Some Soviet Heavy Metal

Howdy folks,

As always I’m hoping all is well in your respective worlds and the challenges of the past long weekend are becoming a memory. 

Given the events in the Ukraine I have been focusing primarily on painting up Marvel Crisis Protocol figures, they have been a lot of fun to paint, and have certainly challenged my technique. However, I thought I would start to work towards my modern mojo, and I recently tackled some T72’s.

Admittedly they were quite quick to paint up and I kept their colours and markings very generic…if nothing, they will find home in the struggles of the 1980s Cold War or the imagi-nations of the coming conflicts in the Afropian region. Having painted up 10 or so T72s to date, I thought I would go with a bit more of a bright tone to this latest addition. I liked how they turned out and they are definitely in line with some of my previous Soviet additions, but also very much in line with the variance in tone and shade that I had seen with some of online references.

Enjoy the pics!

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               30, +6

28mm+             23

 

Bought             10

Progress          +43

Here we go X-Force!

I know, its a little derivative…

Hello everyone,

I hope all is well on your particular front. Those of you Ontario way, I hope you and yours are safe and sound, given the events of this long weekend it has been quite challenging for some. If you are reading this on the tail end of the weekend, then hopefully you are sharing good fortune and have had power and some normalcy returned. 

As the title of todays post says, we’re talking X-force baby! Now to be honest I did not partake in the super hero comics when I was a kid, mostly historical or WW2 for this kid. However, thanks to the MCU and the success of those movies, they certainly helped bring MC Protocol to my door. So, all that to say, characters like Cable and Domino are relatively new to me. A huge shoutout to my main painting mentor Sorastro for his first takes on these figures…very inspirational and some great elements.

Cable was a real challenge to paint up, the model is very dynamic and the shield required a certain amount of faith and OCD for me to get through. The various armour components really gave me a chance to test some new NMM techniques. Not to mention, I really liked some of the ideas that Sorastro brought to it, specifically the smoldering cape. Also stealing his idea of showing some wear/heat on Cable's weapon, I took a look at my photo albums and got a great reference from Forward Observations Group of a suppressor showing great heat damage/wear after a day at the range. The colours were really neat to see...so I tried to emulate that.

 

As for Domino, she was a fairly straight forward figure with some great dynamic action. It was a challenge to decide on an overall colour scheme, again there were some great internet images of previous comic book covers and I had the artwork that came with the packaging. In the end I settled on a mix of a couple of covers. I really liked the action around her riding a piece of concrete hurtling through the air, and the explosion was a great test of colour...I really liked how the heat of the explosion shows on the underside.

I hope you enjoy the pics.

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               24

28mm+             23. +2

 

Bought             10

Progress          +37

A few more Afropia thoughts...

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all doing well and as the weather starts to turn to shades of Spring and Summer...I hope you get some time and relaxation outside.

As soon as I finalized my last post on Afropia thoughts, I had a few more come to mind over the next day or so...as well, I had the chance to see an older post from Rabbits In My Basement on his imagi-nation experience and that got me further thinking on my initial 'hot takes' on my Afropian nations. You can check out his post via the link, but with post-colonial elements in my country overview, I wanted to be sure that I am not just re-hashing what has already been or worse minimizing significant histories for countries that have lived the worst of best and wrong intentions. There's alot of these histories that are horrendously depressing, and in the end I want to make sure that I'm focusing on the gaming aspect and not being locked into specific historic lines.

Not to mention, my main objective is to get miniatures on the table and not necessarily focusing on strict historical accuracy. So I guess I'll maintain the idea of 'post-colonial' in terms of working towards a model for size of the countries (i.e. populace and military forces). And like the name I've chosen, there will be elements from each of these continents.

 

I think my next steps that I identified earlier still stand...all I need to do is refine, and I will probably stick to 1-2 country profiles per post.

All in all, just a tracking of my random thoughts

What kind of place is this Afropia?

Howdy folks,

I hope you are all well and good…a quick thought popped into my mind after my last post; I have mentioned Afropia in a few posts now and I guess at some point I have to give a little more thought and definition to this Imagi-nation. Initially my thought was to have only a single country as the primary setting, but quickly I realized this needed to expand to include at least one potential rival/belligerent…and then this quickly expanded to considering some additional options.

