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Showing posts with label 15mm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 15mm. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 July 2025

15mm Sci Fi: Killer Space Vegetables & Solo Battle Report

 

Some more 'bad guys' painted up for the growing 15mm Si Fi collection, this time it's a whole lot of deadly flora, 'Day of the Triffids' style.

Bought about ten years ago, I got these out to alleviate painting the endless white straps of my AWI collection and then promptly gave to my wife to do... she offered, honest!

Alternate Armies

These are mostly 'Triffic' (not Triffids) from Alternate Armies.
Above and below are from the SHMP25 Triffic Killer Plants pack.
Below are some Death Spores from AA's HOF46 Creegan Doom Spores pack.

Khurasan Miniatures

A score of Triffids more on the 'human' analogy - these kinda have arms and are holding 'weapons', with a great colour job. All from their Alien Civilizations Listing.

A couple of packs of Botanoid plantman heavy weapons specialists.
Some Botanoid plantman commanders and high commander.
And finally a swarm (several packs) of Botanoid plantman battleteam.

Battle Report

Nearly as far back as I bought these guys, we've been developing a home-grown set of rules we're calling Universal. I think it's finally reached its zenith in terms of development and I used them and a supplementary pack to run some of Khurasan's Defence Force troopers through a jungle romp.
The board is set up with random placement of the KSVs with an objective down one end of the board - in this case an APC. This was done by dividing the board up into a 10cm x 10cm grid and rolling 2 x 1d10s for general placement - then scatter dice and a 1d10 for final placement - this took a while. 

The random placement added a few KSVs right next to the objective. But with the board set, I headed the platoon down an edge of the board, trying to avoid certain death.
But once the good guys have moved, the plants move by themselves using a scatter dice and a 1d10.
My strategy worked all the way up the board until it didn't and a plant randomly moved into contact with the squaddies. 
They fired and cleared out a whole bunch, taking a couple of casualties... 
... and triggered reactive responses by the plants who (within a certain range) headed directly towards the troops.
Things were looking grim as the plants surrounded the troops so they went quiet again and tried sneaking the rest of the way...
... only to have their way to the transport blocked.
More firing ensued, drawing in further nearby plants, with only two death spores left to get past.
With this being the first real wargame I've played in nearly five years, its nice to know that I can still make dumb decisions, even when playing on my own. I was so fixated on getting to the transport that instead of shooting up the plants some more, I ran at the spores, triggering their attack and firing back at them.
The result is that the troops were worn down to 50% and failed their leadership test. They should have gone fleeing off into the jungle to meet their death, or until rallied, but I prefer the above result where they all reached the safety of their transport...
It was great to play a solo game with these figures  - given I live in the middle of nowheresville and  especially with the excellent paint job from my wife. 
My step son even came up with a game of his own using the same figures and rules, and a 60 x 60 gridded play area we made for DnD.
Nice job Khurasan Miniatures and Alternate Armies!


















Saturday, 31 May 2025

Multi-Scale: Sci Fi Industrial/Post Apocalyptic Scenery

 

Yep, old plastic containers, bits off of bottles, a massive raid through a giant bits box, and the use of a scenery kit purchased nearly 20 years ago. Nothing was held back over the last year as we feverously built up a table's worth of Sci Fi terrain.

Having been inspired by the motto of the 131st Pi Orionis Mechanised Hover Infantry, I thought a table's worth of run down, weather beaten terrain from one of the mining planets in the Pi system would be perfect.
But having a large collection of 15, 28, and even 25mm sci fi figures and vehicles, I really wanted to make the scenery usable with all these scales.
Its definitely worked with the 40k stuff and the terrain scales well with both the Tyranids and Ultramarines. 
In fact I don't think I'd do anything more to this stuff before being happy having a game with it at 28mm.
The 15mm stuff on the other hand, while it works reasonably well, I think it will need some additional scale pieces done in the same style before it sits well.
But there's now plenty of terrain to set up a full table top for a game.
Some bunkers for firebases are a must for any game.
A lot of the pipe and installation greeblies are from a Chemical Plant Construction Box I bought many years ago - a couple of places like ebay and Pegasus Hobbies are still advertising them for sale.
Other parts are from plastic supplement bottles and even chocolate boxes. These were heavily sanded first, to take the printing off or to dull the shine of the plastic.
Earlier this year my brother moved into a smaller house and donated a giant box of spare parts collected over the last 40 years of modeling.
Suffice to say that greebly time is now made a lot easier and the box was used extensively with this terrain. I think there's some EVA foam on some of the pieces as well.
These ash/tailings piles were made by first bending cardboard into cones, gluing them on the base, then covering them in ground cover.
But this was done old style without printing a single part - although there's a couple of printed bits on the piles. And a further thanks to my wife who decided she wanted to finish off at least half of the pieces and patiently matched the style I'd started off with.

Monday, 3 March 2025

15mm Sci Fi 'Bad Guys'

Feeling the need to field some bad guys against the space dwarves, exterminators, and space brits painted last year, over the holiday break I smashed out some more of the mountain of pewter.

First up some of Ground Zero Games, 15mm, Star Grunt, Alien Mercenary Squad and Alien Mercs II.

To me, and probably intentionally, these guys look like the Mangalores from the 5th element, so have painted as such.

Then I felt the need for some high-tech space lizards, so painted up my collection of Khurasan Miniatures, Garn Alien Warriors.

I finished a couple of hunting packs, distinguished by their lizard highlight colouring.

Also an overall leader and a couple of 'big boys' carrying support weapons. The leader's cloaking device was working exceptionally well and every picture I took of them was blurry. This is the best one.

The detail on these figures is awesome, including their cloaking/shield equipment.

I kinda like these guys. They tower over 15mm humans and, in my 'space world', have tech so much more advanced, that the humans mostly don't have a chance 😆

Next, I feel the need to field some killer flora!
 

Friday, 28 February 2025

15mm Hellenistic - Finishing a 20 year old pile of lead

Got the fever leading up to the holiday break and smashed out a mass of 15mm bags of ancients, in a box of 'To Do' that's been there for well over 20 years.

Mostly Frei Korps like the thureophoroi and thorakitai above, trying my hand at some more interesting and colourful shield patterns.

By the looks of it there's some Thracian thureophoroi mixed in with the regulars and yet another unit (4 DBx/ADLG) stands of Thrcians with rhomphaia.


Also some late Roman republic legionnaires, labelled Frei Korps on QRF's site but clearly a different style to the old 'bobble heads'

Some great detail on these 15mm figures and I think there's still six bags of these guys to go.

Also finishing off some cavalry to make up units for Hail Caesar, with some cataphracts finally making an appearance.

Which brings us to some rebased command and a raft of various psiloi.

Another 8 Cretan archers (above) because you can't have too many... and finally some slingers.

And including some Roman archers... to go with the legionnaires?

Then on to some Essex Miniatures 15mm in the shape of some javelinmen and hoplites.

I think these are several different baggies of Essex's hoplites, including mercenary and Thebans.
Where not molded on, the spears are all piano wire.

So having finished off another small hump from the mountain of shame, the only thing left to do is finish off the newer 15mm hump of Romans... and order some more 😆