Another Bad Squiddo mini - a cyborg

 I finished this Bad Squiddo figure off yesterday afternoon and spray-varnished it this morning.

She is a cyborg, therefore containing robotic/synthetic components mixed with a human biological core. My vision for her is that she is an ancient warrior cyborg, perhaps trapped for centuries on a forgotten world, the last living remnant of the crew of an abandoned spacecraft or perhaps the guardian of some long-abandoned habitat.

To give her the appearance of great age, I decided on a bronze-based colour palette, so that her outer carapace, which protects the small amount of biological tissue inside, looks like an ancient set of powered armour. I wanted her to look battered, with an air of antiquity, a relic of a now-vanished imperial power. 

I dry-brushed her bronze armour with some old gold paint and also gave some small parts of her armour a very light dry-brush with a pale green colour. I also painted some of her mechanical components gunmetal with a raw steel dry-brush for highlighting purposes. The coppery effect on her face mask and "hair" was done with a wash of burnt sienna drawing ink over old gold paint.

The scrap of green fabric around her upper torso is all that is left of a once magnificent long cloak.

Who can imagine the life of such a being? A flickering remnant of humanity forever locked inside an ancient bio-mechanical frame and covered in power armour of great age and complexity. What thoughts, if any would such a being have? Would she even be sane after so long? 

I must say that I really love this mini.

Taking the post-apocalyptic dog for a walk

 I've not really had the painting mojo for a while. I keep starting things and then abandoning them either once they are undercoated or part way through painting them.

However, I knew I had to do something about this sorry state of affairs, so I got to work on a few things I got for Christmas. 

These are a set from the Bad Squiddo Ghosts of Gaia range and they are listed as "Wrenchmouth and handlers" but I prefer to think of them as two residents of the post-apocalypse taking their dog for a walk. I like the cute little puppy the figure on the left is holding up. Clealy the little 'un hasn't had its injections yet.

Here they are again, on their way back from the park.

These figures are the usual fabulousness that we have come to expect from Annie's sculptors and casters and they really are very nice minis to paint.

I shall be finding a use for them in all sorts of science fiction games, including my own ROTOR skirmish rules, once we are actually allowed to meet up and play with our toys again.

I have a few more figures primed and waiting for a brush session, so hopefully I'll have something ready to post in a day or two.

I think the key to getting stuff finished at the moment is just painting something I like, rather than painting for a specific project.

A couple more Victorian Science Fiction figures

I actually painted these two last year, but somehow forgot all about them until now. As some regular readers might remember, I had a lot of turmoil and anguish last year with one of my dogs, so I am pretty sure that is why they never got onto the blog. I have given the photo the title of "A Steampunk Hero and Heroine". They are from the North Star Steampunk range.

These two feature heavily in the illustrations in the original In Her Majesty's Name rulebook, so I felt like I really ought to have them in my collection.

As an aside, a new edition of the revised and updated rules will soon be available. Personally, I am really looking forward to getting my hands on a copy.

Anyway, such characters need names and a background, so here are;

Captain George Ruff-Diamond, late of the Rifle Brigade, is now employed by an undisclosed Mysterious Government Agency in an unspecified capacity. Capt. Ruff-Diamond travels widely across Europe and beyond and is a noted bon viveur, sportsman and explorer. He lives on private means although the source of his wealth is shrouded in secrecy. Capt. Ruff-Diamond is a close friend of Professor Henry Hardy and was once romantically-linked to his sister Miss Amelia Hardy, with whom he remains on friendly terms.

Miss Felicity Ward. Miss Ward is a noted writer of fantastical romances and books on such matters as Spiritualism and the Occult. A former student of Archaeology and History at Brichester University and the École Nationale des Sciences Arcanes in Bordeaux, Miss Ward has travelled widely in the Near East and Eastern Europe and is the daughter of the noted American Anthropologist Professor Charles Phillips Ward of Arkham, Massachusetts and his second wife, Lady Jacquetta Melchett, the noted painter and poet. Miss Ward is a noted fencer and horsewoman and is considered to be an excellent markswoman with both pistol and rifle.

The final part of my 15mm Space Marine project is completed

I was waiting for a dry day to get the last lot of 15mm Vanguard Miniatures not-quite space marines finished, and here they are;

As you can see, there are two squads of assault marines with jump packs. and each squad can be split into a five-man team consisting on one marine with a meltagun, three equipped with bolt pistols and chainswords and a leader with a plasma pistol and a powerfist. I have given the senior leader a red helmet to indicate that he is the overall squad leader.

