Rebel Minis Drop Troopers - Review and Paint Test

The heat and humidity we've experienced lately has really stifled my hobby time. Since I haven't been able to use any spray primers or base coats, I decided to try something different. Two years ago, Maff and Mark posted an excellent Halo Spartan tutorial on Dropship Horizon. It is a very straightforward process - two coats of an undiluted Citadel wash over bare metal. I'm not a Halo player, but I do like the look of the troopers.

I picked up a pack of Rebel Minis' Earthforce Droptroopers after seeing Jeff Racel's excellent paint schemes (see here). The minis are excellent - very detailed clamshell armor that require almost no cleanup. The rifle is identical to that found on the Earthforce Infantry and Homeguard minis - these can easily be a specialized unit in an army using other Earthforce minis. But I'm using them as their own force. The Earthforce rifle is great - it can be a near-future variant of something like the FN P90 with a stick magazine, or it could be a blaster rifle from 5000AD forces. The pack contains nothing but rifle-armed troopers - no heavy weapons are available yet. But I have a plan to work around that (probably in my next post).

But once I had the minis in-hand, I realized they could also work as Halo Spartans using the Dropship Horizon tutorial. So here's the test mini:

My version of the paint scheme:

1. File the mini and superglue to a Universal 15mm Figure Base (a US penny)
2. Two coats of Citadel Thraka Green wash. I learned not to apply this too quickly - it tends to pool very at the neck
3. Paint the weapon with Vallejo Heavy Bluegrey
4. Paint the visor with Vallejo Glorious Gold
5. (my only change from the old Dropship Horizon formula) Coat the entire mini with Wonder Wash Black. This much thinner wash brings out details on the weapon, fingers and small joints, and surrounds the visor extremely well.
6. Paint the base with P3 Bloodstone and flock with my Red Planet blend.

I'm knocking out some more infantry to go with this test figure - the first wash is drying right now. I'll post my Heavy Weapon support idea very soon.

UPDATE: The first squad is complete.

Cheers,

Chris

A Ruthless Terrorist Organization...

One thing that we always have plenty of in 15mm Sci-Fi is human infantry with faceshields and helmets.  I'm not complaining... they are all excellent sculpts, and the "hard sci-fi" settings most of us prefer allow for a wide variety of human factions to be fielded.

But where does one find inspiration to paint these different forces?  Noticing my old comic book collection reminded me of a pretty cool source of color and uniform ideas... and here's the first one I picked.  The ubiquitous Cobra Viper has been remade many times by Hasbro over the years, but they keep coming back to the basic blue uniform.

So I figured... why not?  I still have an assortment of Rebel Minis Earthforce Marines waiting to be painted.  I whipped together a quick unit to see how it looked in 15mm.  Here's the outcome:

Works for me!  Another squad of these, some heavy weapons support, and a few vehicles should give me a fun little army.  These would be great as a mercenary regiment, security force, or even something more like their action figure counterparts.

Speaking of vehicles... what to use?  Once again I ransacked my box of old die-cast toys.  I found an interesting old vehicle called the Space Van.  Its angled cockpit and hull shape reminded me quite a bit of the old Cobra Hiss tanks... perfect for this project!  Another Hot Wheels vehicle (an Assault Crawler - very useful even on its own) provided some good tracks to replace the Space Van's plain and undersized wheels.  I think they work pretty well together... now I just need to find a turret and get this thing painted!

Cheers,
Chris

New skirmish game - In The Emperor's Name

Craig Cartmell has just released In The Emperor's Name, his latest (and perhaps his greatest) set of wargaming rules.  They are designed to play small narrative actions that one would find in games like Necromunda, Gorkamorka, Inquisitor, or even Mutants & Death Ray Guns or Savage Worlds.

While the rules and retinue lists are created with the 40k universe in mind, I've been playtesting them for months using 15mm figures.  I've found them to be VERY enjoyable!  I've even tried playing the same scenarios and forces using these rules and then playing Mutants & Death Ray Guns... and I must admit that In The Emperor's Name is a better game (at least for solo play).  I will post some battle reports in the coming weeks... some will be using "counts-as" versions of the retinues in the book, and some will be some "free-form" retinues I made just for my 15mm collection.

Check them out today!  This is one of the best free skirmish games you will ever play.

Chris K.

A Complete 15mm Army In One Weekend

A couple weeks ago I posted an idea for my first Red Planet-themed army. The miniatures were ordered soon after, and arrived while I was out of town. So I came home to (among other things) a blister of Rebel Minis Sons Of Thunder and a pack of Blue Moon Walker #19.

