Ack! Ack! Ack! ( We come in Peace!)

We it has taken me nearly two years but I have finally got some paint on these Martians.

The Mantic Mars Attacks Martians are really nice miniatures that paint up very nicely however there are a couple of issues with them.




Firstly the Martians are made from a soft plastic type material that is called Restic (resin/plastic?)
This material is a bit of a pain to work with. Firstly when you look at the unpainted figure you may see bent rifles and warped bases which will not straighten no matter how much you try and bend them back. This is actually quite easy to fix.




You get two bowls of water, one holding boiling water and the other ice water. Using some pliers hold the figure in the boiling water for about 30 seconds. Then take it out of the water and using your fingers straighten rifles,bases etc. anything that is warped. The plastic has a memory in it and will easily bend back to the position it was in when originally injection moulded.
Then when satisfied with the final position (don't take too long) dunk the figure in ice water to set the plastic. You can do this several times until you are satisfied that everything is straight and in their original positions.




The next step in preparing the models for painting is removing the flash from the moulding process.
This was when the issues with restic material really stand out. Now generally with white metal figures or hard plastic i.e.. polystyrene, removing flash is a fairly straight forward process. Most of the flash can be removed by scraping the flash with the side of a scalpel blade. Any stubborn flash (particularly on metal) can be removed with a little filling using a small needle file.




Restic flash cannot be easily removed. You cannot scrap the flash off because the material tends to burr and not easily slide off. You also cant file the material as you end up with a rough finish.
The only way to remove the flash is to carefully slice it off with a scalpel blade. You have to be very careful to cut off the flash without cutting away part of the model. The scalpel blade must be really sharp to do this. Needless to say that this process can take a lot of time because the martians actually did have a fair amount of flash on then.




So after I had cursed and complained for an hour or so my miniatures were now straight and flash free and ready for undercoating. There appears to be some residual mould release coating on the miniature that can cause the undercoat not to adhere to the surface so you should clean the miniatures in warm soapy water with a gentle scrub of an old toothbrush.




Once dry I applied the undercoat. For this I used Vallejo undercoat medium applied with a brush.
I applied two coats and ended up with a nice grey base coated miniature. I almost never undercoat my miniatures in black anymore. Black obscures the detail and wrecks light colours. I used to use Black so I could get the black outline effect on my miniatures but I find that is easily achieved with a wash of Games Workshop Agrax Earthshade instead.


Below is the paints I used to paint my Martians. Most are Vallejo (excellent paints) with a couple of GW paints including the most important, the Agrax Earthshade wash which I use in about 99% of my painting these days.


The painting process was fairly straightforward. A nice neat straight paint job. No shading our highlights at all. Give the whole miniature a wash with Agrax Earthshade and when dry go back with the original colour and paint the highlights. Sometime I add just a little white to the base colour to give a final highlight.


Spray the whole figure with matt varnish spray  (I use Testors which is the best IMO) and then when it is dry you can attach the clear helmets. You will need to use PVA glue to attach the helmets. If you use styrene model glue or super glue you will fog up the helmets and ruin the effect.

Its time for you to die puny human!  Ack! Ack! Ack!!!

Get your Damn hands off me you damn dirty ape!

Here is my ape gang for Judge Dredd, Super system or any other type of scifi/pulpy skirmish game.

The figures are from Eureka miniatures (www.eurekamin.com.au) and I have been eyeing these off ever since I saw them. They also have a great Gorilla with a recoiless rifle which I want to get as well as a bunch of gun toting gibbons.

My back story for this gang in Judge Dredd is that they were a group of janitors at a military installation when they revolted, stole a large cache of military hardware and disappeared into the bowels of Mega City One.

Their first couple of games of JD have seen them comprehensively whup a team of judges and plod bots. The chimps have got speed, they're agile, and they are packing some serious hardware. The ape with the M60 is a standout picking off targets if he can get into a good vantage point.

Cheers

Neil

And now for something completely different...

Back again :) 

And this time it's a whole new category of gaming. Now my science fiction has thus far been limited to the glorious heady days of Victoriana where aether ships cross the cosmos to exotic locales like Mars and Venus , where stout hearted British redcoats fight savage Parrotmen or evil Martian Tripods.

VSF (don't call it steampunk!) will always be my first love but never let it be said that I am afraid to try new things. So when a new rules system/game is in the offing I will always be interested to see what it can offer. Now if the new system happens to feature one of my favourite comic book characters, well then in true Jerry McGuire style I would say, " You had me at Judge Dredd!"

Yes it's off to Megacity One to clean up the streets and bash some juvies heads and throw them in a cube prison. I loved 2000AD and in particular Judge Dredd (and Rogue Trooper but let's not get started on that one!). I still have my piles of comics and annuals in a box in the garage waiting for my sons to be old enough for me to "pass on the baton" as it were.

I guess I am a recent convert to what would be called "gang skirmish" where each side runs a faction of around 10 figures each. Individual characters develop skills as you play more battles. Judge Dredd is one of these games. Fellow NWA'er and gang skirmish supremo James Wright ran me through a game of Dredd to try it out. The mechanics are pretty straightforward , being simple but not simplistic and the game runs well and doesn't appear to be unbalanced.

Here is the layout for the game:

The basic scenario was a group of fanatical cultists were trying to open a portal to the underworld and summon a demon. The judges, well they had to stop them. I was running a rogue cyborg-robot faction that was out to spoil everyone's fun.

The cult leader has summon one real nasty mother of a demon (with a strange elephant like appendage!)

My robot's had a mercenary fatty to help out on the day. Fatties are hard to take down especially if there is a ready supply of hamburgers nearby.

"I am the Law!"  Judges swing into action

One thing you learn quickly in the game is that cover is your friend, here some of my bots hide from cultist fire coming from the tower.

I advance my leader to the base of the tower ready to clear out the cultists.

It's chop chop time!

After clearing the tower my fatty and another bot engaged the plod bot and judges on the right while my leader made for the demons

Dredd taking on a rather chubby demon.

Fatties can launch a devastating attack by charging. My Fatty charged a plod bot and squashed it against a wall!

My leader cyborg took on the demon but came off worse off. My faction broke and the judges were left to clean up the cultists but it was not looking good for them.

All in all Dredd is a good fun quick game that captures the flavour of the comic. I will be looking forward to playing this more in the future.

Cheers

Neil