New and Old Toys, Part 7 Star Wars Minis and More

As George Lucas once said, "One thing about 'Star Wars' that I'm really proud of is that it expands the imagination. That's why I like the 'Star Wars' toys." I couldn't agree with him more. In this case I use whatever is at my disposal. I'll usually set up my table with something interesting and things just evolve.

It's been awhile since I've played with my DropZone Commander building models and really love the ease of set up using these cardboard pieces. They photograph well and are very usable for different games systems or a casual diorama setup.

A Rancor mixes it up with AT43 Red Blok mechs, Bugs,
and miscellaneous MechWarrior units and vehicles

Incursion Plastics, Part 1

Catching up on some painting...

(click on the pix to enlarge)

MI-13 (Rear Left to Right): Nigel, Commando, Ack Pack x2 (Flamer), Grenadier
(Foreground Center): Gut Gunner

SWD (Left to Right): Bomber Zombies x2, Hugo Von X, Drohne and
Gretel Von X (Classic pose)

Fallschirmjager Droptroopers (Rear Left to Right): Droptrooper, Flammenwerfer, Panzerfaustwerfer, Hilde Becker and Feldwebel(Foreground Left to Right): Droptrooper and MG42 Trooper

Luck 7th (Left to Right): Grunt APE, Rosie the Riveter, HMG APE, Grunt APE and Blazer 

New and Old Toys, Part 4

Dusting off some of my cardboard buildings from DropZone Commander and posing my other minis amongst this urban setting.

(click on the pix to enlarge)

No room on my table,
solution: coffee table will suffice

Lay down a few road tiles and
top it all off with a plexi sheet

  

Voila! Instant urban battlefield

  

An ominous looking dropship
mysteriously lands at an urban center

A hatch opens and a Scout ventures
out as a Command Bug looks on

A rapid response Mech team is quickly
dispatched amid a loud klaxon

The bugs are fanning out and looking to unload
their recon in force pod! The encounter escalates
as the Mechs are reinforced with assault infantry in battle 

Air support!

AT-43 Red Blok Spetnaz Kolossus, why not?

New and Old Toys, Part 3

Sci-fi doors, crates and barrels are perfect for adding those nice extras to your gaming table. 

(click on the pix to enlarge)

Narrow and wide doors, section and air lock doors
from the Sedition Wars Terrain Pack are great!

Staging the shot

Various items from my collection: Starship Trooper,
AT-43 and Hero Clix Alien to name a few

Finally gotten around to painting some
cool bio-hazard and nuclear waste barrels (red
and yellow respectively) from Fenris Games

More sci-fi crates and hatches from Fenris Games 

Put 'em all together and you get some nice dioramas
"Meanwhile, at the loading bay of HMS Rourke's Prime
currently orbiting Rajanatha 3 in the Gamma Sector"

That's a repainted AT-43 Mech UNI Fire Toad
"Preparations are underway for the massive landing
expedition and support base operations"

"I need that load out as soon as possible!
Otherwise I'm going to miss my timetable
and be late for the jump point."

Refurbishing Old Models Part 3

I finally found the proper materials to simulate metal grate flooring that's perfect for skirmishing my 28mm sci-fi miniatures. Go down to your local hardware store and look for 2'x4' clear prismatic plastic lenses. I bought 3 panels that can be arranged to make a 4'x6' playing area. More than enough for skirmishing.      

(click on the pix to enlarge)

They come in different patterns but I found this particular grid to work well. 

The perfect spray paint to give the right amount of texture.

And Voila!

Anyone recognize those rusty robots?
See Refurbishing Old Models Part 2

UTA

UTA

Assorted Red Blok Mechas

Showdown with an ONI Merc Zombie and a UTA Medic 

Incursion 3d Board Components

Since some of you have been asking here's the components that I used to simulate industrial items, etc. from an earlier post:

http://thehistoricalminiaturist.blogspot.com/2011/01/incursion-3d-board-actual-progress.html

Industrial lights from Plastruct.

