Almost there...

The Grav Tanks are done, they just need to be based.

The whole gang

 The "Duster"

 The Red Guard's newest main battle tank - the "Nemo"

 The "Kardashian" view. I've put some squadron identifiers on these tanks - the yellow blocks on the tanks and the blue triangle on the AA tank. A little odd color is always a nice addition and I've always like the British WW2 tank unit markings.

Rear quarter view. Nice looking tanks...

The bases are indeed finished, I'm just waiting for the varnish to dry. I'll complete the project tomorrow since I'm taking the day off work.

Grav Tanks, continued

I don't often do "work in progress" stuff so I thought I'd keep it going with the tanks this week. They're all painted and magic washed.

I did a fourth base for the AA vehicle this evening and found two Dystopian Wars acrylic pegs which were quickly turned into four pegs, replacing the cocktail straws I'd been using. They're all 1/8 inch diameter. Woohoo. The weird green "flags" are tape covering the clear pegs until they're completely painted. I also threw some sand on the bases so they'd be based more similarly to the rest of the Red Guard.

A further update tomorrow I hope!

Grav Tank update

Rather than waiting for a new gun for the grav tank, I decided the Red Guard could use an AA vehicle. I scratch-built a pair of gun barrels and mounted them to the turret in a decidedly "up" position.

Yeah, yeah, the barrels aren't true. I'll work on correcting that. I also added a small antenna to the top of the turret to break up the smooth silhouette. It'll be a welcome addition to the Red Guard forces.

Work in Progress

I ordered some more 15mm sci-fi tanks last week. I haven't added much to my collection recently and thought the Red Guard could use some reinforcements. I picked up these lovelies from RAFM:

I ordered the box of four and was shorted one gun. Hopefully, I'll get a replacement shortly.

In the meantime, I've got a squadron of three in the works:

I mounted some magnets in the hulls and turrets to keep things together on the tabletop.

The bases are (obviously) very home-made. Metal lowers with a wooden sandwich upper. The wooden bit was drilled through and a cocktail straw glued in the hole. The straw will be cut down later when it's time to actually mount the tanks.


More pictures as I continue making progress!

Oh my... a video game update?

I picked up the very old video game Warhammer 40,000 - Chaos Gate a few months ago for cheap on Good Old Games and have been playing it off and on since. It's been fantastic and quite enjoyable.

I played a game the other night and one of my Terminators went nuts on the Chaos scumbags, doing nearly all of the work himself:

Twenty-one kills, including a greater demon, in close combat with a Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield. That's getting it done!

AAR - Dystopian Wars: Skirmish in the South China Sea

David and I got together on Sunday afternoon for a game of Dystopian Wars. It's been quite a while for David and at least a month or two for me. Since time was going to be an issue, we decided on 800 points and no SAWs.

My list:
1 Magenta Battleship with Cloud Generator
3 Marseille Cruisers
3 Furieux Scout Fliers
4 Alma Scout Ships
4 Lyon Frigates

David's List
1 Sokotsu Battleship
3 Tanuki Gunships
4 Uwatsu Frigates
5 Fujin Corvettes
2 Inari Gyros

We drew random orders - my target was the battleship (oh lovely) and David's was all of my smalls.

A blurry picture of our initial deployments. Since David hadn't played in ages, we skipped right past "Advance, Reserve and Flank" deployments.

Very pretty.

The battleship moved first and thrashed one of the Marseilles, which quickly tried to hide behind the island on my left, but the Inaris caught her and sunk her quickly.

I scooted forward with the Furieux, descended from the clouds, took some pot-shots at an Inari and promptly failed to get the sky ships back to the relative safety of the clouds. The Japanese gunships moved next and look some long-ranged shots at my fliers, damaging one. I've grown rusty. NEVER leave the clouds with the Furieux!

To start turn 2, I won the initiative and dropped a pile of mines ahead of the Japanese ships. The fliers also caused some minor damage to a Tanuki with gunfire.

Dramatic moment of the game: The Fujin squadron pounces on the troubled Marseilles, blasting one and attempting to board the other. The shooting was not impressive, scoring a crit (generator offline) and the boarding action was a miserable failure! The oft-maligned French light cruisers were still in the game - wow.

The Lyons claim an Uwatsu after losing one of their own shortly before.

