A to Z: Robots

I can not even imagine what it would be like to not like robots.

They are Robots.

End of explanation.


So of course it is fun to build robots!
This then is a tutorial on how to convert a robot, actually two robots, that I built for my VSF Quar army.

The rules we're using for the campaign allow for both regular clockwork infantry as well as heavy infantry automatons. I had an idea for the heavies, and in making them discovered I had the left-overs that would work as light infantry too! Bonus!

This is what I started with: two different types of Mage Knight steam golems: 8 each.

The ones on the left have a more cute & pulpy look to them, but I wanted them to have legs: they're far too top heavy. I like the legs of the ones on the right, so I'd just swap them.

This is the type of set-up that is the stuff of C3P0's nightmares.

Blurry picture of our victi...volunteers for enhancement.

Cut!     He didn't feel a thing.

Cut the legs off the other fellow, and get a paperclip for his hip replacement surgery, a.k.a. 'pinning'.
Note: after I built them I decided I wanted those nobby bits off the knees & toes.  It was possible, but it'd have been a lot easier to do at this stage.

Drill into the body & the top of legs, sink the pin, glue and pose into a walking stance.
The walking pose is already much more dynamic than either of the other two robots, so I'm already pleased.

Some variety in poses here.  I added an antennae to the side of the head.

These 4 were given guns from the 40k Ork sprue. I figured some variety would be nice:
some with guns, some without, so unarmed ones could be used as labor-bots in city/outpost scenario gaming.

I even think they'd work in 15mm.  Quite an imposing fellow in this scale, but I think it works, what do you think?

At this point I went back and looked at these left over parts.... look how cute! Like he's smiling at me...
clearly he wants to be made into something useful too...

Be cautious... it is healthy to see this object and think it looks like it is smiling at you.. it's when a lamp or the wall starts smiling at you that you might want to seek help.

Add a gun and a simple exhaust stack and fill in the hole, and I now have an equal number of clockwork light infantry amd they'd work in 15mm scale too!

I haven't had much time for personal painting lately- they're still in a half-painted state:

8 of each are at this stage: just need some clean-up, details like eyes and bases painted.

A Word of Warning:  
While robots are seemingly helpful tools, and some are even cute, they do maintain a sinister agenda...

Watch this important instructional video for more information: it could save your life.

A to Z: Quar

How could Q be anything else? 

There are two creations that hold the rank of favorite independent original creatures for their appeal and the depth of the creatures, setting, concept and game.  One of those is World of Twilight (see tag on the left column) and the other is Quar (also with a tag). 

If you know the Quar then you probably understand.  If you don't, then let the pykpyk outside because you won't want to be distracted, relax, read, and prepare to fall in love.

Zombiesmith

The Quar are the creation of Zombiesmith. You'll be hard pressed to find a miniatures line with a more developed world, culture and history.  I've linked Zombiesmith under 'Places to go'.  You'll find a wealth of information on the Quar, their culture and history under every Quar heading & model description.  The Quar are contagious and delightful in their personality. Their names are a little odd at first, but many of you have a wide range of nationalities and Quar is maybe similar to, but far easier than Welsh (from my cultural relativism at any rate). You'll adjust to the names and ranks quick enough.

The Quar have rotund bellies and long pointed noses.  They are insectivores. They have a technology similar to Earth around the early 20th century.  My girlfriend refers to them as "the nose aliens" and loves them as much as I do. They are simple in their look but very compelling

The Ranges

Quar are 28mm miniatures (though there are also 15mm versions as well). 

They have a style similar to a historical range between the Franco-Prussian war (for Royalist Quar) to WWI (for the Crusader Quar).  They are the two opposing sides of the 'Long War' which has lasted generations. 

The Crusaders were the first to be released, 

Crusader. (Picture from the Zombiesmith site.)

followed by the Royalists, and both are having new miniatures added to their lines.  

 Royalist.  (Picture from the Zombiesmith site.) 

There is also a 'Partisan' Quar line, which could be Quar fighting for either side: citizen soldiers (think French or Polish resistance fighters in a score of WWII movies and you won't be far off). 

Partisan. (Picture from the Zombiesmith site.)

The Forum

Zombiesmith has an active forum, and allegiances run deep for most on one side or the other. I suffer from a need to collect opposing factions, so I have miniatures for both sides, and do like the look of both, but if pressed to chose, I'd say my sympathies lie with the just and true cause of the Royalists.  The forum has many talented people who've made some very fun machines: something about Quar make you want to create machines for them!  In fact, one of the followers of this blog, Bandit86 just made some very cool Quar submarines! Go check out his blog if you haven't already!

