Category Archives: Sci-Fi Gound

This Is What $85 Buys You In 15mm Sci-Fi

One of the great things about 15mm Sci-Fi minis is that they are so inexpensive. An infantry figure costs around 60 cents. A tank or wheeled vehicle around $11. Compared to some company’s 28mm figs, that is super cheap.

Here’s what $85 buys you:

This is my 15mm Sci-Fi army, which can be used to play Gruntz, Tomorrow’s War, Stargrunt II, FUBAR, etc. I ordered from Ground Zero Games in the UK and Rebel Miniatures in the USA. Total cost was $85 US, not including shipping or tax. 65 infantry, 4 big guns, and 5 wheeled vehicles.

The big list:

— Vehicles: —

Right side

GZG V15-42A Bulldog 4-wheel HMTV closed-back Troop Carrier version
GZG V15-39A Bobcat 4-wheel HMLCV (High Mobility Light Combat Vehicle) with autocannon turret

Left Side

GZG V15-42B Bulldog 4-wheel HMTV closed-back Command Post version (with left over Rebel Mini’s gun)
GZG V15-41A Bulldog 4-wheel HMTV (High Mobility Transport Vehicle), open, with tribarrel autocannon mount (+ crew) (I didn’t use the crew)

Center

Rebel Minis RMEFG1 Earth Force ATV Buggy.

— Big Guns: —

Right side:

GZG V15-25A GAWP – Groundmount Autonomous Weapons Platform with Rotary Cannon

Left side:

GZG V15-73A Heavy Autocannon (with NAC gunner)

— Troops: —

Black “Command” and Black 1:

GZG SG15-SFE5 Assault Team (human troops in fatigues) – 4 character figures and four line grunts

Black 3 & 4:

GZG SG15-F03 FSE POWER ARMOUR

Black 2 & 5

GZG SG15-E03 ESU POWER ARMOUR

Green 3 & 4:

GZG SG15-A23 NAC Power Armour & SG15-A21 NAC Assault Power Armour pack A

Green “Command”, 1 & 2:

Rebel Minis MAEF1 The Earth Force Marines Infantry Pack

All 65 troops fit in a cookie tin. Magnetic bases keep them in place.

Khurasan’s Little Green Imperialist Warriors

Little green men. The staple of 50’s Sci-Fi. I was browsing Khurasan’s 15mm Sci-Fi pages when I happened across them, and I knew right away they’d be fun to paint. I think that’s an important quality in miniatures – fun to paint. The order I placed at Khurasan that day was all “fun to paint” minis. Nothing for my armies, nothing I even had an intended use for, but just stuff that would be fun. Fleeing scientists, women with big (ahem) guns, aliens, predators, hill people. Fun stuff.

Cleaned up and ready for primer. They were pretty clean already, it only took a few minutes to clean the minor flash and mold lines. Khurasan is pretty good about that stuff.

Painted and based. If you look close, you can see their tiny little faces are actually way down at the bottom of their giant heads.

I decided to go with a “Martian soil” look for the base.

Is it weird that I think their little alien butts are kinda cute?

Yeah, that’s weird. Forget I said anything.

So, I’m painting then, and I’m thinking “why am I so sloppy with these details?” Then I realize, these guys are tiny.

Here’s a size comparison with a GZG power armor and a Rebel Mini’s Earth Force Marine.

I had fun painting these guys. I know they are mean little bastards that would shoot me on sight, but they are just so darned cute, with their little blue suits and white shoes. Like little kids paying sailor.

Ok, maybe I’m reading too much into this. 🙂

What’s On My Workbench – Right Now

Hey all. It seems like I have a lot of stuff “in progress” at the moment. Some of that is because I’m waiting on 30mm bases from Litko.net for my GZG Spider Drones, so I decided to move on to something else while I wait – some Khurasan and GZG minis I had waiting for paint.

In the front are Khurasan’s Little Green Imperialist Warriors. I painted them last night, dullcote’ed them this morning before I went to work, and tonight I started the basing process. I use vinyl wall spackle mixed with water, sand and very small rocks (more like big sand). As you can see, it’s still wet. If it’s dry enough before I go to bed, I’ll get a coat of paint on it. Then a nice wash, and maybe I’ll glue some sand on.

On the left in the back are what’s left of GZG’s Ravagers pack A – their brothers and sisters are already done. In front of them are 3 of Khurasan’s Scientists. The 4th is a dead scientist, and I’m not really interested in him, so he’s in a box somewhere.

Finally, in the front, is Khurasan’s Cyborg Supercop.

Last, but not least, are the 12 GZG Spider Drones. As you can see, 8 of them are painted, waiting for their bases, and the other 4 are partially painted.

Well, that’s where I’m at today. I’ll feature each of these models in more detail when they are complete. The Little Green Imperialist Warriors should be up tomorrow or Friday.

Happy painting!

Alien Plants

Continuing on with porting my older Imgur articles to this new blog:

I followed this tutorial on the excellent TerraGenesis site and made some alien plants from plastic drinking straws.

I painted them green, and washed them with black. Then I based them on some wood rectangles I got at the local craft store. I glued some sand on the bases and I was done. Or so I thought. They looked a bit drab, so I added the yellow to the ends and it really made them pop.

If I was to do them again (and I will, I plan to make a bunch more) I would wash them with brown.

It was a really quick and easy terrain project.

Identifying Squads with Magnet Attached Flags

Before I started this blog, I used Imgur.com to post my projects – pictures with brief captions. There are several albums over there that I’ll be “porting” over to this blog, a kind of catching up when I don’t have a current project to report.

Right now I’m in the middle of painting 12 of GZG’s Spider Drones, and it’s taking a bit longer than I thought, plus the bases for them are on order, so it will probably be another week before I can show you the results of that. In the meantime, here’s “Magnet Flags” :

—-

One of the things I love about 15mm Sci-Fi wargames is how generic everything is. This means my figures have multiple uses. Not only can I use them for multiple rulesets, but I can split my force in two for a smaller battle with just my own figures, or use the whole army against someone else’s army, or use them for RPGs like Traveller or Eclipse Phase.

Because of this, I need to keep my forces flexible. In a game like Gruntz, it’s convenient to identify the squad leader, and, by extension, the squad. In one game, a particular figure might be a squad leader, in another, just a grunt. To facilitate this flexibility, I use magnets on the base of certain figures to attach a flag that identifies the squad.

I bought a magnet starter kit. It comes with 50 magnets and the drill bit for $8.99 at TheWarStore.com

I added the magnet to the mini’s base. I drilled out the plaster part of the base and super-glued the magnet in. Make sure you have the same polarity on all your bases.

Then I glued a magnet to a toothpick flagpole. I used epoxy to glue the magnet, because the superglue didn’t hold. Make sure you have the right polarity, or the magnet will not stick to the base magnet.

And here’s the result.

It’s a pretty strong hold. As you can see, you can pick the mini up by the flag with no problem.

Here’s the flags in progress. I have black and green flags for when I want to divide my minis into two forces.

Thanks for reading!

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