Shenanigans in the north of Scotland

[Doghead13]

Go for it!

It was inspired by how the mini's posture developed as it came together. It's not a particularly threatening stance; it's just sort of waddling along with its forelimbs in this 'derp' position, while the fact that it's howling in a generally upwards direction gives it this sort of 'large lost dog' aspect. The rest came from an attempt to make the combination make some sort of sense, and I plan to make it into a scenario or (hopefully) series of scenarios for the campaign my mates and I are looking to get going.

 

[Doghead13]

So, autosluggers! Pity there aren't any obvious and readily available examples that clearly aren't autoguns you can nab from the local GW, slap on a mini, throw some paint at, and put on the tabletop that evening.

Actually, there are. They're on the Catachan sprue with the name 'Lasgun' and you just need to assemble them in the right way to get something that looks very much like an M249 light machine gun. You need a craft knife, a bit of ordinary printer paper, some solder or any other thin soft wire, and a pair of very small pliers - that's all. Here's the process in pictorial form:

First, one lasgun.

Chop it until it looks like this. Keep hold of the loose bits for now, some of them are going to become gunsights. Also shave off the winged skull from the side of the lasgun while you're at it.

Cut a piece of paper about this size.

Glue it onto the lasgun where you cut the lasgun magazine off, like this:

Cut it off at angles both sides, then fold them over and glue so it looks like this.

Cut a bit of sprue this sort of size. Shave it till its sides aren't bevelled, or at least bevelled much.

Glue it onto what used to be the top of the lasgun, about like this.

Now use the pliers to fold a bit of solder up like this. You need the pliers to get the bends nice and tight.

Glue a strip of paper to the folded-up solder, like this...

The resulting ammo belt now goes here, on what's now the left side of the autoslugger:

Now glue the lasgun tip and a spare tiny nubbin of plastic on like this to make sights.

There y'go; lasgun to basic but gameworthy autoslugger.

 

[djmothra]

That's not too bad

 

[TakUnderhand]

Solder for the ammo belt! That's great! I'm stealing that

 

[Doghead13]

Even before you get to any actual soldering, as a modeller solder is incredibly useful stuff. It's easy to bend into a shape and stays perfectly in whatever shape you bend it into - it's completely non-springy, which is ever so slightly uncharacteristic in fine wire, and is very easy to cut. It turns up regular as clockwork on my models as everything from wiring in a vehicle's engine bay to rings for attaching the end of a piece of chain, made by wrapping it round a thin rod. If you see something on one of my builds that looks like it was made out of fine wire, nine gets you ten it's solder - I only typically use anything else if it's placed somewhere where it's liable to get bashed flat.

 

[Doghead13]

So, having been in the back of a car going through this:

...to get to a short (As we headed home early to beat the next batch of snow) but fantastic airsoft game at The Hill near Dundee, I've been wolfing my wolf a bit, and for anyone else who was slightly unimpressed by the plastic Fenrisian wolves' non-interchangeable heads, here's my solution involving a wee strip of paper and a bit of solder; it's in place on the right-hand wolf:

And on subjects somewhat more Necromunda-y (though the wolves could very well be used to bulk out a bestiary, and would make one HELL of a dog) what can you do with a pile of random leftover bits, some DV cultists, a spare half of an Ork, most of a Gretchin, an old Kroxigor with the big blunt instrument cut off, and five 1:35 scale WW2 German helmets?

 

[trollmeat]

Did you deliberately blur the ramshackle team photo? I've some random bits that I'm not sure what to do with (and too many projects going on at once), so I will have to make a note of this

The wolves are/could be Cyber Mastiffs or Necromundan Giant Rats (Ratskins have a "rat head" cloak that is massively over-sized when compared to the beastmaster wyrd rats and is more wolf sized, perhaps Necromundan Giant Rats are actually wolves and they just haven't seen a real rat) :-D

 

[Doghead13]

Hrm, yeah, uncalled for camera shake is uncalled for. Let's give that another go with the camera actually sitting on my worktop...

EDIT: These gents now have fitting names courtesy of a friend on a Yahoo group who unlike me isn't completely ignorant in the ways of German!

