Kicking some Space Butt! Or a review of Space Raiders 2 mins.

As I mentioned earlier I receive my much anticipated package of Diego’s Space Raiders 2 Kickstarter mins a few weeks ago.  I pulled a few out to get onto painting stands to proceed with gluing and painting.  As promised here is a review of a few of the miniatures from the package. 

I decided to grab out 5 of the figures to paint up a small crew.  I had to get two of the Picsean figures out since they were my main motivator behind supporting the Kickstarter in the first place.  These are actually from his first Kickstarter which I missed out on.  Lucky for me he made them available through the second campaign.  

I decided to stay old school or better put “Oldrogue” and stick with some of the similarly themed Rogue Trader mins from the package.  I grabbed two of the Minotaur in Space figures.  Rounding out the party is the cyber ork with the Predator style shoulder cannon.  Seems like a well-rounded landing/excursion party.  Review wise I couldn’t be happier with the figures.  They are very crisp casts, hats off to whoever Diego is using to mold and cast these up!  I only had one figure that had any signs of flash, one of the bulls around his naughty bits.  

 I can carefully perform a “flashectomy” with a Xacto knife so not a major issue.  If I were to be critical, and I mean really nitpicky critical, my only complaint would be the bases or lack thereof.  More specifically the slota-tabs.  Not that I am huge fan of slota-tabs but it does give you something to hold onto when putting them on a painting stand or a base.  GWS has lulled me into accepting that all figures would have them resulting in my total lack of pin basing skills.  Again I was feeling adventurous and with reckless abandon I jumped right in and was able to get the larger models attached without issue.  As long as you don’t count the fact that I drilled all the way through one of the Minotaur’s hooves!  

No worries it is a very easy “green stuffing” fix.  I'm not sure what the metal mix is on these figures but they were very easy to drill, somewhere between old soft lead and the very hard tin mixes, again well done to whoever is casting these!  The fishboys were/are more of an issue.  Again partially on me.  My smallest pin drill to date is 1/16 of an inch which sounds small but is nearly as big as the feet of the Picsean. 

Way too large to drill/pin the feet for attaching to a base or stand.  Easiest solution is get off my lazy butt and get a mico drill set, which I will certainly get prior to permanently attaching them to a base.  My quick solution is the clothespin base I made for the Diehard Miniatures Son of Slomm figure.

This will get me started while I look into micro drills.  Again overall I am delighted with the quality of the figures from the sculpts to the casting to the character.  All of them are incredible and I’m looking forward to my Pantheon of Chaos figures, my Greenskin Wars figures, and my Space Raiders 3!

Project Fimir-Support

As any fan of the old Fimir models know, they are moderately scarce and at times command ridiculously expensive prices.  It can be financially daunting if your trying to assemble a unit let alone a army!  There are a few alternative models out there but not many and not as closed in design to the originals as I would like.  One option is to do something similar to Mr Saturday’s Fimir Project and create some models through kit basing and sculpting/producing my own heads.  I would really like to take that route but let’s be honest, I’ve had these figures for well over 6-8 years so if I wait to do that this army will never get done.  Another option is some allies to bulk out the army.  One of my thoughts was that a unit of lizardmen would be a great fit.  The Fimir are bog/swamp dwellers so what better choice than some fellow swamp denizens: alligators!

Enter the great Sebeki by Crocodile Games from their Aegyptus game system.

I picked up a few of these over the last couple of years.  Chris Fitzpatrick’s sculpts are fantastic and I’ve really liked these since I first laid eyes on them.  This turns out to be a great way to utilize them without having to get into a new system.  They do have a bit more Egyptian feel/iconography than I would like so I will have to decide if can remove most of that and remodel them or just live with it.  These are not as ready for paint as I originally thought.  The one fellow needs his weapon glued, a few need a little “green stuffing” around seams and joints, and I need to evaluate the basing.

