Sci-Fi Troopers from Mantic and some 40k action

Some weeks a lot of projects come together all at once - its one of those this post.  I've been playing some bits of the new edition of 40k and with so many space marine armies around in our local group I was keen to bring something not in powered armour to the table.  As I've posted previously I'm collecting a Grey Knights army based around Inquisition troops and various other sci-fi miniatures I am interested in.

Very recently I got a copy of Mantic's Project Pandora as I was keen to try the game as I had heard good things from Frontline Gamer and the designer himself.  My ulterior motive was to get some of Mantic's Corporation figures to see if they would be another good source of troopers for my slowly growing force.

The Status Quo guitar swing in full motion

So what do I make of these guys?  They are roughly the right size to go with my Heresy and Hasslefree troops, although somewhat more spindly (possibly more realistic but less fun!).  The figures come with very limited options - a few alternate heads and a few special weapons (which I elected not to use).  Not the end of the world in my experience, but even the repeated 3 fixed pose bodies are very similar meaning the overall look of the squad is very repetitive.

My favourite kind of trooper, one with no face

The figures arrived already removed from sprues so I'm not quite sure whether what comes in the game box is the same as what's in the squad box if you buy them separately.  I also discovered the plastic is somewhat different to the previous plastic Mantic used, superglue being a better choice with this stuff than liquid poly.

The guns I found really hard to paint for some reason, especially given the industrial polymer (or 'grey') look I am using on my guys.  They also look slightly bent to me - see the blue dude above.

One of these things is not like the others...

Like the rest of the troopers so far, I'm continuing the red and blue squad split.  I was originally planning to make each squad a different colour, but this limits the intermixing I can do - especially as I don't know what figures I will eventually put in the army overall.  Inquisition henchmen squads have a lot of options.

The powerfist equivalent thingy is pretty nice actually

Overall I didn't much enjoy painting this squad, the model's details are quite shallow which means most of the detail is sort of hinted at rather than nicely raised and accessible to paint - especially for rank and file troops (potentially as cheap as 3 points each) I'm not willing to spend a lot of time teasing out subtle details!  The guys do fit into the rest of my troopers reasonably well, especially when mixed in.  I don't think I'll be getting any more of these to increase my army size and I fear these chaps will long be the first casualties from a squad (which in the new rules means putting them in front...)

So moving on, and to prove I'm not unfairly judging these guys, its time to show off some other figures from my growing force.  I'm still experimenting with the best way to get photos of my figs (I will give up and get a lightbox at some point) so excuse the spam here!

First up and key to the selections I am making is Inquisitor Coteaz.  By taking this dude as my HQ I get to take henchmen as troops rather than elites, allowing me up to 6 squads!

This is the first Finecast figure I got from GW and despite a few issues (I had to sculpt a new finger, fix a toecap and a few bubbles) the detail is exceptional on this thing.  I've since varnished it, but for the first few games he was unprotected and no paint rubbed away so the material seems to be pretty good if you can get a good casting.  My Mannfred Von Carstein on foot is story for another day...

In contrast to my issues with the Mantic guys, this figure was sculpted to be painted.  Despite the density of the detail in places I had no trouble going to town on him and am very pleased with the final result.  I also changed the skin tone as a nice reference to Samuel L. Jackson in Star Wars - you'll notice the hammer has a purple (s)haft.

Next up is another Hasslefree figure, the Smudgester.  Despite being tiny (that's a 25mm base he's on) he's full of character and perfect for use as a Jokaero in my henchmen.  I quite like the orang-outangs of 40k but this guy is even cooler if you ask me.  He also reminds me a man-hound character from the Ravenor series of novels called Fyflank - we'll come back to his owner in future.  The Jokaero are also quite small and have some unique abilities in game, the key one illustrated by this figure is being able to fire one of a variety of very heavy weapons each turn so I am very happy with this proxy.  I've named him Frank in reference to Men In Black's little alien talking Pug dog.

Next up are a couple more ABC warriors (from Foundry) - I'm getting close to having them all done now.  This is Deadlock who despite being generally a nice model has a pretty awful sword blade - I might replace it at some point.  So aside from being armed with a spatula like weapon this is another figure I like a lot with a lot of cape to go to town painting.  In game so far I've used him as a lone Paladin - yes I've actually got a Grey Knight (proxy) in my Grey Knight army, don't worry there wont be many!  Turns out having a unit of one is quite a lot of fun and the rules aren't a bad match for Deadlock's character.

Here's Ro-Jaws.  He's a toilet cleaning bot in the stories, so I use him as a servitor, it sort of fits.  I've upgraded the heating unit in his head to a multi-melta so he can do more than just fling poop at my opponent.

Finally (usually for me) some sneak previews of future bits for this force.

First up is a Knight Paladin figure.  Based on a design a friend of mine came up with using pieces from all sorts of GW kits, this huge figure (that's a Dreadnought base) is a reference to the Epic games of yesteryear. I've decided to use this as a Dreadknight - if I ever get my Mongrol built I'll have 2 then!

To finish here's my first Chimera proxy.  Its a land train/ bull dozer thing from Ramshackle games. This was a bit of a pain to build but it looks great (and check out the prices) so I may just get several more when they reopen their store.  They are roughly the right size and again fit in with another character theme I am working towards in this force.

Privateer Press: Journeyman League - The Conclusion

So the Warmahordes Journeyman League came to an end a few weeks ago but I've not had time to post on how things went, so here's my round up post.  I've been fiddling with photography again this post and given up trying to lay the pictures out better on Blogger for the time being so excuse the rather scattered look!

