We did it!

Over a week past schedule, like so many things I have a hand in creating ;)

Need for Speed

Riflething Urban Ops Recon Buggy
15 mm scale

This vehicle started life as a Hot Wheels "Max Steel Turbo Racer" toy:

Pretty cool wheels... But I knew I could do better.  Luckily, this toy is almost exactly in-scale (judging by the driver's cockpit), and solidly futuristic-looking, so it didn't need much work.  I swapped the spindly front wheels for some from another car and added a turret (armed with a Space Marine plasma pistol) and Riflething gunner.  I don't do many vehicles to go with my figures, so this is kind of a step out for me.  We'll see how much painting gets done before the baby arrives, but I'll definitely have a go at it...

Bored? Games!

One of the things the missus and I do to avoid becoming TV zombies is try new board games.  We don't have a big budget or a games library nearby, but fortunately we have interesting friends, who have their own collections of interesting titles.  We regularly play the ever-popular Carcassonne, Zombies!!!, and Settlers of Catan, but recently we've had a chance to try a few interesting new ones:

Candamir: the First Settlers

(not my photo)

Designed by "Settlers" maker Klaus Teuber, this Norse-flavoured game revolves around resource collecting quests and building items for victory points.  Each player plays as a different character, with a few unique strengths and bonuses, so it's a little like a "canned" RPG.  During each turn you venture forth from town towards an objective square, drawing cards to see if each square you pass through allows free travel, or requires you to fight an enemy or perform a risky task to proceed.  Resources gained from quests are used to brew potions to help your character, or build items for different merchants in town, and the first player to make 10 items wins.  There's an "XP" system too so your character can buff their abilities over the course of the game (unless you suck at it, like I did).  Lots of fun, and not too hard to learn either.

Ticket to Ride

(definitely not my photo)

This is a railway building game that can require you to be pretty sneaky in plain sight of your opponents.  You collect same-coloured train car cards in your hand to build stretches of track between cities across a map of Europe and Russia (there are, of course, different geographical sets).  Each player has secret objective cards ("Destination Tickets") for long multi-track stretches that they can complete for extra points, while trying to discern their competitors' objectives and disrupt them.  At the end whoever completes the most objectives and has the longest tracks wins.  This is by far the easiest of these three games to learn, but it has some intense play mechanics and a good balance of skill and luck.

Tzolk'in: the Mayan Calendar

Holy crap.

My wife bought this for herself as a birthday gift.  Wow.  I'm pretty sure this is the most complicated board game ever made.  The board consists of six interlocking gears, based on the cyclical Mayan/Aztec calendar.  Briefly, you place and remove worker pieces on the gears, paying corn to place them and collecting benefits when you remove them.  The thing is, the gears MOVE every turn, so where you place your worker is not where they end up a few turns later. There's a "buy low, sell high" dynamic in how/when workers are placed/removed, but where the game gets really nuts is how this interacts with the temple tracks (points for pleasing the gods), technology tracks (bonuses and multipliers to boost your resources), and buildings and monuments (a bunch of other stuff).  We haven't even played a full game yet, and it took me 40 minutes just to set up the board (probably incorrectly) so I won't even pretend to say I understand it.  But it looks challenging and fun once you learn it.

Shia Khan conversions (and big news)

Garafraxian Black Guards
15 mm

The quasi-humanoid, photosynthetic Garafraxians (colloquially called "Chloros") use heavy armour to protect their fragile bodies during combat.  Their long eye stalks give them excellent depth perception and peripheral vision however, so they generally extend them out of their suits except when in immediate danger.  The suits are lined with red-LED arrays to maintain their metabolism far away from their home star's nourishing rays.

We have another baby on the way... arriving in only a few weeks now, whoa! So I expect that I'll be posting pretty sporadically for a while.  But just like last time, I'll be back, so stay tuned :)

I did want to squeeze in at least one more fun project before our due date, however.  I wasn't sure what to do with these cool Shia Khan Pioneers when I ordered them, but once I got a good look at them I knew I couldn't not convert them into something weirder.

