My Blog is Fight!

Paintedfigs.com - Knights of the Dinner Table!

2012-02-09T23:38:00.000-08:00

You have to forgive a little self indulgence sometimes.

Gamers spend so much time working on their homebrew settings, their characters trappings and back stories, their miniatures and their paint jobs -- which I feel makes it well deserved when we sit back and take a look at ourselves.

One may feel it a sin of ego for us to this, but you have to consider than when gamers look inward - they lose all ability to take themselves seriously. From Renn Fests; to "The Gamers" movies; to beer-and pretzel-games, we are very good at poking fun at ourselves, to the point that it takes on a life and industry of its own.

Part and parcel of this niche interest within niche interests have been the "Knights of the Dinner Table" webzine. What's started as a comic strip has grown over time into a constellation of products based around this highly successful IP.

One of these products - of course - has been some miniatures. I believe these are out of print now, so good luck with digging them out :) . Our client Scott Funk did and sent them over for us to work on, I understand this was his first time using a painting service too.

Funk is the real deal. In addition to being an ardent KoDT fan, he's also done a HUGE D20 conversion for the Robotech Chronicles, and IP that has been neglected since the Palladium days.

Anyway, here are his Knights of the Dinner Table.

Cheers,

Navin

Regarding the Paintedfigs.Com JimmyJango interview with Raef Granger: Trying to Contact Paul Burns of VB Investment, vb-investment-group.co.uk

2012-02-02T22:08:00.000-08:00

Hi Paul,

I got your email but for some reason when I try to reply it (even by my personal mail account), I get a message fail notification:

Given the nature of your email I imagine you need me to get word to you anyway I can, and so I'm blogging my reply.

Here's my Reply:

Thank you for your email,

It is good to hear from you Paul, I hope you are well.

I'm glad you've had a chance to listen to my interview. It is odd though that you do not seem to have noticed that there is no reference to the identity of the person who conned me out of my money, whatsoever in that interview, or anywhere online. No where is that person named, or their company named.

Thank you for your detailed email on this matter though. I will keep it.

Regards,

Navin

And for context, here is your email to me:

paul@vb-investment-group.co.uk ✆ via paintedfigs.com

10:11 PM (13 hours ago)

to navin, pnweerar, navin

Navin,

It has been brought to my attention an interview you did on http://www.jimmyjango.com/ and the subsequent publicity surrounding it.

In summary, you claimed your company was not in financial difficulty when I started in April 2010. That you did not bribe or take part in money laundering and tax evasion and that I was some sort of venture capitalist who had come into your company and stole $30,000 and various other assets.

We both know these comments are both outrageous and wildly inaccurate and I therefore demand an apology.

If you apologise now and agree to publicise the apology we can agree mutual wording and publicity, you can save face and that will be the end of the matter.

If you fail to appologise to me in writing by the 10th February 2012 and then undertake the agreed publicity of the apology, I will publish all relevent documents in my posession online. The contractual terms you agreed to, emails, your company accounts etc, that category prove your talking nonsense.

I will then use all methods at my disposal to actively publicise these documents including but not limited to your clients, your prospective clients, paypal, your bank, the IRS, Customs and through Google both directly and through their and indeed all the major search engines. Then people will be able to see for themselves what really happened.

So the choice is yours, either way this matter will be settled by the 10th February 2012.

Paul

VB Investment Group
____________________________________________

www.vb-investment-group.co.uk

opening hours Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm GMT

PRIVACY & CONFIDENTIALITY

This e-mail communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for
the person or organisation to whom it is addressed. It may contain
privileged and confidential information and if you are not the intended
recipient, you must not copy, distribute or take action in reliance on it.
If you receive this e-mail in error, please advise the sender as soon as
possible and also confirm that the e-mail (and any attachments
accompanying it) has been deleted from your system.

Paintedfigs.Com - The Trouble with Character Minis

2012-01-25T03:30:00.000-08:00

I like what Paizo is doing with Pathfinder, in particular, the way they are leveraging other products and the 3rd Ed SRD in order to put together a new, composite product -- and sell the hell out of it.

What Paizo has shown us with Pathfinder is what Wyrd Miniatures showed us with Malifaux. You can have the nicest minis in the world sitting around, but unless you've a game of some sort to go with them, gamers tend not to be interested. To be fair, Reaper really should have got off their butts and sorted this out well before Paizo did it: it's a bit like if GW did hohum sales until the Warstore decided to create a game called "Warhammer Forty Thousand" and "Sigmar, What A Guy").

