Pic Plentiful

I've now emptied my camera onto the computer, so this is the first of at least 3 posts, all with glorious pictures.  Some I'd forgotten I'd even taken, so you'll get a 3mm rubber tree tutorial out of this eventually. 

First though, I'd like to say Blogger's new editor is really bloody annoying.  I was using the old one as long as possible, but they're making that harder to do.  But I'll persevere. 

This post is less coherent than the follow-ups will be, as it doesn't really have a theme, it's all the oddities.  First up is a re-purposed Blarney castle from a music box I found in a local thrift shop.  It's about 6mm, so I did it up as an evil Warhammer Chaos or Vampire Count lair, with some warpstone showing through the walls and up on top.  Perhaps it was hit by a falling warpstone meteor.

My now 2yo nephew helped paint the green at the base, so I've begun his training.  The glare is from a glossy coat of sealant, I'm dulling it with Dullcote for the table. 

I've previously posted some of the Creatology wooden puzzles that I'm using as cheap terrain, and have finally finished a few.  These are the same building, but converted to different scales, on the left is 28mm, intended for fantasy or the like, and is meant to be a fortified stone house.

On the right is a 15mm stone church, intended for Solomon Kane or other settings.  The cross is a spare bit from one of the other wooden puzzles.  Both were spray painted with a textured paint, then the roofs added and painted later.

I recently took advantage of Black Cat Bases' September sale, and amongst the things I picked up were three planets for space gaming.  This is the one I'm going to do up as an Earth-like planet.  I've just started the land masses, and need to figure out how to give them some life so they don't look like one flat colour.  Once I get the land and oceans done, I intend to paint some cloud cover over everything.

The other two planets will be an ice world, like some of Jupiter's moons, and a Mars-like red planet.  I think I need to order some more planets though, as I have lots more ideas for colour schemes.

Finally, from JR Miniatures, this is a 10mm tower that is slated for use in my Imaro (African fantasy) setting.  I need to do a final drybrush of the roof, but it's otherwise done. 

Next up will be a ton of 6mm terrain and scenics pics.

Fighter Fleets on Bare Metal Parade

As mentioned, here are some of my fighters, all Studio Bergstrom, after cleaning and mounting. The 1" fighters are on magnets, the fleet scale ones are directly onto pins. The Battlestar Galactica ones are all done, the Star Wars ones are still in progress, besides having a lot more types, the 1" TIE variants and B-Wings require assembly.
The fleet scale alone:
Some plant bases for planetary skirmish gaming, many are Woodlands Scenics DIY's, the rest are various dollar store and pet store plants:

More from Shapeways

It's hard to tell if I should place the blame on Shapeways, for giving me a one-day 10% off coupon a few weeks ago, or Steelonsand for his recent blog posts about his Battlestar Galactica project. Anyway, now that I've switched to sci-fi mode and have two tables covered with spacehips - fleet scale and fighter scale - I'll post some stuff in revenge.

While searching for new items from the Shapeways/Star Ranger crowd of companies, I found a new shop doing not-Trek stuff:These are the basic Heavy Cruisers of legend, and are pretty sweetly detailed. The "alien heavy cruiser" has already had its basecoat applied, I find it helps somewhat with the slightly roughness of the White/Strong/Flexible material (which is still way cheaper than the other materials). Coincidently, Klingon Armada and Romulan Armada (licenced Starmada variants in the Starfleet Battles Universe) just made their way to the E23 Warehouse for digital ordering, so now I have a game to go with them, although I'll be tweaking the ship stats to bring them more in line with the TV series. The Armadas are set in the General War (SFU)/post-movie (TV) era, and I'd like to scale them back.

And then for my super-VSF project, using Iron Stars, I picked up Objects May Appear's Gothic Space Fortress. It's an expensive bugger, but the discount helped, and it's awesome. I think the Germans are getting it, but I'll see.
And then for Land Ironclads, also part of the VSF-unity, I picked up (from left to right) some self-propelled superguns (going to the French), a monster ironclad, going to the Turks, and well, the gingerbread house from hell. I'm going to make it the largest possible ironclad in the game, all tricked out with options, but of course it'll be stationary, so maybe some sort of battlefield HQ.
So all this madness, and the fact I'm spending so much time prepping and so little painting, has made me consider establishing a theme for 2011 around painting and terrain, and that's it. Only a few essential purchases (mainly terrain), and no more prepping until I've cleared the backlog that's currently prepped, for a year. More on this in a future post, as I establish my rules.