The 25mm’s seem a bit small and as you can see from the size comparison the line troops are almost as big as the Fimir which are on 40mm’s.

The Beloved of Sobek figure is actually very large and is definitely appropriate for a 40mm.  They also didn’t rank up well at all on the smaller bases.  I’m not planning on painting these until 2^nd quarter or later so I have some time to get the base issues figured out. The Fimir and their allies should see paint in the near future!

Project Fimir-Trooper and Color Test

This is the last figure of the Fimir unit that I've been posting about recently.  This fellow has the distinction of being the only non-converted figure in the group.  And for good reason, he is the only figure that isn’t a knock off re-cast.  As I mentioned in my starting post this whole project sprung out of my frustration with an ebay purchase that turned out to be re-cast figures.  I had originally purchased the very same head/body/tail combination of warlord with axe and mace with a Head 1 and Tail 1 back in the day when they were still in production.  

So in honor of his authenticity I decided to leave him unmodified.  This is the original pose that all the other models are based off of.  I did an initial color test on this lad to see if I liked a blue skinned look and to be honest I don’t know that I care for it. 

Now truth be told I haven’t given it any washes or additional work in years.  That might improve it to my eye, but I'm still not sure I'll go this route. 

I’m going to do some more research on line and specifically study the wonderful WD spread that has painted models in it and see what I have in the paint rack to match.

 I’m thinking, as bog dwellers that they probably would have evolved with earth tones like brown or tan or light green.  I welcome any input! 

More Kicking Butt!

I received a weighty package in the mail the other day.  It came from España and I realized my long and arduous wait was over, my miniatures from Diego’s Space Raiders 2 Kickstarter had arrived!  

The wait was arduous only because I kept seeing all these posts from other supporters who had received their deliveries and I was turning green with envy.  My order was pretty large which meant I had to wait for all the figures to be produced before it could ship.  It is quite a mountain of lead!

I got a little bit of everything in this motley crew of space riffraff.  I picked up some of the wonderful Picsean/Fishmen-in-Space figures along with the Space Minotaurs, Space Orks, Zoat like figures, and Space Fimir!

I’m looking forward to switching gears and getting into some Sci-Fi themed miniatures by  painting up some mercenaries and war bands.  My only concern is that most of them lack a slota-base tab.  I don't have much experience in pin/basing miniatures so I'll be developing some new skills.  Good news is that it opens up some new options for more detailed bases.  I'll be doing a more in depth review of the figures once I get them ready to paint. 

Kicking Butt!

Unfortunately for my wallet I stumbled upon Kickstarter back in early 2016.  It has a been a great source of "new old" mins and a real boon for my miniature collection.  It has also motivated me and kicked my painting back into gear.  While I’ve been somewhat idle blogging wise over the last month I haven’t just been sitting around!  Here are some WIP's of the mins from my first foray into Kickstarter from Diehard Miniatures’ first campaign.  

I saw some posts of Tim and company’s miniatures on a couple of different sites and simply had to have some.  I have always been a fan of WHFB Slann and the background of a star empire fallen into more savage times.  I picked up a couple of their frogs-in-space Eru-Kin.

My goal was to paint them up in a NASA white and orange space suit color scheme with a Yellow-Banded Poison Dart Frog pattern.

I don’t know that I stuck to the plan very well and I feel like the color palette got a bit larger than I wanted.  I'm also concerned that if I do the black banding on the exposed skin I'll loose some of the detail.  At this point they will only have a yellow skin tone.

I tried to pull it back and paint over some areas instead of stripping and repainting them.  I’m okay with their progress.

I’m struggling with getting the white to look the way I want.  I’m going to try and do some black lining and see how it turns out.  These guys are far from done but I hope to wrap them up well before the figures from the Diehard Kickstarter 2 arrive!

Name Change!