As a unit, they're Die siebte Mutanten Kampfgruppe.

L to R: Herr Fahne, Der Unglaubliche Dieb, and Torkler

With Der Unglaubliche Dieb just visible on the left, we have Torkler and Krokodil;

And last but not least, Kranker Junge and Das Gehänge. Coming soon: currently latest and as-yet unpainted seventh member of the Kampfgruppe; Zwangsbelüftungs-Einheit Zwei.

 

[nooker]

Where'd you get the helmets?

 

[Doghead13]

They're 1:35th scale and came in a wild variety of vehicle kits. They're easy enough to find without buying entire vehicles - just google '1:35 German helmet' and take your pick. I just had these ones laying around.

Unsurprisingly they're a little big for your basic GW miniature, but that works just fine for a rag-tag crowd like this. Some of them are built to scale inside and out - those ones produce the effect seen on Herr Fahne if plunked down straight on top of a GW mini's head, he's got a Catachan head. The rest, you have to chop a bit off the top of the mini's head.

Actual 28mm scale ones are very easy to find - stuff like Bolt Action or what-have-you multipart kits - though I don't know how those compare to GW.

 

[Doghead13]

G'day and welcome to what I hope to turn into a regular feature, meaning I'll be doing it each time I get miniatures from a new supplier and/or range: it's Scale Comparison with Uncle Cal, and under the spotlight today we have Statuesque Miniatures!

As a preface I'd just like to say I'm now prejudiced in favour of Statuesque: I hadn't realised they're just up the road from me in Argyll until I noticed the sender addy on the envelope - very happy to find that at least one of my countrymen is making minis appropriate to our sort of purposes.

No complaint at all about customer service or shipping: the invoice is dated Monday and now on Thursday the miniatures are on my desk - for mail north of Perth, that is fast. Even GW can end up taking five days to get stuff into my hands.

No complaints at all about casting quality. Really no complaint - the castings are markedly better quality than the GW Goff Rokkers I bought a couple of weeks back and blow Finecast clean out the water. Hairline fine mould lines and I really do mean hairline, I struggled to find them on some parts, I have yet to find any flash, detail crisp and clear, if this is how they make modern metal miniatures I'm a fan!

As far as style and size goes, giving very little of a toss about the former and knowing guys a foot shorter than me, I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Incidentally, that's an autoslugger if ever I've seen one.

These are aligned straight-on using their slottabase slots to get them lined up. The scale is given by a Rogue Trader-era Imperial Guardswoman, Ms Random Unpainted Escher, and one of my beloved Grenadier Future Warriors. I stuck a ruler behind them, note that it's got that annoying blind end bit before it actually starts being a ruler. She's almost dead on 31mm from top of slotta tab to top of head, making her within a mil of the Escher so far as height goes.

Heroic Scale Heads with the Rogue Trader-era Guardswoman

And the heads with the random unpainted Escher. Incidentally this is the other head sprue that comes in the pack.

 

[Doghead13]

So, Squats!

As someone who goes on about encouraging the production of Space Dwarves I thought I'd better put some of my money where my mouth is, and ordered a pack of five Brokkr from Mantic, along with the makings of a zombie horde because holy cow are Mantic's zoms cheap.

Straight out of the box impression of the Brokkr and they're ever so slightly, well, flashtastic. Don't get me wrong, these are really nice sculpts, but there was a lot of flash and strong mould lines all over them - though not nearly as much as you find all over Finecast and I haven't seen any bubble-type casting flaws on them. I'm also not a fan of Mantic's decision to make them monopose - most of the arms are separate, only two cast in through the entire pack, but they've got these weird angular plug and socket thingies moulded onto them that establish what arm goes with who - not the greatest design decision if you ask me. C'mon Mantic, how about a multipose set of these guys? That'd be rather lovely if you ask me.

There were also a couple of slightly warped weapons. The leader guy's hammer's handle and the 'magma rifle' were both bent, and being plastic straightening them without any snapping going on was ever so slightly interesting.