The Games

Zombiesmith has two games for the Quar, one is a large scale battle game, This Quar's War, and the other is a skirmish game, Songs of Our Ancestors, based on the acclaimed Songs of Blades & Heroes & other 'Songs' titles by Ganesha Games.  Even if you have other intended games to use these miniatures for, the books are worth buying for the pictures & background alone, I own them both and can say they are both beautiful books.  They're both available as PDFs as well if that is what you prefer.  There is also another book in the works? Something that will have a lot of Quar tanks.. guess I'll be getting a third book!

The Songs of Our Ancestors makes a great way to pick up a couple squads of Quar and have some great games for a small amount of money.. scratch the Quar itch you're sure to develop if you haven't already. 

My Quar

I've posted several updates with the machines I've made for my Quar, which I'm using as 'Phobosians' in a Victorian Sci-Fi Campaign.  Quar are very flexible.  I could imagine using them in anything from Victorian Sci-Fi, to WWI proxy, WWWII to Science Fiction. 

Here is a collection of the first command group for my Phobosians:

A few of my vehicles I've adapted for my Phobosian Quar:

Some of the troops in an early W.I.P. stage:

Quar come with integrated bases, which could be used as-is, but I prefer to base them on 25mm round bases. -See my post 'Beyond the Slotta Base'  for an explanation on why I prefer these particular ones. 

Quar have separate heads & backpacks, and some models have separate arms/weapons as well.  

The range is well supplied with infantry, cavalry, officers of various rank, and light field pieces like machines guns, heavy shotguns & mortars and even a light & heavy tank.  No Heavy Artillery as yet, but there are a lot of other company options- the Zombiesmith forum has many examples of  what people have gone for (check the thread 'Quartillery').

I have my eye on the Woodbine Design Turkish Krupp Gun. 

So lovely.  When I can afford a few I'll get them. 

I've been working 12 hour days lately, so I haven't been making as much progress on the Quar project as I'd like. 

Speaking of cost, like any independent 'boutique' miniatures company, it's going to cost a bit more per miniature than some of the larger companies, at least when compared to getting boxes of plastic miniatures. But when compared to other metal miniatures and for the quality and originality of the product, Quar are a great value. 

One of my first posts I put up the Zombiesmith Quar video, but it's highly appropriate to do so here, so enjoy the movie, it's a great one! 

A to Z: Pole-Dancers (safe for work don't worry)

What is sexier than a goblin?
A better question might be "What isn't... ?"  But these goblin girls are trying their best!

A client had an idea and a specific request: Could I convert a couple cheerleaders for his orc team to hold a banner for the team?

Sure. Why not?

Looking at the miniatures, I realized it'd be a bit tough. Plus, I wanted the banner to be removable, so it could be transported safely.  Rather than try to have the pole removable, leaving an odd hole in their pom-pom, the pole is sunk into place, but it's a tube: the banner will be on thinner rods that drop into the tubes.

This way they're either cheering around the banner, or, with banner removed, they're enticing the crowd with a goblin Pole-Dance.. a ritual known to incite goblins and orcs into aggressive battle-readiness,  fighting each other as they scramble to be the first to get away.

But they mean well and this job as cheerleaders is paying to put themselves through shaman school, so be a good lad and give em a few teeth.

A to Z: Orks in Space

GW takes a lot of heat.  And ok, maybe they have a lot of stuff that is derivative, maybe without Tolkien a great portion of their foundation wouldn't exist (though that could be said for a great portion of fantasy authors as well).
But there are a few things that they've taken the ball and run with, and some have been a thing of beauty.

One of those is Orcs, and well, Orks.

Something about them just appeals to me. I've liked them in fantasy, the high seas, the Blood Bowl pitch, planet-spanning battles and I've liked them in Space.

Of course, just because GW has made Orks their own, doesn't mean I'm not going to make them my own as well.

This is my Ork Battleship. What a piece of junk.  Literally.

My concept of Orks is that there are only 2 types of spacecraft that orks actually make.
One is 'rocks' -which I do love the concept of that: tunnel into asteroids, mount engines & weapons on it and good to go.
The other is small simple attack craft.  The "Brute Ram Ships" of Battlefleet Gothic.

That's the extent of Ork original engineering.  Not that they can't make bigger ships, but they're too lazy: it's easier to slap parts of wrecked ships together to make their own.  So while the GW Ork ships look fun, they're too uniform for me.I can't imagine orks having such big ships all looking the same.

Besides: I made my fleet on the cheap ;)


The flagship is made from an Imperial battleship, with the neck cut & shortened (I figure that was the first part to be destroyed in a battle) with various ship parts from imperial & chaos slapped on to keep atmosphere from venting (too fast).


The cruisers are from chaos & imperial mostly and one space marine cruiser combined with parts from an ork ship. The observant might notice a couple of the ship parts are 'upside down'.  No one said Orks are bright... besides, parts of the ship might have the artificial gravity working a bit off anyway.

