Look sir, droids!

I've been slowly getting back into the hobby after a long hiatus. I've had a change in employment that was a little unexpected but turned out well in the end. Now that things have settled down a bit, I am able to start dipping a proverbial toe into the waters once more.
For Christmas my family bought me a few of the Hasbro Star Wars Command toy packs which are 54mm Star Wars army-men in essence. Like most army-men type figures, the scale is a bit up and down but as you can see in the image below the are about right for 54mm.

Each pack has a theme and a selection of figures and vehicles, although the vehicles are of a different scale entirely.

Each pack also has some character figures, which are generally painted in a metallic finish, I managed to get an Imperial pack that has a particularly comedic 'jazz hands' Emperor.

Just like that!

The bulk of the pack is made up of soldiers or combatants that are aligned to the Rebellion, Empire and some neutrals such as the Tusken Raiders and Ewoks. Sculpting is of a good standard but there are are very minor casting detail differences from model to model, even of the same figure. They are cast in a 'soft plastic' similar in consistency to most 'army-men'. Not as firm as the new Airfix 54mm figures but not as soft as Reaper Bones figures.

The figures take paint as well as any other plastic figure I have ever painted, remember to give them a wash before painting etc. Here is the first test figure, a sandtrooper with suitably weathered armour. There is plenty of reference material available online, mostly from re-enactors and cosplay costuming tutorials.

War Artisan's Paper ships

I'm no stranger to making stuff out of paper (I do it for a living actually). Generally if I'm doing wargame stuff with paper, it's something I've designed myself. However, I've seen War Artisan's paper ships pop up on TMP a few times, I even downloaded the free 1/900 64 gun ship from his site a while ago but have never got around to making it up.

Untill now...

 

These kits are small but fairly simple in design (proving the maxim that the best ideas are often the simplest). I toyed with the idea of having a crack at a version of my own but after making up the free kit I have decided that it's unnecessary as these kits are superb.

 

I've added some paint and washes over the original card illustrations.

 

 I've followed the instructions as closely as possible, the only major deviation is the used of trimmed toothpicks for all the masts and recycled paperclips for the yards etc. I'm also using a nylon coated stainless steel jewellery wire for the rigging.

My bases use crumpled copy paper, glued with PVA to a card base to give a subtle 3D wave effect after painting.

The good news is that once I'm finished making these French and Spanish hull versions I will be paying for the 90 and 74 gun versions.

40k Bits and pieces

Painted and sold a few of my son's abandoned 40k armies, including the Chaos Lord conversion I did a while back. There was also a single Chaos Warbike and some Chaos Marines rescued from a boot sale (flea market). These were plastic and a mixture of different generations. I painted them in a generic red paint scheme so they were more saleable.

 

 There was also a lot of unpainted Orks which I put on sale 'as is'. The few that I painted are shown below.

Back to Fantasy RPGs

I'm fortunate to have a son who seems to have caught the gaming bug. I actually have another teenage son but it's getting increasingly difficult to get him to join in with any games we play. Not cool to be playing with toy soldiers with your Dad at that age I guess. The son that likes to game also shares some of my creative traits, this may have something to do with it. He accompanied me to Salute this year and we both enjoyed it. He had a bit of pocket money to spend and snagged himself a few goodies. Our newest shared gaming passion currently is the Pathfinder Fantasy RPG from Paizo. We bought the Beginner Box Set and the Core rule book recently and have been having a fun time in the realm of Golarion. Salute was the ideal opportunity to pick up some fantasy miniatures.

My sons current Pathfinder character is a Dwarf Barbarian, so he picked up a mini from Hasslefree, a Troll Slayer. He asked me to paint it for him so I obliged.

He also picked up a large mini from Otherworld, an Ogre Chieftain. This one he is currently painting himself.

He's taking his time on this one (which is a good thing) but it looks promising so far.

Finally I picked up one of Reapers Pathfinder Iconic range, Kyra the Cleric from the Leisure Games stand at Salute. I'm in the process of painting this currently.

I'm also using one of the two free Salute 'Jason' minis as a Pathfinder character as I've done a bit of converting work on him.

My son also spent some of his pocket money on Zombies!!! 2 Zombie Corps(e)

We've had the main set for a while so he snapped this up from Leisure Games at Salute.

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 Google Docs 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.