15mm Moongrunt Project from GZG

Well this is what I've been up to hobby-wise, instead of painting Plains warriors and Seventh Cavalry troopers. But now I'm done this and can get back to the Little Bighorn project. But let me talk a bit about this one first.

I posted a couple weeks ago about how visiting the Museum of Brands in London, England got me onto Space:1999 and the Eagle spacecraft, and how buying one of those got me back into 15mm astronaut combat, and this post is the culmination of all of that. I wrote about how I'd bought and painted some astronauts in EVA suits from Ground Zero Games, but together with that order came two "armies" from GZG's "Moongrunt" range - a Chinese PLA space force and some British that will stand in for NASA astronauts - I just liked the look of the British models and their suits better than the GZG Americans. The NASA gang I've painted from the GZG British is shown in these photos.

The GZG models are sold in packs of six, and I wanted a decent platoon on each side, so I ordered four packs, in this case three packs of "riflemen" and one heavy weapons pack. These I divided up into three sections of seven models each (fve riflemen and two with rocket launchers), and a platoon command section comprised of the platoon commander and two flunkies.

The models were painted pretty simply, with heavy overbrushes of Celestra Grey, Corax White, pure white, Nuln Oil wash, then pure white again. Guns were Leadbelcher with Nuln wash, and I painted a red armband on the platoon commander and blue ones on the squad leaders.

I also built and painted a vehicle and passengers for the force. This is a pretty cool little 8-wheeled buggy that carries driver, squad leader, and six passengers. 

I used some Lunar "NASA" decals on the vehicle.

You can remove the passengers. I superglued them together in groups of three (one on each side of the compartment) to make that easier.

I also added some weathering on the vehicle hull. I suppose that dust and tiny micrometeoroids would weather stuff on the moon.

Here is the opfor - the Chinese People's Liberation Army Space Force.

I organized the force the same way as the other one, but the Chinese have more heavy weapons, so they get four in each squad of seven men. I know that eight is an even luckier number in Chinese culture so I might either reorganize the force or just buy another pack of these guys.

First squad. The leader has a red stripe on his helmet.

Second squad, contains two heavy rifles and two rocket launchers.

Here's the transport - a rocket-powered hovering sled. I made a base for it using magnets on the support post and underneath the vehicle.

So when the vehicle lands, you just take it off the flying stand.

Of course the passengers are removable and the vehicle can be used as a cargo transporter!

I did a rough job on some cargo for the bed.

Well that's this project finished for now! This will let me get back to the Little Bighorn and I'm trying to motivate myself with some new readying - "Hokahey - A Good Day to Die" by Richard Hardorff, that chronicles the Plains warrior casualties of the LBH battle.

Anyway the next thing to do with these models is have a game of some kind. I also have to get a larger terrain mat, probably 4x4 feet. If you have any suggestions please put it in the comments!