Flames of Orion Mech Pilot

    Grungy sci-fi is so cool. I think Alien/Aliens or Terminator hit the perfect aesthetic for what I love about a gritty Sci fi setting. Something character driven that focuses on the every day folks surviving in a place that is unforgiving is my go to for this theme. This is exactly why I love my buddy Steve’s game Flames of Orion. It’s a fast paced 6mm scale Mech game set in a universe where mech pilots battle over scarce resources and planets exploited by mega corporations, all while narrowly surviving battles without their mechs overheating or getting shredded by an enemy stalking in the shadows. While the mechs are sick, I like that he’ll often incorporate 28mm scale pilots for a “zoomed in” scenario during narrative events. Combining these scales for two different games to tell a connected story is something I absolutely love to daydream about doing in other settings.

    But right now I’m talking pilots. Specifically scrappy mech pilots. I wanted to make a little freak that tells a story just by looking at him without any other context. First, I thought about what his mech would be called. Without spending much time on it I came up with the name “Mournful Memory.” And with that I started to form what I thought this guy would look like and what his story was. 

    I wanted him to be a veteran of sorts, either a military vet or just a veteran of Mech combat over the years. The base I started with for the model was a 4th (I think) edition Tau body from 40k. I clipped the tau feet off, and shaved the chest down so it was flat and just looked like some sort of plate carrier. I threw on half a Cadian leg and the lower half of a Necron leg for a nice dirty bionic touch. I like that these lower legs give him a little more height and I think it helps the proportions to be better in the end. The arms are a Wargames Atlantic German WWI machine gun arm and a genestealer cult arm carrying…something. That something looked like a cool IED or some sort of tech that a mech pilot might need. Maybe it’s the core that powers his mech, so he brings it with him when he needs to dismount. 

    The head was a tough decision and I was going between 3-4 until I decided to go with one of my favorite Sci-fi mini heads, a shaved down plastic Cadian head. I use these converted heads for my home brew guard regiment, and couldn’t help but use it here too. I shaved down the sides, rear box, and front skull so it looks like a nondescript science fiction grunt style helmet with the chinstrap unclipped. This screamed the vibe I was going for. 

    I mixed up a little bit of green stuff to fill gaps and repair some cut bits. I added a cool rope and pouch attached to his belt on the front that gives a little in world narrative to this guy being practical. I began to scratch up his armor to give a little more grit to his used and abused kit. Is the helmet an honored piece of his past, or a necessary practical scavenged item he puts on when leaving the safety of his cockpit? 

    I based him with my usual sand mix, after gluing him to a thin piece of cork. The mix is play sand, various beach sand, kitty litter, and tiny pebbles. It’s a nice effective basing method for variation in texture. 

    Finally I added a grappling hook bit connected to his belt on his back with the idea that it’s how he gets in and out of the main hull of the mech when he needs to. It’d also help with traversing the war torn cities and landscapes while exploring I’m sure. I added some more scratches too to even out the damage.

    Here he is. Let’s call him Rall Kellner, pilot of the Mournful Memory. I like that I was able to achieve a downtrodden appearance in his posture without it being pathetic. So does this model tell a story without context? I think so. If anything it looks like a guy who’s burdened, hands full of bullshit, while everything he’s carrying and wearing has practical application. In context of being a mech pilot, I love the idea that he’s carrying around the power core out of a reasonable worry that it could be stolen. After all, it is not only his weapon, but his home and safety net

    For painting him, I kind of just rushed through to try to capture the overall tone of what I wanted rather than going absolutely nuts on building layers. I've been trying to jump out of my comfort zone with painting lately, and with that I'm not being SO precious with detail on fun projects like this. I made sure to primarily focus on the face as well as adding some nice little free hand checkers to give him visual personality as well. For a collective few hours, I'm very pleased with this guy. 

Sculpting My First 28mm Civil War Casualty

    

    Something that the folks close to me know is that I really love collecting and gaming with casualty tokens, especially for historical games. Since I’m actively working on my Civil War ruleset, "Vortex of Hell", while writing this, I’m deep into ACW territory as far as minis go right now. I painted about 140 individual Civil War minis earlier this month for the first play test (Here) of my new game with some friends, and needed to take a little break from painting piles of tiny dudes for a few weeks before getting back into it. So what better way could I spend an hour and a half than sculpting a dead guy?