Marseilles doing what they do best...

Towards the end of turn 2. My battleship may be on a collision course with one of my own mines. It had blasted the far gunship pretty soundly with its guns.

I began turn 3 by giving the gunships both barrels. Mines, bombs, some gunfire... F&$* you, gunships. Bombs and gunfire from one scout ship produce two crits on the center gunship.

The mines do the trick, killing off two gunships and crippling the third. One more person on earth hates Furieux scout ships. Huzzah!

My Almas repeat the crap performance of the Fujins earlier and get their boarding parties wiped trying to cause some AP casualties on the Sokotsu. I wish I'd boarded it with the Furieux first - BLAST!

The Lyons finish off the last gunship.

The Fujins blast away at my remaining Marseille.

I can't completely avoid my own mines and plow into an AD5 one with the Magenta. David promptly rolls what you see there - a damn crit from my own mine! Gah! The first crit doe to stop rolling was a "1" and the second dies spun a while, showed another "1" briefly then rested on a "3." Whew. A Mag Explosion would have been unthinkable. We both laughed long and loud at the turn of events. After the mine rocked my flagship, its guns reached out and put a big hole in the Japanese flagship. I can live with that.

David's battleship plowed through an Alma, turning it into confetti with little effort.

A bit of shooting from the Sokotsu and we called the game. David had hit hit 50% MFV requirement but had not killed my smalls and Istill had some work to do on David's flagship. We called it a well-fought draw.

Well that was a fun game! It was nice facing off against the ships I play with a lot of the time. My usual opponents despise the Blazing Sun fleet and now I know why! Luckily, the French AA was up to the task and the long-range rockets weren't too terrible. Those gunships did a lot of damage to my fleet so as much as they were irrelevant to my victory conditions, they could not be allowed to live.

The ROF guns-only force is very strong and I'd certainly field them again, without the heat lance wonder-weapons. The Furieux are absolute top-shelf awesome and I cannot recommend them enough. My Marseilles gave up 150 points but kept the 'vettes occupied all game - I can live with that; that they were still on the table after three turns was amazing! The Lyons and Almas performed as expected - perfectly fine frigates. The all-gun Magenta is a beast an once again lived up to its sterling reputation.

Thanks for the game, David! See you next weekend for Star Fleet Battles.

More Fench Tanks!

Of the Dystopian Wars variety. I was a good little painter during the week and got seven more DW French tanks completed. My July 4th present to myself is actually getting finished, how weird!

The batch of the week.

 

 The Bastille landship. Good armor and plenty of firepower.

R-6 Medium Tanks.

 L'Aman Heavy Tanks. Their Heat Lance weapons are just wicked.

Rear bumpers.

Back sides of the R-6es and Bastille.

Next up will be some French ships - I got a terrific price on miniaturemarket.com and couldn't pass on it. Have a great weekend! I'm actually going to get to play DW tomorrow with Wai Fung - it's been a little while for both of us.

RP Dystopian Wars

I finally finished up my French mobile airfield for Dystopian Wars! It sat idle for at least a month, but I turned up the painting heat on it over the weekend and got her completed. I love it. I also finished off the AA tanks I'd started at the same time. It's good to see the models turn out nicely after being ignored for so long.

I replaced them in the queue with a Bastille-class landship (another giant gun-covered thing) and some medium tanks. Progress on them has been good so far so, who knows? They may get done this week! God forbid!

Last Batch of Firestorm Armada

Well, the last batch for a while anyway. I think I'm done with the Kurak Alliance for now. I've got a sizable collection and if I paint more FSA stuff, it'll be for a new fleet.

For now though, here are four more Xelocian Frigates

I ordered them immediately after seeing Spartan's new ugly redesign. They're just like the last squadron except that I added a black bar through the midsection white stripe to differentiate squadrons.

And the big project for the last couple weeks: the Ryushi Battle Carrier!

It's a big-ol' son of a gun and a complex build, as Spartan models go, which isn't saying much. I tinted the force-fields with Green + Pledge floor wax so they'd look a little less like the same clear acrylic as the base and pegs. I spent a good bit of time on the fighters on the flight deck which aren't visible in these pictures but can be easily seen with the naked eye. I'm happy with the way it turned out and can't wait to put it on the table for a game!