The Latest 15mm Madness: Finished and Based and Ready for Action!

As promised, shots of the finished Dread Cheddar Wedges of Death otherwise known as the new 15mm anti-grav AFVs from Darkest Star Games based on one of my original kitbashed creations! So, without further adieu about nothing:

One of the two new panzerknackers alongside one of the original kitbashed anti-grav panzerknackers for comparison:

And one of the new APCs besides its creative ancestor:

Rear view of the original and the new APC:

Close up of the APC's passenger access ramp:

I am very pleased with the way that Darby was able to translate my kitbashed original through 3D into this new family of modular combat machines. These are available now through Darkest Star Games, and Darby has assured me that there will be more designs forthcoming based upon my kitbashing madness featured on this blog, so stay tuned to your TBD receivers for future announcements and other feats of creative madness and derring-do!

Oh, and silly me! Here's the link to the Darkest Star Games website: http://www.darkeststargames.com

Various and Sundry On and Off the Workbench!

Here's the first installment of a photo tour of what's been a-cookin' on my workbench and rolling off to the Great Outdoors of our little patio to be sprayed with Testor's Dullcote for your amusement and consideration! We begin with what happens when one of my original kitbashed creations meets modern 3D computer modeling skill and technology, the end result of Darby Eckles of Darkest Star Games taking a fancy to my 15mm scale cheese wedge-shaped heavy anti-grav panzerknackers and deciding that they were the perfect basis for the armored support for a new canid alien race he's been planning for a while now...

As you can see I wasted no time in assembling the four samples Darby sent me, two apiece of the panzerknacker and APC variants. Each is cast in only four (4) separate parts, two ball mounted gatling guns, a sensor/targeting array for the commander's cupola, and a frontal mounted weapon system consisting of either a twin gatling gun and smoke grenade dischargers, or one of three possible weapon choices for the panzerknacker: 

Besides the hypervelocity rail gun I chose to mount on my two shiny new panzerknackers, there was a  conventional style main gun barrel and a heavy rocket-boosted howitzer option included in each kit. I designed the original trio of wedge-of-gouda shaped AFVs with two conventional gun-armed tank destroyers and a single heavy howitzer model, and outlined my creative vision to Darby that the machine is essentially an extraterrestrial anti-grav analogue to the WW2 era German Army self-propelled assault gun family built on the ubiquitous Panzerkampfwagen IV tank chassis:

After a coat of flat black spray primer I proceeded to paint the alien quartet of armored anti-grav doom in a scheme that would look suitably alien enough yet be effective camouflage in an alien environment (and give me an excuse to use my favorite color -purple- on an otherwise somewhat serious sci-fi subject):

I developed the pattern by borrowing elements of design from both the late WW2 German camouflage patterns prevalent on their tanks and AFVs near the end of the war, and the patterns found on French tanks from the early period of the same conflict. I added an extra layer of extraterrestrial authenticity thanks to my being a hoarder of decals from models and projects past, in this case some very effective Zentraedi insignia from Macross kits some 25 years ago and kept until the right project just happened to come along:

 Here the Fearsome Anti-Grav Foursome receive their mandatory coating of Testor's Dullcote flat spray finish to seal the models and blend the decals into the paint work along with yet more space fighters for Silent Death and a pair of the new S-Model 1/72 scale Hotchkiss H-35 fast build kits:

As far as I am concerned Darby has done an excellent job of interpreting the original kitbashed models and translating them into their new, resin incarnations, in a number of ways I would say better than the originals! The triangular shape really lends itself to conveying an very non-human take on just how to best arrange the target profile of an AFV from a non-human perspective, particularly that of a canid alien evolved from a pack hunting social carnivore. As these were drying I was assembling the bases for these anti-grav hunter-killers using some pre-cut oval wood plaques from Michael's craft store, some plastic bottle caps, and white Tacky Glue. Some paint and flock, and the next shots will showcase the models on their bases along with the original kitbashed creation that served as Darby's physical guide through this project.

So stay tuned, Space Possums, as there's more to come....


Next Installment: The Finished Models on Bases and Further Mischief!

EDIT: For those of you interested in these marvelous little nasties, here's the link to Darkest Star Games:  http://www.darkeststargames.com

All kinds of fun stuff to be had from this growing line of 15mm sci-fi goodness! >;)

A Quick Update: Finished the Beastie!

I did! I did! I did! And ain't she a purdy beastie, seen here in the kitchen the night I finished the paint scheme and cleaned up the detailing:

The next day came the Dullcote:

And I promise I'll get some better pix shot and posted as soon as possible, as I am eager to break this nasty brute in as a 10,000 ton torpedo-heavy destroyer for Silent Death: The Next Millennium...

...And Then There Were More Starships!

Yup. As the 70s rolled along into the 80s more variety crept into the starship miniatures available, including the Space Squadrons 2998 series from Grenadier Miniatures. While I did manage to acquire the boxed set I never managed to get enough of the ships to really satisfy me desire for a galaxy conquering armada thanks to my measly allowance and the then perennial problem of not having found either a satisfactory  set of rules for starship miniatures combat that was generic enough to allow me to design my own ships nor the dratted basic problem of how to base the ships themselves and make them look good! So alas, I lost interest, and eventually sold off the Space Squadron 2998 ships that I did have to my eventual and eternal regret, but I did manage to retain a handful, a pair of the sleek Aurora class strike cruisers, the minelayer which remains to this day I think the best starship miniature of its class ever, and the repair tender which I have buried in storage at the moment so I'll have to post a shot or two on a later date.