As Chloro shock troops poured in from the docking ring, Fett found himself
in the uncomfortable position of fleeing away from his ride off the station.

Kind of a goofy B-movie look here, but I like it.  All I really did was stick in wires with drops of epoxy on the ends, and sculpt the tentacle/pincer things over their human hands.  Well within my constraints of talent, fortunately.

The Ion Age February Mini

Interstellar Envoy
15 mm

The Zin Envoy was Ion Age's limited edition mini from this February.  I'm surprised at how fast I got this mini done... by my standards at least.  Anyway it's a great figure, alas now unavailable but if you have one, have a go at it.  I really tried to glam him up, and so it was a lot of fun to paint.

The Ambassador has a stroke of luck - a Very Strange Alien appears just
as he needs to send an urgent encrypted message to the homeworld.

The Ion Age March Mini

Female Muster Officer
15 mm

"Your papers, please."

As I mentioned in my last post, Gavin at Ion Age was nice enough to comp me this month's limited edition mini when he re-sent my order.  So I figured I'd paint it up first.  I like the pose here, as you can see it reminds me of a border guard or sentry though it could be a combat hand signal too. The sentry box is from Germy.co.uk, home of a number of nice paper buildings.

As a side note, I noticed Ion Age minis are visibly larger than some other 15 mm minis I have; this one is a mm or two taller than my Khurasan SEAL team.  Probably fine to use together, though.

Thanks, Ion Age!

I ordered some Ion Age stuff at the beginning of February... it never showed up :(  Fell off the boat, I guess.  But Gavin shipped it again, and threw in March's limited edition miniature too:

I'm going to try and paint one of these up for the blog ASAP, they're pretty nice figures.

Among other fun things, I ordered a couple of "Maligs", sort of undisciplined auxilaries from the Shia Khan faction.  I love them!  They'd make GREAT not-Space-Orks:

"More dakka!"

Ain't no party like a boarding party

... 'cause a boarding party don't stop until all hostiles on the target vessel are neutralized or captured.

Cultural Collective marines and breaching drone
15 mm

"Maintain spacing!  Watch your angles!  Advance on my mark."

While life as a citizen of the Cultural Collective is generally one of fulfilling work and hedonistic leisure in a low-scarcity economy, utopia is not without consequence.  In addition to its overt and covert diplomatic interaction with other galactic powers, the CC is constantly engaged in a variety of low-level military endeavours against renegades, pirates, rebellious elements, and adjacent domains with whom it is not officially at war.
 

No citizen is compelled to serve in the CC's armed forces.  Instead, service simply appeals to a certain subset of the population who enjoy the the combination of action, violence, and relatively low personal risk due to advanced weapons and armour.  Periodic excesses may occur, but the average CC resident considers these a small price to pay for freedom and security, if they are aware of them at all.
 

I decided to keep a cool blue "authentically military" look for these guys, with only the white helmets to offset it and tie them in with the robot.  The yellow markings* on the bases (colour printed and slightly weathered with paint) help with both colour contrast and visual unity.

* The square yellow signs are tiny versions of "Autonomous Device" and "Self-Replicating System" from this interesting collection of future warning signs - good eye-candy for any industrial or military sci-fi scenery :)

Diecast Drive-by

I just made a few good finds in the grocery store while on an emergency cat food run.  Inspired by Spacejacker's amazing Hot Wheels repaints, I thought they might work as 15mm scale vehicles.  First, the "International MXT", in desert drab:

Wow!  Probably a bit off-scale, but it looks perfect next to some average minis.  This is a real military truck, but not so well-known you can't field it as a fictional one.  Detail is a bit soft, but I don't know if that's from the casting or the kid-proof paint layer.  Apparently even this durable paint can be stripped with solvents or oven cleaner, but the metal body has to be separated from the plastic frame and wheels.

