Elven Heavy Cavalry (Gripping Beast Goth Elite Cavalry)

 At Salute 2023, Renedra had an offer on Gripping Beast plastic box sets. On the Lead Adventures forum someone had used the Goth Elite Cavalry as Elven Cavalry with a suitable head transplant..

So a box was added to my load.

The box is of standard dimensions and contains four sprues, each sprue builds three cavalry figures.

Each sprue has seven heads, three shields, four lances, two swords (with optional two axes) and two standards (one of which is a Draco style one).

The head/body joint is a flat iron shaped neck on the body and a corresponding flat area on the underside of the head.

For elves, the helmeted heads from the Oathmark Elf light infantry was used. They have a ball joint, so a pilot hole was drilled into the neck part of the body, and that was opened up with larger diameter drills until a 3mm drill made the correct size for the head.

The horse had a feather from the same sprue added to the head with the feather projecting back between the ears. I did contemplate making them unicorns, but they were not bulky enough.

Salute 2023

 Salute 2023 returned to Excel. The entrance was at N10, the queue ran along the north side from N4 to N10.

Gringo's 40 American Embassy game set during the Tet Offensive,

Demonstration Oathmark game.

Soviet Cold War Desant

 Not finished...

War-games Atlantic Harvesters

 Wargames Atlantic recently released a box set of Alien Bugs they call Harvesters.

This is a set of comparison photographs.

William Killian and a Stargrave Zombie.

Hasslefree figures from a Galaxy not so far away.

The harvesters occupy a lot of space and need large bases, limiting their use in enclosed spaces.

Anvil Orbital Fusileers.

Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder bodies with Stargrave heads.

Stargrave and Anvil.

Great Escape Games Gunslinger with Stargrave arms and head, and an Anvil Robot.

Anvil Exo-Lord sized robot and Exo-Lord.

Implements of Carnage

 

While ordering some other things from North Star, I added the two Implements of Carnage plastic sets.

The first sprue contains various upgrade pieces to convert die cast cars (and a motorbike).

The second sprue has another motorbike and a dune buggy plus lots of interesting bits and pieces.

Wrecked Starship

 First shot of a piece of Blotz Crashed Starship terrain on my new sectional base board.

Empress BMD-01 progress

 As mentioned back in February, I received a BMD-1 from Empress.

It is now assembled and base painted.

So the detailing included an aerial on the left rear deck, cables attached to fittings on the hull nose and stretching back to the rear of the hull. Rubicon cable ends were used, the cable is brass wire. Holes are drilled into the hull a distance from end point (the distance being such that the cable ends will hook over the bracket and the ends of the wire). This secures the wire (the hole at one end is made very deep so that the wire can be tensioned by pushing the wire into the hole) and gives the impression the cable end is attached to the cable.

Notches were filed into the nose for the two bow mounted machine guns.

A rotating periscope on the rear hatch. A piece of thin plastic card is placed into a paper punch and a circular piece cut from the plastic. A piece of Slater's 0.06" microstrip makes the periscope.

The aerial is a piece of 1mm brass rod. The base is made from a piece of Plastruct rod.

It was at this point I noticed that the model was missing the periscopes just behind of the turrets. Again strips of Mircostrip provided the periscope heads.

The periscopes were painted with Humbrol 34 White acrylic (shown in the above photographs). They were then painted with Army Painter Deep Blue. The headlights are also Humbrol White.

This is the base painted model with Rubicon Soviet Tank and T26 decals. The numbers are from the Soviet Tank set (DCSV01) and the number in a triangle from the T26 set (DCSV05).

The grills have been shaded with Citadel Camoshade, as has the periscopes and hatches.

It now awaits final weathering and shading.