28mm Scavengers of the Post Apocacalypse

I squeezed out a little time last Sunday and tonight and finished a couple of Reaper figs for my post-apoc scavengers.

Really nicely sculpted figs by Julie Guthrie, Evie and Hans of the Chronoscope line.

Here's the rest of the crew, mostly Copplestone figs that I painted sometime back.

 

 

 

 

They subsist, located in the old ruins, reluctant to relocate in any of the new or revived communities in the region.  They do trade with the nearest townspeople, and thus far, have fended off various gangs, and ruffians.  They are known for finding and trading highly sought after and rare items from before the cataclysm.

I still have about a another dozen figs to add to their numbers, that will give them scouts, a couple heavier weapons, and make them a little more diverse.

Fantastical Thoughts and Other Odds and Ends 4-10-16

Did a little bit of everything today; cleaning, sorting, painting and building (well, everything but gaming).

During my sorting and cleaning, I came across some Tom Meier elves that I bought some years ago to give me a break from using dwarves against my daughter' Orcs.  As it turned out, she started to lose interest in gaming shortly after that, so I only ever painted a single elf.  This was a test run for a color scheme.

 

These are really nice figs, with outstanding fine detail; I didn't do it any justice.  He stands about 31mm tall from bottom of foot to top of the white portion of the helmet.  At the time, there were three basic styles, with variations in helmet, and armor, and each came as spearmen on foot, mounted, and bowmen.  Looking at the site now, it doesn't look like all of these are currently available, though some of the figs are, as well as other wonderful sculpts from Mr. Meier at Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures .

Some of my earliest miniature gaming took place as an off-shoot of D&D with fantasy miniatures.  I largely drifted away from fantasy in the 1980s, despite buying a bunch of dwarves for an abandoned consideration of Warhammer by my old gaming group in the 1990s.  And even with revisiting it during my daughter's brief interest, I haven't seriously gamed fantasy miniatures in decades. 

Over the last year, I have been resisting a draw to re-explore fantasy miniatures, and from time to time, have pulled out old plans for an elven village, dwarf fortress, and other models conceived for that Warhammer expedition. 

A couple of days ago, I ventured to the local hobby shop, which has started carrying Ral Partha and Ironwind figs and army packs, and almost bought a bunch of 25mm orcs and goblins on the spot.  Many are figures that I used in those D&D games, all those  years ago. Today, when I stumbled onto the tray with the lone painted elf and his brethren, it seemed a fateful coincidence.  A draw, slight at first, then more intoxicating as I considered the elves spread across the tray, seeing them as they might appear, with proper paint, defending their home from the forces of evil.  I fear that it is only a matter of time before a new quest begins...


And in other news,  I managed to get paint on a few things, finishing my modified 15mm Jeep TOWs in the process:

 I also discovered that the few pots of GW paint that had bought over the years had all solidified.  Their place on the painting table quickly taken by the Vallejo bottles that I found on close-out at Hobby Lobby yesterday for 39 cents each.  WOO-HOO!

My other big success of the day was building a mate to my ZU23/T34 conversion for my African imagi-nation army.  I originally started two of them, completing one, and losing the other in my basement flood a couple of years back.  In an effort to use up a few pieces-parts sitting on my table, I built a second model for the Mugabian army. Here it is after construction:

 

Now lets see how many years it takes to get it painted.

Clearing Off the Paint Table a Little

It has been about eight weeks since I last had a day of hobby time.  So I did a little cleaning in the basement, putting away some of the clutter that had accumulated, and managed to finish up a few odds and ends on the paint table.

First item done is one of ArmiesArmy's ASU 85s, making three thus far for my forces:

This is probably may all-time favorite 15mm modern casting.  They are just so clean and nicely detailed.  Can't wait to get some of their British stuff.

Next was to finish off the bases on some AT3 Sagger teams for my Mugabian forces.  Yes, ATGMs are coming to imagi-Africa:

These are QRF figs that came in a recent order from ScaleCreep which consistently offers some of the best service in the hobby.

Uwanda will get Milans:

These are QRF German Milan teams painted in Uwanda's colors.  Nice figs that have me wanting to build West Germans for the Cold War.  (By the way, QRF is expanding their range of Leopard 1s, if you haven't heard already)

While going through an old model kit box recently, I found a long lost old Imperial Guard figure, so decided to paint him up:

I love these old figs, and will replace one of my plastic IG figs with this one.  It was kind of cool to find him after being lost for about 26 years.

I recently stumbled into my second 1/100 Fouga Magister kit:

An old Starfix kit made in Israel.  It builds up into a nice little model.  Here is a pic of my other one in Uwanda Air Force markings.

Took about two years to find this one, and two more years to locate the second.

Last of my day's accomplishments was to add some detail to a pair of Jeeps with TOW atgm. The original models are metal castings from QRF.  While looking at photos, I realized that there were a bunch of different configurations of this vehicle, so I decided to spruce mine up and make them a little different.

And primed, but not yet painted:

These will be painted to use with my late 1970s/early 1980s US cold war forces.

May not seem like much, but I got 14 models off of my table (and a bunch of clutter), and two piles of pieces ready for paint.  I'm one step closer to space for work on my post-apoc vehicles, and the hospital for an upcoming Uwanda-Mugabia war  scenario.

New Hatch for My Humvees (but not much else)

Well, I finally got round to making a master of the open hatch for the Humvee weapon station, but other than casting, that is the sum total of hobby progress for me this month.

The old, and the new.

Plugged into one of my Humvees.

