Eleven Minis Painted and Counting...

I've actually gotten some painting done. Six old west minis (mostly Foundry and an Artizan) that were actually started back in Pittsburgh at one of our paint nights... what... three years ago? Four? Well they are finished.

I also finished five Copplestones (I think the biker is one of his Grenadier sculpts from EM-4/SG mirlington) from scratch. In the background are two 1/55th scale cars... the Unimog 1500 is from Siku and was picked up on Ebay last fall... the Honda CRZ is from Majorette and was one of two I picked up at the supermarket two weeks or so ago.

I've got about a squad's worth of WW2 US Infantry from Artizan cleaned and mounted, and a platoon's worth of Copplestone Casting's Chinese troops that will be painted as WW2 Royal Thai Army, all waiting for dry weather to be primed.

Happy New Year 2K16!

My New Year's resolution is to post more often... twice a month is my minimum goal.

So to start off 2K16 here is what I've been putzing with:

base: Hot Wheels Mid-Scale (1/50) 1959 Chevrolet Impala.

rear wheels: the front axle from a Fastlane haul truck (those giant mining dump trucks).
front wheels: axel from a "Mars Attacks" truck from Mantic.

scale mini: Wargames Foundry

The haul truck wheels are hollow, so there will be some filling or plating with plasticard. I'd like to do a bladed front bumper, and a pintle mount or turret. Windows will be armored over, and I'm leaning toward a rusty rat-rod type paint scheme. The back bumper is also pretty high, so I might sling two oil drums under the boot.

Basing Revisited

I've reconsidered my basing ideas... I had been using black anodized 1" fender washers, but it was creating a height difference between my slotta-base and cast-on base minis.

I favor Mark Copplestone sculpts, particularly his work on Grenadier's Future Warriors line. The original line (now available from EM4 and Mirlington S.G.) used GW style round "slotta" bases and miniatures with a cast on tab. After the demise of Grenadier, and the Future Warriors line, Mark set up his own company (Copplestone Castings) and resculpted most of the line as Future Wars... with cast on bases. As I mix the two lines (and others), I had been gluing the Copplestone Castings mini straight to the washer, and clipping the tab off of the Grenadier minis; gluing the soles of the feet directly to the washer. This created a height difference in the finished minis... accentuated by the tendency of the Copplestones to be a slight bit taller than the original line.

I basically had three options:

1. Ignore the difference (ha!) 
2. File down the cast on bases to make them paper thin, then glue them on the washer. This is a humongous pain in the ass. 
3. Base them on thicker bases, and recess the cast on bases. 

I realized that between the washer thickness, and the cast on bases, the Copplestones were sitting pretty much as high as a slotta based Grenadier... so I decided to use those. For the Copplestones, I'd carve out a void to fit the cast-on base, then back it with plasticard. I tried it on a couple minis and it seemed feasible... but I needed to order some 25mm slottas.

Backing the Mantic Dead Zone Kickstarter project helped refine the plan; before I could order slottas, I received my first backer shipment... chock full of these 1" plastic bases with a 15mm recess in the middle. I realized that the Mantic recessed plastic bases were a perfect starting point for the Copplestones. Many of the female figures had a small enough base to just be glued in place. Some of the others, with the base carefully trimmed to the soles of the boots, would also fit an unaltered base.Wider stance figures were traced onto the base, and then an X-Acto blade was used to enlarge the recess to accommodate the base.

As the Mantic bases were not tapered like GW style slotta bases, I chose to use MDF rounds to base the tabbed minis. The tab is trimmed to create two small pins, one on each foot, these are plotted on the base and then it is drilled with a bit of roughly the same width as the pins. Apply glue, press into base. I had a supply of Gale Force Nine's MDF bases, which I was a huge fan of, but as they seem to be discontinued, I ordered some rounds from Back 2 Base-ix in Australia, cheap, relatively near, and good bases. They are unfinished, which means I need to paint superglue over the surface before using watery basing materials like Vallejo's pumice compound. But that isn't a big deal.

