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...

Finally Crawling Out From a Mountain of Paperwork

Hi everyone! My sincere apologies for not posting anything these past few months. I know that I’ve been awfully remiss but ever since getting back from the Caribbean I've been consumed with the current work contract. Thankfully that's been completed and I will resume posting again.

Stay tuned...

Farm Animals

Animals are a necessary accoutrement to breath life to any wargame table. Mike had a whole bunch he acquired eons ago so I offered to paint 'em and use them to populate our soon-to-happen Viking campaign.

I need more sheep!

The black and white calf is a metal figure that came in a bag of animals I acquired at a train show.

The same goes for the black pig and white bull dog.

A nice village ripe for plundering!

Back from El Caribe

Hey all! I know that I've been absent the last few weeks but I've been working a month long contract since July 4th. The job: survey 70 sites in the eastern Caribbean. Namely the countries/islands of Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Kitts, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. My island hopping was not necessarily in this order. It definitely fired me up for some pirate action since I was in the thick of it. Pirate lore, I mean. 

Two of these islands: Dominica and St. Vincent were location shoots for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. So I'll be continuing my posts once back stateside. Till then, me maties, till then. Arrrrrrh!

Napoleonic Skirmishing

A couple of months ago we had a game day dedicated to Napoleonic skirmishing using Willy's home brew rules. The following photos were taken by Mike. We all met at Willy's shop (our semi-official club house) and skirmished with his just completed Red Coats from Alban that was featured in his post: http://tacticalminiaturesgaming.blogspot.com/2011/04/more-alban-and-reinforcements-by-post.html

A peaceful hamlet in an unnamed valley.

Terrain was a combination of Willy's mat from the Terrain Guy along with the road by an unknown manufacturer and selected pieces from my collection. Recognize the huts? Those were the medieval/dark age huts I scratch built for our future Viking campaign from an earlier post: http://thehistoricalminiaturist.blogspot.com/2011/04/viking-housing-development.html. Carpet tiles were used for the plowed fields along with my scratch built haystacks. The wooden kegs were acquired from the wood working section of my local craft store (i.e. Michael's, Hobby Lobby). 

They have smaller scale barrels that are perfect for 28mm
and very cost effective and easy to paint.
We're talking $4 for a package of 9 wooden barrels.
Wooden fence sections come prepainted from Pegasus Hobbies.

Opposing forces: a squad each of British and French (An officer, an NCO, 8 grunts)

Objective: Loot the Village!

Red Coat opening shot of the day.
"That should keep those Frogs' heads down. Come on in Frenchy!"

Keeping the Frogs at bay.

Fire fight from Red Coat perspective: Frogs taking cover by the ale barrels.
"Hold your fire, Perkins! If you put a hole in 'em barrels, it'll be your hide!!"

And across the field, the fire fight from the Frog perspective.

Impetuous bayonet charge by my Red Coat is successful.

The Red Coats won that day but barely. The bad news: 70% casualties. The good news: survivors don't need to share the ale!

Motor Torpedo Boats

Fast surface action with Motor Torpedo Boats!

A couple of months ago, my buddy Mike picked up some British and German MTBs from the UK. No rules set has been selected so far for our gaming group. The criteria for us being: beer n pretzely, easy and playable to get the flavor of fast, surface combat without any hassle of charts and complexity. Bleh... >:p
Something similar to the mechanics of a 'War At Sea' without the cards. Eventually, we'll find something and by then we'll have some boats to play with!   


At any rate, the sculpts were cool enough that I offered to paint them since I've never painted 1:600 scale torpedo boats before. These muthas are heavy, solid and nicely detailed.  

Right outta the bag.

There was minimal flash on a couple of boats but overall they're clean and ready to go! 

The following photos are courtesy of Mike since I did a quick turnaround and didn't have time to photo them in my studio. I must say that it didn't take me long to complete them plus they were so fun to paint. As I always say, some minis are sculpted so nicely that they actually paint themselves. 

The Brits: a Fairmile D flanked by two Vospers.

Foreground: Fairmile D; background: Vosper 

Fairmile D

Kriegsmarine Schnellbootes aka 'S' Boats aka
'E' Boats to the Allies (the 'E' denoting 'enemy').

Schnellbootes
Forground: Early War; background: Late War

Late War S Boats

The whole lot.

Now we need some Merchant Marine tramp steamers for targets. 

Comicpalooza 2011

As previously mentioned, I attended and ran a couple of games of Incursion at Comicpalooza last Saturday. The Incursion games were uneventful in that I mostly taught a set of young newbies the mechanics of the game. The fun part was walking around during my break and taking in the sights.

Princess Leia

Slimer

VSF Re-enactors

Clone Trooper and Imperial Officer

Han Solo and his babe.

Zombie Coeds

Zombie Coeds attacking a Jedi.

In person this Anime character was quite impressive and stood 8+ feet tall with eyes that were lit up.

Master Sargent from HALO

Silk Spectre

Zombie School Girls
(I heard some geeky hight school boys calling them ZILFs!)