Martian Rocket Test Launch

Last week I gave one of my new Shapeways arrivals a paint job to see how things turned out, volunteering the Martians' rocket (actually an Earth R-Rocket from Pat and Walt's Spaceship Emporium) as it was going to be a pretty simple colour scheme, and would let me test out some of my silver paint.

I applied the paint straight to the WSF (White, Strong, Flexible) surface, which is the default (and cheapest) material the Shapeways products come in. As mentioned in my previous post, it is a rougher surface than metal or resin, but should look ok from standard tabletop distances.

So here's a close-up of the result (prior to sealing):

And another:
I used two different silver paints, and one metallic gunmetal paint (darker rear portion). One silver was used for the body, wings, and nacelles, the other (cheaper) for the middle portion and nacelle fins. From close up things seem a bit "sparkly", rather than a polished metal, partly because I was using craft metallic acryllics, but also because of the bumpiness of the surface.

And then a long distance shot to see what the result is from a gaming distance:
I think things look ok from this distance. I have bought some better metallic paint to try on my next volunteer.

My main lesson was I'm going to prime these, not to help with the surface but to minimize bleeding at the edges, as the material (and all the Shapeways materials, according to reports) absorbs a lot and it is hard to get hard edges on the first or second coats. So letting the primer do the bleeding will save frustration later. At least that's my theory...

Other updates...the current batch of helicopters are done except for the bleeping canopies (and decals). The next batch of helicopters and ground support planes have been prepped and primed - 39 more! F-4B's, Dragonflies, Broncos, Mohawks, Chinooks, Choctaws, UH-1B's (inc. medivac), T-28's, and probably more that I've forgotten. The Chinooks and Choctaws are the bulk of them. Some will be done as the South Vietnamese Air Force, others Marines or US Army as appropriate.

In the meanwhile, I'm taking a break from the canopies ("issue avoidance") for a couple of days to get started on the US ground forces. Last night I finished painting the bases (dirt, fallen trees, shrubs) so I'll begin with faces and hands. My research turned up about a 9:1 ratio of white troops to African-American troops, so roughly 1 soldier per squad will be black. I'll vary it from 0 to 3 to keep things interesting. Then I'll get helmets and uniforms done, then return to the canopies (and get some UH-60 canopies finished that have been in purgatory for a year), then back to the infantry. There, I've said it publicly, so I have to do it.

I also based a bunch of civilian vehicles for 3mm, once I get some sand applied to a second round of LVTP-5's, I'll prime them this weekend if the humidity stays down. My other big prepping project has been a ton of WWI aircraft. So far a bunch have been cleaned, but need to be assembled and mounted.

Then to top things off, this month's splurge was on some 6mm fantasy troops from Microworld Games. I know, I know, what happened to my 2mm fantasy projects? While they're still good, and I'm continuing them, but for more traditional fantasy, where 6mm can do the job too, I've decided to go for the larger scale. I've never been a fan of Games Workshop's practices and sometimes too-gothic tendencies, but their fantasy setting is way cool and in particular the Gotrek and Felix novels are enjoyable (I've read 4 as of about 2a.m. today).

So I ordered some of Microworld's really nice Undead and Orc troops (check out the mammoth skeleton!), enough to get started on some armies. Another thing moving me in this direction is that my rules of choice (Advanced Legendary Battles) seems to have been designed as an alternative to GW, and the army lists are pretty WHFB-esque. So for a change I don't have to mess around with things.

I also picked up one pack of their dino-riding sci-fi line, the raptor-riders. I haven't figured out what to do with them, but they're so damn nice. Ideas for them include a 6mm sci-fi faction (Hammers' Slammers is due out in 6mm so it could fit in there), weird WWII, or VSF/Land Ironclads. Even though they're 6mm, I think if you bronzed up the weapons pods, they might work at 2mm (except of course the pack I ordered, which has riders that would obviously look out of scale...sometimes I don't think things through).

Bad Pictures of Good Mini's

All of my recent orders have been coming in on top of each other, today's arrival was a test batch of ships and things from Shapeways, a Dutch company that does 3D printing on demand for other companies. That probably doesn't make sense, but basically, someone uses a CAD-like program to create an item in 3D, such as oh say a spaceship miniature, then uploads it to Shapeways, who handles the printing (using one of those expensive rapid prototyping tools) and delivery, and the creator gets to set his own commission as well.

