistol and meat cleaver) 

The models are 40mm-ish in scale and come with 32mm bases. I was excited about the decals because I wasn't jazzed about painting US and Soviet flags on the models' arms, but it turns out the decals are much too big to use for that anyway, so I hand-painted them to mixed results. 

Black Site offers all kinds of stuff for the game including a mat (24"x24" is the play surface) and STLs of craters and Moon-surface stuff like oxy tanks and gantries, I'm having Challenger Byron print those for me. But it occurred to me that what you really need for LOS-blocking are just big rocks and Canadian Tire came to the rescue with a bag of lava rocks for the barbecue - $7. I might paint them but they don't look bad as is. I got my mat from Mats by Mars because they make good mats and it was cheap as chips.

The game rules seem pretty cool and it looks like games play very fast. You only have 3-5 models per side and combat in a vacuum can be... dangerous. The game simulates low-G combat with lots of knockbacks (basically many of the weapons are non-lethal "kinetic" ones rather than penetrators, but when you get knocked back you fall prone and the pointy rocks on the Moon's surface are dangerous too). Looking forward to trying the game out soon. 

Cheers,

Dallas, listening to the lost cosmonauts recorded at Torre Bert :-)