So, I now have the Afropian region to ponder.

At this point I have an idea on countries, some initial concepts on their political leanings, sponsor state in a case or two, and general geography. In total, the region is composed of 6 countries…1 country in the ‘centre’ with 4 others surrounding it with some degree of shared border + one island nation (blame Farcry 6 for this latest addition).

Petoriastan - thank you Family Guy, lol…although I don’t think it is a dictator state. Mountains to the north, plains/prairie-like region in the centre, plains and grasslands to the south. No solid thoughts on sponsor, but some colonial history…maybe British…

Mikaroon - to the north and east of Petoriastan…hills in the northern and western region, plains in the central and eastern, with coastline as its south border. My initial thoughts are former French/European colonial…

Federation of Alarus - shares the northwester border of Petoriastan. Federation had a nice sound to it, Marxist-Leninist for its politics; as such seems a classic Soviet satellite inspired state. Mountains and hills in its east and south-east region…hills pretty much everywhere else.

West Chartoria - again thank you Family Guy and my wife (who is worthy of her own nation-state) for the name inspiration. It falls on the western border of Petoriastan and that border also extends to share the western border of Aponwana. Hills in the north, mountains/hills in the west, shared savannah in the south east with both Petoriastan and Aponwana. Right now I’m thinking a more modern day take on South Africa, perhaps some former British colonialism history as well.

Aponwana - fully along the southern border of Petoriastan with their western border shared with West Chartoria. Savannah and grasslands throughout, I am picturing this as being more in line with a classic failed state vibe…former Soviet protectorate or something to that effect.

And finally, Yara or Tropico or something…not sure on the name yet, but heavily inspired by Caribbean or Latin America setting. Regardless, it is an island nation, to the east of Petoriastan or Aponwana.

That is where things stand at the moment. Next steps will be to review/focus the geopolitics of the countries…get them a flag, something to identify with.

Take care. Until next time…

Painting Update - Random Pieces

Howdy folks,

I hope all is going well on your respective sides of the dice.

Coming up to the end of the month, I thought it would be good to have a general painting update...nothing specific like my recent Marvel Crisis Protocol figures, but some progress nonetheless with a few pieces that cover a range of potential settings.

Mostly guided by my Afropia imagi-nation project, I have been roughing out some scenarios and campaigning ideas (game selection, force size, etc.) and thought that one of the constants certainly in post WW2 warfare/conflict has been the element of civil-military cooperative efforts for development. In the case of Afropia and more recent conflicts, I wanted to have some general construction vehicles, so I purchased a couple of D7 Bulldozers from Skytrex Miniatures. I know these are more in line with WW2, but I think they'll work for anything spanning the last 70 years or so.

At the same time, I wanted to have some scatter pieces that could work for a variety of settings be it military facilities, dockyards, etc. so I also purchased a few of their cargo loads for military vehicles. I picked up a couple of each, a cargo section of oil drums and boxes. Having recently played some Farcry 6, I was inspired to paint up my oil drums in a very nice looking Olive Green and Vermillion mix matching those drums found all around Yara.

And because some of these pieces are rather finicky at their edges (chipping or rubbing paint off) I thought I would try basing them on some MDF board that I had kicking around. At the same time, I also painted up some blank pieces so I could either have concrete platforms for 15mm or cargo pallets for 28mm...I thought they could mix well with any of the Rogue Stars, Stargrave, or Zona Alfa universe/scenarios. The painting on them is a little scratchy but given I haven’t seen too many clean pallets and/or pristinely painted area at aerodromes. Anyway, they should work at the tabletop level…

Thats all for now, take care folks...enjoy the pics.

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               24, +16

28mm+             21

 

Bought            +10

Progress          +35

Marvel CP - Doc Strange and Wong

Howdy folks,

 

I hope all is well on your side. Just a quick post for today, I recently had the chance to finish off the Doctor Strange and Wong expansion pack for Marvel Crisis Protocol. As has been my experience with these models to date, they are a double edged sword for me, lol. On one side, they are such fabulous and dynamic poses, on the other, they sure can take an extraordinary amount of time for me as my OCD grapples with getting them just right.