Next up we have this tracked dump truck thingy.  Some greasy sci-fi potential here, for sure.  The cab is not at all big enough to be 1:100/15mm, but I still feel like something could be done with it, or at least the track portion could be used as the basis for a kit bash:

There are probably a bunch more interesting things available along these lines; I've been keeping an eye out for that cool fire engine Spacejacker used, but no luck so far...

Colour Commentary?

So I'm working on these GOTA troops from Khurasan, and while I'm generally happy with the colours I've picked and how they look on their bases, I am stuck on one thing.
 

My robot!  I don't want it to be exactly the same scheme as the troopers, and just blend in.  But I don't want to do it in a wildly contrasting or too-colourful style either because I'm trying to make them look realistically military and of the same faction.

Any suggestions, oh readers?

---

Also, my Planet Tubby entry in the Titanium Dropship painting contest has finally been posted on Dropship Horizon, along with a lot of other very, very nice entries.  Check em out, if you haven't already!

Hellspawn Hero

Hellboy
15 mm

"Don't mess with me, lady. I've been drinking with skeletons!"

This miniature is released by my favourite mini company as part of a pack called "friendly demons".  Its a pretty good proxy for Mike Mignola's wisecracking demonic comic book hero.  I whipped up a couple of spectral foes for him too, using Rebel Minis' Nazi zombie pack:

"Aw crap!  Nazi ghosts?  Worst kind of ghosts!"

Now I just need a 15 mm pyrokinetic woman, amphibian man and homunculus, and maybe a plague of frogs.  Anung Un Rama...

"They Came From Planet Tubby"

Mysterious Tele-Aliens
15 mm

The origins of these strange biomechanical aliens are shrouded in mystery.  They dance and babble in childlike voices, until they suddenly disappear, only to turn up on a new world.  Strangely, they can communicate instantly with others of their kind via their abdominal view screens, and so have become a widely used faster-than-light messaging network for other species.  They have been known to alarm some human religious leaders, but are considered an extremely useful oddity by most sentients.
 

(This "squad" was my entry in the Dropship Horizon 15mm SF painting contest.  A lot goofier than my original plan, but time was tight.)

The figures above were my original plan for this contest.  Khurasan GOTA Clan riflemen with Mekanoid Melee Bots for support, on scratchbuilt starship bases.  But my KM order just arrived this week and there's no way I could have finished them nicely for the 15th.  So, Tubbies it is ;)

Jen Haley MURDERS Khurasan's Paranormal Investigators

I don't normally post about other people's paint jobs... but damn it, woman:

"Something's spooky out there Mulder, and it's Ms. Haley's brush control."

I was still am pretty proud of my paint job on this set, but yet again, Haley shows me why she's soaring with the eagles while I'm still ****ing with the ducks.

According to Jon's TMP post, Khurasan will begin selling these with a new wave of releases starting next week.

Ooh! A painting competition!

The excellent blog Dropship Horizon is holding a 15mm sci-fi painting comp.  Their post itself is pretty clear, but in a nutshell:  three categories: squad, vehicle/mech, terrain piece.  Must be sci-fi.  You can enter one entry per category.  Lots of prizes.

The comp closes in a month so, if you're me and your stock of 15mm figures is sadly depleted, time is a bit tight.  But hopefully I can pull something together and even have the time to paint it nicely.

Ice, Ice, Baby

Ice Warriors
28 mm

You might have to be a real Doctor Who fan to appreciate these old enemies who made a reappearance this past year, in the Eleventh Doctor episode "Cold War".  As with the recent reappearance of the Zygons, I think they managed to update the concept while keeping the same goofy 60's-special-effects charm of the original design.

"That one!"  "Duh-okay boss!"

I really liked their appearance in the 1972 (Third Doctor) episode "The Curse of Peladon", where, while abrasive, they weren't the bad guys any more, and ultimately helped the Doctor discover the real villains and maintain peace.  These two figures depict the Ice Lord Izlyr and his bodyguard Ssorg from that episode.

