GZG Starter Fleets

While I haven’t been wargaming for a great while, the scale I’ve been the most active in is space gaming. I started with the paper counters from the back of the Full Thrust rulebook and then managed to get a hold of some Em-4 plastic fighters. While intended to be used for smaller scale games like Silent Death, the fighters, when shaved down and modified, work well for small capital ships.
Though now, I have some “proper” ships. Just before Christmas, I ordered Ground Zero Games two-player starter deal and picked out a Sa’Vasku and ScanFed fleet. I liked the general look that the ScanFeds have, and I’ve always been a big fan of bio-ships so the Sa’Vasku were a natural choice as well.
There are 16 ships total, split into two fleets of 8 with matching ship types. Included in the box was also a version of the Full Thrust Light rules so you could give it a whirl and see if you want to try out the (free!) full rules. This can be obtained on the Ground Zero Games website, if you are interested: http://www.groundzerogames.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=9&Itemid=50
First up, the Scandinavian Federation fleet. I went with a nice dark grey and blue color scheme, and made highlights and paneling using light grey and sky blue, the final touch was red for the engines and a white dry-brushing all over. Not bad for my first attempt at a full fleet.

The flash on these models were minimal, with most of it being just a small amount of mold lines. Although, there were two catches to the ScanFed fleet which makes them a bit tricky. First and foremost is how the engines are. On the ship classes larger then destroyers, the engines are separate pieces that need a lot of shaving and filing to get to fit just right with the ship. As well, they like to seem to fill up a little during the molding process, so you need to have a pin vise and hobby knife ready to shape them out a bit. Secondly, for everything destroyer class and up, the forward hull and the rear hull of the ship all fit together in the middle. Meaning it can be a bit tricky to get it level, without it dipping up or down, or leaning to one side
The largest ship in my current ScanFed fleet, the Battlecruiser. Don’t have a catchy name for it just yet.

A frigate next to a destroyer.

The Heavy Cruiser: The second largest ship in the fleet. It’s currently in drydock due to losing its flight stand in a transport mishap

More random images!:



The Sa’Vasku: This were a joy to paint! Being organic I was able to mottle in a lot of different colors without having to worry about consistent. I started with three primary colors, a dark green for the body, ivory for the spikes/appendages, and a dark red for random fleshy spots. For the body, after the first coat or two, I started dabbing  highly watered down paint in random places. This added a vary mottled look with different tones of green. I later drybrushed some more green colors with very good results; they sort of added to the organic look while wrangling in the various dabbed colors to make it look somewhat consistent. The ivory spots were then drybrushed with some light brown to add some interest, while I hit all the high points of the red areas with progressively lighter reds and crimsons. I really like the overall look to them.


Counterpart to the ScanFed Battlecruiser. It has more mass, and has IMHO a rather interesting design.


Frigate (Left) with a Light Cruise (right)

The new style Heavy Cruiser, my favorite ship in the fleet and the one I think has the most character. I was able to ask and GZG swapped the old style out with the new one. I can’t wait till more of the newstyle Sa’Vasku come out!

More images:

 

Closing Thoughts: I really do love both fleets for their own reasons, and hope to grow both when I get the chance. I’m working on a number of space terrain projects that I’m hoping to complete sometime in the near future. For the models themselves, I plan to get some rare earth magnets to put into the bases because I’ve been having a lot of issues with flight stands breaking! It would also make transport much easier as well.

Mechwarrior Clix to 15mm Conversions (Part 1)

After deciding to start into 15mm, I realized I still had a lot of unused Mechwarrior Clix pieces about. While I only played the clix game for a little bit, I later intended to convert most of the pieces I had for use with Mekton, but decided against it as the ‘Mechs (which are around 1/220, IIRC) would be rather large for what little table, and thus, battlefield space I have access to. So, after recalling that most of the vehicles and infantry are about 15mm, I decided it would be excellent for my first and experimental army.
First, I began to cut the battle armor and infantry off of their old bases (which tend to be groups of 2, 3, or more) and then base them individually on pennies. I recommend being VERY careful here as a slip of the knife can cause one or more of your men to need a peg leg.


The following battle armor will make for some nice sniper or gauss-rifle support, three squads of three suits of it.

