Salute and some 6mm Sci-fi

Broke my Salute cherry this year. I went with my youngest son and a good time was had by all. Unfortunately, young boys lack the stamina to walk that big hall all day and his energy magically disappeared once all the cash was spent.
I saw some amazing stuff, I made a conscious decision not to take any photos (apart from one of my son and a Stormtrooper) as I wanted to concentrate on the shopping experience.
I've been itching to buy some 6mm stuff for a while and Salute was the perfect excuse.
My recent Starship gaming using GZG's Full Thrust rules and miniatures means I've been spending a fair bit of time drooling over Mr Tuffley's 6mm Dirtside and Future Wars range. So, after queuing for a ridiculous amount of time my first port of call was the GZG stand, after shaking Jon by the hand and saying hello, this is what I purchased.

Each pack cost £3, so £30 spent for two small starter armies so that son No.2 and I can have a battle. Both armies get infantry, APcs, tanks, walkers/mechs and some VTOL transport. The six legged Spider Mechs are actually GZGs 15mm Spider Drones but scale up nicely.
The only complaint I have is with both sets of VTOLs. The casts were a bit ropey and as the problems were duplicated on each copy each model I can only guess that the mold is nearing the end of it's useful life. Still, it gives me a good excuse to do a bit of Greenstuff converting.

I'm going to use a Green and Tan paint scheme for each army as an homage to the plastic army men battles I've had on the carpet in the past (Carpet General wasn't a name I just plucked from thin air you know).

 

So here are some test paints for what will eventually become 'The Magnolian Empire' (Tans) and 'The Malachite Confederacy' (Greens).

I also scored some 6mm buildings from the excellent Brigade Models who have an excellent 6mm range of its own which I shall be buying a few bits from in the near future (just don't tell SWMBO).

I'll post some pics of the finished armies and buildings and maybe an AAR as soon as I'm able.

Finished FT Intro Fleets

I managed to complete the painting of my NSL and FSE starter fleets for Full Thrust. Without further ado here are the pics including some step-by-steps.

No casting is ever perfect so I used Green Stuff to fill, modify and bind. I like to fill the engines at the back so it can be painted as a white engine energy bloom

Black undercoat, followed by a mid-gray dry brushing and then a black wash. Then I start to paint areas of colour leaving some black areas for engines, techie bits and windows. Space Wolf Grey for the FSE and Bestial Brown for the NSL.

 On the NSL ships I dry brushed the brown and then painted some panels with Bleached Bone. The FSE have two additional highlight colours of Codex Grey and Ultramarine blue. All of the FSE ships have a blue stripe of sorts down the centre line of the ship to distinguish them as ships of that faction.

The NSL ships have red and white areas added to their engine areas to distinguish them as part of the same faction, as well as some crudely painted NSL symbols on the largest panels of each ship. The FSE ships have an additional thin yellow stripe added to the left of the blue centre line area (blue and yellow being the colours of the FSE symbol). Windows are added by painted white squares or dots onto some of the darker panels, especially the ones that are sculpted as little strips. Finally panel lines (greeblies or aztecing for those in the know) are painted onto large areas (relatively anyhow) of flat colour to break those areas up. I haven't painted panel lines onto faction colours, however. Panel lines on Space Wolf Grey are Codex Grey, lines on Bleached Bone are Snakebite Leather and lines on Codex Grey panels are Black.

Matt varnished (Vallejo) and photographed on a printed background for effect.

FT play aid downloads

I had some requests from the folks at TMP for PDFs of the card play aids, so I've added the PDFs for all my paper/card play aids to my personal webspace for download. They are all set up on A4 sheets but I've checked that the image area fits within US letter size for all you space jockeys across the pond. I printed mine onto adhesive label paper and then stuck this to a thicker board.
Course clock and arc turning tool here:
PDF link
Damage, mine and bogey markers here:
PDF link
Destruction markers here:
PDF link

Full Thrust - a new addiction

For Christmas Santa sent me some stuff to paint. Actually it was a present from the wife and kids and it came from Ground Zero Games. I'd downloaded the free rules (full and lite) some time ago and convinced the kids it would be fun to play.
I ordered the Fleet Intro Double and modular Space Station to use as an objective in defend/attack scenarios. I chose the FSE and NSL fleets based purely on their looks. Each Intro Fleet comprised of a Battlecruiser, Heavy Cruiser, 2 Light Cruisers, 2 Destroyers and 2 Frigates. I spent just enough money to be eligible for some free Xmas goodies and also received a freighter and an Escort Cruiser of each faction. A very generous bonus.
OK now some pics, I've managed to paint about half, starting with the smaller ships and the freighter.

The Freighter "Lola"

Frigates and Destroyers of the NSL - New Swabian League

Frigates and Destroyers of the NSL - New Swabian League

FSE and NSL Escort Cruisers

I've managed to play a couple of games with the boys already using the 'Lite' version of the rules and all enjoyed playing and the games took between 1-2 hours. After the first play through I fashioned some card play aids which helped during the second game. We played on the floor but I have plans to either buy or make a game board/mat at some point.

Course clock

Turning/fire arc tool

Damage markers

Destruction markers

The destruction markers serve no real purpose but we left them on the play board for one turn after a ship was destroyed as a reminder of the carnage. My kids happen to be the luckiest of dice rollers and we have a house rule that one failed dice throw, against me, can be re-rolled by them to give them a 'chance'. Consequently, I've lost in both games so far.

Last of the Ultramarines

Here are the last of my sons re-painted Ultramarines, sold on ebay but recorded here for posterity.

Micro La Haye Sainte in paper

After spending a bit of time making my paper soldiers, I've decided to try making some buildings, micro sized but with sufficient image quality to be scaled up if required. The finished base size of this is 105x60mm approx.

The flat version of this is only made of 5 parts, I've glued the base to some thick card to prevent warping. This is not for the feint hearted and is very fiddly to glue. I prototyped this at a much larger size, probably double the finished size. The main piece should reduce the amount of fiddly glueing.

The farm courtyard actually needs gluing to the unprinted reverse and positioned carefully so that the buildings fold inwards they will fall into place on that image. The internal side of the main farmhouse and the main gate are separate pieces, the gate needs to glue inside and outside the main wall covering the white parts of the main wall.

The finished model is shown here with some 6mm an 15mm metals to give an idea of scale. Finally, there is a 300dpi A4 version provided below for printing and making. I've positioned it carefully on the sheet so that it should print, centred on Letter sized paper withouth having to scale.

A paper evolution

The paper battalions have now evolved into a more flexible version that uses smaller blocks that can represent companies, sections or half sections for a 1-1 representation of a battalion. I've had a lot of input from the folks at TMP click here to see the lengthy discussion. My thanks for all their great suggestions.

I have made some final revisions to the soldier illustrations to reflect the individual companies with some command elements, Fusiliers, Grenadiers and Voltigeurs.

 Individual blocks shown here, note labelling on the underside to show which company (they even have correctly coloured pom-poms if your printer is up to the task). Shown here is all six companies in line.

Column by division in close order and in square.

I took the time to print four, six company battalions. This meant I could also represent a battalion in 1-1,  every man represented (720 men).

 Shown here as a column by division at section intervals. Then a column by peleton in close order. Then the whole battalion in line, which I just managed to fit on my A1 map of Waterloo pm.

Finally the battalion in square. Unfortunately the flag is not in the correct position, I may make a final tweak to include a flag party.

Here is the latest A4 that reflects the latest changes, all six companies per A4, the flag and an optional command front for the company of your choice.

A final note, I've noticed that blogger optimises any images uploaded to this blog, the final version will be at a much better resolution.