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!

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.

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!

 

Space Dwarves (a.k.a Squats)

 

Some more 15mm sci fi completed from my mountain of shame and as ever, I've had all these for quite a few years.

These are Khurasan Minatures, Thrainites and Clear Horizon Miniatures, High-Gravity Mercs (Sci-Fi Dwarves), with some Alternate Armies, Laserburn, V011 Scorpion Air Landers for on-planet transport.

The two figure ranges mix together seamlessly and I struggled initially to think of a paint scheme. But the shoulder pads and poses reminded me of Games Workshop's Epic and 40K Squats from eons ago. 

In the end, I mixed those old paint schemes with the more modern Leagues of Votann.

The landers are resin and were a bit warped, and I didn't really know what to do with them.

I ended up covering them in 1/72 scale stowage and greeblys, which worked well and applied a heavy layer of rust colour first before dabbing the paint on, using the painting technique from the Bill Making Stuff Youtube Channel.

After some eye watering painting, as these guys are really small, was happy with the colourful result.

USGMC Exterminators

These are Khurasan Miniatures 15mm Federal Defence Force "Exterminators" for use with/against their awesome Space Demon line (not Aliens).

I'd got a bunch of 'not aliens' finished back in 2016 by commission. I'd painted the vehicles back then too but was unhappy with the result. 

So I took the plunge and bought a company's worth of Exterminators and have been finishing them and their vehicles over the last few years. This included doing a bit of movie research and getting some custom decals made for them.

These marines hail from the United Systems Galactic Marine Core vessel, USGMC Odessa -  a slightly larger cruiser than the Sulaco (both named after cities in the US).

I got sucked into the 'lighting' debate regarding the Aliens movie and after much thought, went with a dark grey green for the main grunt armor and vehicles. This is because I don't have the lighting effects from the movie on hand for most games... I did stay true to the film though and made all the pulse rifles a scale version of Brown Bess.

Marine Platoons

There are three platoons of about twelve multi-tasking soldiers, each with their own APC - Khurasan's M2189 Caiman.

Tan coloured fatigues and helmet covers - different colours for different platoons.

Jungle green fatigues and helmet covers, closer to the movie.

A generic grey, just to distinguish platoons on the table top.

Company Commanders

There's a company commander and 2IC, both with their own 'command/support' cars - Khurasan's M3918 Polecat.

Dropships

For the dropships I went with Khurasan's Cormorant Lander and am thinking of printing an APC version of the drop cargo. 

Where there was space, I placed the name of the ship on vehicles, taking prompts from the APC in the movie.

Atmospheric Craft

Still in progress are a series of atmospheric craft and I've chosen Clear Horizon's Condor Heavy Lift VTOL and X-14A Raven-Class VTOL.

Support Weapons

There's a raft of support weapons which the grunts can break out from their APC when needed. In game, you have to swap out standard marines from the platoons to field these... because there are never enough marines.

Sentry Guns

I also got some sentry guns, because, well, why wouldn't you? They were in the movie and its fun to set something up on the tabletop that fires at anything that moves in front of it - including marines.

Hard Suits

For troubling infestations I painted up three sections of Extreme Environment Suits.

These guys can head down into xeno lairs and passages like tunnel rats, clearing out the menace without fear of xeno acid splash.

I'm pretty sure these are based off the peeps that come into the prison with Weyland at the end of the 3rd movie .

Basing

Using Flames of War as a 15mm reference, I've used MDF and magnetic bases from LITKO and always get the best service from this company. 

This allows me to field the grunts in FoW style squads or as individuals, but still moving them around on bases for ease of use during a game.