A bunch of guys have started creating miniatures through Shapeways, there may be others, but I've only come across the spaceship ones. The Star Ranger site also provides a good listing of what manufacturers are around, and now includes the Shapeways companies.

So I placed a test order from most of the companies, in the basic material (white strong flexible), which I knew going in does come with a kindy of grainy texture that apparently is ok once painted and viewed at a normal distance. Have seen the texture in person now, it is kinda like the feel of a sugar cube. There are other materials, but they cost more, and I spend too much on this stuff already!

There is generally very little flash, maybe a bit of sanding along edges is all a couple of them need. It seems like they really come ready right out of the box; apparently you don't even need to prime them.

So the project these mini's are going to is my own VSF universe, which is to include Iron Stars for spaceship gaming, Aeronef for aerial gaming (as well as some Sky Galleons of Mars), and Land Ironclads on the ground. Most of this order was for space, but I also got some ironclads, as you'll see.

The setting combines a few things, a lot of Space 1889, but with that setting's Martians moved to Venus, and Wells' Martians occupying their proper planet. There are Moonmen, really from other star system, Jovians (white ape-like sentients), and a mysterious murderous race from beyond (tentatively GW Ork-like).

Once I got today's order, after the obligatory fondling of the miniatures, I tried taking some pictures, and now see that they mostly suck. I forgot to put on the close-up option, but I think the real problem is how white and reflective the material is, they have a lot more detail to them than these pics show. Anyway, till I get these painted, here's what I got:

Two shots of a gothic destroyer from "Objects May Appear". He actually has some bigger ships (BB and CV), but I thought they might be too out of scale with my Irregular Heirs of Manacus and Uranus ships. I can probably go bigger, but this is a nice ship. I was going to make it German, but seeing the pagoda-like structure on top, and relative simple lines, I may make this style belong to one of the Chinese factions in my universe. Probably Imperial. Oddly enough, when sketching out my universe, long before I saw these ships, I'd noted that the Chinese ships had castle-like lines with buildings on the "deck".

I picked up OMA's Ether (left) and Air (rightx2) frigates as well. Unfortunately as the store images suggested, they're very similar, so I can't use the "Air" line as one faction, and the "Ether" line as another. I'm going to go with the Ether line, if I get any of the Air ones I'll call them sub-variants. I will get the Air SSBN though, as my universe calls for the French to have sub-like ships. These frigates will belong to the URA (my universe's USA - there's also a CSA).


This is "Irrational Designs'" Belter Attack Cruiser. I'm not sure which nation will use it, I'm leaning towards the Ottomans, but the Austro-Hungarians are still with a ship line (since I canned the "Air" faction per the previous paragraph).

At the top is ID's Jovian Schild Cruiser, which will either go to Germany or the Black Nippon, a militant Japanese splinter group that disappeared into the ether years ago, and supposedly left the solar system and came across some very high tech. But since I took away the Gothic Destroyer from the Germans, they need something as they're a major faction, and I like the look of this.

Below is one of ID's Martian ships, but I'm giving it to the Moonmen, who came from another star system hundreds of years ago, crashed on the moon, and have been there every since, enslaving the local Selenites. Now that they've run into humanity, they're getting back out into the stars (since some humans are conveniently trading with them for raw materials).

Although I gave away the Martian's saucer, they do get this rocket, from Pat and Walt's Starship Emporium. This is a small R-rocket. I'll get some bigger ones as needed, I wasn't sure how this big this would turn out to be.

AOTRS only makes one in the line, and it is pretty cool. I think it's kinda Japanese looking, so either for Japan proper, or the Black Nippon rebels.

Pat and Walt also have their Mulcien line, which I'm giving to the unknown aliens from beyond. The main fleet will be bigger than this, as with everything, I was testing sizes. The holes in the side of the ship, as well as some other depressions, take the weapons parts shown here as well.

The weapon and comm equipment on sprues are really neat. If my math is right, 112 bits came in the order, 8 of the large 10-item sprue, 4 of the 8-item sprue (there's some overlap between the two). Besides outfitting my X aliens, I'll be using these bits for other projects:
- secret VSF project "New London"
- orbital space fortresses (I got some small space stations from OMA too, but this is for some Battlefleet Gothic type stuff)
- armored WWII trains (see last week's post - this wasn't even planned but now I have turrets!)
- the satellite dishes are PERFECT for 3mm Vietnam firebases; I was wracking my brain as to how to do one myself...

