Miniatures painting progress April 2022 part 2

 A last few figures that I finished but didn't have time to photograph before the end of April.

Grenadier Future Warriors dictator and wasteland nomad, Mark Copplestone designs that I enjoy painting. 

Alternative Armies giant spiders. Useful for both fantasy and SF games. 

Miniatures Painting Progress April 2022 part 1

 First batch of miniatures finished in April 2022 - some old Grenadier Future Wars figures sculpted by Mark Copplestone that will see service in Five Parsecs, my Frostgrave mage and apprentice and a couple of cultists, an Alternative Armies carnivorous plant and a Reaper Troll. These include my first efforts with Army Painter Speedpaints on the cultists and plant.

Future Wars Police - the "Copplestone Cops"

Frostgrave Cultists and AA Carnivorous Plant

Frostgrave treasure marker, apprentice and Sigilist

Reaper Troll painted as a frost troll

Five Parsecs Miniatures Choices

 Setting up my first Five Parsecs campaign gives me some choices such as which scale of miniatures to use as I have some 28mm SF (and lots of historical/fantasy minis that might be useful) and quite a lot of 15mm SF.

Figure options 

15mm 

Alternative Armies have several ranges that can work for this, particularly Laserburn and HoF, which have different aliens and a variety of human types. Ground Zero Games also have a wide range and an unbelievably good postal response to orders. There is a small range from CP Models with plenty of character. 

28mm

Lots of options including the Stargrave plastics where probably a sprue of crew and a sprue of mercenaries will cover off your crew needs with maybe another couple of sprues to provide opponents. They are available from North Star who also have metals in the Stargrave and Copplestone Castings ranges, as well as plastic Frostgrave cultists who can be customised with SF weapons to give another option. 

The metal ranges from CP Models have plenty of nice options for aliens and humans including separate heads, weapons and equipment for customisation. Alternative Armies also have plenty of options in this scale as well. 

My choice is to go with 28mm in the end despite having plenty of painted and unpainted 15mm SF.

For terrain I'll mainly be using paper models from Dave Graffam downloaded from Wargames Vault. 

Painting Update October 2018 Fifteens and Frostgrave

Lots of stuff finished this time

15mm ACW

More rebased ACW - 20 Confederate infantry, 8 Confederate command, 4 Union command and 4 Union infantry this time.

Newly Painted ACW - 20 more Confederate infantry and 4 command

15mm SF 

Security Force Alpha and a Laserburn Partisan scout car

25mm Frostgrave

Giant spiders and a tomb

Painting Update 28 September

Some more stuff finished at last. Another 20 figures done, so moving on  towards the total.

Flintloque Guerillas de Santanda and a Catatonic priest

25mm Fantasy figures including a Flintloque golem

15mm Space Todoroni, sorry Newtlings from 15mm.co.uk

Some more 20mm German Infantry in shelter quarters from Caesar.

Painting Update 20 April

Another painting update in what is turning into my year of 15mm figures after last years 20mm focus. All figures from 15mm.co.uk in the HoF Science Fiction range.  

Cultists - standard bearer, servant (with radio) and Holy Guard troopers

Cultist infantry

Back to historicals and Flintloque figures after this as I try and push on to get to half my annual target achieved, though these take me up to 95 completed. 

Miniature Painting Update 29 November - more progress

Flintloque Ferach Elven Chasseurs of the Gardes, front and back views of most of these poses. I have now got a unit of 12 of these painted up and based.

HOF Cultist servant with a radio pack on his back, Cultist Minigun and SFA SMG trooper from 15mm.co.uk

Two out of production Alternative Armies Orcs

Two Alternative Armies Skeleton warriors and in the centre an executioner figure that I believe may be another out of production Alternative Armies figure

WIP - November - at last some more minis completed

At last I have got some of the many miniatures that I have been working on finished - these are a mixture of fantasy 25mm mainly from Alternative Armies, but also a lot of 15mm SF from the Hordes of the Future (HoF) range from 15mm.co.uk.

two dwarves of uncertain make, Alternative Armies elf duellist, Heritage dwarf archer

Alternative Armies Orc heavy infantry - these are currently out of production but I picked them up on ebay.

HOF - Security Force Alpha Comms trooper, Colonel and Sergeant

HOF Security Force Alpha - Heavy Laser trooper, Shotgun trooper, Trigun trooper, Missile trooper and Sniper

HOF Security Force Alpha - SMG troopers with front and rear views of each pose

HOF Medics - front view -they have a red cross on the back of their tunics.

HOF Cultists - Official, Overseer and Propagandatron

HOF Cultists - SMG and a Missile armed trooper

Work in Progress - late October

A lot of different bits and pieces showing that I have been painting steadily, but sadly starting too much rather than getting things finished. However I plan to finish at least some this month.

 

 Alternative Armies Ferach Elves including the cavalryman from the Catalucia Shilling Service pack.

 

Alternative Armies Witchlands Vampire, Liche and Zombies

 

Plastic Soldier Company Panzer IVH and SHQ German Infantry

 

Alternative Armies Fantasy undead and orcs. 

 

15mm.co.uk HoF Medics

 

HoF cultists

 

Italeri French Napoleonic Infantry - to be turned into Conscrit-Grenadiers of the Jeuene Guard by adding plumes to the shakoes. 