What this means for us out here is that there's more character painting to be done -- and its needs to be done in volume, cheaply, and quickly.

You would think character mini painting is a much bigger challenge than painting blocks of uniform figures, and you would be right. There are no efficiencies in painting, scale, or design. Figures need individualized attention not only from the painter but from me and Suraj (design), and this simply is not scaleable (and we've certainly learned not to mess with things that aren't scaleable).

We do manage painting blocks of characters though, but we do it by:

- using reference pictures we're asked to match or use to get general theme and feel
- hand-waves from the client towards the right direction ("make them look Arabian!")
- being left entirely to own devices ("it's clearly a jungle native in a grass skirt. Make him brown!").

Clients have the same challenges when working with a mass of individual characters a well though, so this is usually how things work out.

The problem is when we only have a few characters to deal with -- this is where things are manageable enough for the client to give detailed instructions per miniature ("red sash, yellow shoes, green eyes, black belts and pouches, etc...") but the time involved in execution starts scaling massively. This is one of the reasons we charge a minimum order free or urge people interested in just a single miniature, to try over at Coolmini.

Paintedfigs.Com 3d Printing: We Found a Fancy 3d Printer!

2012-01-17T00:25:00.000-08:00

We visited a university yesterday that we heard had a high end, 3d printing machine which nobody was using. Turned out it was no rumor. What was even more fantastic, was that they were more than happy to have us use their machine to print our miniature masters (which we'll use for making molds later).

In the picture below, the structure I am holding is printed to a 25 micrometer resolution. That's finer than my eye can pick out. The machine just needs standard, .STL, 3d design files.

Generally, working with the government out here is massively annoying, expensive, and slow. We honestly weren't expecting to find highly professional, dedicated, honest academics who were excited as we were at the prospect of us using new technologies to produce miniatures.

This is Daniel, our engineer (playing with some sort of etching and milling machine). Daniel and the head of the lab got on famously, they geeked out over technology fairs; insane machines; and German engineering like, well, wargamers over a new codex.

We'll be doing a test print with them soon. We're also working on making molds and building a casting machine, so let's see where this little project goes.

Forge World Space Orks!

2012-01-09T23:40:00.000-08:00

Lee Jones is an client of ours from Canada, and he is quite clearly mad.

If you take a look at our galleries, you'll see his name pop up fairly frequently. I'm pretty sure his is the largest Ork army we've ever painted, we've done several orders for it already and it looks like we'll have several more to go. The bar keeps being raised regarding what constitutes a horde army, but I'm guessing Lee is going to be one the chaps who gets a deciding say in where that bar is.

Here are some pics of some his Forge World items, I picked them because one doesn't see these every day. The centerpiece is the Marauder-conversion, he's done an excellent job of "orkifying" it.

We have some other projects we're working on for Lee, including Sisters of Battle. My hope is that they'll end up with a Hello Kitty theme and scheme, but to be fair, that's already been done.

Cheers,

Navin

Raef Granger Interviews Me for The Hollywood Gamer Podcast Show

2011-11-29T01:01:00.000-08:00

Raef Granger, one of the co-hosts of the D6 Generation, is striking out on his own and doing his own podcast now. He talks about why on his page here:

http://www.jimmyjango.com/2011/11/lesson-3-solo-podcasting-learned.html

Some of you may remember when he started the "Jimmy Jango," era -- it was right after Russ confessed to the use of grease pencils, so quite a while ago.

My understanding from my chant with him is that he'd like to do podcasts at a more relaxed rate and focus on feature stories and interviews, profiling people in the business or key issues.

I was quite honored that he asked to interview me for his first podcast. You can find it in the link above, and download it specifically here:

http://www.payloadz.com/d1/freeproducts.asp?id=1531825

And click on the "The Navin - Paintedfigs Interview."

In it, Raef and I cover:

- how to knee-cap GW's UK sales model using a VAT loophole in the Channel Islands
- Singapore and Dubai as the great pirate ports and money havens of Asian business
- 3D Printing replacing plastic injection and pewter casting, and coming piracy impact
- General notes on starting a business, and mistakes to watch out for
- What to do when you get conned out of all your money (and what not to do).
- Gyrcopter test piloting (I'm not kidding).

Give it a listen. Raef is incisive as always and he doesn't let me get away with anything. It was good to talk to him again, and I wish him luck with his new show.