    First, I should mention that I’m an historian and the American Civil War is one of the topics I’ve been studying for decades now. With that, the famous photos of casualties taken by Mathew Brady’s team, Alexander Gardner, and others are seared into my mind. Those photos showed the American pubic for the first time what war really looked like. It wasn’t soldiers dying bravely with loved ones near their side comforting them, but instead ghoulish bloated twisted bodies set in inhuman poses, their faces frozen in painful expressions. Even though this blog and the hobby in general is about toy soldiers, I always remind myself that these photos, and now tiny sculptures, are of real people. People who ate birthday cake, had dreams, crushes, and who's lives were cut incredibly short due to this war. So I always try to treat projects like this with some reverence, even if it is a stupid little toy soldier. 

    With this in mind, I wanted to start my casualty sculpting journey with those photos as a reference. Also it's worth noting, there are some fantastic casualty sculpts that I think already fit this bill from Sash and Saber and a few other companies, but I believe you can never have enough variation. Anyway, let’s kick off the rust and start sculpting! 

    I used a 50/50 mix of green stuff and milliput, which is what I have been sculpting with for a while now. It’s the best of both worlds. I first started with the legs. I used an S&S casualty and an older “Old Glory” casualty model for scale so they weren’t too long. I always end up going too big when I sculpt and needing to hack off bits as I work. 

    The legs started as tubes, and the torso started as a ball. I sculpted simple creases into the pant legs, then moved to creating the jacket front. The jacket is kind of a Richmond Depot jacket or a federal state jacket, so this guy can be painted as either side. The buttons are arguable too large, but I was having a problem with scale for them at this tiny of a size. This should be a 9 button front, but there are 6 visible, so next time I'll spent more time on this part. I definitely need to work on that. 

    Next I sculpted the waistbelt, cap box, and cartridge box. Those were all simple enough. I sculpted the waistbelt open, as there are many primary accounts of wounded men opening their belts, jackets, and trousers looking for their wounds before bleeding out. Each arm started as a tube and was simply shaped into place and molded onto the torso. I pressed in the seam of the sleeve caps as well. Next were the hands. There's really nothing special there, just balled up fists with the hint of fingers pressed in. Then the feet were sculpted into a semblance of Civil War "booties" or brogans.

    The most anxiety driving part of this was the face. Sculpting faces is always tough for me, which is probably why I usually sculpt monsters and mutants. But, I think this face turned out ok for a potentially bloated dead body. I started with a ball of putty, stabbed a basic mouth and eye sockets into it, then nostrils. Then I sculpted the nose a bit, and put two plastic beads for eyes. Then the worst part is four individual eyelids which are blended into the face. I added a "tongue" into the mouth as well. The hair was added last, and was just clumps of green stuff mashed into messy curly hair. Somewhere in here I added the jacket collar as well. 

    Last, I did a little clean up on various bits, and added a haversack strap for another layer and detail to the finished mini. I should add, this entire thing was sculpted on the plastic of an old blister pack, so the pics were of course very tough to make look good after the fact. 

    Here are some shots after he finished drying. It definitely isn't perfect by any means, but I think it was a worthwhile project to get me back into sculpting at this scale. Hopefully I'll have enough creative juice left to do a full set of these guys and maybe possibly cast them. We'll see!

City Fight Terrain

    Ever since I first got the book well over 20 years ago now, "Codex Cityfight" has always had a special place in my heart. I think a lot of that has to do with Karl Kopinski's art that so perfectly illustrated the worlds of the 40k universe. He brought it to life in color and black and white art that still to this day inspires my own models and how I view that universe. Now, Gage and I have been kicking around the idea with some other friends in the New England War Council to do some Cityfight, at least once, sometime soon. Terry threw together a small 500 point 3rd ed Black Templar army for this project that looks and feels exactly how Kopinski's art makes me feel. See that HERE.

    Now, 24 years since its release, I finally am working on a specific board for this setting! This is somethings I've had delusions of grandeur about probably since the book coming out. Initially I wanted to do a static 4x4 board, ort even a 4x6. While that is a cool thought in theory, transporting those would be almost impossible, so I settled on a bunch of 2x2 boards we can build larger boards out of, and it affords some modularity. I set out collecting trash 

    So with all of that in mind, and a LOT of trash, community junk bits, and a pile of 3D prints from Gage, I set out to make some trash terrain. The first piece was a destroyed imperial government building(?) or something along those lines. I wanted it to be a piece that was an easily identifiable important building in the set up. Its the only one with a yard, which in theory could have looked nice before half the building crumbled down. Each piece started with a 2x2 foam board and was built up from there with trash and sculptamold. Once that was dry a nice mix of sand, small debris, and grout was added to tie it all in and make it look like piles of rubble. 

