"It's a charge, boys!"

Awhile back I blogged about a project for this year - Great War Canadian cavalry, circa 1918, for a "Battle of Moreuil Wood" game.

Well, the cavalry has arrived from Blaze Away Miniatures in Australia (cheers Jon!) and so, as a break from painting FuturKom and zombies, I spent a few minutes this afternoon converting some of the troopers.

The Blaze Away figures are really nice but there are a limited selection of poses: officer with sabre, trooper with rifle upright, trooper with rifle across lap, trooper aiming pistol. As I'm building several decent-size units of models, I want to have the maximum variety of poses that I can, and in this case, that means converting. My sculpting skills being none-too-impressive, I'm going for the simplest conversions packing maximum impact in terms of differentiation.

The models that best lend themselves to conversion are the trooper with rifle upright and trooper aiming pistol. Both will be converted to hold sabres - a relatively simple matter (I hope) of cutting off the rifle/pistol, sculpting a hand and sabre hilt/handguard, and attaching a sabre blade.

Anyway, you can judge the success of the conversions from the photos - each converted model is pictured alongside a model in its original state so you can see exactly what was done.

More pics to come as the project progresses...

Ed-209

Here's a better picture of the robot.

FutureBritz

The West Wind heads and the Churchill arrived late last week and I've been busy converting the future britz. I also have a few heavy weapon exo-suits for each squad. In the back is an Ed-209 type robot.
This is the crew for the 88 MW cannon.

This is the Omega Churchill with some kind of massive gun. Any suggestions for what it is?
I imagine the gun needs to have minimal recoil or else Tommy is losing his lower half.

More progress on GünSchwarm

Well, pretty soon it will be time for a game against FutureKom - possibly as soon as this week! I have a little over 30 GünSchwarm troops painted, with a smattering of heavy weapons, to make a decent GünTruppe - and of course, the Panther will be a beast for them. However, to have a decent game (and a well-rounded force), the Güns need some more vehicles, so I have been working on painting and converting more vehicles for the force.

Orginally, I wanted to try and use a Solido 1/50 scale SdKfz 251 for the IFVs. Then I thought I would use Rhinos - however, Mike F. now has those for the FutureBritz. So then I thought I would use Chimeras. And I remembered how much I f***ing hate putting the GW Chimera kits together (there is a special place in purgatory for whoever OK'd that track assembly). Some Solido half-tracks showed up in the mail, courtesy of some transactions from TMP. So, I got to kit-bashing with GW's excellent tank accessory sprue and came up with this.



I liked the look, but the vehicle suffered from the "1/56" effect - i.e. it appears laughably too small to allegedly carry 8 to 10 25/28mm scale troops. So, I settled on ditching it for IFV purposes, but keeping it as a recon vehicle. I finished painting it up yesterday. The blurry Gün troops give you an idea of the size.





Of course, recon is good to have, but the Güns will need some more tank support, and some mobile flak support, keeping an eye out for the FutureKom jabos! Below is a photo of the next two vehicles for the Gün Panzer Korps - a converted Solido flakpanzer (which already looked sci-fi on its own) and a converted Mark IV Panzer, now sporting an absurd, mostly-recoilless rocket mortar! Seemed like the kind of thing to send in and support the Schwarm at close quarters, particularly in their urban re-development programs.



Priority is to paint the Flakpanzer, so Dallas can be sure to roll out his Jabo when we play the first game!

What happens at Painting Nite...

... gets posted to the Blog!

Greg B., Brian and Mike F. were out for painting night on Thursday.

So to shame those who did not show up, here's a couple photos of what got painted.

Greg painted half-a-dozen of his excellent GünSchwarm models and made progress on several others, including basecoating a vehicle for them.

I worked on a bunch'o'zombies for a long-overdue commission.

I also took a break from the zacks and painted a few TAG terrorists. Almost there, just have to finish the flesh and weapons, and add a few highlights.

Famous Model Soldier Painters Gather Tonight

Since I just got back to town after a business trip (and subsequently am too lazy to set up a game) tonight will be a "painting night"...

So bring out your Tau, GuenSchwarm, Tesla Coils, Space Orks, or whatever else you're working on, we will have a beer and slap a bit of paint on. Usual place, 7:30pm.

Cheers,

Dallas

Another silly creation

Here's the 88 Megawatt Anti-Tank Tesla Coil. Basically it's a massive energy/laser cannon that will be crewed by 4 men. In reality it's a pile of junk that has taken form over the last few days. I'm hoping that the paint job makes it half credible.