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.

Five Leagues from the Borderlands Party

As mentioned earlier, I bought Five Leagues from the Borderlands back in October.

So, having rolled up the four heroes and two followers, this is what I started with:

Heroes:

• Noble: Partial Armour; Helmet; Shield; Quality Weapon
• Mystic: Partial Armour; Basic Weapon;
• Townsfolk: Light Armour, Quality Weapon
• Frontier Woman: Quality Weapon; LightArmour

Followers:

• Militia: Light Armour; Self Bow
• Wiley Rogue: Basic Weapon

Having created the party, it was off to the Sprue pile to build the figures.

The majority of the figures were built from Frostgrave sprues, with some Oathmark and FireForge for variety.

Noble

I wanted something different to the the Oathmark Human infantry. I did look at the Frostgrave Knights as a source, but decided that the Fireforge Almughavars would do for a starting out Noble.

The arms are from the Frostgrave Knights sprue, as is the head.

The Mystic is based on a Frostgrave female Wizard. The arms and the head are also from the same sprue.

The Townsfolk figure is from the Frostgrave Soldiers sprue, as is the head

The feather is from the Oathmark Elf Light Infantry.

The Frontier Woman is from the Frostgrave Barbarian II sprue

The Militia Follower is built from the Fireforge Byzantine Auxilia using an unarmoured body and the bow arms. Due to the different head/neck arrangements for these bodies compared to the Frostgrave/Oathmark/Fireforge Almugavar figures, a head from the Auxiliary was used..

A quiver and other items will need added.

The Wiley Rogue is built using the body from the Ghost Archipelago Sailors sprue, the arms an 

Here are photographs of the whole party.

Fireforge Living Dead Peasants.

One of the Enemy tables in Five Leagues from the Borderlands is Whispers from Beyond, with a lot of Undead types. Though I have a large number of Oathmark Skeletons, I needed  some more Zombie types. Looking at the ranges available, I decided that the Living Dead Peasants looked like a good match.

FireForge's Living Dead Peasants is part of their Forgotten World range.

Supplied in a standard sized box it makes 18 unarmoured zombie/undead figures.

The box contains three identical sprues. Each sprue makes six figures, four male and two female (not quite the result of an equal opportunities necromancer).

Each sprue can build three unarmed zombies plus three armed with two handed (mainly improvised) weapons or six armed with a hand weapon. There is a bit of a shortage of empty hands for the the hand weapons (I managed to get two with hand weapons in addition to the three unarmed ones - there is one additional empty hand, and one of the ones with a hand weapon has a lantern).

There are nine heads, two of which are female. One head has a corvid having a snack.

Here are the six assembled from one sprue.

Side views of the six figures.

As is normal for the FireForge fantasy figures, they are notably taller and bulkier than the Oathmark figures. However, they do not have "puddle" bases, so their head height is not that bad compared to Oathmark.

Oathmark Skeleton, Fireforge Living Dead Peasant, Oathmark Human Infantry and Oathmark Revenant infantry.

In Five Leagues from the Borderlands, the maximum number of zombie types is eleven, so there will be some conversions required so I do not need to buy an extra box.

Empress BMD-1 IFV

 After "One Thing and Another", and before the current unpleasantness, Empress released a range of Cold War Soviet Paratroopers as opposition to their BAOR British infantry. I have just got round to ordering them. So they do not have to walk very far, and to give them some punch, here is the Empress BMD-1.

This has been re-worked from the HLBSCo version, an example of the original HLBSCo BMD-2 has been featured here, and is still awaiting finishing.

The first thing you will note is that the track guards are now metal, a major improvement as at some point before assembly I managed to break the resin ones on the BMD-2.

This will not have as much stowage as the BMD-2 as it will be representing a vehicle early in the conflict and so will be regulation rather than many years in the field (and having been air-dropped).

It will need the periscope fitted to the rear hatch, some aerials and probably the bow mounted machine guns.

Some research is required on the equipment placing.