Red Star and Perry

For the benefit of anyone intending to make conversions using the Red Star range and Perry miniatures here is a quick thing I threw together. It is a Red Star head with Bigeard Cap on a body from the Perry plastic Desert Rats box.

I leave it up to the reader to decide what works size-wise and what can be done by a bit more work on the neck joint, but this will at least show you the size Red Star with Perry.

I have done another head swap on a figure from the Perry plastics box. This is a Warlord Celt head used to make an LRDG trooper.

1st section of Perry Desert Rats

I tried to get at least a section each of Brits and DAK ready for GothCon. That did not happen, due to work and the oncoming flu that also ate most of my GothCon experience, but I did finish one section and here they are. The goal here is a full British platoon and at least a section of DAK.

These are intended for CoC with the Section Leader on a hex base for easy ID.

Second squad of Martians

The second Martian squad is finished. The bases are just flat grey for the moment. Since they are essentially board game pieces, I will do all the bases in a style that fits the gaming mat once all the minis are painted.
This makes 20 regular Martian Grunts and finishes that part of my Martian forces. I also have 5 Martian Marines, 5 Martian Stealth Troopers, about a dozen Science Troops including a big-ass ant and half a dozen Martian characters, a Flying Saucer and a Giant Stompy Robot. For the humans we are looking at ten soldiers, a dozen heroes, some allied aliens and the Novas Vira gang.

The dream is still to finish the whole lot before Dungeon Saga is delivered, but we'll have to see about that.

You can't see it in this picture, but they have a white stripe on their nitrogen tanks to distinguish them from 1st squad. And in case someone wonders, their helmets were attached using super glue and no misting occurred.

How kine of you!

These lovely animals are from Warbases and I bought them to serve as either loot or table dressing for the Dux Gondorum campaign. I have some boars that will serve as semi-domestic pigs as well, but these are not painted yet.
The paint job on these is quick and dirty:block paint, a drybrush and a dark wash because let's face it, no matter how cool highland cattle are, they will never be the centre piece of an army so a quick job will have to do. Now I need to dig out my wattle fence and get that painted as well, or else they will just wander off the table.

GothCon 2015, we hardly knew ye

The last two years we have been going to the eminent gaming convention GothCon. Last year Laffe and I ran Chain of Command in NWE 1944. This time we opted for Chain of Command but in the desert. We had the toys, the tools and the talent. Only one minor problem:one of us also had the flu. To illustrate the situation:below are all the photos I took over a three day gaming convention.

 The hotel. Great place.

 View from the room. Yes, that is a boardgame café across the road!

 A guy with a cool T-shirt.

 Our favourite sushi place.

 The mug my better half gave me for use while gaming.

 The setup for the first game.

 Our info and display table.

A patrol phase in progress.

That was it. I spent more time taking naps than I did running games. Our involvement was still a success thanks to the efforts of the other three lads: Laffe, Koen and Jocke.

I really, really hope I stay healthy next year, especially since I have promised to run and First Indo-China War game. 

Bank Holiday Painting

It has been far too long since I updated. A lot of fun stuff, such as GothCon and some less fun stuff, such as the flu, has happened since then. I will talk more about GothCon later. The flu, well, the less said the better, to be honest,

Friday May 1 was a public holiday in Sweden and I celebrated by painting miniatures. I finished Claus von Richthofen for Dust and an MG42 gunner for my WW2 winter project. I also did five Martians but they will show up once I finish the rest of their squad.

First, Claus. I am not really happy with the way his splittertarn trousers turned out, the edges of the pattern are too soft and the pattern itself is not quite right, but he will have to do. I'd rather go on to all the other wonderful figures I have waiting than redo one in the hope of getting it better.

An MG42 gunner from CP Models. Not really happy with the way he turned out either, but he has been sitting on my desk for a year, it was time to get him finished and moved on. Same here, I have tons of lovely minis, including a Schwimmwagen in the pipeline.

Building a Sarissa Far East House, part 1

As a part of my long on-going French Indo-China project, I bought a house from Sarissas Far East range. This is part 1, a review of the actual building of the model, with lots of pictures. If you found this by googling Sarissa review and can't be bothered to read it all, here is the Executive Summary: The Sarissa stuff is amazing. Buy it!

The house stands on a platform, so the first step is to construct that platform on the base plate.

 Cross-support in place

 Frame support goes around the cross support

I put the floor bit on top of the support platform to make sure that the struts fit in the holes in the floor and left it there while the glue dried on the support beams.

 Floor piece in place temporarily

Next step is the house itself. The floor piece taken off the supports and put down, then the inner walls, that would be the palm leaf screens in reality, are fitted into holes in the floor.

 Inner walls raised

Next the frame/outer wall goes on. No holes for these pieces except for the front balcony railing, but clear marks on the inner walls that shows how to align them correctly. 

 Frame goes on

 Roof. I added a cut-out from the frame to give extra stability

 The roof in place

And that is the whole lot. It was all done in an evening including time for the glue to dry (that is why the glue is still white in some pics). It goes together like a dream, quite simply. My only other MDF buildings are from 4Ground. By comparison, these have less surface detail but cleaner fitting pieces. 

The whole assembly, from the bottom.

 Base with support beams

 House added on top

 Roof in place

Stairs slot into place

I am currently painting the whole affair, next update will contain the finished product and some comparison shots with the Red Star miniatures that will be fighting over these buildings.