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!

More Squat Bikers!

More Squats! These are some resin bikers from Curtis Fell of Ramshackle Games. 

I like these models much better than the old GW bikes, for a few reasons. Not only are they much less expensive to buy (especially if you can take advantage of a Ramshackle sale - these were literally only a couple pounds each), but mostly I like 'em better because they look better! I really dislike the "Harley custom chopper" styling of the GW Squat bikers. If your army is gonna have bikers, much better that they're reasonable looking "kettenkrad" style half-tracked bikes that look like they can support a heavy weapon and gunner.

I selected a variety of weapons for these models, including a couple wicked-looking heavy flamers.

Here's a big gun of some kind, autocannon maybe?

Lascannon here for sure.

The second heavy flamer.

And lastly, a heavy stubber.

The models are all really good and scale decently to the old GW Squats. Sometimes Ramshackle's resin doesn't play well with superglue so a helping hand from some greenstuff or two-part epoxy is required, but they're nice models with very little flash. Arms and heads are separate so you can mix and match.

Here they are with the rest of my Squat army. I have a ton more bikers (just on regular cycles, not half-tracked ones) and a couple more metal models and exo-armour suits to paint, but what I'm working on now is bigger, much bigger... stay tuned :-) 

Commissar Snow White and Her Six Squats

After returning from a week's vacation in Florida I returned to painting for the Challenge! Here are some models I've just finished for my "vintage" Warhammer 40K Squat army. If you like, you can read all about the origins of this crazy project here. 

Anyway even though I painted a Squat Commissar, I felt like a human female commissar would be a great addition to this army, kind of a Disney vibe right?

The model is a 3D print I got off eBay... I really like the "Anneka Sage" model from Victoria Miniatures, as well as the "Severina Raine" GW model, but they are both crazy expensive. Maybe someday.

I also painted six "command-type" Squats for the army - these are (Lto R) Grom Atchison, Vollmer Adams, and Lisle Sterling, all from the ancient GW metal range.

They're Perry sculpts if I recall correctly, and really nicely detailed. I added a moustache to Lisle with greenstuff as I didn't care for the neckbeard look.

The giant power fist and packs are great too.

The other three are Colt Stoner, Roth Bergmann, and Mauser von Dreyse.

Strangely, Roth (centre) had a stud in the middle of his back, like there was supposed to be a backpack there. So I added one from the bits box.

These Squat models are super-fun to paint and go up surprisingly quickly. I have a bunch more metal models from the old range and I'm sure I'll get to them soon!

Squat Land Raider Proteus and not-Thudd Guns!

Escalation continues in the vintage-Squat project, with a vehicle and some support weapons. The Land Raider Proteus is the new GW "Horus Heresy" kit, which itself is a throwback to the old old Land Raider. The not-Thudd Guns are 3D prints (the Renault Pattern support weapon carrier) printed for me by Conscript Byron of Northern Lights Terrain, and their crews are from Wereweevil Miniatures.

First off, the Land Raider Proteus. The new kit from GW is amazing. A great throwback to the original Land Raider, but with modern detailing and tooling. Pretty easy to assemble and looks fantastic!

I assembled the model as the "non-transport" variant with the twin heavy bolters. All variants come with twin sponson lascannons, of course. 

The model was painted with GW Castellan Green and Deathworld Forest, then washed with watered-down Agrax Earthshade. It was lightly weathered with sponge chipping and dirt drybrushing, starting with dark brown and working lighter. The tracks were basecoated with a Vallejo "track base" colour, then painted with a rust powder and water mix, washed with Agrax Earthshade. Rust streaks were done with a fine brush and a mix of Reikland Fleshshade and old Chestnut Brown ink.

The powerplant looks great.

I used some tac numbers from the standard GW vehicle set and the Imperial Fists roundel from the Land Raider sheet. I cut out the "fist" from the middle and painted the inside white. It worked OK and meant I didn't have to try and freehand a circle. The insignia itself is the "F-rune" and is a nod to the original Space Dwarf/Squats box set.

Here's the vehicle commander! He's made from a plastic Squat torso with some conversion work on the arms and hands. He just sits in the hatchway.

I drilled out the hinge and inserted a very fine piece of wire, so the hatch can be opened and closed. I do have some concerns about the long-term viability of this solution though... 

Next up are the not-Thudd Guns! I found the STL for these as I was looking for 3D print files, as the original Thudd Guns are $$$$$$ if you can even find them. I think they turned out pretty well.

they're suitably industrial-looking for sure.

The gun breaches and crew platform.