Cheers,
Navin

Paintedfigs.com - Winter Scheme Wood Elves and Ultraforge Treewoman

2011-10-19T00:26:00.000-07:00

In 2005, Games Workshop re-released their Wood Elves army. Along with the earlier Tyranid re-release, it was the start of GW trying to take back their edge in sculpting over the upstarts Privateer Press. It was a shock for us because suddenly, GW infantry weren't easy to paint any more, and we had to up our game in terms of efficiency and techniques. To this day, the Wood Elf Glade Guard are among the most expensive, basic infantry we paint.

They're normally painted in woodlands greens and browns. It's a nice palette, suggestive of summer and greens work great with browns, and this allows you to use bright red for small or salient details. The problem for Wood Elves players though is that everyone paints them this way.

Fall (Autumn), Winter, and "Shadow Woods" are solutions people normally turn to and we've done all three. Sean here wanted us to work on some Winter scheme Wood Elves. He sent us a strong reference pic and left the rest to us.

The centerpiece here an Ultraforge Treewoman (sic). Ultraforge is a small company that has made a name for itself in recent years working on well sculpted, high quality, resin substitutes for GW models. They're stuff ins't cheap but it looks great. The Warstore offers their stuff at 20% off:

http://www.thewarstore.com/ULTRAFORGEMINIATURES.html

The Treewoman looks good but that's because the model looks good. The paint scheme we used was very simple -- the model stands out because its a good sculpt.

The rest of the painting was pretty straight forward as well. We had to use a lot of white to tie in the winter theme, but we chose to shade with blues rather than offwhites to give them a cooler toned feel -- all the way down to enchanted blue. We needed brown for the wood, but this was useful because we could tie in things like brown leather and brown hair. The cloaks on the old school bowmen threw their painter at first, till I pointed out we should just use different brown tones to pick out the leaves. He didn't do as many as I'd have liked though (I think three tones would have worked best. Two seems a bit sparse and little unnatural).

Gold and yellow stem naturally from brown, so that solved the problem of what color to use for armor and such. I think many people would have preferred silver, but this is too suggestive of High Elves too me, and I think its too neutral a color.

Paintedfigs.com

Paintedfigs.com - A Forest Goblin Army

2011-10-04T03:46:00.000-07:00

We're working on an army of forest goblins right now, and every single figure is mounted on a spider -- a giant spider, or an Arachnarok.

Adam, a client of ours for many years, wanted a custom scheme for his spiders. The Arachnarok's had their own particular look he wanted, but its the giant spiders (not very giant when you think about it) that have a scheme that really stands out. We had to do tan and black markings on them, and I feel they came out quite well.

You'll notice the Arachnarok's do not have some parts or their crew glued on -- this is because of packing concerns. These minis have to travel half way across the planet and they're not going to do that safely if they're and awkward shape.

I haven't seen an army like this and was always wondering when we would. The all-forest goblin list has obvious appeal, all GW needs to do is make a forest goblin infantry set - perhaps with a few "all purpose" bits and pieces so they can be used as weapons crew or otherwise converted to replace other goblins, and that would be that.

I've entertained fantasies of doing my own forest goblins force but that's largely been sated by my involvement with this order. I still like the idea though of making a small skirmish force. How an Arachnarok can be fielded with a skirmish force eludes me, unless its just used as a big beasty for a specific terrain board or scenario.

All that would be needed for a forest goblin-themed board would be a couple of abandoned step pyramids form the before times, some jungle (cause lets face it -- these guys need jungle, not random trees from Nova Scotia), and we'd be set.

Idle thoughts perhaps. Perhaps not.

Microsites!

2011-09-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

We built some dedicated sites (or "microsites") to promote painting services for certain products. So far, we've done:

Space Marines

www.SpaceMarinePainting.com

Space Orks

www.SpaceOrksPainting.com

And Eldar:

www.EldarPainting.Com

They offer the same services our main site does, but the advantage is that they should be easier to find and use than our main site, if one is looking for certain specific products.

Check em out!

Paintedfigs.com - Grey Knights!

2011-09-27T01:49:00.000-07:00

We finally got some of the new Grey Knight plastics in recently, here are some pics of a set we did for Joan Company.

I wasn't too sure about the value of them going to plastic, until I saw the range of bits and the new codex - the kit can support a good range of builds. I hope GW plans on redoing all their plastic kits accordingly, so that people will be able to make any codex configuration with the bits available in any relevant kit.

