Painting Update - Scatter Terrain

Howdy folk,

I hope all is well on your end, happy Fall to you all. To say the least, the past month or so has been a little on the insane side with regards to tempo and time away from any hobby work. I managed to get to the Maritimes for some holiday and then over the pond to jolly ole England for a week of work. Definitely felt odd being out and about in the real world, living like it was practically 2019, lol.

Before and between all that business I did my best to keep up the painting. So, with that I thought I’d share a quick post with a few pieces of scatter terrain for a variety of settings and ‘verses. Thanks as always to my buddy Duncan for the 3d printing support.

Anyways, enjoy the pics.

You can see all the pieces here...the rocket looking scatter pieces are Citadel and Warhammer markers, the rest are STL 3D printed pieces.

Painted

15mm            30

28mm+          54, +11

Bought           25

Progress       +59

Painting Update - Warhammer and Citadel Stuff

Howdy everyone,

I hope the summer is treating everyone well…we are definitely seeing a great variance in the weather between some nice cool temps and the warmer, humid side of summer we’re used to. To say the least, the last couple weeks has been rather fluid, various family commitments has kept me from getting any serious painting done…however I was able to finish up some pieces at the end of last month/beginning of August…so I guess that evens out some.

I had bought a few packs of warhammer tokens as well as some random figures at CanGames quite a while ago and am now just getting to them on the workbench. I thought that they would fit well with a crew build for Zona Alfa…maybe Traders or Mercs…hell maybe even Stargrave.

Anywho, I hope you enjoy the pics. Take care.

A handful of terrain tokens and pieces…landlines and UXO, unexploded ordnance…

Crew lead and a couple of sniper type characters…not sure how they place in the overall 40k verse, but I thought they looked cool and could somehow work in a setting or two…so wth, why not Zona Alfa…part of the trader side…we’ll see how that fits out.

Painted

15mm               30 

28mm+             43, +13

 

Bought              25

Progress          +48

Painting Update - 40K Cadian's

Hello folks,

Just thought I'd post another pandemic painting update...even though CanGames was up in the air I still wanted to be ready to run a Zona Alfa game just in case restrictions on gatherings became loosened up.

Well, even with the confirmation, I still wanted to keep up steam on mu painting and the idea of running a table presented me with the motivation/reason/excuse to break out a Cadian Shock Trooper box that I bought at one of my first CanGames.  I had seen some pretty interesting paint schemes and mods on these troops and when I saw them on discount, I totally jumped on them.

Given the idea of using them in the Zona Alfa setting got me wondering on how to best paint them up...having spent quite a bit of time researching the Soviet-Afghan war, my mind went towards using the Soviet VDV Paratroopers and Spetznaz.  Surprisingly, these troops had a wide variance in dress regs and kit outs...and like any soldier in any theatre, what works tended to stick.  So, this gave me a chance to try my hand at replicating the various uniforms and those awkwardly awesome looking tennis shoes.

I hope you enjoy the pics...

Hike up Lead Mountain, 2020

Painted:

28mm            18 (+7, Cadian 40K)
15mm            35

Bought:         0 (these were bought many years ago)

Progress:     +53

Painting Update - Scavengers and Reavers

Hey folks,

I hope that all is well with you and yours. Up at this end of the world we are doing our best with self-isolation and quarantine, I know this is affecting many and I hope you are finding the time to connect (figuratively or virtually) with family and friends. I see many are taking this time to get through their respective lead mountains, etc...good luck with that and good job/luck on your progress.

Now, just prior to this, I had committed to running a miniatures game for this years upcoming CanGames in May. Now, unfortunately due to the COVID situation that is affecting many of us, there will not be a CanGames this year.  I was holding out hope that we could have something...it was just not meant to be...and of course, if this is the extent of the negative impact on me by COVID, then life is not too bad off.

My idea for CanGames was to run a Zona Alfa game...I really liked the backstory of the ruleset and I do have a bunch of figures lying around needing to be painted...and, an excuse to make extra terrain is never a bad thing either. Some future posts on the terrain side to follow...

So with that in mind, I thought I would break out some 40K Scavenger figures and fill their ranks out with some NorthStar Miniatures that I had originally earmarked for Rogue Stars as a Reaver Crew (ala Firefly and Serenity).  I gotta say, I really like how they turned out...and the North Star figures were originally Frostgrave Cultists, but were mod'ed up with one of North Star's plastic conversion sprues.

