Zona Alfa: Red Caps, Dust Hoppers, and Rad Spiders

I decided to continue my push into the Zone by painting up some more critters that I have lying around.  I don't have any stalkers to face off against them, or any terrain for the Zone for that matter, but it's been fun to paint up the beasties and create a bit of lore for my Zone in the process.  In fact, I managed to dig up another couple of critters to go with the ones that I'd already shown, so let's take a closer look at what I managed to put together.

First up are the critters that I previously posted as my analogs for "dogs" for Zona Alfa, and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out!  Get ready for the reptilian goodness that is the red cap!

Believed to originally be a kind of snake, exposure to something in the Zone changed them into the creatures known as red caps.  Aggressive and territorial, red caps typically move in groups commonly called broods and will mercilessly attack anything they come in contact with.  Thankfully they are not poisonous as some snakes are, but with they're sharp teeth and vicious talons they can dispatch an unsuspecting stalker in minutes.

As for the minis, these are rippers from the Tyranids of 40k fame.  I did a quick look around and while you can apparently still get this on at least the Termagant sprues, I'm not seeing much as far as options for buying them loose.  Kind of a bummer as I wouldn't mind getting more but I'll make due with what I have.

Next up are another blast from the past, dust hoppers.

Dust hoppers are relatively harmful.  Large insectile herbivores, individually these creatures are more of a threat to flowerbed than a person.  When they start moving in swarms though, they can become extremely dangerous.  With sharp claws on their four limbs, hoppers moving as a swarm will tear through an area and anyone unlucky enough to be standing in their way.

Filling the niche of a swarm for my Zone, these minis are control bugs from the defunct Starship Troopers Miniature Game released by Mongoose Publishing back in 2005.  One of the later releases for the game, I don't think this unit really caught on.  I managed to get ahold of one blister but I'm pretty sure they've gone the way of the dodo now.  As for Zona mechanics, dust hoppers are an example of the vermin you might find in the Southwest Zone

And the last critter from the Zone for today are rad spiders.

The size of a small dog and glowing an eerie blue, rad spiders are an all too common threat in the Zone.  While not actually radioactive, rad spiders physiology has been altered so they contain some kind of bioluminescence which real reason they glow.  Even without the danger of radiation, rad spiders are still extremely dangerous due to their aggressive nature and poisonous bite.

Unlike the other two critters that I have put together, rad spiders are not actually minis and are readily available.  Just hop onto Amazon and search for mini plastic spiders.  There is a listing there for 120 of the little critters for less than $8 which makes these the cheapest minis I've ever bought!  You could always use the larger ones that are typically done with an attached ring, but personally I think that these ones have a better look to them.  I'd scored these years ago for a Halloween decoration but I think I'm going to grab some more so I can make some more species of eight legged crawlers in the future.  With their size, these ones could easily fit into the game as either solo critters or members of a swarm, depending on how you base them.

Next I should start looking at some of the Stargrave minis that I recently picked up to see if I can piece together some fitting minis to be stomping around in the Zone.  Until next time...

Warlords of Erehwon: The Rune Golem of Lord Ramsay the Grey

I've been doing a lot of for the Zone lately, but that hasn't been the only thing on my painting table.  There have been a couple of rune golems sitting on my table for a while, so I decided that it was time to put some paint onto one of them to see how it would look.

He's a little monotone but that kind of fits with the background I've made up for my Knights.  The house troops of the army will be in blue like the spearmen around the rune golem.  These units are going to form the building blocks at the core of my force.  To expand beyond the core, I want to assemble a few more blocks of 250 points so I can plug them into the army in different ways.

The first of these blocks is going to be focused around Baudric the Red (he popped up in this post here).  The next of the blocks is going to be Vallios Ramsay the Grey who will be bringing his "pet" golems to the party.  In addition to a pair of rune golems, Ramsay himself is mounted on a rune steed with two knights to accompany him.

Ultimately I'm thinking I'd like to have a block of peasants that I could put into the force as well, just to have some cheap "troops" to give me more numbers but these are going to wait for now.  I'm planning on getting some of the Fireforge Northmen Folk Rabble for these.  Since they are plastic figures, it should help keep the cost down a bit, but I just realized that I have 60 Stargrave minis, 20 Panzergrenadiers, and a bunch of other Rune Wars minis that I still need to assemble, never mind paint, so I'm thinking I need to slam the brakes on my purchases while I work on the backlog... especially since that's just the plastic figures... and it doesn't include the Ghar army box that I still have yet to crack open.

Oh boy... this might take a bit.  Well, until next time...

Zona Alfa: Creepy Crawlies In The Zone

About three months ago, I started dabbling with what minis I had on hand that I could use to explore the Exclusion Zone that is the focus of Zona Alfa.  I started to make some headway, but things kind of stalled out after pretty quickly.  Since I started picking up the brush again, I think it's time to start looking into some of the ideas that I had oh so long ago.

Out of the book, Zona Alfa lists the possible hostiles as vermin, dogs, zombies, ghouls, bandits, mutants, or large mutants.  These categories are nice and vague though, so all it takes is a little digging and some imagination to come up with the an appropriate mini from you collection.