Ozymandias (15mm terrain)

Ancient Stone Head
15 mm scale

This was an idea I had a while ago for an interesting, cheap scenery piece.  I don't normally make, or have use for, scenery/terrain but this was too fun and easy to pass up as a holiday project.

Sacrificed: one "Clone Wars" Pez dispenser; surprisingly solid and tedious to saw through, I have to say.  You could probably use any action figure head or even a Barbie (if you didn't mind your relic looking like Barbie).

I glued the sliced head to a 2.5" diameter wooden craft circle with hot glue, and smeared some more glue around to make the ground uneven.  Then covered with a mix of sand and ballast and spray-primed.

Wow... at this point I was pretty pleased with the result but I felt it still kind of looked like a toy.  It needed a bit of scale.  So I painted on some lines to make it look like it was originally carved out of massive blocks.  And, of course a little bit of scraggly desert vegetation to add some colour.

 

So there you have it.  One mildly-interesting terrain piece, the mysterious ruins of a long-lost temple or monolith.  Could be better, but as a test run I can't complain.  Maybe someone else can improve on the concept with some more details, or better source material.

"Astounding!  I'll definitely get published in the Xenoarchaeology Bulletin for this!"

"Luminous beings are we..." (Gingerbread post!)

"My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes..."

 

Merry Christmas!

Well I didn't have a lot of time this year, but I did produce my yearly gingerbread "house" that I like to share here with my readers.  This year... Star Wars.  I wanted to do the Dagobah ship raising scene but an X-wing would have been a lot of gingerbread.  So, here we have Luke, R2 and Yoda decorating for "Life Day".

Yoda's hut was done by draping a sheet of dough over a hemisphere made of crumpled foil, and baking it.  Once the foil was removed, a hollow dome-shaped cookie remained.  Overall, not my best or most elaborate gingerbread creation, but still fun.

ARE YOU MY MUMMY?

The Empty Child
28 mm scale

A basic but tricky conversion of Hasslefree's "Rose" mini, which was obviously inspired by the super-eerie Doctor Who episodes "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances".  Which also featured a character named Rose.  We're down the rabbit hole here, people!  Anyway, a lovely little figure, and I'm happy with the final result.

Goes nicely with Heresy's Ninth Doctor..  I mean "Doctor Malcolm Ecclescake".

"You'll have to act creepier, Captain Jack is stealing the episode."

The whole squad

DEVGRU SEAL Squad
15mm

The Professionals

OK, I finished them!  This is actually my first fully-painted "real" squad of miniatures (five Riflethings painted over five months doesn't count).  And probably my last, to be honest.  But it was a fun challenge and the results were worth it, I think.

I wish I could say the gangers have a fighting chance here... but no.

Also, dear readers, we've got another addition to the family coming in the spring.  As joyous as this is for me, I expect my posts will become even more sporadic next year.  But I'll try and post some interesting new stuff in the next few months, and keep Painting Agency on your blog feed, because I'll be back :)

Some DEVGRU SEALs... and their "dog"

DEVGRU riflemen and marksman
15 mm

So I painted three of these cool guys to start - two assault types and a sniper.  I tried to stick with "realistic" military colours - pretty drab but with sharp highlights - but they're not based on any specific uniform the US military now uses.  As people have said, they would definitely fit in any current or "mid tech" near-future scenario.

BigDog load-bearing robot
15 mm scale

I felt like my SEALs needed some kind of very-near-futuristic technological support, so I sculpted this guy to carry all their extra gear for blowing things up and shooting at people.  BigDog has received a lot of attention for its impressive ability to walk around in an eerily lifelike fashion while carrying heavy loads.  This version would be roughly donkey-sized IRL.

This was a fun sculpt.  I'm not very good at sculpting anything but pouches, so I just let this take me wherever it ended up.  The fabric protecting the legs saved me from having to do anything too mechanical-looking there, and careful painting hides the irregularities in the rest of the frame.  Overall, I think it's a good dog.