Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge XIV #6 - Star Wars & Science Fiction

 As part of last year's painting challenge I completed an assortment of retro Star Wars miniatures that were sculpted by Nevile Stocken of Archive Miniatures within weeks of the first Star Wars movie hitting the theatres. Alas, Stocken couldn't get a licensing agreement, and the line was modified to become 'Star Rovers' with enough changes made to circumvent copyright. These were a gift from a friend who got them from the estate of a mutual friend who had passed away. A total of sixteen figures consisting of Obi-wan Kenobi, Greedo, R2-D2, a Tusken raider, four Jawas, and eight Stormtroopers. With the exception of the Jawas, the figures stand 32-34mm tall. Obi-wan's light saber, and the gaffi stick of the Tusken raider  had broken off at some point. I rebuilt them using lengths of florist wire.

I was initially going to build the structure in the background as a Gondorian tower for Minas Tirith, but the materials I had weren't giving off the right vibe. I decided to add another building to my Tatooine collection instead. It stands 8" tall and the base is 8" on a side.

Somewhere in Mos Eisley

 

Stormtroopers

Tusken, Kenobi, Jawas, Greedo, and R2-D2

More Stormtroopers

 

 The last of the Stocken figures is a Bunny Stormtrooper, one of a variety of modifications to the original sculpts made to avoid copyright infringement. It could easily be converted back to a normal Stormtrooper by snipping off the ears, tail, rabbit teeth and toes. Unfortunately there was only one of these in the bag of minis my friend gave me.

In addition to the Archive miniatures, I also painted up two old-school 25mm Star Wars miniatures of Han Solo and Leia Organa from West End Games. They were painted with Vallejo acrylics, with a wash of Citadel Reikland Fleshshade on the skin areas. In the background is a plastic model kit released by MPC for 'The Return of the Jedi' which is approximately 1/78 scale. A bit small for the figures, but it works well on the game table.

 

Keeping with the Science Fiction genre are two female troopers from the Eurasian Solar Union by Ground Zero Games. I picked these up off eBay years ago with plans to add them to the mix of various manufactures that I painted up as my planetary militia. I had done a few of these for a previous challenge, and I used the same colour scheme using Vallejo acrylics and Citadel washes.

Lastly I painted up five resin cast vehicles from Scotia Grendel, consisting of two of their tracked Sci-Fi APCs and three of their wheeled A.T.A.C. APCs. I had purchased these at least fifteen years ago when I was still running an after-school wargames club, and I needed more vehicles for the large number of students who attended. In the end, I never found time to paint them and, after I retired, there was little incentive until now. Once again, the Painting Challenge has provided the necessary motivation to paint up items that have resided in a storage box for over a decade. 

The wolf's head on the back of the tracked APC is actually detail that is cast on the model in slight relief. I painted them white on both vehicles. 

A group shot of all five vehicles

6-wheeled APC, right side and front

6-wheeled APC, back and left side

Tracked APC, front and left side

Tracked APC, right side and back

 All of the figures and vehicles in this post were done for various themed challenges associated with the Challenge Library - Children's Books, Manga and Graphic Novels, Romance,  Science-Fiction, and Lady Sarah's Library Cart. It will be interesting to see what themed tasks will be presented in this year's 'Divine Comedy'.

The Doomed

Osprey released a new wargame several months ago called “The Doomed”. It’s a rules light skirmish game set in a suspiciously grim dark setting. The game depicts several factions struggling against giant monsters called “horrors”. The various factions have advanced technology, but are pretty medieval in appearance . The game encourages kitbashing the various factions and the faction descriptions are deliberately vague and open to interpretation. One of the factions is called the “Martyr Retinues”. They are basically tech priest in 40k and I decided to kitbash and paint a 5 “man” squad from various bits.

This guy is converted from a Heroclix Hulk model. I added a power fist from a 40k contemptor dreadnought as well as a backpack and bionic head. I imagine this guy is genetically engineered and then given bionic components to make him more suitable for battle against giant monsters. This has had an unhealthy effect on his flesh which appears to be approaching a state of decay.

This fellow is almost entirely bionic. He’s made from a mark III space marine chest, skitarii head and legs and arms from an adeptus titanicus knight.

These 2 grunts are made from a combination of genestealer cult and skitarri models from GW. The legs are from a copplestone robot and Victoria Miniatures.

The last member of the group is the leader. One of the weapons this faction can use is called a “thermal lance” I decided to literally interpret this as a lance. I used bits from my Bretonnians, skitarii and parts from an ork burner. Instead of a mount, he has bionic legs from a Mantic enforcer. The shield is from anvil industry.

I limited the number of colours used and relied heavily on washes to achieve a very grimy effect and to help unify them as members of a single faction.

This was a fun and goofy unit to build and the vague theme and descriptions really let you run wild. I plan to complete a few more squads over the winter, but now it’s back to the steel legion!

Thanks for visiting!

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!

Challenge Submission #13 - A Handful of Special Challenge Targets

 One of the features of this year's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is the Challenge Quadrant, consisting of three rings of planets surrounding a central star, each planet representing a special theme for the figures to be painted. Here are some of those special figures that I completed in late January and early February.

 The figures of Gandalf the White on foot and mounted on Shadowfax are the older Games Workshop Lord of the Rings castings. I have included Gandalf the Grey in the photos for the 'Before' and 'After' comparison.

A Canadian Churchill tank at Dieppe -Churchill Mk III T68696 'CAT' is a repainted 1/50 Solido diecast model I acquired from a friend. It was originally painted in a desert yellow/olive green striped camouflage pattern for service in Tunisia, but I wanted it to match another Solido Churchill that I had that depicted 'Cheetah' (shown in the background). So the 'tank from Tunisia' was repainted using Vallejo Dark Earth, and then the vehicle name, numbers, etc. painted on freehand.

 A legionary of early Imperial Rome, equipped with lorica segmentata, gladius, and scutum. This is a 28mm plastic figure that came as a sample years ago with an issue of Wargames Illustrated. I was never sure what to do with it, and thought I might use it as a gladiator in our 'local arena'. I'm glad I had it on hand for one of the stops on the Challenge Quadrant.

 A Eurasian Solar Union SAW gunner from Ground Zero Games and a Rebel Commando from West End Games. Both date from the mid to late 1990's. I have painted them up in the colour scheme for the Ral Partha Galactic Grenadiers figures I use as 'Planetary Militia'. In the past I have used both GZG and WEG minis to augment the variety of poses and weapons in my squads.

 

 A 54mm miniature from the Scale Link Ltd. WW1 Grand Guerre range, which depicts a British or Canadian infantryman advancing at the 'Trail Arms' position with fixed bayonet, and his Small Box Respirator worn at the 'Alert' position. He is identified as a member of the 27th Battalion CEF by the blue circle over a blue rectangle on his shoulder. The figure was painted using Vallejo acrylics, followed by some Games Workshop washes. Finally some AK Interactive Spattereffects 'Wet Mud' was applied to areas like knees and elbows. 

  Two 'old school' 25mm Star Wars figures from West End Games depicting Princess Leia Organa as she appeared in 'A New Hope' and 'Return of the Jedi'. Again, these are painted using Vallejo acrylics with GW washes on the faces and hands, and to produce the camouflage pattern on the poncho.

 These special challenges have been very useful in clearing out some of the miniatures that have been lingering in the 'PENDING' box for some time.

Thanks for reading.