Looking at my own minis, fielding zombies is going to be a piece of cake.  Heck, even ghouls will be easy too since I started collecting minis for the Plague faction in Deadzone.  I had already painted up some of my type I Plague in different colors schemes which is perfect for this.  Initially I had tried to do more of a traditional zombie look and they didn't turn out too bad.

The normal skin tones are not very sci-fi though, so I decided to play around with some Citadel shades that I had picked up and I really like how these ones turned out.

I'm thinking that for Zona I will use the regular zombies as... well, zombies.  Creative, right?  But the purple skinned ones are going to be some kind of rad ghouls.  They look similar but different enough that I like how they will look on the board.  I do want to paint up some more of each though (I'm thinking six each so I can cover up to threat level 2) but this gives me a solid start, and once they are assembled painting them up is pretty quick.

Next up were the vermin.  I think everyone think instantly of rats when you say vermin, but as the rules point out, it can be any thing in your collection that you feel fits the bill.  Digging though the old minis box, Two of the five threat level one hostiles done!  That still leaves the vermin, dogs, and bandits.  Since they are the most common, I had planned to start with the vermin.  Thinking of these as swarms of rats, insects, or some other nasty creepy crawly, I grabbed some old Tyranid ripper swarms and based them up.

Still need to get some paint on these gribblies but you get the idea at least.

It was after I got them onto the bases that I realized that if these were some kind of swarm, then it would make more sense to do 40mm bases with groups of them on each bases.  I'd already popped some of these off their original bases so this would mean rebasing them again which I wasn't looking forward to, plus I'd used plastic cement this so who knows how cleanly they would have come off!  This is when a thought struck me; maybe these would work better as "dogs"?  Given their size and having two on a base it seems like the perfect option.  Plus, I've been trying to figure out where to get dogs/wolves that weren't zombified so going with the rippers instead eliminates that whole problem.

So what about the aforementioned swarms?  I was stumped at first but then realized that Reaper Miniatures has the perfect solution for these; actual swarms!  I'm thinking I'll go with either the beetle or spider swarm, I just need to dig them out of the bin first.  That said, I did see a pretty awesome post on the Zone Alfa Facebook group that featured some rad spiders.  His were printed but I happen to have some small Halloween spiders floating around still...  Something to think about there.

For the next bunch, I went way back to 1999 as I dug out a couple of Neo-Soviet rad troopers from the miniature game Vor: The Maelstrom.

I bought a couple of the starters at a discount after FASA went belly up, mainly for the Growler minis that come with them.  The Union troops aren't bad either, and I might pull some of those out to fill out my crew or maybe as a military force patrolling the Zone.  But the Neo-Soviets?  I really liked the aesthetic of these guys though I never did pick up too many of them.

Thankfully they are still available through Iron Wind Metals so I'm thinking I'll pickup a some more from the Neo-Sov range.  In particular, a couple more rad troopers but equipped with SMGs this time.  Besides the rad troopers, I like the looks of the cyclops for a large mutant and either some of their mutants or perhaps some rad hounds to fill the role of mutant on the table.

I also really like the look of the chemgrunt (maybe count the sprayer as a flamer?), plus maybe a few of the Vanguard soldiers.  The downside to these minis it they are metal mono pose figures, but I like the look of them and I think there are at least a couple of different poses for each trooper so there will be a little bit of variety.

The only downside to using these is that I don't have them yet.  Unfortunately Iron Wind is experiencing shipping delays right now, so even ordering them might take a while.  I don't know when I will be getting this to the table, but for now I think I'll dig into the minis box to see what else I have on hand.

And as for the mutant and large mutant?  Haven't gotten that far yet, but they are something I can dig around for as well.  I also got to thinking about terrain for this and had something of an epiphany.  Zona Alfa is by default set in the Russian exclusion zone, but the setting is very open ended and people are doing Zones all over the place.  I had been thinking if not Soviet, then at least someplace with temperate terrain... until this morning.

What about the United States southwest?

There is a whole lot of nothing out there, and between the terrain, the weather, and the critters it could be an interesting place to explore.  Not to mention who knows what might have wondered out of a certain Area out there if everything fell apart.

This is definitely a theme I am going to look more into as it just feels like it would be right, but we'll dig more into that later.  Until next time...

Bolt Action: The Making of the 12th Mechanized Infantry Platoon

After more list building, I figured out a 750 Bolt Action list that I think will be fun to play without being cheesy at all.  The core that drove the shape of this force is the story that I came up with.

The 12th mechanized platoon is one of the units involved in the push through occupied France in1943.  As they went deeper into enemy held territory, the unit came under fire and lost their transports but were able to capture German vehicles and continued to push forward.

Is this historically accurate in anyway?  No idea.  I did some cursory research for to figure out a time and location but the rest of it I made up on the fly.  I might flesh it out more as I build the unit, but for now this gives me a solid framework to hang my concept from.