As for Mantic's bases, they seem kinda like reinventing the wheel tbh. They work just fine, but I've never been a fan of any sort of cast-in base and the Brokkr have small circular examples attached to their feet, that drop down into the matching indent in the base proper. I note that Mantic's Plague Zombie sprues don't have this 'feature' though the fantasy zoms do, and I suspect that a mashup of parts from Mantic zombies and GW's Flagellants and Chaos Cultists may very well make some really nice scavvies.

Size-wise the Brokkr are visibly taller and a bit thinner than a plastic Squat or a GW dwarf, though even the tallest and most upright member of the five only just comes up to Fred the Scalecadian's shoulder pad (apart from his spiked-up hair, that is) and a couple of them are in very hunched-up postures, making them look much shorter than they are.

Here's a scale comparison pic and a photo of the line-up of five Brokkr. The guy in the middle in the second photo is the one I used for the scale comparison photo.

and lastly an arm length comparison of plastic Squat and Brokkr; like the Brokkr themselves, the Brokkr arms are marginally longer than the GW Squat arms. I haven't got any GW plastic dwarf arms available; I may have to get some and compare them length-wise to this (carefully conserved) Squat arm sprue at some point.

Height-wise they're about halfway between GW squats/dwarves and humans, and tbh I wouldn't argue against their being used for either; they'd make just as good a short member of a human gang (I could see the leader guy as a shortarsed Van Saar) as they would a tall member of a squat gang.

In conclusion, I may very well get more of these lads as conversion fodder: may very well is going to become definite if Mantic see fit to make a multipose set in the style of these guys, I'd buy that like a shot.

 

[Doghead13]

Some minor conversions (weapon swaps) later and painting up a rebuild of an old conversion victim that'd turned out rather short, and it looks like Urist McHelsing's been on a bit of a recruitment drive for more Squattish vampire hunters - he's back with five strapping young lads from the Mantic Firth and a comely half-human lass who used to be part of some rogue trader's retinue...

(Yes, I've reglued the right arm on the Brokkr with the lasgun. It alerted me to the fact that it was inadequately attached by falling off.)

The girl is a Rogue Trader-era miniature that'd suffered a brutal converting; she'd been taken off at the knees. Her new set of feet used to belong to a plastic Catachan. Also note chap with hand flamer, 'Scorch' Adamson, ready to troll charging Spyrers until that rule issue gets sorted out (joke.)

Last two Brokkr with Urist. I've named all three of these lads; that's Long Tam with the meltagun (a simple conversion, just glued the muzzle of an old plastic meltagun to the Mantic magma rifle's gun barrel) and Murdo McBrokkr with leech-staking hammer standing beside Urist McHelsing himself.

Two dorfs dorfing. On the right, hundred-percent original 1980s plastic Squat; on the left, a brand-new Brokkr with a really rather meta conversion: those are original Squat arms he's got there, though his lasgun used to belong to a monopose plastic Orlock. This is post the Brokkr with the lasgun having had his gun and arm adequately attached.

Tallest examples of my three so-far-used not-a-squat dorfy sources: converted 40k human, Warhammer Fantasy dwarf, and Brokkr.

And the whole dorfy gang. I've got another couple of partially-painted plastic Squats kicking around, but am going to save them for when I actually have the gang in play, in case any weapons loadouts that aren't represented here crop up. This lot have not by any stretch of the imagination been built to fit the format of a gang: they're just whatever went together nicely as I was assembling each miniature. They could do with a bit of neatening up and most of the gloves definitely need more work, but they're table ready as it is.

My next dorfy acquisition will probably be from Hasslefree, though I may very well find myself honour-bound to donate to the 'Keep Bob Olley sculpting Space Dwarfs' fund and I could do with getting together a Squat with a heavy stubber.

 

[djmothra]

I picked up a box of the 20 Forge Fathers that were on sale last month - gonna be using them mainly for a Mordheim Dwarf Treasure Warband and perhaps a Squat Gang (or Van Saar maybe!) I also have some KoW dwarf sprues as well, so they all mix and match. I did look at the Brokkr, nice, but not on sale...and I was being cheap that day

 

[Doghead13]

The Brokkr are very much monopose miniatures, sadly. They need a lot of converting to get some variety into them; the pic of the five unpainted and put together shows the only way the set goes together without some chopping and changing.