Happy New Year!  Last blog of 2016 set up some goals for 2017, the last of which was to re-name the blog.  Full disclosure, that was a cheap softball goal given I had already done most of the work!  My wonderful wife often accuses me of having adult ADD so I chalk my entry into the blogosphere to this!  I got inspired by several of the Oldhammer blogs and jumped in with both feet.  I’m sure that we all what to have a witty, impressive blog title and I got busy brainstorming names but many great ones were already claimed: Realm of Chaos 80’s, Leadplague, Oldhammer in Toronto (if I was in the Great White North), Eldritch Epistles (not even sure what that means but Steve already laid claim to it!), etc…. I quickly devolved into writers block and came up with the wonderfully lackluster and underwhelming Miniature Assault.  Best I could come up with at the moment.  After a year I still hadn’t come up with much until I came across an article with a great quote and Wham there it was, the name I had been looking for.

Who was it that provided the new title?  None other than one of the greatest Roman military leaders and politicians, Julius Caesar.  What better person to grab a quote from.  Especially one that has a gaming link.  According to historians Suetonius and Frances Titchener, the Roman patrician pronouncement as he crossed the River Rubicon back into Roman territory "Alea iacta est" ("The die is cast") in reference to his future as he sought to become dictator.  Caesar was said to have borrowed the phrase from Meander, his favourite Greek writer of comedy; the phrase appears in “Ἀρρηφόρος” (Arrephoros,) (or possibly “The Flute-Girl”).  Regardless of where it came from I thought it would be a great blogg title.  So now it is so!  Well that is if I can figure out how to get the name changed on Blogger!  1 down 51 posts to go!

Silent but not dead!

Well the blog has been a bit silent as of late, you know how life is.  You think that you have all this extra time to do things and it turns out that your expectations and reality do not match up!  Had a conference to go to prior to Thanksgiving which put me off track and I foolishly told myself that I'd have plenty of time over the Holiday break which evaporated with a trip to visit my oldest son.  No worries as our Aussie mates would say, I'll catch up during our Christmas break.  Yea that didn't happen until today while watching some college football.  So I think that it is blog obligatory to do a recap at the end of the year.  

2016
It looks like I managed 36 posts for the year, not bad that is a little more than one every 2 weeks.  Better than I would have thought.  I covered everything from resurrecting an old Fimir project to covering a start to finish project for Car Wars/Dark Future.  I played around with new figures like Reapers Bones and new techniques like a wet pallet.  I babbled on about some Oldhammer nostalgia and my never ending search of used bookstores for materials.  Respectable output for my first real foray into the blogosphere.  I don’t know that I’ll ever match the literary output of James over a Realm of Chaos 80’s or the painting quality of Matt at Oldhammer in Toronto.  I’m fairly happy with this effort but would like to do more.  

2017
Now we transition into the other obligatory end of year/New Year’s blog aspect, resolution/goals for 2017.  Well I could go through and put to use some new management training I’ve recently received and set up some S.M.A.R.T goals but I’m on vacation/holidays so no work like thinking!    Instead I will do some combination planning and set some blog and painting/hobby goals all in one, here we go:

1.       First off let’s shoot for weekly posts for 2017.  I think that I can achieve this without too much effort if I just put my mind to it.

2.       Next goal is to put some paint on the Fimir project figures.  That might take some effort since I haven’t settled on a paint scheme.  I think I also have to overcome some fear of getting paint of them as well.

3.       Kickstarter kicking butt!  I have a ton of mins coming in from several Kickstarter campaigns that I backed in 2016.  They should start rolling in January, starting with Diego’s Space Raiders 2, to his Pantheon of Chaos, Greenskin Wars and Space Raiders 3.  That doesn’t include Direhard Miniatures 2 and the plastic OGRE mins from SJ Games.  Will be a busy year for new lead, it will take some effort to not ignore the old lead lying about!

4.       Lastly and probably the easiest is a name change for the blog.

Not too many goals which leaves me room for improvisation during the year.  Seems like I’ve covered all the bases so I’m out of here for 2016.  Happy New Year to all!