I also started working on the new paint scheme and so far, I'm really pleased with it.

The base is Vallejo US Army olive drab primer which I then hit with Citadel Agrax Earthshade to give it some depth.  Once this was dried, I tried to pick out the raised areas with some P3 Traitor Green to give it a little more depth.

Rather than leaving the helmet the same color, I painted these with P3 Thornwood Green to make them slightly darker, and I also hit the handle of the shovel with the same color just to mix things up.  Next came the brown pants, in this case P3 Gun Corps Brown and the shoes which are P3 Bootstrap Leather.  Once these were both dried, I went over them both with a shade of Citadel Seraphim Sepia.

The last step (so far) was some Citadel Rhinox Hide for the weapons.  I'll probably go back and pick out some of the hardware on with Citadel Abaddon Black eventually, but for now the Rhinox Hide is so dark it might not even show.

Once this was all dried, I coated them with Vallejo Matt Varnish to give them a bit of protection.  Then it was time to finish dressing up the bases, which in this case just meant painting the edge with Abaddon Black to give it a more finished look.  Once this was sealed as well, I took a white ballpoint and wrote BAR on the appropriate soldier to make it easier for me to see who has what.  I'm going to do this with the NCO's as well.  The labeling is only on my side so it doesn't disrupt the visual of the mini too much when you are looking from the front

There is still more to do with the 12 Platoon but I like how they are starting out.  The details that I added are nothing major but I like how they break up the solid green uniform and make them a little more interesting to look at.

I'm also taking a different approach to how I am painting them by only doing them one at a time.  Typically I would try to do blocks of troops but I'm really liking this approach more for some reason.  I'm also trying to mix up the skin tones a bit as well, instead of the ghostly white that I'd originally used.

Next will be more of the troops for the 12th, plus the first of their captured vehicles should be arriving this week, a Warlord Games Opel Blitz.  And I've also started some work on a couple of old Vor the Maelstrom Neo-Soviet rad troopers that I've been thinking of using for Zona Alfa.  Lots of fun stuff in the works and hopefully I can get back into my hobby streak by working through them one at a time.  Until next time...

Bolt Action: The Green Machine

I was planning on posting about the Green Machine before our Combat Patrol tournament but... better late than never!  See let's take a look at just what the Green Machine is and just how it did at the tourney.

A couple of weekends back, I was able to make some good headway assembling the minis I need to make the Green Machine a reality.  Thankfully I already have a good chunk of the minis on hand, but one of the things that I was lacking was a engineer squad... or more specifically, the flamethrower team that can be part of an engineer squad.

Yeah, it was that kind of list.

I did a bit of hunting around locally to see if I could find the flamethrower team mini in stock but no such luck.  Instead, I had to resort to bashing one together and overall I'm pretty pleased with the results.

In case you're wondering, Sparky is the one in the front to the right of center.

I'm the first to say that it's not perfect; the "flamethrower" should have a nozzle on it, not to mention the complete lack of a hose attaching the weapon to the fuel tanks.  That said, I'm quite pleased with the results and I was looking forward to terrorizing people... I mean, fielding this unit at the Combat Patrol game.

Along with the engineers, there was a 2nd LT with minder, three six man infantry squads (each with a BAR of course), a medium machine gun team, and Stewie (AKA an M3 Stuart light tank with LOTS of machine guns).  And since I was just looking for quantity over quality, everyone except the engineers and Stewie was inexperienced... hence the unit was "The Green Machine".

Brownie points if you've already noticed what I did with the paint scheme!

As the curveballs kept coming, I realized that I wouldn't be able to paint them up the way that I wanted so I did the next best thing; I painted all of them green.  Yep, the Green Machine went from being a Bolt Action army to being a bunch of plastic toy soldiers in a matter of minutes and it really made me happy.  People also got a kick out of it at the tourney which is a plus in my book.  I wasn't going into the event to be uber competitive, I just wanted to push around some minis a goal that I was able to achieve readily.

Doing even vaguely well in the ranking?  Not so much.

At the end of the day, I managed to lead Stewie, Sparky, and their buddies all the way to 12th place our of fourteen players!  What made it even better was I scored lucky 13 for my point total and I had a good time in the process.  There were a couple of "Really?" moments as one of the players introduced some house rules to the event but whatever; it was the last game of the day and I just wanted to kill stuff so I rolled with it.

So will Bolt Action possibly become a thing again for me?  Quite possibly.  My LGS will be hosting another event this fall and I want to try to field a real army for it.  Not real as in list building minutia but what that has a story behind it.  I'm thinking the mechanized platoon that I've always wanted to run, except I'm going to pick up a couple of SDKFZ's instead of using M3 half tracks.  I prefer the look of the SDKFZ, and I like the idea of a late war US force that was been pushing into German territory.  Their own vehicles were damaged or broke down so the did the next best thing; steal from the Germans!  Of course before I can do that, I need to buy the models which is all the more reason to pace things out.  I believe the earliest that they are looking at for the next event is September so I should be able to get some practice games in plus start making my minis look like a real army.  Until next time...