Pipes: drinking straws spray painted with rustoleum.
Pipe elbows and valves from Plastruct.

Bent pipes: soldering wire. Stains on the floor: watery and runny paint.

And here's how I did the door frames.

Click to enlarge.

Incursion: SNAFU Action Shots

Back in May of 2011 here's what I had...

Fast forward to August 2012 and I'm finally done with the SNAFU miniatures and ready to play. But first some posing... 

Panzerraffe center stage having a shoot out with 'The Hurricane' with 
Gracie coming down the corridor for an  assist. 
Meanwhile, Bazooka Joe's lining up for a rear shot.

Drohne with a couple Sturmzombies in tow to engage Bazooka Joe.
And the Panzerraffe gets some more SturmZombie backup.

Might as well bring in the Blitzhund Mark II into the mix.

Now Ilsa ,the other Blitzhund and more Zombies have joined the rumble. 

Refurbishing 'Old' Models Part 1

If you're anything like me, you're a collector. And with the infinite variety of the cool toys we now have available at our finger tips thru the web it's a real challenge not going overboard. Oops! Too late.

A smattering sample of my collection posted on my Christmas 2010 blog. 

A great example is AT-43. They've been discontinued for some time now but there's stores out there that carry stock and would gladly sell them for the right price (usually reduced). I love these pre-painted minis. I've been lusting after them for a few years since they were released and have finally acquired a few. There really is a great reason for restraint b/c waiting for the price to go down really helps my budget. I've kept my collection to just the human factions (U.N.A. and Red Blok). 

I gravited initially to the Red Blok whose reminiscent Soviet theme had me hooked.

Actually to be honest, I also have a weakness for Mechs. Growing up watching all kinds of giant robots in anime will have that effect on you. And AT-43 has some good ones. Check out this beauty from my Red Blok collection. All I did was to dip all the minis in Army Painter to give it better shading and 'presto!'

Red Blok Molot

Inevitably, I'll be collecting the Dust minis but I can wait. I'm just a sucker for the ever increasing Weird War II genre that's creating a great variety for collecting and gaming. For now they're cost prohibitive but I'm confident that their prices will go down eventually. 

FCC Housemaster

Same goes for those MERCS figures. Have you seen em? Beautiful, drool-worthy stuff and a must have for any sci-fi mini collector but hard to justify the cost since you're paying almost *GASP* $10 per UNPAINTED lead (I've checked alternate sites and they've gone done considerably since, i.e. $7.50)! For now they're confined to my ever growing wish list. Sigh...

Size comparison of MERCS and AT-43 Steel Trooper straight from the MERCS site.

I digress because I want to feature my latest project of repainting a recently acquired mech from the Operation Damocles Initiation Set (now discontinued). I got this idea and was inspired by a link on a TMP blog post: http://firebase-spartan.blogspot.com/2011/03/workbench-pig-iron-for-5150.html.

Fire Toad in its original paint scheme straight outta the box. The 'Before' picture.

At any rate, I liked what this guy did so much that I decided to do the same. At first, I vaguely recognized the mech by its shape though was different. Then it struck me that he repainted it a monochrome color to match his infantry. Brilliant! It look so good that I had to give it a try. Making it monochrome got rid of the visual noise that made it a less believable mech (an oxymoron). For my version I gave it a different twist and made it more compatible for using on my WWW2 universe and Incursion board.

I snuck in the unfinished and repainted mech in an earlier post that you guys might remember.

Here's the 'After' picture. A few decals and what do you get? A new model!

I know I'm mixing German crosses, Mr. Grognard (Willy aka LTL Dad!). Who cares! It looks fine to me. Not to mention that this is sci-fi and WWW2 all rolled into one.

Performing support role with some of my Waffen SS (Black Tree Design).

Then picked these up at my local Toys R Us for about $2 a package. That's roughly $1 a model. My sole purpose for acquiring and repainting them and is using them as terrain for our game groups Sci-fi games.

  

Here are the 'soon to be' Maintenance Bots next to some AT-43 minis.

Coming up, the 'after' shots...