 
On the left here is a nice gun emplacement, while the one on the right is a broken SRM launcher that’s been converted into a command or comm post with the handy placement of a sewing pin.These, unlike the normal infantry, are based on nickels instead of pennies.


The following are two larger pieces of power armor, one is based on a penny while the other has an EM-4 25mm round base. (In the first shot is one of the smaller PA suits for size comparison)




Next up are the vehicles. While about scale, they do look a little shrimpy next to some of the infantry, but will do good for now. I’ll see how well they look next to actual scale vehicles sometime, once I manage to get a hold of some Khurasan or GZG armor.
The first vehicle up is a VTOL that will make for some nice light support. The base itself is actually some laminated floor tile cut to size and he flying stand is the actual clix stand. For some detail, I took one of my PA suits that met a hobby knife in a dark alley, and chopped it up some more. I reckon it will make for some nice blasted remains.



Here we have some GEV units that, after I pried them off their bases, decided to mount them on cut down flight stands to make them look more ‘floaty’ then most other GEV or hovercraft. I rather like this look, albeit some ground cover won’t cut it for them! From left to right we have an open air APC (with missiles!), a grav tank, and a grav artillery unit.


Next are two tanks to show how they look on their clix bases, and how they do after being removed.

Size comparison time!



Closing thoughts: So far things are going well. From what I can tell most of the stuff is fairly close to 15mm and it feels good to be using old minis for a new project. It’s nice they are already painted but I’ll probably and eventually paint them to fit with other parts of the collection as it grows. I intend to try these out with Fast and Dirty 4.0 but I also intend to give Gruntz a look.
But best of all… The little turrets swivel! :D
Tips: As aforementioned… Be VERY careful when cutting infantry free of their bases! Not only is it easy to damage them, being soft plastic, but from almost every angle you can cut from, your hands are in a good spot to get stabbed. This is especially true when trying to pry vehicles or entire bases away from the clix base. Patience and care are key here.
I’ve read on TMP that some people have a much easier time sticking the mini in a freezer for a bit, then prying it off. The cold makes the superglue holding it into the base brittle and easier to snap off. Though your minis could also become more brittle as well while cold.

15mm Wargaming

If you find your way on over to the TMP forums, you’ll usually see a lot of buzz about 15mm sci-fi. It was here that I first encountered the 15mm scale; before this, I was only really familiar with 6mm, 25mm, and fleet scale starship gaming. Of late, I’ve been more and more interested in wargaming in 15mm, and I intend to start a new collection in it fairly soon.
Something that began to interest me as I read, was that 15mm seemed to be a nice middle ground between 6mm and 25mm. In 6mm you can easily have a large battlefield with lots of units, but armor is the focus and infantry squads are often confined to a single base. In 25mm each squad member is separate and the focus is on fire teams with vehicle support. The drawbacks to 25mm is that you need larger terrain, and table size for games. 15mm is attractive to me because of how it combines both of what I’m looking for in those scales, it is the right size for large games, and easy storage, but each infantry or other small unit has much paintable detail.
Budget-wise I am liking 15mm. There are a number of great dealers of 15mm sci-fi figures (as well as pretty much any other time period) and most are quite affordable. As well, I can still have squad based games, but I require less storage room due to smaller units and terrain.
15mm is also about 1/100th scale, meaning HO model railroad buildings, and most matchbox cars look rather nice side-by-side with them, opening up more possibilities for terrain and units.

Birth of a Blog

  I’m always unsure of how to start a blog, or even a project. That’s why doing an ‘introductory’ post usually helps me get rolling. First, I’d like to talk a little about myself. I am a resident of the USA, in the state of Washington. I have only mild wargaming and roleplaying experience as of yet, but my will experience will grow as (hopefully) this blog does.
  My wargaming interests cover starship combat, groundscale, and Mecha.My roleplaying tastes match this as well. The systems I currently game with are Full Thrust (Space), Mekton (Mecha Wargaming and roleplaying), Battletech (Mecha), and Dirtside (Groundscale). I have plans to expand into  either 15mm or 25-28mm scale squad based combat. With Guncrawling being a thought as well.
Things I need to do for the site:

• Organize the pages
• Add links to useful sites
• And get a banner and logo up

Since I am also new to blogging I will be reviewing rules about what pictures I can post (for reference material) as well as the other ins and outs of blogging.