So after my last post on the subject I had one round left to play before the league finished.  I was also trying to get some more bits painted before it all ended.  At the end of the league, games played, games won and figures painted all counted for points!

My final game was 35 points again Brian, using his Khador.  Brian is the very model of the best sporting attitude and he pointed out a number of things I was about to do wrong (turn order and so on) which meant I was able to play my force to their very best.  I did manage to win as a result, but Brian was very generous to allow me to do so!

I managed to get one of my favourite gators painted up in time - Snapjaw.  This guy is a character warbeast who hangs around with a mini-warlock called Wrong Eye.  The pair of them make a reasonably effective team and look great on the table.  I think I especially like Snapjaw because he reminds me of Godzilla - look at the profile in the first picture above to see what I mean.

The final scores for the league meant that thanks to me persistently turning up and playing (8 games), sometimes winning (4 games) and painting a fair old amount (3 large warbeasts, 5 medium infantry and 1 small solo) I collected piles of hobby points. It turns out I received the largest amount of painting points and came top overall as a result!

After the league finished, finally my Bullsnapper came into stock.  I love this little guy so have painted him up to near completion quickly.  This dude is much brighter than my other gators as I seem him being quite a different species and also rather nippy.  The colour scheme I think works nicely.

5" template for the Swampy Pit spell Barnabas uses to great effect

Part of the way of gators play allows me to set up swamps on the tables before the games starts and also create temporary pits throughout the game.  I decided to make some scenery to represent these rather than just use templates.  I've not completed all of them yet and intend to do a post showing how I went about it, but for now here's one of the big pits I've made complete with tree stump, fetid pools, grass clumps and little mushrooms!  This is also the reason my painted gators aren't based yet, I am still figuring out the best way of achieving a decent water effect.

Finally for this post, a shot of Steve the Mad Wizard's tower from last time.  Now completed with flock to match Rob's modular table in 7th Heaven, looking good!

Making your own fantasy scenery - Wizard's tower

Despite having a Blue Peter project box that's slowly taking over my entire gaming room, I rarely make scenery from scratch.  There's a lot of companies out there producing excellent stuff at good prices and I also have my Hirst mold that I've covered previously.  However over Easter 2011 my mad scientist friend Steve was visiting and after polishing off a tube of Pringles we came up with a 'make a wizards tower in a weekend' challenge.

The finished article

Well the photo above shows what we managed to make during that weekend.  Pretty pleased with it we were too as it was very much spur of the moment, no planning and frankly Steve is 97% enthusiasm and 3% skill I'm sure he wont mind admitting.  

So after selecting a couple of Pringles tubes as the basis we had to work out what we would do with the general look of the thing.  I have a lot of cardboard lying around so that allowed Steve to get cracking on the shingles for what inevitably had to be a conical roof.  This took a long time to make but looks great now its done.  Each roof is capped with a bit of baking foil.  I liked the idea of some bracing sections to break up the large wall surfaces so some thin card strips were added.

I also have some sheets of plasti-card for occasional conversion and basing jobs on miniatures so this allowed us to come up with the bridge, doors and windows for the double tower construction.  The window and door frames are deliberately wonky and a-symmetric - Steve was in an arty mood!

I had some spare bits from my Hirst molds that were put into use as jutting joists under the roofs and as abutments (I think that's what they are) on the bridge.  We also used a couple of wooden coffee stirrers as braces on the bridge as these are a bit thicker than card and there was no need to bend them.

The towers are mounted on a double layer of packing polystyrene I'd been saving.  Using a hot wire cutter Steve created the rough shapes you see and I then hot glue gunned the two sections together and to a mounting card base.  

My dog photo bombed the original shot, so here he is in full, glorious fluff-o-vision

The hill base also had some slots cut into it to allow some steps to be forced in, leading up to the front door - you'll see them more clearly further down.  Once the main sections were arranged, the entire thing was glued together with a combination of hot glue, PVA and when all else failed cello-tape!  Some loose sand and gravel was added in places to add further variety to the hill.

The hill section was coated in artex to give it texture and hide the polystyrene - this also meant it wouldn't melt when I under-coated it!  Just to be extra sure I also painted this section with my latex primer to give it even more of a sealed coating and further texture.  finally the joins between the tower and the base were hidden using wood filler.  This stuff is great and I have more things I want to show where I've used this in future.

Its black, BLACK!

A quick spray undercoat of black and we are ready to paint.  It could have been white, but black allowed me to be a little slapdash and not worry about every spot.  This is gaming scenery so its going to take knocks  so it only needed to look effective not win any awards.

A front view

So here it is 'completed'.  Well the painting is anyway.  This is going to live in my local gaming store so I am going to let Rob flock it to suit his boards, so some of the brown areas will have a nice green fuzz effect on them shortly.  I'll snap a shot of this once he's sorted that out.

Rear view

As you can see I've picked a slightly strange colour scheme, something Steve and I discussed and agreed on was that this tower belongs to a fairly eccentric mage so purple and light bluey-white it is.

Main door

Here's the front door.  All made out of plasti-card apart from the door knocker which is a spare bit from another kit I'll show at some point in the future.  Wood effect was simply scored into the plastic with a sharp craft knife.

Stairs

Here's the stairs, I can't actually remember what they are made of, but being quite thick its probably balsa or foam card.  Artex provided some texture but they are a bit slap dash!

Walkway between towers

Last shot, so you can see the bridge section has somewhere to place miniatures and Steve even went to the effort to make a pair of wonky doors too.  The gantry has wood effect scored into it too.