Escorts: captured ships. This is what happens when you can't prevent orks from boarding your ship.
The 2nd from the right is a 'scout' ship. I always want a 'scout' ship for a fleet, even if the rules don't address it.

Ram ships: the lifeblood of an Ork Fleet.  Punch into an enemy ship, cut down the crew, add a new ship to the fleet.  Rinse & Repeat.

Not the whole fleet pictured above, but a sampling from the previous pictures.

A friend of mine borrowed my space mat, so this quick photoshop bash will have to do:

To Infinity... and Be-headings!

So Disturbing

This is one of those images that Lovecraft would have described as 'an indescribable horror'.

I was hunting to see if I could find a source for the Eureka winged monkey with fez that didn't require shipping them from Australia, and like any naive fool looking for the unknown and unexplainable, I stumbled upon an eldritch nightmare to sear the mind and soul.
Turn away! Don't look Marion ...

You were warned.



Update: I found that Eureka has a webstore for the US: http://www.eurekaminusa.com/
However the path to that discovery has cost me many sanity points, the loss of which you now share. 

A to Z: Newts

Carrying on from M: Moon, N brings to mind another project I want to do.
I've had it in my head for several months, and in fact, in general, far longer.

N is for Newts.  An army of Newts actually, and their amphibian, reptilian and other wetland friends.
Khurusan released several 'Salamen' recently, and when I saw them I knew that was the army I wanted to build for 15mm fantasy.

They have archers, javeliners, and light cav.  Lizardmen for heavier infantry, and you can always find 28mm miniatures that work for 'monstrous' sized creatures in a 15mm scale.

For a long time I've been wanting to get back into 15mm fantasy, for large armies.
I'm disillusioned with Warhammer, and paint too much for other people to have the time to devote to the massed ranks that I'd need for that (though I do have a few in number army idea I may make for it, for fun).

Generally then, I'm thinking of sticking to skirmish for 28mm fantasy and larger battles going for 15mm.

But it has created a dilemma: What rules system to use?

I'm an aesthetics-junky so I classify the games by the look of the basing:

1. Hordes of the Things & Fantasy Rules!: Both fun and not-difficult games. basing is on 40mm squares. I prefer element bases like that, but 40mm square looks a bit small, and the square shape while very handy for game rules looks a bit more like a board game playing piece than a unit to me: just something about the square.

2. Fantasy Impetus: Love how the units look. The bigger base sizes, in rectangles, looks more like units to me, and has more room to create interesting scenics.  The Geektactica blog has been a big inspiration.  Problem is Fantasy Impetus doesn't appear to be well supported (though that could be an incorrect impression) and, especially if it isn't, the base sizes would prevent the army from being used in another system, which of course is a problem with HOTT/FR! style bases going to Impetus,though clearly not with each other.

3.  Rebel Minis has a new 15mm fantasy army scale game called Mighty Armies.  I don't know much about this, but the basing style makes me less inclined to go down that path. I'm not a fan of the strip-bases and building units from them, for 15mm as much as I like element bases. At a 15mm scale I'd prefer the look of a loser army formation with diorama type scenic bases, not just packed ranks of troops, which is one of the things pushing me away from Warhammer.

4. Create my own rules. "I'm not such a bad pilot myself..."  Problem there is again with the base sizes: needs to be something that would function with other game systems that others would play, so really it doesn't solve all the problems.

If someone has a suggestion for a rules set, opinion, solution, or just knows of a game system to be considered for 15mm fantasy other than the ones above I'd be happy for the input.

Because Khurusan has turned me into a Newt


.. and I may not get better. 

A to Z: Moon: Theater of Battle: WWWIII

The year was 2018. That was the year of the invasion from Outer Space.
But not by Aliens.
By Nazis.


I became aware of this movie-in-the-works, IRON SKY, last year.
If you haven't heard of it, I've included the two trailers below.
It looks awesome.

Not just a great movie idea with a sleek film noir vibe, I instantly started thinking about how to game this setting.
A friend of mine got into the idea too.

Some assumptions were obvious:
1. 15mm sci-fi
2. Skirmish platoon sized battles with a handful of vehicles: Gruntz would be ideal for this.
3. I'd be tempted to get the Lunar landscape gaming mat from Hotz ArtWorks


My friend called dibs on the Nazis. For them, we're thinking Rebel Minis' Titan Marines:

Although Eureka has some great SciFi Germans too:



That leaves their opponents.. what will I chose? I didn't know at first, until Khurusan came out with these:

Perfect! These will be the British Royal Lunar Marines.
Support them with some GZG Bulldog Rover APCs and some of those 6 wheeled tanks.

Some great pulp sci-fi battles on Earth or strike back against the Lunar Nazis on the Moon!

Not sure when I'll have time to start this project, but it is fun to plan.

Here are the previews of the movie, and check out the website for Iron Sky.