Grey Knights are a good excuse for pulling out metal primes. Something useful to try is priming your minis in the same color that will be the dominant basecoat color - or at least as close as possible to it.

This allows you to do a much thinner, cleaner basecoat which means preserving more detail, and faster painting.

Brasses suggest the Adeptus Custodes, but copper or gold should work nicely with Grey Knights. Perhaps with washes of green and brown in to suggest the patina of age, and then highlighting in lighter golds (Burnished Gold?) or blends of golds and silvers. For no extra effort, that would make for a very distinctive looking Grey Knights army that would make everyone jealous. Yes, they wouldn't be grey, but then silver isn't grey either... A project I think I'll need to do myself some day.

Whether or not I'm keen enough on Grey Knights to get my own is one thing, but I'm definitely using their bitz. Their psybolt and psyflame gear is great for Ordo Malleus minis, and the teleporter packs demand to be used in any project you can get away with.

I'm a big fan of In the Emperor's Name, a new, elegant, rule set for 40k skirmish that rewards kitbashing, and the teleport packs work great for Imperial Guard special forces or kill teams.

If you're interested in Paintedfigs.com working on Grey Knights for you, you can always look us up at www.paintedfigs.com.

Zombie Horrorcaust! George Romero in 15mm

2009-09-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

The Zombie Apocalypse Genre
As a man of science and reason I do not worry about ghosts when I go to bed. Neither am I concerned about vampires, greys, or El Chupacabra. Yet, I always make sure I bolt the doors and shake my head at the large accordion windows, and am thankful for the cement wall around the garden - because of zombies.

No one believes in zombies but on a certain level we find them both particularly disturbing and if not plausible at least relevant to our times. Romero's clever trick was to take the familiar and make it monstrous -- we did not need to go the darkest corners of the Amazon or the Taiga to find horrors, nor ancient palaces from before the coming of Man or the limitless promise of madness from deep space. Instead we could look next door at our neighbor. At children crossing the street. At our own family members. Within each, the promise of horror.

The genre Romero spawned in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead has some key hallmarks:

- Apocalypse. The zombies have, are, or will destroy the world as we know it.
- Cultural Collapse. Nations fail, organized power evaporates, and the values of the civilized world and its citizens are replaced by brutal survivors with brutish thoughts.
- The disaster is of our own doing. The zombies rise because of the opportunity given them by human greed, pettiness, cruelty, and stupidity.

Our challenge was to capture all this in miniature wargame.

The Miniatures
We had ourselves a large number of figs from Rebel Minis; SWAT police, zombie containment teams, rugged survivor types, and greys. Rebel Minis does some excellent 15mm and their prices are quite good (20 zombies for $9.99, with poses ranging from insurance salesmen, to fire fighters, to children with teddy bears). They also ship pretty quickly and cheaply, I recommend them.

We had enough minis to do a larger wargame rather than a skirmish based fight, and I very much wanted to use as many zombies as I could but not have them be a hassle to move about. Given this we decided to use Flames of War bases and put the zombies on 4 to an infantry base, with everyone else 3 to a command base (the survivors though we mounted on small coins individually - I wanted them to really stand out).

You can't really do a larger scale wargame without more unit types, so we supplemented with some minis from other ranges.

Some British Flames of War quad tractors that looked vaguely Humvee-like got press ganged as trucks for the CDC containment troopers. Backing up the zombies were of course the meddling Greys that started the Infection in the first place, and I gave them anti-armor rippers that I got from Zombiesmith (who also do some awesome 15mm space frogs among many other things). The Greys of course needed saucers, and being a cheapass bastard I made these out of GW aerial bases, warmachine bases, and bits of Tau drones.

Harean, a friend of mine and one of Sri Lanka's proud and few wargamers, saved the game from being a simple objectives fight. He gave me the idea of having the humans start working against each other, and using triggered events and changing objectives to push them towards open conflict. This of course would allow the zombies, helpless against the united human players, to swarm into their city and grow explosively off the flesh of helpless civies.

The Factions
Dinuka, a new gamer and space wolves fan, played the Government. He controlled SWAT police and riot cops, as well as CDC troopers with their trucks. We used 40k rules and cops we made middling shooters (BS 3) with no AP, while the zombies had 3+ saves. This was to bring how difficult zeds are to drop by supporting cast characters. Riot cops we made tougher though (padding and armor), and gave them additional attacks if they formed a line and baton-charged things. We gave the cops poor leadership (LD 7) to represent their panic during the early Infection period.