Now that’s mostly on me and my process. Funny enough, when I have a reference guide to go with my OCD tends to be even stronger. Again, the other side is that these guides have been a great way to further develop my style.

In this case, Wong was definitely a quick paint job for me, and the guides were helpful with various elements. But because there was no dedicated guide I had to develop my own plan…and it worked well for me. Now, Doc Strange was an interesting figure…quite dynamic with the spell effect and quite finicky with trying to attach him to it. My main disappointment is that the spell effect aside, the sculpt of the Doctor felt somewhat underwhelming and this one may be my least favourite of the range so far.

Regardless, the figures presented some great challenge and I hope I nailed the spell effect. Overall, my main frustration was having the glue crystallize on me after I glued the Doc to the effect…sigh, could always be worse.

Cheers. Enjoy the pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               8 

28mm+             21, +2

 

Bought              0

Progress          +29

Afropia, Imagi-nations and what gaming dreams are...

...made of, I guess, or some sh%t like that...basically just trying to keep an idea going that started out as inspiration and getting minis on the table that now encompasses trying to get my historical themed gaming/painting mojo back in action...

 

Howdy folks, I hope all is well on your side, I suspect that the tides of fortune and highs vs. lows certainly is keeping many of us/you on our collective toes. I have to admit, since the first reports of the balloon going up, sh%t getting real, and Ukraine-Russia going hot I have had read a few blog posts on how this is challenging the historical and modern gaming hobby. And I gotta say, I feel some of that challenge...now, before anyone gets heavy or torqued in any reaction, I gotta say, I think I've been here before.

There was a time when I had zero interest in gaming current, modern, or even 'relatively' recent conflicts in any theatre and geographical location. Be it Africa, Middle East, or Europe, my flavour of historical gaming was fairly restrictive to the [not so] Great War and WW2. Given some of my experiences in the green..or blue suit, I guess...I wasn't too keen on modern and Africa was waaaaayyyyy out of the question. Having experienced 2nd hand some of the impacts/effects of the 90's conflicts, I couldn't see how I could approach these various battlespaces with less than solemn reverence. It took the effort of dealing with some of my inner demons, recognize my PTSD symptoms, and just try gaming with good folks...also having folks to game with that had gone through similar avoidance was beneficial. I have to recognize and acknowledge that it was Peter Pig and their AK-47 ruleset that helped me break that wall...and if you read my last Afropia post, I didn't even get to game it, but I did read the ruleset and that helped to reframe my reality with the gaming environment and still respect the non-fictional context around the various conflicts and regions.

 

And to be honest, I'm still not overly cool with current events, it really does depend on the ruleset, context, and treatment around the conflict

So I guess what I'm saying with the current conflict/war...I've been here before, and I can move forward again...it just takes some time and some good folks to game with. I have had Afropia on my mind quite a bit this past week and I do enjoy creating scenarios. So I will have to revisit some of my original thoughts from January and try to get moving on settings and scenario creation. We'll see how the progress goes.

If you're in a position to help out those affected by this war, good on you and good luck; if you're affected by this war, all the best to you and yours.

Cheers.

More Cyber - Monster Fight Club

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your respective frontages. I thought I would take the opportunity to throw a quick painting update on a couple of more Cyberpunk figures from Monster Fight Club. As before, I found these figures to be quite clean and they take paint really well. The hardest part of the process was deciding on the paintjob...and I must say that they definitely evolved while they were on the paint table.

In the end I wanted something that had some colour, and ironically without being too sci-fi'ey...so I ended up with an improvised camouflage pattern (similar to some old NZ camo smocks I think) on the one figure and just some classic special ops, brown and green with the other. And as I seem to be doing consistently doing with these figures, I painted on some street/sidewalk texture as opposed to my more routine basing techniques.

I think these figures will definitely find a home in a few genres and 'verses. So, I'm pretty happy with the turnout, enjoy the pics.

 

 

 

2022 Lead Mountain Climb

Painted

15mm               8 

28mm+             19, +2

 

Bought              0

Progress          +27