My last 15 figures for Black Ops games

Well, the last for the moment, who knows what the future holds? 

First, here are three somewhat ambiguous "good guys";

The two on the left and in the middle have a definite Royale With Cheese look about them, but I'm not sure who the guy on the right reminds me of at all. Still, they could quite easily be detectives with an unorthodox way of investigating things or maybe unscrupulous operatives of a secret government agency. They could fit in with these two I painted back in 2020.

Next, I have police officers from some kind of authoritarian one-party state who will make suitable opponents for Special Forces or clandestine intelligence operatives. There are five with pistols and batons and four with shotguns.

They could be border guards, security police or maybe just even your average jackbooted street cops.

Here are some leaders for these police. One uniformed officer and two plainclothes ones, who might equally work for the State Security Bureau. The guy in the middle is definitely the Big Cheese.

So, that it it for the Black Ops scene for now. It has been a lot of fun painting them.

I shall be looking again at the Copplestone range of figures to see what else might be useful in the new year.

A few more Black Ops figures

These are, once again Copplestone Future Wars figures and are described as "Sewer Scavengers". The whole lot are all very post-apocalyptic and will work well as fanatics or similar.

This first set above have a definite leaders and characters vibe about them and the remaining ones below are more rank and file .

Some of them have a kind of Army Surplus look about them and others look more like down and outs. I used a nice mixture for their bases that I bought at Colours a while ago. It is called battlefield rubble, I think and looks very much like waste ground or urban ruins.

As with the whole range, these figures were a joy to paint. The detail is crisp and there are some nice little details.

More Black Ops figures

I've already posted a couple of times about my Black Ops small project using Copplestone Future Wars 28mm figures, so here are my latest eleven figures;

These are described as "Partisans", so I think that these would work for various different kinds of irregular militia, armed insurgents or paramilitaries.

I could see these working well as the kind of far-Right Survivalist or White Supremacist nutters who want to overthrow democracy and are therefore a target for Special Forces anti-terrorist operations. They could also be the People's Militia in some kind of authoritarian state. There is a definite former-Soviet Union vibe about them. Their SMGs have a definite PPSh-41 look about them, but with a more enclosed barrel.

Black Ops Special Forces

This was a rush job, because I wanted to be able to use them at the club tomorrow (31st July).

 These are from the Copplestone Future Wars range. Five of them, the ones with hoods are the Hostage Rescue Squad and the other two (the commander with a cap and the trooper with a helmet and assault rifle) are from the Assault Troopers sets.

I want to use these as the kind of Special Forces stealth operatives who can infiltrate secret bases, armed compounds or clandestine installations, do the job and get out quickly. 

Their paint job is essentially all about shades of grey which make them hard to see in the dark or in the kind of tunnels and passageways beloved of film and TV whenever Black Ops are part of the plot. Even their weapons are matt grey.

Anyway, I hope that they will work for the game that Clive, one of our club members is running tomorrow. 

I will also be able to use these for the Black Ops rules written by Guy Bowers, which are published by Osprey.

Some more finished minis!

Two more figures painted. This time from the Copplestone Future Wars range. 

These are listed as Power-armour troopers but I see them as armoured combat droids for my ROTOR rules. They could, of course be suitable for any science fiction rules you might have. These guys are pretty big, around 4cm tall and have heavy weapons and powered fists, so a tough nut to crack.

My idea for these, apart from having one as a heavy hitter in a ROTOR Reiver team is that they have been hanging around for a long time, maybe as heavy security for an industrial complex or perhaps a scientific or mining location. Therefore, I wanted them to look a bit battered and battle-worn. So, lots of small areas of raw metal and a bit of rust around the lower legs. I also wanted them to look like decommissioned military droids so I painted on a ghosted dark green area where military insignia had been in the past.

You can see the rusty areas quite nicely on the rear view of the two droids above. When I painted them, my aim was to bring out as much contrast as possible, so plenty of dry-brushing and darkening the recessed parts of the figures.

To do this, I used some Army Painter Strong Tone (the stuff in the dropper bottles, not the tinned version) painted all over the models after an initial priming coat of PSC US Olive Drab spray before adding in the bare metal areas and the layers of dry-brushing with Vallejo Olive Green, Desert Yellow and finally Iraqi Sand, finishing off by adding on the rust glazing, using AK Light Rust Wash.

Finally, I finished the bases off with Gamer's Grass (available on the Bad Squiddo website) dry vegetation tufts and a mix of sandy and rocky ballast.

I am really very pleased with how these have turned out.

OK, so what exactly have I been doing since my last post back in December?

Well, we did have the Christmas festivities, so I will own up to eating and drinking too much 😋 and watching a lot of stuff on Netflix, Prime and the actual telly channels.

I got some wargaming-related presents too; the second edition of the Frostgrave rules, some Artizan 28mm Wild West gunslingers, some Copplestone Back of Beyond Chinese bandits, a couple of Copplestone Future Wars figures in power armour (which I intend to use as combat droids for my ROTOR sci fi skirmish rules) and a couple of the Bad Squiddo Ghosts of Gaia that I didn't already have. I now have most of the range, which is one of my favourite sci fi ones around.

I also bought some 15mm figures for my first project of 2021. I expect that you are asking yourselves what did I buy?

Well, the figures are to go with a set of rules which I found on eBay together with the accompanying source and reference books, as I referred to in my previous post, which were originally published back in 1993 by a rather well-known gaming company.

I have now undercoated and started painting the figures, making reasonable progress with them. I am hoping to have at least a few of them finished by the end of the week, at which point I will reveal all regarding the project.