Now with crew. These models are from Wereweevil and come with a not-Termite launcher - basically a mortar that shoots a shell through the ground instead of through the air.

Here they are as produced by Wereweevil.

The backs of the models. These figures are actually really nice and as you can tell, fit in well with the old-school Squats from GW. 

So that's some important Squat support troops done - now I have to get to the command section and some more bikes!
 

40K Squats - yes, Squats! (and not Leagues of Votann)

Well, this story began back in the Springtime at PrairieCon, western Manitoba's longest running (and obviously, best) gaming convention.

I've been involved with PrairieCon as an attendee, organizer, or volunteer for just about 40 years. For the last... let's say "many" conventions, I've helped run the game auction (that's me auctioneering in the green shirt below)

Anyway, at the last PrairieCon auction, one of the final lots was a large box of about 5 pounds of random miniatures. This was at the end, after about two hours of auctioneering, and I was beat. But the boxes within the large box of minis were tantalizing, to say the least, with some nice vintage Citadel miniatures boxes featuring prominently. WHFB Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers, 40K Eldar Harlequins, Space Marine Terminators, Space Ork Raiders... awesome stuff. Plus a ton of other old Ral Partha and Grenadier boxes. There was no time to verify contents of any of the boxes because I had to start the bidding. So away we went.

I wasn't gonna let this lot get away, even though I had no idea what was actually in the boxes, and I ended up winning the lot. Then it was time to sort out what I'd gotten myself into. And unfortunately, the very cool boxes were somewhat misleading because most of the contents weren't there. I think the Skarloc's box and the Harlequins box were missing only two models each (which I've since sourced from elsewhere), but the Terminators box and the Space Ork Raiders box were full of... SQUATS! Nearly a full plastic box worth of infantry models (35 of 'em), plus more than 25 metal models, including bits of bikes and some Chaos Squats in exo-armour. WOW!

So since I'd always thought the old Squats were kind of cool, and I'd now lucked into practically a whole army's worth of vintage models, I've decided to paint them. And this is the first post of several where I'll describe how I've done that.  

First off, a confession. Although I'd gotten a whole army's worth of Squats in one go, I can't help but add to the group with other stuff. This includes a very cool Squat Commissar from Wereweevil Miniatures out of Australia (more on them later). The chap on the right is a plastic Squat from the original "Space Dwarfs" box, with a sniper rifle from Victoria Miniatures (more on them later too).

I've painted 27 more of the lads so far and have organized them into a platoon of three sections. Each section has 9 models including one trooper with a heavy bolter and one with a special weapon (melta, flamer, or grenade launcher). The rest of the troopers carry lasguns from Victoria Miniatures.

Second section.

Third section. Since the plastic Space Dwarfs box only included three different heads (helmet, cap, blad with sunglasses) I did a lot of work with greenstuff to put some hair on a few bald heads and make some beards a bit bushier.

 

Close up of one of the squaddies. Paintwork was really simple - helmets and gloves in Zandri Dust, flak vest in Mephiston Red, shirt and pants in Castellan Green/Deathworld Forest, leather gear in Mournfang/Skrag Brown, boots and most of the beards in Doombull Brown. I went over the lot with Agrax Earthshade and re-highlighted in the base colours.

Unlike all of the other weapons which came from Victoria Miniatures, the heavy bolters are from the original Space Dwarfs box.

Some of the arms required some greenstuff work to make 'em fit with the Victoria lasguns. I do much prefer them to the old GW lasguns though.

This is the Wereweevil commissar. The company makes some very cool not-Squats; expensive, as they come from Australia, but I lucked out and found a bunch for cheap on eBay.

I love this sniper, the Victoria rifle looks really good.

Speaking of Wereweevil, how about these dudes? They're the Termineggs and they mix in very well with the old exo-armour Squats. They did need some conversion though - the Termineggs come holding guns in both hands and that doesn't suit the loadout in 40K. But never mind - I have a bunch of RTB-01 Space Marine power gloves in the bits box so I swapped those in.

Here they are with a Squat trooper.

Lastly - gotta have bikers! These are from Ramshackle Games, and I much prefer them to the old Citadel bikes. These ones are quite workmanlike and not crazy choppers like the vintage ones. These look like military equipment.

The Ramshackle bikes are great, albeit slightly on the small side - but no so much as to be really noticeable. The company has a ton of bikes and stuff to supplement a Squat army and I'm looking forward to painting more. One tip though - the resin that these are made of is a bit tricky to glue together - superglue for sure but sometimes a bit of greenstuff is needed too.

So that's the first tranche of models done. Next up is a command section for the platoon as well as some more bikes.

Stay tuned!