The CDC containment troopers we allowed to join cops as Independent Characters, as gave them Imperial Guard commissar ability of sacrificing a mini to have the unit pass a failed moral test. They also were good shots with good AP and range - and could glance against flying saucers.

The CDC trucks had flame throwers (that utterly devastated zombies), 50 cal guns (that didn't), and rocket launchers for harassing the flying saucers. They were lightly armored though, Armor value 10 all round.

Ruwen, a Star Wars fan, played the Survivors. The Survivors were SWAT and riot police as well, backed up by "Natural Born Killers" - individually based survivor minis wielding shotguns, attitude, and lots of attacks. They just had 3+ saves but they had two wounds, and excellent initiative to get their hits in first. These represented cheerleaders with sharpened pool cues, gas station attendants with golf clubs, S-MART clerks with boom sticks. The few out of the crowd that survive the initial infection stage and emerge as the heroes of the story.

Ruwen also got CDC trucks -- they were too powerful and too key to be held by just one player.

Harean played the Infection. The Greys were shooters, the rippers were anti-vehicular, close combat creatures that had a move of 9 inches. The saucers could deep strike, had a fairly decent shooting attack, and could carry eight bases of whatever they liked! They were key for deploying zombies and Greys about the city and generally giving the human players a hard time.

The Game: Orchestrating Romero-style Human Worthlessness
The public objectives of the human players was to repel the oncoming zombie hordes (starting at the far end of the table) and not let them enter the city. Both players were then separated, and given little notes with secret objectives. Dinuka (Government) was to evacuate vital personnel and documents from city hall to the airport, and told that Washington expected the city to fall. Ruwen (Survivors) was to get someone to city hall to contact a whistleblower who had grave news for them.

The zombies (coming on the board 10 bases per turn) were annihiliated by the combined human forces. But then, Dinuka (Government) began falling back, establishing a secondary line that Ruwen (Survivors) was not too happy about. Meanwhile Ruwen had a SWAT team racing off to the town hall, that Dinuka was not too happy about and couldn't stop by the time he realized what it was doing.

On Ruwen (Survivors) reaching the town hall, the human players were given more information and new objectives. Ruwen was informed that a nuclear strike was inbound, and that they needed to rescue people from buildings and get them on planes leaving the city (we had six plane tokens at the airport). Meanwhile Dinuka (Government) was told that the city had been judge to be compromised, and that by no means were any be permitted to leave the city. Dinuka still needed to ferry out government officials and files to get his victory points. To guarantee a punch up, he had to use the same planes that Ruwen was going for.

Meanwhile, Harean tried his hand at deep striking. Getting zombies and Greys in the thick of things, and swarming about uncontested parts of the city and feeding on civvies, came together nicely as cops turned on natural born killers and trucks fired rockets at each other.

The fight was very close by the end. The zombies were gobbling up huge numbers of victims, the cops had been largely eliminated, and the human units were cut off from each other and being picked apart by both the other side and by the Infection. Ruwen managed to get one transport out, before Harean blocked off the roads to the airport with a swarming mass of zombies. There were some interesting set piece type battles, as NBKs were swarmed by undead - and somehow managed to hold their own (two, named "Ash" and "Ash's girlfriend" ended up fighting back to back as it were versus a horde, and "Ash's girlfriend" was the only survivor, limping away on a single wound (and of course, infected).

Afterthoughts
The Government faction fell apart too quickly. They needed more CDC troops, and likely the Survivors (who we gave a lot more points to since we were afraid they would get caught hammer and anvil between the other two), could have done with fewer NBKs.

Everyone had a blast, the game ended up being far more successful than either Harean or I had anticipated. While we can't play that same scenario again with the same players, it is definitely something we can use on newbies or at events and conventions on the uninitiated.

Gepanzerte Soldats - World War Two Mechs

2008-02-07T07:22:00.000-08:00

Background: Weird War
Sixty three years since the Second World War, and even as its veterans and victims live amongst us to many it is no more than a colorful activity book, a ledger of derring do, and a playground grimoire of mad and comfortably far away ideas. Coated in that veneer of appeal that separates history from fiction, it has historians, garage hobbyists, and small boys constantly in its orbit.

