Colonial Marines 28mm

 Here they are, the Colonial Marine Corps. As I’m a home during this time of crisis I had a bit of extra time to finish them off. I tried my hand at the odd piece of armour artwork and used decals for extra detail. Some of them are so small you can hardly see them, but I suppose it all helps with the personalised graffiti look.

 I have put  reference from my phone on this post so I can always find it again easily when I need it.

 This sniper isn’t from Woodbine miniatures, I think it’s from Scotia Grendel or something like that. I bought it off EBAY as I thought it would be good to include a sniper in the Platoon. He kind of mixes in and his scale is good with the others.

 It will be nice to include lots of variations in the armour for future figures, like an all green set or even a couple of desert camo designs.

More Desert Fighters from Trent Miniatures

 Another batch of angry Desert fighters swell the numbers of insurgents. The Colonial Marines have kicked a hornets nest! Due to the numbers of these guys I have opted to use quick shade, the marines are down stairs getting varnished the old fashioned way.

 Due to the amount of small details on the Marine’s armour, I am going for the more controlled route of using Kleer floor varnish then matte coating them.

 The quick shade is brushed on with an old brush for extra control, also I check them after a few minutes to wick away any pooling. I had great fun with a thin brush doing all the head wear, the secret is having the right consistency of paint to make it flow.

Colonial Marines

 Now the paint job is done I thought I would try to add a little personality to the Marines. The personal touches the Marines drew onto their armour were a huge part of the look of the unit. I gave this a bit of thought and decided to try some tiny decals I had bought for my 15mm sci-fi stuff.

 Once washed with decal fixer and varnished again they should work well. It’s just to add a tiny amount of colour and detail to the figures, just enough to catch the eye. Most of these decal sheets are for the Gundam range of plastic kits and we’re bought off EBay.

 I took the opportunity to stick some danger signs on these RPG’s while I had everything out.

Hudson’s classic armour from the film.

Colonial Marines

 I was so impressed with the desert fighters from Trent Miniatures, that I started to look around for some one they could fight against. It wasn’t long before I came across future marines from woodbine studios, part of Gripping Beast. These marines are of course from one of my favourite films, Aliens. Well, it didn’t take a lot of thought before I ordered two packs to check the size. They are true 28mm so fit the Desert fighters perfectly. It is worth saying that both sets of mini’s are sculpted by the same guy (Rob Baker), so they work very well together.
I have always fancied playing a bit of modern warfare and with these two ranges now I can. A bit of near future, hard sci-fi.

 I spent a lot of time researching the camo and armour designs. The great thing is, that because the film was made in England, Humbrol paints were used to paint the armour. To my amazement I actually had the exact colour paints in my cupboard. So I sprayed the figures with Humbrol Dark green, the base colour for the metal armour used in the film. From here I painted in the sand yellow, black and chocolate brown to complete the look.
As there are so many Re-enactors portraying the unit at events, the internet is buzzing with costume facts and reference material. A lot of it varies in quality but some good close up studies can be found of just about every item of kit. Very useful indeed for a Painter.

 Check out the scratches on the wall... best activate the tracker.

 The exact paints used for the film production and a wealth of props make this project a fun one. Also I thought with these marines, Xenos or zombies could make for some fun games as well.
Game over man...game over!

Trent Miniatures Synguree Desert Fighters

 I saw these on eBay the other day and recognised they were sculpted by the same guy who created the 1st Corps sci-fi range, Rob Baker. On receiving them I found out they are true 28mm so are a little taller than 1st Corps, but not enough to really matter. What fun I had blasting these out, I decided early on that I wouldn’t get too bogged down with these so chose to Dip them. Being skirmish troops the added protection of the hard varnish would be very welcome, plus the brown shade is perfect for desert colours.

 I thought £9.99 for 8 figures wasn’t bad at all. Being irregular troops I imagine their squads will be quite large, around eight men. So one of these packs is a squad basically. There are two eight man packs to choose from plus a Anti tank team. These were a lot of fun to paint as you can tell and it’s got me thinking about a small force of mercenaries or insurgents. Endless fun to paint as everyone is painted differently.

 Above, before the Dip was painted on. Simple colours with the odd detail.

 Here we can see some size comparisons with 1st Corps and Pig Iron miniatures. 1st Corps are classed as true 25mm so are slightly smaller. Pig Iron heavy infantry are big men in big suits so their size isn’t a problem. I do like the 1st Corps figures a lot and at £1 a figure they are pretty unbeatable on price. Great for collecting platoons quickly at low cost.

FEDERAL HEAVY INFANTRY

This is a bit of quick colour theory, trying to work out a good scheme for my futuristic Federal Infantry.
 They are based on figures from 'Pig Iron' and are their 28mm Heavy Infantry range, nice sculpts with a vast choice of heads for customisation.

My CONFED troopers have a mix of camo schemes but I see these FED troopers as being more uniform in their appearance. The first figure is what I imagined, he looks like a riot cop to be fair, so I just wanted to try a few other options to see If anything jumped out. Maybe a mix of one and two would look more military.

Another Green Stuff Night

 Tonight I cracked on with the Wolf Rider project. I have been too tired after work to do much lately so tonight was a long time coming. I finally got to Chance to make a batch of green stuff cloaks and even finished off a Cave troll while I waited for the putty to harden.

 I gave this Cave troll green scales like the one encountered in Moria, “For the Shire!”.

Having made more Green stuff than I needed, I gave a couple of spare Goblins some cloaks too, should  help keep them warm in the Gundabad wastes.

 Waste not want not, these Oathmark Wolves/Wargs have been drummed into service now their riders have gone. The liquid Green stuff helps with the lack of fur and with some dry brushing they look okay.

 They are large animals but seem to fit in well with the horde, the more the merrier.

Dragon Rampant Question

I was reading an online battle report today and read something that got me rather confused... I had always taken it as every unit in Dragon Rampant fought with 12 dice until they were reduced to half strength, then they use 6 dice. Now if that unit was one of six figures, I still used 12 dice until it was taken down to three.

 In the report I read today a unit of six model fought with 6 dice. This left me a little confused, I have read the rules today and only found the 'full strength unit equals 12 dice rule', Is there anyone out there that knows the answer to this query?