Here in all their late 70s early 80s glory are the Auroras painted and based as New Anglian Confederation strike cruisers for Full Thrust, and the minelayer based as a generic enough human vessel ready to muck up the spacing lanes with a whole passel of 600 gigaton space mines ready to slide off the racks:

Later in the 1980s along came some very fetching plastic kits from Japan into the local hobby shop, and among them were some small, relatively inexpensive plastic kits of various starships from the classic anime Space Battleship Yamato. Here I thought might be a means to revive my space combat gaming hopes and aspirations. I collected quite a number during this period, but alas, the twin problems of no acceptable rules and no acceptable bases mitigated once again to drive me back to focusing on ground combat and using up the majority of my cheap plastic starship kits as parts for other kitbashing projects of a sci-fi ground combat nature (and several of them made great Lascannons or Plasma Cannon conversion fodder!).

Then along came Full Thrust to my great delight, and with the added bonus that some extremely clever 12-point cast metal starship flight bases complete with clearly marked 90-degree rear arcs were also being produced by Geo-Hex to coincide with their newly achieved status as the official U.S. licensed manufacturer of the Ground Zero Games metal ship models and distributor of the game itself! I could buy the flight bases separately, the game was generic and included a handy ship design system! 

Further joy came in the form of Silent Death 1st edition, so now I could play either at the fleet level with the big dawgs, or down and dirty at the space fighter dogfight level to my heart's content! So I forged ahead, building up my fleets again and ever vigilant for new and adaptable starship models. As it turned out, those handy little Space Battleship Yamato models were getting set for a return, and in a manner I did not suspect but would be very happy about upon discovery.

Know in Japan as gashopon ("capsule toys"), these came in a sealed box assortment, and sure enough Space Battleship Yamato was experiencing a renaissance of sorts due to an anniversary of the first release of this classic anime, so not one but several sets of assorted starships and fighters from the series came out in pre-painted preassembled assortments. By this point we had the internet, and further there was the sterling mail order service of HobbyLink Japan (http://www.hlj.com). 

I did not hesitate, and upon receiving my first shipment and discovering that the lion's share of the models were hard plastic and therefore eminently suitable as wargaming models, I proceeded to repaint them all to make them my own, and fulfill my mad dreams of a galaxy-conquering armada to call my own! 

Here are many of those splendid Space Battleship Yamato mini kits and gashopon adapted to serve as my armada from the Imperial Terran Space Navy, the defenders of all things Terrestrial, Civilized, and Imperial in the spirit of the creative visions of H. Beam Piper, Gordon R. Dixon, Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer, and Robert A. Heinlein for your consideration and enjoyment:

Something old and something new! The latest version of the Garmillas tri-deck carrier from Yamato 2199 Mecha Colle from Bandai, and the 70s vintage Garmillas tri-deck carrier form the original Space Battleship Yamato anime! The newer tri-deck carrier is thinner and less imposing than the original, but the latest in plastic mould tooling technology and CAD capabilities has resulted in a kit just dripping with detail even at this tiny scale so wonderfully suitable for tabletop wargaming:

Standard EDF battleship of the Borodino class reimagined as an Imperial Terran Navy dreadnought:

The main carrier division of my Imperial Terran armada to date! I plan to add two more fleet carriers eventually, and DON'T let Bandai or anyone else release the original EDF carrier dreadnought hybrid, or I'll have another four or six of those while I'm at it:

Imperial Terran superdreadnoughts and their attendant heavy cruiser and torpedo destroyer escorts:

The hybrid dreadnought carriers with a superdreadmought and many heavy cruisers in attendance, plus their fighter complements drawn from various sources: 

A closer look at the Imperial Terran Navy's latest class of superdreadnought and its attendant heavy cruisers:

Like wolves ready to charge after their prey, a wedge of Imperial Terran Navy torpedo destroyers ready to surge forward to deliver their deadly cargo of 600 gigaton warhead torpedoes:

Another view of the Imperial Terran Navy capital ships and their escorts:

Ever vigilant, the Imperial Terran Navy stands ready to repel the barbarians at the gates! And they don't come much more barbaric that the Entomolian Empire:

That's right, I didn't stop with the Terrans and the Carnivorians once Bill Char and Monday Knight Productions brought the classic Superior Miniatures Star Fleet Wars line back to us after so many decades! He in all their brightly colored insectoid menacing glory is my mostly finished Entomalian fleet. I have a half dozen destroyers and a small swarm of the star bombers to finish and base, so for now, they'll just have to make due as a very powerful assault group looking to overrun a border colony on the fringe of the Terran Empire:

The Entomalian incursion is repelled after much hard fighting, but the threat to the safety and security of the Terran Empire never ends, as a new aline menace appears! Classic Ground Zero Games Sa'avasku from the Full Thrust optional game universe. These are marvelous biotechnology symbiotic starships, quite literally living starships fully capable of traveling across the vast distances of space and wreaking havoc with their biologically generated energy weapons:

Oh, and there's still another fleet, but that, dear readers, is for another time... Stay tuned to your TBD receivers for further news from the fringe of the Known Universe!