    Once I figured out the overall plan to tackle three more of these boards, I got to work on the rest. The only thing that I needed to make sure for each was that they had the same width street. Other than that, they could be whatever I wanted. I ended up with the government building, two blocks of houses, and one of a a promethium facility. These four destroyed city blocks would hopefully become the board I've been envisioning for decades!

    Something I struggle with on every project is trying not to be too precious with every piece and to let the overall piece speak for itself. I can go in later and add more detail, but for these build steps in the beginning I really tried to let it just happen rather than meticulously thinking about where and when to drop sand. If this is a city that's been bombed by the Imperium, destroyed by orks, or ravaged by any matter of freak alien weapon, it would be absolutely trashed. The plan is to get it all to the same stage at the end and then once its playable, go back and add posters, more grime, trash, and smaller world details. 

    Priming it all black really tied it together. I used a texture spray paint to add just another layer of grit to the end result. Next was a series of grey zenithal sprays from above to add some depth and to get the bleak bombed out ruin effect. 

    

    With these steps all done it was at the point where it's totally serviceable for gaming! But, because I'll never be able to leave a project at this stage, I'll go back soon to add everything I mentioned above. Biggest thing I REALLY need to add is rust, grime, and mold textures to really make this look like a few months to a year of warfare and neglect has occurred. 

   

    Above are a few photos from a game of One Page Rules Grimdark Future a few of us played on the almost finished board recently. Dillon played Chaos guard and Knights, Blerz played his insanely cool tyranids, and Brad played his rebel Grots. Last five photos by Terry! 

    With these four almost done, I already have plans and junk to make the final two so we can eventually play a proper Cityfight game and have a full 6x6. For those two, I want one to have a railway and part of a railyard like a Stalingrad vibe, and for the other, another residential block. 

-Tyler

Soviets In NBC Suits

"That's the Zone for you, come back with swag, it s a miracle; come back alive, success; come back with a patrol bullet in your ass, good luck; and everything else, that's fate."

Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

      I was gifted a few minis by my buddy Jackson earlier this year, and knew they had to be used for my zombie apocalypse ruleset "Inhumane Harvest" and other games like Zona Alfa. Nothing is cooler to me than a faceless freak in a gas mask, especially when those gas masks are historically accurate to a specific period and identifiable. Sadly, I didn't take any work in progress pics really, as I didn't have plans for a blog post then!

    These Soviet soldiers in 80's NBC hazmat suits from Eureka Minis. this overall look and aesthetic is near and dear to my heart, so I got to work getting these five little angels painted up. 

        The first two I painted were treated as test models to get the correct color for the suits. Luckily, soviet NBC gear did come in a variety of subtle color variations, from almost white to mild olive drabs and everything in between. I landed on a nice faded mint green for these guys. I thought a subtle build up of that color wouldn't be too distracting, as I never like seeing a really heavy shadow on something that is pretty light colored and evenly toned fabric in real life. 

    I painted their gas mask bags and other pouches appropriate khakis, using some of my original examples as reference. The metal hardware and gas mask tubes were a black contrast paint with building grey highlights. For the bases, its just sand and building up browns and natural colors with a watered down wash before the final highlight and tufts.

    Here is the full finished squad. I love these models so much. The miniatures are so nice, they're cast well, and their proportions are realistic. I'm a sucker for a good neutral or realistic pose that isn't too over the top or animated, and these fit the bill for that so well. They can fill the role of protagonists as a full Zona Alfa Squad, player characters or unfriendly NPCs in Inhumane Harvest, or really anything in between. The only thing I think I'll change, or I guess it's more of an addition, is to add another guy in a helmet purely for aesthetics. 

Here are some nicer pictures of the squad. 

The pointing man emerges as the clear leader of the crew. Is he menacingly pointing at unarmed potentially infected civilians? Or is he pointing at someone nearby to save?

    Like I said, I really like these models and I'm stoked to throw them on the new 2x2 eastern block apocalypse board I've been working on. Maybe I'll post about that soon! 

-Tyler