Tag Archives: GZG

Ground Zero Games

GZG’s Grav Mini Drones

Hello. I noted a few days ago that I was painting GZG’s Grav Mini Drones for Reddit’s April mini painting challenge. Well, they are complete.

Cleaned up and ready for primer. As you can see, they are pretty small.

Primed. “But,” you ask, “There are only seven. Where are the other two?” Well, I primed these in the backyard at night, and when they were dry and I was bringing them back into the house, I dropped two in the grass. The very long grass that I have not cut in too long. I went back outside with a flashlight, but I could not find them.

The next morning, in the sunlight, I found them right away. 🙂

Attaching the “post”. I got some acrylic rod at the local hobby store. It cut easy with wire cutters, and super glue worked just fine on it.

Painted. Not the most realistic paint job, but a real drone would have been solid gray or dull black, and where’s the fun in that? Most of the detail is in the bottom. which you really won’t see much of during game play, so I had to do something to give visual interest to the smooth top.

I painted the top first, then the bottom, and then washed the bottom in black. If I was to do it over again, I would had painted and washed the bottom first, then painted the top.

Making bases with Green Stuff. This was the first time I didn’t have to work around the figure’s existing base, so I had a lot more freedom.

Complete.

This base is my favorite. I might go with variations of this base in the future. It looks good, and was fairly easy to make and paint.

What would I do differently? I would take more time making sure the base edges were flat. Some of them had rounded bulges on the edges, and when I painted the edge black, it resulted in some sloppy looking paint jobs.

Reddit’s Monthly Painting Challenge

I’m a redditor. Reddit has several excellent subreddits related to gaming and miniatures. http://www.reddit.com/r/wargames is an especially friendly place for 15mm Sci-Fi gamers.

Anyway, a new subreddit, http://www.reddit.com/r/taleofredditgamers has just been started, and each person states what they will paint, then posts progress reports. The project must be done by the end of the month.

This month I am painting GZG’s Mini Grav Drones, and I’ve already run into problems. 🙁

Adventures in Basing

Last week I tried my hand at making bases with Green Stuff. I was painting GZG’s 15mm Ravagers Pack A and I really wanted to make nice bases. I had some Green Stuff freshly delivered from Amazon, and I decided to give it a try.

I hadn’t really planned ahead at all, so I was improvising. All in all, I think it came out pretty well.

Here’s all 8 figures in Ravagers Pack A, 4 models, 2 of each. I plan to use these for role playing, so I wanted to make them different – like the two women were different women, despite the same pose.

Here’s the four figures I concentrated on painted and washed.

This is the disposable wet palette I use. A paper towel, soaked in water, with parchment paper over it. The kind of parchment paper I found in my kitchen, on a roll. It will keep the paint wet and ready to use for hours. Thanks to Rottenlead and his excellent videos for introducing me to the wet palette concept.

I use 0.8mm plywood bases, 20mm diameter, from Litko.net. I put their “Heavy Duty Magnetic Base Bottoms” underneath them. Above is the plywood base only.

Those are the plywood base with the magnetic bottom attached. Putting the minis on a stick with poster sticky stuff during painting is something else I learned from Rottenlead’s videos.

Glued to the base with super glue. That glue in the picture is the best. The glue is very thick, and the squeezable sides give great control. “Gel Control” is a very good description.

Green Stuff on the base and textured. I used some of the metal mesh I use for chain link fences (article coming soon), some sewing thread to press straight lines, and the texture from one of my metal files to press the details into the Green Stuff. You can see on the black haired woman that some metal dust came off my file. I later used some spare Green Stuff to clean my files to almost new. 🙂

The file. You can see the textures I used.

The finished bases. I used Citadel’s ‘Ardstuff to make them glossy. Two coats. My drybrushing of the yellow could have been better. 🙁

I think it was a good first try. I have a ton of ideas on what to do better next time.

How I Got Into Wargaming (Again)

I’m somewhat new to miniature wargaming. I say “somewhat” because I dabbled in wargaming as a teen in the 1980’s, and I am only now getting back to it. (That’s the “Again” part of the title). As you can imagine, things have changed a lot since then.

I read a lot of Sci-Fi, and I was working my way through David Webber’s Honor Harrington series, which contains a crap-load of space battles. I thought that might be a fun genre for a computer game. I was searching the web for a good computer space battle game, and not having a whole lot of luck, when I came across the rules for Full Thrust.

Wow, I thought. Space battle miniatures. Sounds cool. I bought Ground Zero Game’s Full Thrust Intro Fleet Double – 2 sets of 8 ships, from different factions. I painted them and played a few games with a friend. Super fun.

That led to 15mm Sci-Fi ground combat. I read the free Stargrunt II rules, and heard a lot about Gruntz, and ended up buying that and getting a bunch of minis from GZG, Rebel Miniatures and Khurasan.

Now I’m painting up a storm, making terrain, etc.

Here’s the very first 15mm Sci-Fi I ever painted, before and after. These were painted in February, 2013.

So, I guess you can blame David Webber for writing those books, and my co-worker Matt who turned me on to them, for getting me back into miniature wargaming after all these years. 🙂

GZG Full Thrust Intro Fleet Double – Part 5

Spaceship minis really need to be stored with the base attached. I put hours into cleaning, assembling and painting these miniatures, I want to make sure they stay safe in storage and transport. I’ve used camera cases like this one in the past to store microphones. I bet it would be great for miniatures, too. Dedicated miniature cases can be very expensive. This case is $34.99 on Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001HJTK5Y/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00 There are many other sizes, also.

The inside of the case. It has some dividers I won’t use, a set of keys to lock it, and a shoulder strap. There are 3 layers of foam, a thin top and bottom layer, and a thick middle layer that is perforated for easy cutting.

I’ve removed the top layer of foam. I put it back before I close the case and put them away. The middle layer of foam is perforated, so it’s easy to cut along the perforations with a butter knife. I would not suggest using a sharper knife, because then you might cut the foam instead of the perforations. I measured the space I needed for each ship. In this case it was a 3×4 rectangle.

It fits. If you accidentally cut too much, glue it back with wood or elmers glue.

I cut all the spaces for the ESU fleet. In some cases, I put a chuck of foam back for the front or back of the ship to rest on, but still allow the base to go all the way down. You can use wood glue to hold them in, or just friction.

Here’s the whole ESU Intro Fleet

Here’s both Intro Fleets. As you can see, there’s still plenty of room for more ships.

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