And then finally, some land ironclads. Maybe Russian, maybe German (the gun is a German thing). These are from OMA, there's some other stuff in the range, but nothing quite as cool as these.

So all in all an interesting future direction for miniatures, at least in part. I think the output would be too soulless for figures of humans or creatures, but certainly for mechanical things this is great. Hopefully more people start offering product this way, who may have never done so via traditional lead or plastic. I don't want to see those disappear, but for those odds and ends that would never be profitable to sell that way, here's an option.

And if anyone is reading this who wants to do 1/600 and 1/300 aircraft this way, have I got a wish list for you...

Christmas in July

This morning, while contemplating getting out of bed or having another 9 minutes of sleep, I heard the outer front door slamming, suggesting a parcel being placed between the doors! Bounding downstairs, I found a small, but heavy, package with Royal Mail markings - my latest Irregular order had arrived!

Risking being late for work, I spent some time fondling the new arrivals at the breakfast table. This order was my biggest yet, and was all over the map in terms of projects (hence the ridiculous label list for this post). Actually it was so big and spread out, I can't even remember exactly all of what I ordered until I cross-check the codes with the master list.

But, some early comments and plans...

VSF in Space - I like the Iron Stars rules, but have never been jiggy with the miniatures; to be honest, I've always liked the look of the Battlefleet Gothic ships for VSF. But not their prices. So I picked up the Heirs of Manacus (and expansion) and Heirs of Uranus fleets - look good! There's a new maker of ships in plastic (via Shapeways) of Gothic ships, hopefully that can be a third fleet for my VSF in space ideas.

Star Wars in 2mm - I got a bunch of the basic WWI/WWII infantry and MG/missile stands for troops, and some of the 2mm sci-fi support weapon stands too. I picked up the two and four legged walkers, and I think I'm going to prefer the Ground Zero Games/Germy walkers. Irregular's two-legged walkers look good, but are bigger than the GZG AT-AT clones, so they wouldn't match up (would be ok as AT-ST's on their own though). So I think the Irregular walkers will join the land ironclads I also ordered for some Land Ironclads gaming (they'd look good bronzed up).

WWI in the Air - I picked up the 1/300 WWI aircraft Irregular makes that no one else does, and some others that were just cheaper. This is a case where I can't remember just what that was though, although the Taubes were pretty obvious!

WWI on Land - Picked up some 2mm WWI tanks, either for a future If the Lord Spares Us project, or to trick up for Land Ironclads.

WWII on Land - To supplement my GHQ and CinC stuff, I picked up a fire engine as background fluff, and the steam train, it looks pretty sweet. I also got the doors, windows, roofs, stairs scenics pack, to try making some of my own buildings.

19th Century - Picked up more artillery for my fictional setting, but also for...

18th Century Imagi-Nations/SYW in India - I'd like to do the SYW in India (maybe in Europe too) in 2mm, so I picked up British and French SYW army packs to get me started. Also picked up additional artillery pieces, the army packs tend to be a bit short on that. I plan on using the King of the Battlefield rules, though I also picked up the new pdf of Might and Reason recently too, more for bigger 18th Century battles in Europe though, not India.

Kull and Imaro - Finally, I ordered a ton of codes to get further ahead on my 2mm fantasy projects. Lots of elephants and war mammoths, and infantry. Will have to make another larger order (e.g. 70+ of some codes, times two or three figures per code...) later this year. I messed up my polar war chariot order though, forgot the wolf chariots are single items, so only ordered 3, when I need 6 (see my There's no basing like sno' basing post for the start of the stands). Some of the elephants (the non-Howdah) ones are going to be converted to gunkwu's, I'll see how that goes, it's going to involve a fair bit of chopping.

Anyway, happy, happy!

July's order will be some more Splintered Light Miniatures (they're having a sale), some Calvacade samurai dwarves (another sale), and an order from an architectural model supplier, for 2-6mm civilian stuff (cars, small trains for targets, transport trucks).

Silent Death Stats for Original Battlestar Galactica

There was some discussion last weekend on The Miniatures Page about BSG stats for Silent Death, and while some exist online for the new series, I never could find much for the old series, which I prefer. So I used my dusty collection of BSG notes to start statting up the ships while on a space kick last December. I also started Star Wars at the same time. Both are about 2/3 done, mainly the larger (Warhound-sized) ships are left to do.