Sorry, not much to show. I'll have a mold of it by next weekend, and will make it an option soon for my Humvees that previously had the close hatch.

 Tomorrow looks to be a hobby day though, so with any luck, I'll make a little progress on one thing or another.

Selling 15mm Modern Vehicle Miniatures Again

Just wanted to post a quick note saying that I'm selling miniatures again.  I've added the M1115 Humvee w/ Tow and the M60A2 main battle tank to my list. 

 

My site is located at:  Irishserb's Miniatures

I had to make a price increase, but limited it to the larger models, and please note that our friends at USPS increased postage costs last month, so overseas shipping starts at $13.50.  Domestic shipping still isn't too bad as the resin models are pretty light.

Thanks for looking.

Cold War Again (in 6mm)

I grew up on the Cold War.  Eventually finding a sort of comfort in the daily threat of thermonuclear incineration (and fully believing that the world leaders weren't silly enough to toast us all, silly me).  Though I came to gaming by way of colonials and World War II, in little time the Cold War became a major part of my hobby, mostly in 6mm, and to a lesser degree in 20mm.  When the wall came tumbling down, and we all became friends again, the Cold War faded from my hobby, largely leaving the it in my gaming past.

A few years ago, I began to again have that taste for the Cold War, and started planning and rebuilding the Cold War in 15mm.  Unfortunately, my 15mm Cold War adventure has gone more slowly than anticipated, as life has found many new ways to interfere with my hobby.  All the while, my 6mm Cold War armies have mostly collected dust, with only occasional ventures out of storage.

A few months ago, while lamenting my slow progress in 15mm, both in mastering my own models, and in acquiring those from other sources, the little light-bulb went on in my head. Why not simply re-animate my 6mm armies?  While not best suited for many of the infantry oriented games that I'd like to play, micro scale is probably the best choice for the armor heavy battles that still capture my interest.  And, with thousands of miniatures already setting around, I should be able to get there pretty fast.

So, not too long ago, I pulled my micro-armor "cubes" together, and started to take inventory of what I currently have.  I sold a thousand or so models off some years ago, when in a bit of a financial pinch, and had a bunch of stuff (like another 800 models) damaged in a car accident several years back, when a woman decided that her red light didn't really mean "STOP".

Somewhere around 1987, I started building my micro-armor storage cubes, 1 foot square cubes with six drawers, that each store between about 220 and 400 models depending on size and period.  Currently I have three of them full of Cold War vehicles.

One of my more recent cubes, using thicker 1/2" plywood for the box,

originally, they were more like 5/16" ply.

Some years after the Cold War gaming faded, I started playing a lot of Arab-Israeli games, so a lot of my NATO v. WarPac stuff got repainted and re-purposed for the desert.

Egyptian...

 

 

... and Israeli.  There are smaller numbers of Syrian and Jordanian

vehicles in one tray or another, as well.

My NATO and WarPac stuff is in a bit worse shape, having been scalped for the middle east, and generally in a state of disrepair, as I focused on mid-east and WWII.

A small portion of my old Warpac stuff.

 

Some of my US stuff  to the left above and below.

 

For now, I am going through my TO&Es, and see what I can field without new purchases.  I need to update the painting, adding markings and more weathering to a lot of models.  In time, I will fill in the gaps with new models, but should be able to build a lot of company and battalion sized units with my dusty, forgotten legions.

Funny, I just commented on TMP a day or two ago, about not having any armies to paint. Silly me. 

The Uwanda/Mugabia War: A Turn for the Worst

This weekend I spent some time thinking about the war between Uwanda and Mugabia, rolled some dice, and thought a bit about things some more.  I also caught all of the lists and records up to date and began preparing for the future.   So here is a window looking into the direction of the war between the nations of Uwanda and Mugabia. 
______________________

The Mugabian President stood in the conference room and frowned at his generals.

"What do you mean, Mugabia's greatest war hero is an a Uwandan hospital?  Uwanda's troops stand on Mugabian soil; our hero lies in their hospital, and you have nothing to say?  Tell me, do you enjoy breathing?"

As always, the President found just the right words to motivate his officers.  A plan was quickly offered to remove the Uwandan troops from Mugabia, and shortly afterward, a second plan put forth for the liberation of Mugabia's greatest hero.

Mugabia's President Upepo-mfuko reviews the elite Presidential Guard. 

______________________

Uwanda's chief of staff looked across the table, meeting the eyes of each of the generals seated there.  He began, "Well gentlemen, what do we do now?  I am open to suggestions."

The attack at B15 did not lead to the string of anticipated successes, largely due to the leadership of a man now recovering from his wounds in a Uwandan hospital.

The Uwandan chiefs considered a number of options, and in time a consensus was reached.  It was finally time to go to war.  To this point, even the action at B15 had been conducted with a minimum commitment.  Every effort had been made to avoid escalating the scope of the conflict. But a year had passed, as had the appeals by Uwanda to find a peaceful solution.  Mugabia's occupation of Uwanda's territory could no longer be tolerated, and the ULF's absurd demands simply could not be met. 

Uwanda would mobilize.  Requests to allies for help achieving a peaceful solution would be replaced by orders for war materials. Uwanda would aggressively protect its sovereignty. A large scale offensive would be launched with the aim of regaining lost territory, destroying Mugabia's ability to make war, and to capture or kill the Mugabian president.  Preparations were under way...

Vickers Mk.III main battle tanks of the Uwandan army on maneuvers.

Note: Vehicles and Mugabian Presidential Guard (Soviet naval infantry)  by QRF, the president and officer figures by Peter Pig.