Month: January 2012

This began life as a clicky-base figure.  I kept the skull the way it came out of the box, but I repainted the rest of the figure.  The figure also comes on a strange base with some odd, green, translucent fog.  It took a bit of work to cut the figure off that base.

Can you ever have too many zombies?  I don’t think so.  Some time back, when the HAWKs began this club project, we each bought one or two boxes of the Wargames Factory zombies.  They are very nice, but there are no women.  Last time I looked, women were more than 50% of the population.  Chris and I split this bag of zombies about six months ago, but I just got around to finishing them.

After painting 700 rifles and backpacks on 10mm Prussians, I needed a break, so I painted a few zombies.

The zombie dogs were from a bag for the Zombies board game.  I painted two of them.  Each of the HAWKs took a few.

Just like when painting gangsters or cowboys, you can have fun painting zombies and zombie hunters.

Speaking of zombie hunters, here’s one with a hack saw in her hand and a severed zombie head in the other other.

After I posted the pictures of my new frogs with slingshots, some folks on the TMP GASLIGHT list started talking about other sources of frogs.  I am reposting some pictures from the frog game I ran at Cold Wars using both my frogs and Chris’ frogs.

The theme of Cold Wars was South American wars of liberation.  Since Chris’ paints his frogs in brightly colored schemes, as a joke, I submitted this as a theme game.  It actually made it into the PEL that way!

In the picture below you can see a scratch-built snail tank.  You can also see Chris’ killer bee unit at the top left of the picture.

Below you can see a close assault by my North American frogs on his South American snail tank.  In the next turn, the snail was dad and had fallen over.  A hurrah went down the North American battle line!

And finally in this picture you can see the North American dragon fly unit engaging a South American heavy cavalry unit.

Chris gave me these frogs with slingshots for Christmas.  I painted them up this weekend.  These will mix very well with all the Eureka frogs.

Chris also has a unit to paint up.  We think we now have enough frogs, lizards, alligators, etc. to run at 12+ person GASLIGHT game.  We’re thinking about an “amphibaganza” at Historicon.

I posted pictures of these when I first finished them a few months back.  I used a light orange dry brush to highlight the “high points.”  Everyone thought the light orange was too close to flesh color and made them look naked.  Last week, I repainted their leotard outfits in a darker orange.

Above and below are the Venusians facing off against some creatures from Recreational Conflict.

Recreational Conflict makes the deep sea diver or space man (depending on how you want to use it).  The larger one is supposed to be sized for 28mm figures, and the smaller ones are sized for 15mm.  I bought the large ones some time ago and painted them up for my undersea GASLIGHT game.  I saw the small ones at Fall In, and picked up two packs.  I plan to use them as drones or robots controlled by one of the larger ones.  I may also mount them onto bases when we begin work on Look, Sarge, No Charts: Victorian Science Fiction.

At an HMGS convention some time back Wargames Factory was distributing some of their Zulu War British as samples.  The guys in my club gave me their figures.  I’ve had them assembled, primed, and based for some time.  As I don’t game the Zulu War, I wasn’t sure what to do with them.  In preparation for our Historicon GASLIGHT Mars extravaganza, I’ve been painting figures.  See previous posts.  This weekend I finished my Brits painted for service on Mars.

The uniform is similar to the Zulu War uniform.  While the British Army on Earth has converted to khaki, it was determined that the red coats were actually camouflage on Mars.  The red coats were retained, but worn over khaki trousers, rather than blue.  The khaki takes on an orange tinge after service in the red soil of Mars.

Here is a picture of those newly-painted British troops receiving a charge from green Martians.

A few days ago I posted that I had gotten the RAFM Space 1889 Elephant Team for Christmas.  Early this morning while everyone was sleeping, I finished it.  It doesn’t come with any crewmen, but I have some other “dismounted” Gatling guns and crewmen I can use when the gun goes into action.  I plan to use this in Northwest Frontier and VSF games.  I think it would also look good on Mars.

As I began work on the RAFM kit, I remembered that somewhere in a box, I had an old Hinchcliffe elephant gun team.  It was missing the two riders and the two crewmen sitting on the limber.  It was also missing the barrel of the cannon.  I decided to finally assemble this kit as well.  See above.

I made the barrel for the cannon by starting with the plastic tube that had once protected a paint brush.  The breach was made from the cap for a tire valve.  I added a couple of extra bits from the bit box.  I think the outcome was pretty good.

I am looking forward to seeing these two guns in action on the table soon!

No pictures today.  A little at a time I’ve been working on the elephant gun team I got for Christmas.  As I was priming the pieces, I remembered that I had an old Hinchcliffe elephant gun from years ago in a box somewhere.  I dug it out and am working on both at the same time.

The RAFM elephant team is like one seen in the movie Gunga Din.  There are two elephants.  One carries the gun carriage, and the other carries the Gatling gun barrels.  As I assemble the team, I want to make sure I can take the carriage and gun off the elephants and put it into action on the gaming table.

The Hinchcliffe elephant team is different.  The two elephants are linked together (front to back) by a chain which then runs to a limber behind them.  According to the box there were riders on the elephant’s neck and two riders sitting on the limber, but those are missing.  Also missing is the barrel of the cannon being pulled behind the limber.  That’s not a big deal, as I’m sure I can come up with something suitably pulp or VSF looking.

While working on this, I’m also picking away at 24 battalions of 10mm Prussians.  I’m thinking I made a mistake trying to do that many battalions at once.  I primed them and dry brushed the blue coats.  Now I need to go through the daunting pile and paint the gray trousers.  Grrrr.

Chris and I are getting ready to run a large (20+ player) Mars game with GASLIGHT at Historicon this Summer.  In preparation, I’ve been painting green Martians (see previous post, Bronze Age Miniatures) and now red Martians (also Bronze Age Miniatures).  I also picked up the hover sled from Recreational Conflict at Fall In in November.  I have been working on them a little at a time over the past couple of weeks.  This weekend I finished them.

The Bronze Age red Martians come in packs of five.  I didn’t realize until I got home that one of the “citizen” backs was missing a couple of swords.  I wrote an Email to the company, but they never responded.  I reached into my bit box and found some extra Moro swords from Pass of the North.  You can see one in the picture above.

The sled also had a nice interior, as can be seen above.  I chose to go with an orange color scheme, thinking it would blend with Martian terrain.

I have some Wargames Factory plastic Zulu War British that I am painting in orange uniforms for Martian service.  Stay tuned for pictures of them in the near future.