So for those interested, here are Silent Death stats for the old school BSG fighters:


Cylon Raider
Template: Lt. TPAC
400t
30 Slots
3 Crew
36 Hits
Drive: 12
DV: 12
DR: 0
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-2
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
1 x Mk. 30 Torpedo Launcher, Fwd Arc, 10 Ammo
Poor Structural Integrity
Poor Reactor Design
Critical Design Flaw
Cargo: 2 Units (10 slots)
Cost: 33

Cylon Scout Raider
Template: Mdm. TPAC
600t
50 Slots
3 Crew
54 Hits
Drive: 16
DV: 12
DR: 0
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-2
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
Poor Structural Integrity
Poor Reactor Design
Critical Design Flaw
Cargo: 2 Units (10 slots)
FTL (5 slots)
Cost: 29

Cylon Control Raider
Template: Lt. TPAC
400t
30 Slots
3 Crew
36 Hits
Drive: 12
DV: 12
DR: 0
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-2
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
1 x Mk. 30 Torpedo Launcher, Fwd Arc, 10 Ammo
Poor Structural Integrity
Poor Reactor Design
Critical Design Flaw
Cargo: 1 Unit (5 slots)
Control Unit (Cost 20, 5 Slots): Can’t fight while controlling shell fighters, can only evade; also requires 2 crew (1 per 3 shell fighters) to operate a 6 shell fighter flight. Control unit counts as two weapons for damage tracks.
Cost: 45

Cylon Shell Fighter
Template: Lt. TPAC
400t
30 Slots
0 Crew (crew hits count as ability loss) Pilot 1, Gunner 1
36 Hits
Drive: 12
DV: 12
DR: 0
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-2
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
Poor Structural Integrity
Poor Reactor Design
Critical Design Flaw
Receiver Unit (Cost 5, 5 Slots): Counts as one weapon for damage tracks.
Cost: 18

(later) Cylon Heavy Raider
Template: |Mdm. TPAC
600t
50 Slots
3 Crew
54 Hits
Drive: 12
DV: 12
DR: 1
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-2
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
1 x Mk. 30 Torpedo Launcher, Fwd Arc, 10 Ammo
2 x Mk. 50 Torpedo Launcher, Fwd Arc, 6 Ammo (each)
Poor Structural Integrity
Poor Reactor Design
Critical Design Flaw
Cargo: 1 Unit (5 slots)
Cost: 76

Colonial Viper
Template: Lt. SPAC
100t
9 Slots
1 Crew
10 Hits
Drive: 16
DV: 14
DR: 1
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-3
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
Armored Cockpit
Poorly Shielded Drive
Cost: 14

Colonial Viper (Improvised)
Template: Lt. SPAC
100t
9 Slots
1 Crew
10 Hits
Drive: 16
DV: 14
DR: 1
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-3
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
Armored Cockpit
Poorly Shielded Drive
Poor Mechanical Reliability
Cost: 12

Colonial Asp
Template: Lt. SPAC
100t
9 Slots
1 Crew
10 Hits
Drive: 19
DV: 15
DR: 1
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-3
Armored Cockpit
Poorly Shielded Drive
Cost: 13

Colonial Azure Viper (later)
Template: Lt. SPAC
100t
9 Slots
1 Crew
10 Hits
Drive: 17
DV: 14
DR: 1
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-4
Twin Splatterguns (lasers), Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
Armored Cockpit
Cost: 14

Colonial Scarlet Viper (later still)
Template: Lt. SPAC
100t
9 Slots
1 Crew
10 Hits
Drive: 17
DV: 15
DR: 0
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-4
Twin Impulse Guns, Fwd Arc, Infinite Ammo
Armored Cockpit
Well-Shielded Drive
Shielded Weapons
Cost: 15

Colonial Shuttle
Template: Shuttle
400t
15 Slots
2 Crew
40 Hits
Drive: 10
DV: 10
DR: 1
PD: n/a
Decoys: n/a
DC: 1-2
Cargo: 6 units (1 bay)
Cost: 19

- torpedoes are strictly air-ground or anti-ship in nature, not anti-fighter

Berry Berry Quiet on the Front

Well it's been six weeks since I last posted, and in one sense things have been pretty quiet on the miniature's front, as April and May are my busiest periods for work. I don't spend much time at home and I'm usually about 10 minutes away from nap-time when I am, plus this year I had the added pleasure of breaking a finger (a pinky finger, so no threat to painting etc.!).