While most of my 15mm infantry are single-based on 3/4" fender washers, I decided that multi-basing would be the way to go for my new Red Planet forces. I've been wanting to try Alien Squad Leader, and these guys seem perfectly designed for that sort of game. I decided three Sons Of Thunder looked good on 1-1/4" fender washers.

So it was time for prep work. Nothing fancy here... just filed down the excess mold lines (of which there was very little - great casting on both product lines), and some tiny droplets of superglue to stick them onto craft sticks for painting ease. I also found some round dot stickers (usually used for garage sales and what not) for the bottoms of my washers. This made it very easy to spackle the center holes. I applied the spackle fairly rough... no reason not to since it will add more texture to the bases. At this time I assembled the walkers completely.

It was pretty easy from there. I hit everything with black Armory spray primer, cracked open my chosen P3 paints (Khardic Flesh and Underbelly Blue for the minis, Bloodstone for the bases), and started drybrushing. The infantry are all heavily drybrushed with the Khardic Flesh, with the black exposed between armor/suit plates. Then I drybrushed the weapons, helmet domes, and backpack tanks with the Underbelly Blue. After hitting the entire model with black Wonder Wash, I popped them off of the sticks and glued them to the painted washers.

While the Wonder Wash and glue were drying I basecoated the walkers. These took a few more coats than the infantry to complete. Between coats I had time to flock and seal the infantry bases, using the same Red Planet mix as my terrain set.

While I worked on walkers and infantry, I noticed that the blister pack from Rebel was a pretty good size for a Sons Of Thunder building. I drew a few geometric shapes, printed them on cardstock, found a rubber washer and interesting bit from an old toy (bonus points for the first person to correctly identify it), and here's what I came up with:

I figured that would work just fine as a scenario objective. And what the heck... it would have ended up in the garbage otherwise! So after a total of maybe 6-7 hours worth of work (not counting drying times) my project was finished. Here are the final results:

The paint jobs certainly aren't going to win any competitions, but it works just fine on the tabletop. The walkers in particular need something else... I think I need to include some of the dark grey used on the terrain platform to break up the orange. But it is ready to play!

I'm very pleased with the infantry. One pack of Sons Of Thunder yields four NCOs, four heavy weapon troopers, and sixteen rifle troopers. I created two command stands (nco and two rifles), four infantry stands (three rifles), and two heavy weapon stands (two heavy weapons and one NCO as a spotter). You could easily create four squads of six infantry if you want to individually base these little guys.

It's the little projects like this which remind me that switching to 15mm was the correct decision. I have 24 infantry, 2 support vehicles, and a terrain piece... all for the same cost as a single Finecast character miniature. And even a below-average painter like me can produce tabletop-quality results in a very short time. So as part of Dropship Horizon's 15mm Conversion Challenge, let me say this. Stop fretting over your perfect army lists and give up the fifteen different levels of highlights and detail bits. Just build some minis, get them painted, and play a game!

Cheers,

Chris

Off The Beaten Path: Hydra Miniatures

Awhile back I discovered another manufacturer of 28mm minis that work great in 15mm games. I'd forgotten about them for awhile, but now seems like a great time to feature them. Hydra Miniatures, best known for the popular War Rocket minis, has a few hidden gems in their other lines.

First off we have yet another line of automatons. It is in Hydra's Retro

Raygun range - their Warbots. These are a bit pricey for 15mm usage, but look like great minis. I first noticed their Minibots - very pulp-retro-B-movie science fiction. But lately it's the Hoverbots that have

caught my eye. I could see these Hoverbots in a maintenance or medical bot role, sent out from a command vehicle to support troops and equipment on the battlefield. Or their arms could be replaced with any ranged weapon you might have lying around, and you'd have a good UAV or drone attack bot. The larger Warbots in this range, particularly the Destroyer, would make good battle mech-size walkers in an automaton force.

Okay... my last three posts in this series have been very robo-centric. So let's find a greener option. For this we look at Hydra's Primal Dawn prehistoric fantasy range. The Kithix are a pretty cool group of giant bugs... these would make great Tyranid-style large creaturs in 15mm. Again, they are a bit pricey, but very good sculpts. But in this range it is the Vardu Sprouts that caught my eye. I've been a Mutants & Death Ray Guns fan for quite some time. Until Khurasan's recent Vornid release, there were very few good "walking plants" in 15mm. The Vardu are great plant warriors, and could easily be used alongside the Vornids.

If nothing else, I hope these Off The Beaten Path posts have helped to stimulate some imaginations. 15mm sci-fi is great because you aren't restricted to any single set of rules, background, or one manufacturer's products. Keep your eyes open for anything that will fit the games you want to play!

Cheers,

Chris