They're nice miniatures, but they could really do with more variety.

Incidentally, a couple of my Squats are wearing 1/35th scale WW2 G.I helmets - they fit surprisingly well with the size of the old plastic Squat helmets.

Anyway, on the subject of 1/35th helmets, here's two more freshly-painted members of Die siebte Mutanten Kampfgruppe: it's Der Ratte and Zwangsbelüftungs-Einheit Zwei:

Der Ratte is another recovered conversion victim; he used to be a Ratskin brave, but lost his weapons and got his block knocked off. Now he's got a new bonce courtesy of the Warhammer Falgellants sprue with another stahlhelm banged down on top, and replacement weapons with thanks to the Catachan Imperial Guard. Zwangsbelüftungs-Einheit Zwei is of course another plastic Chaos Cultist with a stahlhelm on top; it's really striking how easily a few minor modifications, even just something as simple as a helmet, transforms these guys into something new. They're great miniatures that would've been amazing if GW had seen fit to make them multipose.

If anyone with some fluency in German is wondering why 'Zwangsbelüftungs-Einheit Zwei', the miniature's the Chaos Cultist with the big computer-fan style fan on his back. The idea behind the name is that he used to be some sort of grimdark 40kesque pointlessly biomechanical industrial extractor fan.

 

[trollmeat]

I looked at the minis and thought ~"they look pretty cool", and had to scroll back to have a 2nd look when you said "Der Ratte" was a converted Ratskin. Now that you've pointed it out I can see it, but the head and weapon swap was enough to trick my feeble mind

 

[Doghead13]

He's also got some ancient epoxy putty work putting a sleeve onto his left arm, as a part of turning his bare Ratskin Brave chest into a T-shirt.

Anyway,

TO DAS YAKKETRIBEN!

ACHTUNG! Ve haff ackvired ein puttputtmotomaschinen!

She goes like schiess uff ein yakke, jah?

Test piece for using 1/43 with 28mm; an ancient Volkswagen Beetle model I've had kicking around since the late 80s. Coat of Mechanicum Grey and a bit of drybrushed weathering and I think the Kampfgruppe have found themselves some wheels.

Scale-wise the car looks much less out of place than the bigger 1/35 or 1/32 stuff I've used previously. Now I just need to get hold of a WW2-era German truck (Opel Blitz or suchlike) in a similar scale for them to cart all those huge muties around. I'm thinking something in 1/48 from Tamiya might do the trick.

 

[Doghead13]

And another scale comparison. On the left, 1/32; on the right, 1/48 so marginally smaller than the far-easier-to-find 1/43 scale. I know Escher juves aren't exactly big, but to my eye the old 1/32 car is way overscale.

That's pretty much decided it; I'll be changing over to 1/43 and 1/48 for most or all of my future vehicle needs. It'll be interesting to see how they compare to the 28mm-scale WW2 truck I ordered today.

 

[djmothra]

I do believe that 28/30mm stuff from Armorcast and Italeri is around 1/55 - so 1/48 is close enough

 

[Doghead13]

Well, the truck in question's from Warlord Games, as part of their Bolt Action range. I'm tempted to see how the Perry Miniatures stuff scales up too, but at this point I'm pretty close to maxing out my miniatures budget for the next while.

Part of the problem is availability. 1/48 is like hen's teeth for everything bar military vehicles. For civilian cars, you've got a choice of either a small number of WW2 era vehicles sold as staff cars by Tamiya, or an even smaller number of out-of-production kits by Revell, such as that BMW in my previous post. Finding anything between 1/64 (Hot Wheels scale so far too small) and 1/43 (about as big as you can get to look OK with 28mm minis, and it only works height-wise because of the minis' bases) is like finding a needle in a haystack.

IMO the best compromise currently on the market is 1/43 just due to how much is avaiable in that scale, how easily and how cheaply. My only worry is that the 1/43 and 1/48 vehicles are going to look ridiculously huge compared to the WW2 truck.