Interesting site for SF and Fantasy miniatures collectors

I had this site The Stuff of Legends pointed out to me and it has been really useful in finding out what the old Miniature Figurines (Minifigs) and Citadel miniatures SF figures that I own are. At some point I'll be posting pictures, but currently I'm removing paint from them with the intention of selling off some and painting up the others.

Book Review: Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon is Neal Stephenson's technothriller about cryptography and is a precursor to his baroque cycle. Like many of Stephenson's novels it uses multiple points of view to tell the story weaving them together into a single narrative, or in this case two narratives from the 1940s and 1990s.Stephenson does manage to keep the narrative moving despite the frequent changes of focus by interrelating the sections and leaving cliff-hangers on each narrative fragment.

For any reader who has read the Baroque trilogy there are many familiar family names for the characters, with a number of famous historical figures making cameo appearances including Alan Turing and General Douglas MacArthur.

One common feature for Cryptonomicon with many other technothrillers, even those written byTom Clancy who I'd not particularly associate with Stephenson, is the frequent infodumps. These are less common than in the later Baroque Cycle and do not detract too greatly from the flow of the novel, helped by Stephenson's humour and attempt to make them appropriate in context.

Cryptonomicon is an exciting read though as an alternative history does not have the levels of invention that characterised Stephenson's earlier work like the The Diamond Age or Snow Crash. It can clearly be seen as a transitional work between his briefer earlier SF work and the lengthy alternative history series of the Baroque Cycle.

Miniatures Gaming - Free rules from the web

There are currently a wide range of good sets of miniatures game rules available for free on the internet. My particular favourites out there are:

Fast and Dirty FAD from Weasel Fierce's website. This is a set of SF large skirmish rules for platoon to company level actions with no specific background specified and a design influenced by Stargrunt II.

Stargrunt II from Ground Zero Games is an interesting set of SF miniature rules for large ground skirmishes. They are possibly a little fiddly in use because of the different types of dice used and the mechanics for resolving fire fights needing multiple die rolls.

Full Thrust is a set of starship combat rules from Ground Zero Games, who produce an extensive range of human and alien nations' starships to use with these or any other sets of suitable rules. Full Thrust does give a fairly quick and enjoyable game and can be used with any set of starship models that you want.

GZG also have Dirtside which is a set of larger scale ground action rules intended for use with 6mm or similar small scale miniatures.

The fantasy miniatures rules Hordes of the Things have now been made available for personal use till the next edition appears at some future time from the Wargames Research Group.There are quite a few other sets of miniatures rules avaialbe for free from the WRG website. The old version of the DBA rules is also there and that provides a fun game though it is somewhat of a chess with miniatures game.

There are also a large number of sets of rules at Freewargames Rules, but I haven't tried any so can't really say more than point people at them.

I'll post some links for the paid for rules that I favour in a separate entry on the blog soon.

GROGNARDIA: Mutant Future News

I was pleased to see that from the Grognardia blog there is an updated version of the Mutant Future RPG due out soon. I've been looking to use this ruleset and will probably do a play by post game some time once I've worked out my addon rules for trade and bartering and to see what amendments I might want to the mutations and creatures.

Sky gives up plan to remake Blake's 7

As a fan of the original BBC series from the late 1970s I'm glad to see that Sky has given up its plan to reimagine Blake's 7, though it seems like there is potential for it to be picked up by another producer. I'd not be keen on a remake of the original with the lead characters like Blake, Vila or Avon recast given how definitive Paul Darrow was as Avon.

A series set after the original could be viable, e.g. "Blake Lives!" with new rebels against the Federation inspired by the memory of Blake and maybe led by survivors from the shootout at the end of the fourth series. Potentially if the setting is not too long after the events of the series the Federation could still be led by Servalan, but it might be better to make it a longer gap and create a clear break in the way the Time War was used in Doctor Who by Russell Davies.

Under a Steel Gray Sky - Mutant Future on a lost starship part 1

The lost generation ship is a concept in SF that appeals to me as a GM because of the ability to mix setting types on different decks of the ship and to create what are in effect dungeon crawls in exploring the various areas.

I've been inspired in this by the original Metamorphosis Alpha game, which was one of the first RPG I bought back in the 1970s. The literary inspirations comes from  Brian Aldiss' Non-stop, published in the US originally as Starship. There are not a huge amount of stories set in this specific setting apart from Non-stop and Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, but I have found Aldiss' stories in the Hellonica series of novels and Hothouse as useful inspirations.

In my choice of title I have used the idea of the characters not being aware of where they are and the ceiling above the deck where the characters above is the seen as the sky. This means that often there will be a low ceiling making flying mutations less useful than in a conventionally Earth setting, this means that I've opted to ban the Complete Wing Development and Psionic Flight mutations.

I'll discuss this some more in another part where I'll set out my base assumptions about the setting and start to develop some of the details of the settings.

More miniatures pictures

The Minifigs hobgoblins from this  post, now cleaned up using Dettol.

Old Minifigs 25mm SF figures - Ceyhan Pinheads and Robomen.

I'm now going to strip the old Humbrol enamels off the SF figures and repaint them, I'll post pictures as I go.