The end result, after all of this, are miniatures that appear to all be based the same way. That is good.

Finished: Copplestone Scavengers & Partisan

In May I finally got some Woodland Scenics Burnt Grass flock to finish the bases of my Copplestone Castings scavengers. They actually come from three packs; Two are Sewer Scavengers (FW2), two are Scavenger Heroes (FW31) and the last is from the Partisan Fighters (FW40) pack.  I've had these minis for years - part of a large order I placed in 2004 while living in Japan.  They sat a round for quite a while, were based on washers then MDF rounds, then washers again...  Finally I decided to paint them at our weekly paint night, without an actual plan.

I don't paint particularly well, occasionally I manage to pull off something cool, but mostly I block paint and use Army Painter Quickshade.  This is mostly from a lack of patience and that if I don't do it this way I'll be repainting them forever.

My basic plan is to paint minis into 10 man units/gangs, a nice round number that fits well into VHS box mini cases.  Four of the scavengers here will be part of the same gang, noted by the red articles on all of them - I was inspired by a western gang painted with the same idea in Warhammer Historical Old West.  The tall, man-ish lady will be part of another gang noted by the blue.  Basically I ended up painting Crips and Bloods/TAP Boyz. - though that certainly wasn't planned.

The black chap was towards the end of the night and is based on a friend of mine.  You can see that my accuracy had suffered a bit from fatigue. Still on the table he looks fine and I don't think I'll repaint - though I might use a black Sharpie to nick that red fleck on his dreads.

Of all I think I am most impressed with the Crown Royal bag on the belt of the dude with the SMG.  Sitting around painting with a bunch of old-skool gamers, that part of the sculpt just screamed "Crown Royal dicebag!"  I am rather pleased how the stitching came out.

I got these guys painted in pretty much one night, a couple touch ups and the quickshade applied later in the week.  It was about there that they languished as I was without any dull coat.  Once I got around to picking that up I needed flock... thus the weeks added up.  Finally (a couple weeks later) they stood finished.

These are the first minis I'd completely finished this year, though I have a about seven western minis that were painted and quickshaded before these guys (awaiting dull coat and finished bases).  These guys have already appeared in a Daring Tales of the Sprawl game, and should work well in post apocalyptic, dirty/hard sci-fi and even modern settings. Last week an order from EM4 of ex-Grenadier Future Wars minis arrived from the UK - once my bases arrive from Litko I'll try to get them painted up to oppose these guys in Combat Zone and Cyberpunk/DTotS RPGs.

Scotland Police, Fine Young Cannibals

I picked up a Heller 1/43 scale plastic model of a Leyland Rover SD1 3500. The Rover SD1 was the archetypal British police car of the 1980s, and was one of the vehicles featured in the climactic chase scene in Doomsday, one of my very favorite movies.

The Doomsday car was actually a ’78 Rover SDX 2600, a smaller engined South African version that is visually almost identical to the Heller model. It was decked out with a yellow and red “jam sandwich” stripe with a dull yellow heptagram insignia centered on the door. A number of viewings and copious frame advancing lead to the digital recreation seen below. The center featured the typical Scottish police crest of the thistle topped with a crown in a wreath with a scroll at the bottom. Around this was a band of text that was very difficult to decipher. It was three words, one at top separated from the two on the bottom by two dots. I’m very confident that the last word is “POLICE” and rather sure that “SCOTLAND” rounded out the bottom… the top word however was rather tricky. At first I assumed it was “CENTRAL”, the Central Scotland Police being a real police force. However some digging proved the heptagram to be unlike any insignia used by any Scottish police. I returned to the frame advance and was able to determine that there were eight characters in the word in question – something like “CANNIBAL.” I have no idea if this is really what the crest reads – but it makes for a rather good in-joke by the production crew, so I whipped up a graphic in GIMP to make into a decal. The idea here is for a Doomsday inspired Combat Zone force…

♫Good thing, where have you gone?♫