As for Zona Alfa, I thought these figures would work well as inhabitants in the 'exclusion zone'...and the figures have a great amount of character to them.

Enjoy the pics... 

These are the North Star Frostgrave Cultist box...

I used the zombie arm that came with the Cultist box and took a weapon and head from the plastic conversion...I know the arms don't 'match'...but I was really going for that fallout/radioactive/wasteland look.  I like how it turned out and it really fits well together.

Warhammer 40K, Scavenger box...a real pleasure to paint up...these should totally fit in with Zone Alfa and the wasteland feel...could work for multiple gaming systems/settings...

 

Hike up Lead Mountain, 2020

Painted:

28mm            11 (+11, 5 x 40k, 6 x NorthStar)
15mm            22

Bought:         0 (these were bought mid last year)

Progress:     +33

40K...What is THAT?

...or maybe an alternate title could be: some pictures of some of the rules that Mike made up for me...

So, I had the chance to hang out with Mike and Serge last week and all that I knew was that there would be some gaming...and I didn't have to bring anything.  When I got to Mike's place, he had laid out a very nice looking table with appropriate scatter terrain...some really nice rocks and trees...suitable for any era of gaming...and on this table were a bunch of brightly coloured figures, for the most part they were brightly painted.

Outside of playing about 10 minutes of demo when Games Workshop still had their stores in Ottawa, my exposure to Warhammer...of any K...had been mostly limited to 'that other section' of the gaming store, "the evil empire", and/or some really great paintjobs of figs in a showcase...all in all, pretty limited.

I have seen individual figures repurposed for Frostgrave...they looked really cool, some great character to the sculpts...and I even have a box of Cadian's and a few snipers in my basement that I had bought because I saw someones force/warband/? done up as a battlegroup of Afghanistan mission Canadians, complete with scratchbuilt Lav's!! It was inspiring...

So, I really have no preconceptions...I have no expectations...and I have no previous frame of Warhammery reference (outside of Legends of the Old West)...I got to throw a LOT of dice; Mike had a great mix of old-school and new figures; the table looked great; it was an interesting multiplayer scenario...and I got to game.

Oh, if you'd like...here is Mike's version of events...

With that, I present the photos that I took as I learned...what the hell this 40K thing is...enjoy...

My initial setup...I think I have...human type forces...bottom blue group has long range weapons...above them are stealthy type troops with 2 damage eating drones...in the centre, I have my force commander and 5 rapid fire guys (i.e. SMG's...), and to their right, in red hats I have a gaggle of rifle toting grunts (I believe these were my weaker troops)...oh, I also had some heavy duty mech looking types in drop orbit...

 

Serge setup near the centre...he also ended up keeping some troops in orbit, ready to drop at a moments notice...Mike setup his Marines to my left behind a copse of pines, and I think he had troops in orbit as well...

 

Serge drops one of his units behind my right flank...they are close combat stars...

Serge takes my red team down a notch or two...

at the beginning of my turn, I drop my Mech's and their damage eating drones in behind Serge's main force...

weird angle...I move my stealthy's over behind the rock formation...move my range guys a little behind them on the edge.

I put some hurt downrange...my red team fires, my SMG's fire, and my Mech's unleash hell...

Mike drops some Marines on the centre objective...we are all trying to occupy within 6" of the centre, whoever has the most troops at end of turn receives a point...most points by end of turn 5 or 6 wins...Mike also deployed more troops to his left flank to deal with another dropped unit of Serge's.

 

Mike unleashes some battlePigs on my stealthy's and I put some hurt on a 4man team, leaving 2...but I think they healed because of his hardcore medic...

 

My forces initially focus on hurting Serge's mainforce...however once Mike's troops dropped, we kind of tried to get to the centre without causing too much mutual pain...

Again, the battlepigs...

My stealthy's were actually doing a pretty good job of defending from these melee monsters...the medic in his other team is doing a bang-up job and is saving troops...

Mike's commissar goes all badass on one of Serge's units...

 

Re-jig of the battle lines...I fallback with the stealthy's...push with the Mech's...move to link with the Mech's with my SMG's

Serge pushes between my two elements trying to get closer to Mike's pigs...

Serge takes the fight to the centre...knocks out the Marines that were collecting points...and then gets bounced by battlepigs...

I push my Mech's in...unfortunately my angle of attack is a little frigged so I have to attack Serge first...

The endstate...somewhat of a melee stalemate in the centre...Mike has collected 3 points and we have 1 turn to go...no way to overtake him at this point...

Fun game though...