The human imagination being what it is, the further an event ripples away in time, the more we get to reinvent it into something more interesting. The first ripple is the informed and deliberate projection of "what if." What if the Germans had won the war? Fatherland is probably the best WWII themed book in this genre known as Alternate History (which Brian Aldiss reduced fairly accurately to being chiefly "Roman crap, Dixie crap, and Nazi crap").

The next ripple out abandons any pretense of seriousness. In the case of WW2 this was both comedy and pulp fiction - with everything from Dad's Army and 'Allo!, 'Allo!, to Indiana Jones, and Wolfenstein 3D. Spielberg did not invent the Nazis as entertainment, but he helps make the rest of us get away with it.

The next ripple is post structuralism - World War Two is no longer interesting as a topic in and of itself, but instead as a medium for whatever we'd rather be examining. This is commonly called "Weird War," and is populated with SS psychics, grenadier zombies, and flying tanks (there really were flying tanks). Weird War in the past ten years is or so is especially disinterested in the details of the actual conflict, and fills the ruins of Villers-Bocage with Japanese style giant robots (you really want to click on that link. You'll thank me for it). We know we are in still in this ripple because many are still uncomfortable with this melding. There's no melting in the pot if someone isn't unhappy with what they see.

This brings me to my latest project - the Gepanzerte Soldats. Sadly, these were not my idea - I first saw them done by W.B. Kurgan on my favorite forum, the Lead Adventure's board:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j15/WarbossKurgan/Pulp%20Adventures/HPIM4571.jpg

Kurgan was putting together power-armored Germans, something just as Weird War (and unevenly accepted) as giant mechs. My interest was more in what these 28mm space marine conversions would offer a 15mm German army, since, well, I have one and I need something to spice it up.

The Gepanzerte Soldats scale pretty well with Flames of War Germans -- not huge like anti-ship Gundams, but rather more like medium-sized tanks. I like mechs that seem practical and realistic like the mobile armors in the anime series Gasaraki, and the Gepanzerte Soldats were bang on the money.

Putting Them Together
Games Workshop's space marines are fairly fascist looking (form does follow function you know). The newer ones look more like angry space knights, but the older stock, tube-sock, standard marines are just the right amount of plain to be compatible with other products.

The "Kolony Militia heads" from Pig Iron Productions are perfect for the headswap. They have not only iconic German helmet going for them, but my favorite fashion accessory - gas masks!

Power armor Nazis in gas masks. You can't go wrong with that.

We didn't mount them on the 28mm round bases the space marines came with, but instead on Flames of War medium bases. They look a bit odd on them (initially I had them on Flames of War small bases), but I needed them on the larger bases so that could be more easily accepted as light tank proxies in a (semi) serious game.

I painted them differently than Kurgan did. He opted for field gray, a mostly green color. I wanted these to pass as armored vehicles, so I painted them Vallejo German Grey -- the same dark color early war vehicles were painted in, so they could hide better under the shadows of trees. Many people think that the German early-war, infantry uniforms were this color too, but this is just a popular (and for commission painters, quite annoying) myth.

The problem with this is that German Grey is a grey -- and that is to say, automatically boring. To add color I did the lenses in red with green in the little sight things on the side. To help the problem, I also went for a rich, loamy, brown basing and gave them camo netting.

The camo netting was a stroke of luck. These are a brand new product from Antenociti's Workshop, for 15mm vehicles and terrain pieces. I got it for use on client minis but it needed to be tested of course. On my minis. First. Of course.

I think it came out nicely. I did what I could to make the netting hang straight down to give the suggestion of mass and size. The problem is that it's easily over done, so I just did one platoon with them and the rest will be bare.

Expansion
Right now I have ten of these chaps, which is two platoons in tankland. I've got more space marines coming to flesh these out to a total of 22, which is enough for four platoons with two "tanks" for the HQ. In plain German, that's a Panzergrenadierkompanie.

Space Frog Army Completed

2008-01-14T04:34:00.001-08:00

Took me about one and a half years, but they're done now.

Flames of War is a popular game set in World War Two, played in 15mm. Players field historically accurate armies of the period and simulate battles with a fair degree of realism.

But what if aliens invaded?

Choosing the Right Alien
The first challenge for the modeler is what to use. No mecha monstrosities or salivating xenomorphs for this period. Aliens of this period wore bubble helmets, had green (Martian) and blue (Venusian) skin, brightly colored equipment with fantastic names like "Atomizers" and "X-Bombs."