In addition, I have created a small team consisting of the four marines left over from the two squads above, plus the final model from the "Characters" set I talked about in an earlier post. I have painted him as a second Librarian, equipped with a jump pack and armed with a Force Weapon (in the shape of a Power Hammer) and a powerfist. The assault marines can act as a kind of bodyguard for the Librarian but the whole team makes a pretty formidable attacking force.

You will notice a sixth figure here. He or she is a GZG Japanese Tech Ninja Special Forces figure who I have painted up as an assassin of the Officio Assassinorum, equipped with a needle pistol and a power sword, plus a few grenades. This is in line with the 2nd Edition rules and Codex Imperialis, which predates GW's invention of the different Assassin Temples.

So, that is the end of the first part of my project.

The next part will be all about the Imperial Guard. I have bought the figures but I need to base them and get them primed before I can start painting. These will also be using Vanguard Miniatures figures.

After that, I will start planning some opponents and also look at vehicle options. There are some nice ones on the Vanguard website which will be ideal.

Part Two of the 15mm not-space marines project

 I thought that I'd run out of spray varnish, but I found a can in the box where I'd put it so I wouldn't lose track  of it, after forgetting I'd put it there in the first place!

This meant that I could varnish some more figures.

First, my second squad of not-quite space marines;

These are equipped identically to the first squad that I posted in my previous post. I did consider giving them contrasting colour edges to their shoulder armour but decided against it.

I now have two squads of the basic troop type, which should be fine for gaming purposes.

I have also painted up two five-man squads of Tusculum Nova Elites in Heavy Armour, who bear a slight passing resemblance to Space Marines in Terminator armour;

As my project is all about the Dark Angels, these are obviously the Deathwing. Each squad of five marines has a leader with a storm bolter and a power sword, a marine with an assault cannon and a powerfist and three marines with storm bolters and powerfists.

I really like these minis, they are significantly bigger than the standard power-armoured marines, as befits their status and their tactical dreadnought armour.

My remaining figures for this project should be finished later this week.

The Big Reveal: My first project for 2021

 As I have been hinting, I have a new 15mm project for 2021 and I can now reveal what it is all about. It is something I have been thinking about for a couple of years and it is to recreate Warhammer 40k in 15mm, but using the old 2nd edition rules, which I was able to buy on eBay before Christmas. I bought a complete set of the books; the Rulebook , the Wargear manual, the Codex Imperialis, the Codex Army Lists and the Armageddon scenarios, plus the quick reference card. A bargain at £13, I think.

The reason I chose this early version of the rules is basically because they are what I used to play with my son back in the mid-1990s when he got the 40k bug. He was an acolyte of the Chaos Gods, and built up forces for the Orks and the heretical rebel Chaos Space Marines, whereas I ended up with a Dark Angels army and an Imperial Guard one.

My project is initially to recreate the latter two forces and then create an opposing army of Space Orks.

My chosen supplier of 15mm figures for this project is Vanguard Miniatures, whose 15mm Defeat In Detail range is ideal for my purposes, although they are not listed as anything whatsoever to do with 40k on their website.

Anyway, I have bought enough Tusculum Nova Elites to build a reasonably-sized Dark Angels force, and I have been slowly working on them since just before New Year. 

So here are my first completed figures.

First, a Commander, a Chaplain and a Librarian;

These figures come with separate arms and heads, which gives you the option of putting them together in a few different ways. My Chaplain has a Storm Shield and a Crozius Arcanum, the Commander has a power sword and a storm bolter and the Librarian has a plasma pistol and a force staff.

I have a fourth character figure, but he will be appearing later on, when I get round to the troops he will be leading.

Now, here is a squad of not-quite space marines, armed with boltguns.

As you can see, they are led by a sergeant with a bolt pistol and a chainsword and the squad contains a trooper with a missile launcher and a weapon that I have decided is a meltagun, although it is described as a flamethrower on the Vanguard website.

I wanted to give these troops some heavy support, so I knocked up a couple of Dreadnoughts, using two Ground Zero Games Cyclops Heavy Battlesuits, one of which I modified by replacing the supplied right arm with a spare gun from a GZG tank model.

Of course, they look nothing at all like the 40k dreadnoughts we can see on sale today, but neither did the early GW ones that you can see in the 2nd edition books.

The one on the left is equipped with a Heavy Plasma Gun and the one on the  right with an Autocannon. Both of them are also equipped with Powerfists.

Here they are with the Librarian, to show how imposing they look alongside their regular battle brothers;

Now, I am not going to stick 100% to GW-approved heraldry or colour schemes on this project, mainly because I have no intention of trying to paint all the symbols etc that would be required, but also because I really like the early approach to the space marine chapters and how they looked in the early days of the life of 40k.

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.