I've also been slowed down as I've had a slew of Vietnam stuff on the table, and I hit a bit of a wall in terms of maintaining momentum when it's the same old stuff to do every night. In this case, doing a bit of sculpting on some bases where figures are in dugouts or behind fallen trees. However, in my first bit of news, Charlie Don't Surf has now been released by Too Fat Lardies, along with a scenario supplement (Surf's Up), so I should get moving again.

And while things have been slow on the painting table, that hasn't stopped me from spending money like a drunken sailor on new mini's. Some birthday money helped on that front, and I had two large orders filled by Dom from Dom's Decals (a fine purveyor of Tumbling Dice mini's). I finished Vietnam both tactically with helicopters and aerially with North and South Vietnamese aircraft, as well as the USAF, USN, and USMC.

I also got the 1960's/70's Indian and Pakistani starter packs, and a ton of modern Warsaw Pact stuff. Of course now that I have it, I'm trying to remember what my plan was! I think it was to work on a modern Chinese air force, as that's a future conflict I'm most interested in trying out on the table.

Going further back in time, I also got some early WWII aircraft, France, RAF, Luftwaffe, Poland, Finland, and Russia. I also got some early war FAA aircraft and extra German aircraft to play out some naval aerial action under the alt-history that the Graf Zeppelin was completed. I've been picking up some Axis and Allies' 1/1850 ships to serve as targets, and with the GZ available, I wanted to be able to defend her. So some Ju-87's will serve as the two proposed naval equivalents, Bf-109E's will play 109T's, and then the poor Fairey Fox will defect to serve as Fi-167 torpedo bombers. I'll probably use some 109G's to act as Bf-155's (or whatever it was), although they don't really look alike; but then nothing does.

I also got some late war RAF to go with my late war American and Soviet forces, as part of my hypothetical East-West war in 1945+.

I should be done painting everything sometime in 2150.

Still on my airforces, I made my first order with Heroic & Ros, under the new ownership of Andy Kirk (I'd never placed an order with the old ownership so I don't have a comparison). Everything just arrived yesterday and looks good, it took only 10 days or so to get here from the UK. This order was for the basics of WWI aerial gaming, I'd been buying a lot of stuff unique to CinC during their sales this winter (including a STUPID amount of Nieuport 11's - so every nation could have their allotment). Now, I have all the classics, as well as a good representation of heavy bombers. Future orders with Irregular and H&R should round me out shortly, I'd like to have everything in hand by the end of the year.

But since there is the well known axiom that once you have finished buying or painting all your miniatures your lifespan is measured in mere seconds, I have started on some new fronts.

• 15mm Freikorps (QRF) "History of India" figures for skirmish gaming using Songs of Drums and Shakos by Ganesha Games. I ordered through a nice new US company, Miniature Armies. I've begun rating the figures in the SDS system, just working on fine tuning them.
• I've been on a space kick lately, and while I have avoided buying new mini's, including some of the nice new ones available in plastic via Shapeways, I have started on notes for a campaign using Starmada and Victory By Any Means. I figure I'll use my billion Starfire counters to start, and have actually made some good progress in converting Starfire's (3rd Ed.) tropes to Starmada; I always liked a lot about Starfire's background and tech levels, just not the mess of rules.
• I also almost got into Star Trek (TOS) gaming, but the apparently terrible state of ADB molds has put me off. Of course, I also have a billion Starfleet Battles counters from my one purchase of the Captain's Edition rules, so I could use Starmada and the counters. There is an authorized Starmada conversion (Klingon Armada, Romulan Armada), but I figure I can do it my way easier.

There are also some great new Splintered Lands miniatures out or on their way to production, so that may occupy a summer purchase, but a multi-project Irregular purchase is next on the list.

By Your Command

Just a quick post of some original series Battlestars and Basestars (and one new series Battlestar that served as a guinea pig). These are from Studio Bergstrom and are for fleet scale battles; I also have his BSG fleet scale fighters after a merry Christmas to me shopping blitz in early December.

These are after painting, before Futuring and Dullcoting. One battlestar (middle) will be the Pegasus, the other the Galactica (left).




I had a good night working through some 2mm miniatures for Kull and Imaro, will post those when I have a good collection to show off, hopefully tomorrow. I've also bought some new storage shelves, to help reduce clutter and minimize anger at having useful things in inaccessible places and useless things getting in my way all the time!