The second challenge is a gamer's challenge - the alien army must be easily compatible with the Flames of War rules and design format. They need to be on the right sized bases, they should be organized into platoons, they need to have corresponding units for infantry, armor, artillery. Not only does this allow alien-specific rules to be written for the game, but it allows the aliens to be played as any official army it conveniently mirrors (fallschirmjager Germans, Italians in North Africa, or whatever).

To my knowledge, Zombiesmith's Aphids are the most easily slotted-in match. They come in convenient packs (infantry platoon, mortar platoon, bike squads and platoons, and best of all an infantry company deal), and cost less at retail than Flames of War costs me at wholesale.

Modeling your Alien Army
The aphid bikes look pretty crap and the only support weapon offered are mortars, but the bike riders are pretty handy (reference the ripper swarm cavalry conversions) and more weapon options are easily available with a trip to www.15mm.co.uk (which is also an excellent source of other 15mm aliens, especially grays). I used some Eldar parts that were lying around to make my "Disintegrator Rays," and of course if I had D-Ray tanks I could also have D-Ray artillery (D-particles are very dense you see, and when fired on a low power carrier wave the rays are easily bent by the mass of the earth, allowing artillery to fire at targets beyond the horizon).

The modeling was pretty straight forward. I put together three infantry platoons to make a company, and gave it a mortar platoon for support. They are rather small mortars so would be medium range ones at most. This is the WYSIWYG rule: What You See Is What You Get. It's inappropriate in a wargame to call a cave man mini a tank, because your opponent, who has enough to think about, should not have to deal with a non-intuitively modeled army.

WYSIWYG is why the frog artillery is aggressive looking, and also why they are based on the larger, Flames of War, artillery bases. The "radio operators" are just aphid bikers, with a Flames of War 50 cal. machine guns stuck on their backpacks vertically to look like big radios.

The cavalry unit can be fielded as scouts, artillery spotters, or both. They are not a large unit because large cavalry units are inappropriate for World War Two, alternative or otherwise (and if you're Polish you should know better by now). The mounts are just tyranid rippers.

The tanks are what are called scratchbuilds - they are completely cobbled together out of bits and pieces. The hoverskirts are just large, 40mm square bases, and the turrets are the lids of old GW paint bottles. The fins, boosters, and guns are all Eldar bits -- they had a rather classic scifi look to them which made them excellent choices.

The basing is not otherworldly, one would expect at least a Martian red. Originally this was what I had planned but it was too garish even for my tastes, while the more natural basing added a nice brown-green to moderate the scheme a bit, and gives the impression that they are invading forces that are fighting on Earth.

Reinforcements of the Imperial Expeditionary Force
The obvious choices are some other support weapons, "machine gun" team equivalents for example. Perhaps some anti-tank units, pioneers / engineers, and storm troops. More tanks would always be a good idea, and some other kinds of tank and infantry transport as well.

Well that's for making sure the army can easily slot into the role of any other Flames of War Army - and hardly the ultimate goal! What one really want to do is now add options that will give the army its own feel, style of play, and be appropriately '50s scifi.

I honestly don't know enough about the period to decide what that should be, and will need to do some research. Dan Dare was mostly fighting the Mekons in space and Flash Gordon was perhaps a bit too early (the '30s), but I'm sure a few sleepless nights on the net and some grainy classics on Itunes will give me some ideas.

Being invading, rapacious aliens from space, I'm thinking drop pods, lizard monsters, slaves, and something to do with the D-Ray idea.

And that's before we even look at aircraft.

Adding Character - Zurga The Merciless!
Even a historical tour de force like Flames of War has characters with special abilities. Pulp scifi needs no excuses. The army is the Imperial Expeditionary Force lead by Zurga the Merciless. This is actually not a Ming reference, but to the Zurga, the base lead from Les Pêcheurs de Perles, (The Pearl Fishers) a French opera by Georges Bizet I had the privilege of seeing over the weekend. Zurga is of course a perfect pulp villain name, and since he wore a bathrobe as a cape at one point as was described as merciless, well....

Zurga the Merciless ("Zurga TheMerciless" on Facebook if you want to add him) adds a whole new dimension for character and of course for humor.

Zurga is a minor military officer with ideas above his station, one of many, many spawnlings of the mighty but indolent Emperor. The intrigues of the royal court are light years away, but successful campaigns abroad would build his prestige and hard boild veterans backed by enslaved / conscripted conquered peoples make a formidable force for toppling emperors, pretenders, and upstart kinsmen.

