King Kong & Pals: A Monster Movie Figure Set

Another old project from 2013 using a mix of Old Glory 15mm tribesmen and a Reaper giant gorilla figure to do a King Kong/Skull Island-themed figure set.

 

 

The Old Glory minis come in the usual nice variety of sculpts, and this is just one of many styles ("tribes") they make, many of them a bit "Hollywood" feeling. 

 

You can find the whole range here:

 

https://www.oldglory25s.com/index.php?page=1&cat_id=1068

 

They come with shields in a variety of types, but I went without for these guys to keep the costume and prop budget down.

 

The big guy is a 28mm scale Reaper fig from the days before Bones came along.

 

Think I paid $25-ish for him in metal when he first came out, a bargain for the weight.

 

That was up to $45 the last time I looked, which means next time I need a giant primate it's the toy store for me.

 

Nicely detailed, as you'd expect from a Jason Wiebe sculpt.

 

Admittedly a bit small compared to the original movie monster (and a runt compared to the Tojo or Kaijuverse versions) but still good sized.

 

Perhaps it's a juvenile Kong, or an Exceptionally Mighty Joe Not-So-Young instead?

Combat Wombat 15mm Scifi Vehicles

Combat Wombat has been out of business for years now, and his old range languishes in limbo over at Skullduggery Press, but several people were wishing for images of the models for posterity's sake.  Some digging around in old photos (over a decade now, in some cases) turned up a few, at least.  No idea what these were called in the original catalog, but at least they're photos.

 

Some light grav tanks, most converted with a Rebel Miniatures Grey in the commander's hatch and added flight bases.

 

 

The turrets were drilled and pinned to let them rotate, and the bases were left unglued for ease of transport.

 

Some heavy hover tanks and a mobile artillery blower to go with them.  Think they shared some components, and the gun barrels are the signature turned-aluminum ones CW was so generous with.

 

I was definitely thinking Hammer's Slammers when I gave them all names.  Artillery hogs are apparently my spirit animal.

 

These were IFVs, and shared design features with a small family of models, including an APC and a smaller version as some kind of recon scout IIRC.

 

Probably some minor conversions to the turrets, but I can't swear to it.

Modular Robot Miniatures: 28mm Old Glory Showcase

Taking a look at Old Glory's 28mm scale modular robot set today, with some images dating back to 2012 (and painted even earlier).

 

 

You can find the unpainted version on their store here:

 

Make-Your-Own Robots

 

The full set gives you 13 different bodies and enough arms and heads to leave you with plenty of spares when you've assembled everything.

 

They theoretically cost $49 and can be purchased that way, but they're part of their collection of free figures that you get when signing up for their Old Glory Army deal:

 

Old Glory Army Membership Deal

 

So, you could pay $50, get a 40% discount on most of the figures they make for a year, and get this set of figures for free. 

 

That's quite a bit like paying a net $1 for a year's worth of 40% off on whatever else you order from them.

 

Kind of obviously a good deal, so I suspect they don't actually sell many of these sets at retail.

 

The models are nicely varied and depending on how you paint them, the sculpts will feel either retro-sci, Star Wars-ish, or (as I was shooting for with these ten) a grungy low-budget Ice Pirate kind of vibe.

 

They obviously make excellent PC figures for Star Wars roleplaying.

 

Also useful for scifi skirmish rules like Rogue Stars, Five parsecs From Home, Void pirates, etc.

 

Not out of place in near-future post-Apocalypse settings either, although you might want to convert them to be more beat-up in that case.

 

Bit harder to use them in mass combat scifi since you really can't get whole units of the same body design easily.

 

Suppose you could have a heterogenous squad of them for that, but there are better options for "trooper" bots IMO:

 

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2018/03/dance-puppets-deadzone-marionette-kit.html

 

More of a Lost In Space feel on this one, with perhaps a nod to Robby from Forbidden Planet.  IIRC this is the only body variant that doesn't have a separate head.

 

I like the way the sculpt evokes that feel (especially with that those arms) without being a direct knockoff.

 

Some of them really scale-jump to 15mm well, as this shot of two robo-gladiators with some 15mm Ground Zero Games figs acting as their tech support staff.

 

 

Particularly fond of the orange tripod design here, even my 8 year old paint job and photography doesn't really do it justice.

 

Think I've done three sets of these over the years, and the many spare parts that's generated have helped with quite a bit of kitbashing as well.

