Coopdevil
Member
Back in June I went up to the Phalanx show in St Helens aiming to buy a bunch of Critical Mass Games 15mm "Arc Fleet Augments" and start a 15mm Rogue Trader project. I was even reading Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" on my Kindle while travelling up there on the train which seemed to be a curious case of synchronity (there's an passage in there whereby Earth sends up a load of crack troops to assault the rebellious Lunar colonies - the battle is in the tunnels and passageways of the domed city and the Earth forces get done over badly because they aren't used to moving the weak gravity of the Moon. It struck me as the sort of thing that 1987 vintage 40K was all about). I bought a big bag of little mans and rode the train home to the Great Mercian Post-Industrial Archology in (Imperium dating) 013 M43 with great plans.
And then I painted one, possibly on the same day I bought them and then sidelined the whole thing.
Last Sunday I was in Wilkinsons (UK household goods store) and found one of these
Which got me thinking about a 15mm sci-fi game in which these were armoured transports. This then brought to mind a guilty thought about a certain forgotten project...
...and as I was between projects having just finished off a starter set of Cryx for Warmachine I decided to drag it out of retirement.
A week later and I have the first Not-Space Marine squad painted.
Colour-wise, the chapter is this
The base colour is GW Khorne Red, washed with Army Painter Strong Tone Ink (this is quite clearly Devlan Mud rebottled) and two coats of gloss. Because I like gloss and when I was first buying the Dwarf, the first few 'Eavy Metal articles were full of John Blanche and Aly Morrison's figures and they were covered in great, thick coats of rock-hard gloss varnish. Nobody else likes gloss and it is massively out of fashion. But I don't care. I even like the tactile feel of gloss varnished figures when you pick them up.
As for the hovercraft, it looked a bit too small next to the Arc Fleet Augments to become a plausible APC. But it did remind me of the Galahad Light GEV from Steve Jackson Games' OGRE.
So I went back to the W40K-RT rulebook to look at the rules for Hover vehicles. The example Hover-er is the Land Speeder which wouldn't really fit as that is an open-topped vehicle that probably derives from the "air rafts" of Traveller and Laserburn (themselves descendants of Luke Skywalker's X-34 from Star Wars) but then I remembered this old favourite - the Grav-Attack!
That's a light Hover scout/attack tank thing so that gave me something to play with in a "count as" manner. Simple paint job, more gloss and this becomes the first of my Not-Grav-Attacks.
(I've since been on a trawl around every local supermarket toy section, two branches of Wilkinsons and two branches of TRU and can't find any more of these Amphi-Flyers
This is somewhat hampering my dreams of a large scale Grav Attack assault appearing on a table in the Dudley area anytime soon).
This morning, my order from Ion Age arrived. Obviously what follows are their photos but as you can see these are 15mm versions of an old Alternative Armies range from the 1990s. I should be able to churn out three squads of CMG Arc Fleet Augments and then a load more of these;
They remind me very much of the original release of C100 Space Marines that had armour that had a bit more "greebling" that the later releases (i.e. the ones contempory to the original release of W40K-RT).
Another die-cast find are these Hot Wheels "Sky Knifes". A kind of futuristic helicopter/autogyro.
I'm in no real rush to do anything with these (which would probably only be a quick paint conversion) but long term plans are to field them as Orgus Flyers.
Currently on the painting table - varnishing and groundworking of Squad #2.
Rules-wise I'm not going to change any of the measurements in 40K. Many years ago I saw a 15mm sci-fi game at my local club in which the ranges, move distances and spacing between troops all looked quite similar to contempory 40K. It actually looked better than 28mm. Not the individual figures, but just the "density" of everything and looked a million times better than the rugby scrums with giant vehicles and seige guns that seems to represent the modern game. To my mind, 28mm figures are actually too big for 40K measurements.
(This isn't unique to 40K, WW2 ruleset Bolt Action has recently proven too be quite popular at my club and I have seen it played in 28mm and 20mm - the later looked far better and more realistic).
Obviously the 15mm weaponry doesn't match the real 40K stuff. A hand gun is a hand gun so there is no problem with assuming that the main sidearm carried by the CMG and Ion Age figures is a Bolter but it starts to fall apart when you get up to Heavy weapons. Actually I don't care. I'm tempted to use the random equipment generation and just assume that the big weapon is a "placeholder" for whatever Heavy weapon is randomly generated (Heavy Bolter, Plasma Gun, Grenade Launcher etc.) and the medium/SAW-type is the other weapon (Flamer, Graviton Gun, Plasma Gun etc.). I might not even require these weapons to be identified to the enemy until they open up.