Is Zurga advised by the priesthood? Perhaps are crazed hermit? Or worse, a wild haired alien covered in tattoos and wode? Does Zurga have to send back prisoners for the mines, rare metals, and exotic beasts
to build favor?

These all effect modeling, and as a result gaming. If he must plunder resources he'll travel with huge drilling machines and tree-tearing tripods: these make for interesting tanks.

If he has to curry good will, he will get to roll for "the Emperor's favor," before battles, getting useful things like orbital strikes of janissaries - or perhaps assassination attempts and tax collector visits.

The more ridiculous, the better.

Sabol Epic Terrain

2007-10-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

My Blog is Fight!
To my knowledge, I am the only wargamer in Sri Lanka. This is a bit odd given that this is where the first and largest miniature painting studios in the world are, but it seems without a gamer culture you'll get no gamers. This, is my story!

John Wayne holds the fort.

It's more than a little odd being the only person in a country with a particular hobby, especially if you're an obsessive chap like I am. Yet I feel compelled to carry on. As long I get jollies collecting and building space rangers, eldritch demons, and nazi super weapons, I'm probably not going to stop.

This blog gets it's name from "My Tank Is Fight!: Deranged Inventions of World War II" by Zack Parsons. This book will feature prominently soon, as it has plans for a supertank I want to build. The P1000 Landkruezer.

Sdkfz half-tracks roll out.

Importing a City: A Visit to the Customs Office
Today I cleared some wargame terrain at the customs office, probably the only imported wargaming terrain in Sri Lanka. The customs officers didn't like the look of what were clearly model refineries and government buildings, so they wanted me to come in and explain what it was. I took with me my Flames of War rule book and a few 15mm minis.

"Now what's this for?"
"These are for games. Here, like in this book."
Dubious expressions.
"Can you clear that table for me? I'll show you."
I got a table. A group gathered.

"See how all these pieces fit together? It's like a section of a city. Now these guys here, these are World War Two Germans, and these are Space Frogs. With these pieces, they can fight."
"How do they shoot each other?"
"You make sure they can see each other, and then you check the distance with a ruler. Some guns can shoot further than others, or shoot more bullets. These two are carrying a machine gun, but the others just have rifles."
"Is this used for gambling?"
"No."
"How do you keep score?"
"The dead. If I kill more than the other guy, I will usually win. Sometimes, I have to capture buildings, that's why this one looks important."

Tank hunter lying in ambush

"Who else does this in Sri Lanka?"
"Just me. I am the only person who plays these games, in the entire country."
"Then where did you learn about this?"
"In America, where lots of people play these sorts of games."
They seemed pretty satisfied with that answer.
"Can this have an impact given the current situation?"
"In the 1800s the Germans started using wargaming to train their officers. This is where military exercises come from. It is a tool for war. Only after World War One did it become a game."

The panzergrenadiers engage the invading space frogs!

"So it can be used by people in our current situation?"
"Well, it should be."

I think the honesty surprised them. They cleared the minis, and a grandfatherly one said "now please don't give these to anyone."

This must be how it feels when you get a gun license.

About the Terrain
These were Epic scale minis (6mm) made by the guys at Sabol Designs, the makers of Sabol foam for packing wargame miniatures for transport. As far as I can tell these are their own gaming pieces, and they're selling them off to recover some cash and reinvest in new pieces. Judging from the attention to detail and character of the pieces, they clearly just want to have fun making more terrain and this older stuff was just getting in the way.

Artillery spotter team
I got six city-scape pieces mounted on plasticard tiles, and two nice set pieces - a fortress and a government building. The fortress has that old school, 40k tackiness to it, and the government building makes me think of the Capitol Building, the Reichstag, or the Colombo Town Hall. It's a heavy piece too, and quite detailed. The quality of the work is excellent -- the bitz have a lot of character, the assembled product is compelling, and the painting is well beyond what normally gets done for wargame terrain. I thoroughly pleased with it.

The Germans fortify City Hall

The only problem is that Epic is 6mm scale, and my Flames of War, Spugs, and Aphids are all 15mm. This makes the compiled city block look rather cramped, but it should still work out it we space them a bit.

Poya is coming up, let's see if I can con people into playing a game of GIs, Nazis, and alien invaders in the year 1946!

A Sherman tank platoon breaks out.