 

Starship Terrain Part 2: Battlefleet Gothic / Full Thrust Gas Clouds, Asteroid Fields, Warp Rifts

A few years back I did a showcase gallery of some starship terrain pieces:

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2017/08/starship-terrain-custom-planets-moons.html

At the time I couldn't find images of all the "area" terrain I'd done for Battlefleet Gothic back in the early 2000's, which also got pressed into service in other rule sets.  Finally stumbled across them in an old file the other day so here's a follow up post.

I find "area" or "zone" terrain works best as flats, since most rule systems let ships enter and move through them.  3D terrain looks great, but it's impractical to balance ship minis on.  Hence all of these were made of thin plastic sheeting, about the same thickness as cereal box cardboard but much more durable and basically immune to getting wet.  They were cut into irregular shapes that roughly matched the range of sizes you could get with BFG's random terrain generator system, and I made enough that we usually had a more-or-less exact match for whatever the dice rolled up.  Everything was heavily matte-coated after painting and held up for several years of play and transport without visible wear.

 

The gas/dust clouds were sponge-painted using three different color palettes.

 

The blue/purple/pink set was the most whimsical, and included the infamous Colon Nebula.  The brighter sides were usually aligned toward the "sunward" table edge, which made remembering what directions were slow or speedy for Eldar much easier. 

 

The red/orange/yellow set got used preferentially for fights in the inner system, nearer the local star.

 

And the green/more green set included some of the most elaborate shapes.  They also got a bit of orange on some pieces to mark sunward, as well as to spice them up a bit.  Bit blander than I'd intended for these.

 

The asteroid fields were hand-painted, one rock at a time.  They're very simple paint schemes, if a bit time consuming.  Varying the size and shape and configurations of the asteroids helped make the shades-of-gray palette more interesting to look at. 

 

I made a point of doing a basic light/shadow effect on each piece so the rocks all share a uniform sunward side.  The templates for these were left rounded rather than the irregular gas clouds so it was a little easier to move without accidentally clipping, which is quite dangerous in BFG or Full Thrust.

 

Only did a few warp rifts, which are rare results on the random charts.  They were sprayed silver, then the "wave front" of intruding warpspace was painted in by hand.  I deliberately left one edge flat in an attempt to make them as unnatural-looking as possible, although if I do more in the future I'll probably do a full "border" on fully-irregular shapes instead.

 

Long since sold these off, but seeing them again has me feeling an itch to try another set and see how I can improve on them with almost a decade's more experience.

Rebel Minis 15mm Scifi Alien Worms Showcase

Looking back to 2014 today to show off some more models from Rebel Miniatures.

You can find these models unpainted on their web store here:

http://www.rebelminis.com/sandwurm.html

http://www.rebelminis.com/riwoofse4.html

The worm-holes were handmade out of some putty on a 1" washer base, although Rebel sells something very similar in resin along with some terror-mites here:

http://www.rebelminis.com/temiwbugho.html

The sand worm here was formerly a Starship Troopers figure, but has been redone as a three pieces miniature, with two resin body halves and a metal mouth section. 

The smaller ripper worms make nice companions models for the big boy, either as larva forms or just a related species from the same alien ecology.

As you can see, they're still pretty big in 15mm.

All of them could scale jump to 28mm without a problem, and they could work in scifi, fantasy, or horror settings as well.  Nice, versatile, inexpensive figs.  Hard not to like.

Rebel Miniatures Brog 15mm Scifi Showcase

Today we're looking back into 2013 again and taking a look at some more 15mm scifi figures.

These are Rebel Miniatures alien Brog infantry, which you can buy unpainted at his web store:

http://www.rebelminis.com/alandve.html

The paint jobs are a bit dated, the photography more so, but I think they show off the sculpts adequately.

For some reason I don't see a ton of Rebel stuff online, which seems strange to me.

His prices are quite good, he's got a nice range of sculpts within each of many factions, and he's in the US, which is a big plus in terms of shipping costs these days - well, if you live here, anyway.

Admittedly, his alien races are almost all humanoid rather than freakier looking stuff like GZG's Xar or Ixx, but they have consistent styles of weaponry, which is a plus.

Their gear looks just different enough to obviously be from different armies across the various races, while still looking like they share similar technology bases.

I'm particularly fond of the little orbs on many figs' backs, which I've summarily decided are combination power packs and personal shield generators.