Coop
And then I painted one, possibly on the same day I bought them and then sidelined the whole thing.
Last Sunday I was in Wilkinsons (UK household goods store) and found one of these
Which got me thinking about a 15mm sci-fi game in which these were armoured transports. This then brought to mind a guilty thought about a certain forgotten project...
...and as I was between projects having just finished off a starter set of Cryx for Warmachine I decided to drag it out of retirement.
A week later and I have the first Not-Space Marine squad painted.
Colour-wise, the chapter is this
The base colour is GW Khorne Red, washed with Army Painter Strong Tone Ink (this is quite clearly Devlan Mud rebottled) and two coats of gloss. Because I like gloss and when I was first buying the Dwarf, the first few 'Eavy Metal articles were full of John Blanche and Aly Morrison's figures and they were covered in great, thick coats of rock-hard gloss varnish. Nobody else likes gloss and it is massively out of fashion. But I don't care. I even like the tactile feel of gloss varnished figures when you pick them up.
As for the hovercraft, it looked a bit too small next to the Arc Fleet Augments to become a plausible APC. But it did remind me of the Galahad Light GEV from Steve Jackson Games' OGRE.
So I went back to the W40K-RT rulebook to look at the rules for Hover vehicles. The example Hover-er is the Land Speeder which wouldn't really fit as that is an open-topped vehicle that probably derives from the "air rafts" of Traveller and Laserburn (themselves descendants of Luke Skywalker's X-34 from Star Wars) but then I remembered this old favourite - the Grav-Attack!
That's a light Hover scout/attack tank thing so that gave me something to play with in a "count as" manner. Simple paint job, more gloss and this becomes the first of my Not-Grav-Attacks.
(I've since been on a trawl around every local supermarket toy section, two branches of Wilkinsons and two branches of TRU and can't find any more of these Amphi-Flyers
This is somewhat hampering my dreams of a large scale Grav Attack assault appearing on a table in the Dudley area anytime soon).This morning, my order from Ion Age arrived. Obviously what follows are their photos but as you can see these are 15mm versions of an old Alternative Armies range from the 1990s. I should be able to churn out three squads of CMG Arc Fleet Augments and then a load more of these;
They remind me very much of the original release of C100 Space Marines that had armour that had a bit more "greebling" that the later releases (i.e. the ones contempory to the original release of W40K-RT).
Another die-cast find are these Hot Wheels "Sky Knifes". A kind of futuristic helicopter/autogyro.
I'm in no real rush to do anything with these (which would probably only be a quick paint conversion) but long term plans are to field them as Orgus Flyers.
Currently on the painting table - varnishing and groundworking of Squad #2.
Rules-wise I'm not going to change any of the measurements in 40K. Many years ago I saw a 15mm sci-fi game at my local club in which the ranges, move distances and spacing between troops all looked quite similar to contempory 40K. It actually looked better than 28mm. Not the individual figures, but just the "density" of everything and looked a million times better than the rugby scrums with giant vehicles and seige guns that seems to represent the modern game. To my mind, 28mm figures are actually too big for 40K measurements.
(This isn't unique to 40K, WW2 ruleset Bolt Action has recently proven too be quite popular at my club and I have seen it played in 28mm and 20mm - the later looked far better and more realistic).
Obviously the 15mm weaponry doesn't match the real 40K stuff. A hand gun is a hand gun so there is no problem with assuming that the main sidearm carried by the CMG and Ion Age figures is a Bolter but it starts to fall apart when you get up to Heavy weapons. Actually I don't care. I'm tempted to use the random equipment generation and just assume that the big weapon is a "placeholder" for whatever Heavy weapon is randomly generated (Heavy Bolter, Plasma Gun, Grenade Launcher etc.) and the medium/SAW-type is the other weapon (Flamer, Graviton Gun, Plasma Gun etc.). I might not even require these weapons to be identified to the enemy until they open up.
Coop
) but I can get them in the UK it's just that it involves expensive (rip off) postage. eBay would be running at about £5 for one compared with £1.25 in the shops - then again, the petrol has probably ended up costing me as much as just biting the bullet and ebaying them in the first place...
