COVID Cupdate 5

Quick post, another Lurking Panther, this time painted as a mutant mountain lion.

Goofiness notwithstanding, I'm actually quite happy with this one.

COVID cupdate 4

In all honesty, there were updates ready for last week, but due to a number of factors I didn't manage to get a blog post up.

Slugs!

So convincingly gross they icked out the the COVID cup whatsapp group! More nasties for fantasy and post apocalyptic adventurers.

Mortar!

This is my entry for the Rare bonus round. Now I can already hear what you're thinking. Sebastian, how is a metal Catachan Imperial Guard mortar from the early to mid nineties count as rare? There must by thousands of these bastards around. Oldhammer doesn't necessarily mean rare! And you'd be right. But this figure is perhaps the rarest figure of all. Each wargamer will only have one of these, and that is the first figure they ever had, and this is mine, the one that started it all, gifted to me on a birthday and - probably not starting but - crystalising the start of a life long love of wargaming.

In retrospect, I should have taken a picture of the "before" model, before I stripped it of all its glossy, thickly applied citadel paint glory and repainted in a more "realistic" style, but here we are.

This is because, this is also a Dynasty model!

***

As if the prominent winged skulls on the mortar and the flak jacket pauldrons weren't enough, the extremely large caliber of this mortar instantly marks it out as a 2N6 ultra-heavy infantry mortar, produced and used exclusively by the forces of "General" Zattomir, one of the pre-eminent warlords during the middle-Warlord era

The 2N6 traded range, portability and supportability for an extremely impactful kinetic effect, able to ruin emplacements and troop concentrations and was produced to pacify the Moscow metropolitan area and urban areas inn Eastern Europe, and in the run up to Zattomirs abandoned invasion of coastal China (abandoned due to his alignment with Gao).

In the swirling, chaotic fights that took place with Solarin motorised raiders on the central steps, however, it proved to be utterly worthless, and large stocks were captured (and converted into more generically useful materiel.

A number of examples still exist; 1 in the Imperial Arms Museum in Dhaka, 1 in the Martian Mons Collection (not currently on display) and at least 4 in the hands of private collectors.

COVID cup update 3

Nothing to report last week due to massive amounts of laziness probably, but hey, two entries this week!

First up, for the "scout" bonus round of our challenge group is a Lurking Panther from the Darwin's World post-apocalyptic campaign setting.

From the Terrors of the Twisted Earth:

"Descended from the mountain lions and puma of the old American wilderness, the lurking panther has had to evolve certain features to compete with the more dangerous predators of the Twisted Earth. The lurking panther’s long spindly neck allows it to observe its prey’s movements by placing the head high above, often among a tree’s branches or poking through thick underbrush or sand; in addition, its eyes sit on the end of pliable stalks, which further allow it to conceal its body behind cover and still observe unseen."
 
I'm aware that it looks more than a bit goofy but it's from the period in time when I was determined to have minis for all my RPG monsters, before the (Pathfinder) pawns bug bit, but I was damned if I wasn't going to complete such a simple paint job.

Second up there's the first of my dual-role miniature for a new project.

This is an a Iron Lords sniper from the (newly revived!) Anvil Miniatures range. I am rather fond of their definitely not Space Marines honest guv!" aesthetic, and as soon as I got into my local Kill Team scene I jumped at the excuse chance to buy some. Unfortunately, they had closed that production line and I had to supplement this last miniature with their no less excellent Afterlife line.

He will be pulling double duty as a soldier in the Dynasty setting - a long running sci-fi politics RPG run by a friend of mine. Think West Wing meets Babylon 5 (or The Thick of It meets Red Dwarf if you're feeling uncharitable).

To cut a long story short, my current characters dad came to power by consolidating the survivors of a post-apocalyptic high tech earth and somehow made the jump to God Space Emperor.

The period that I am calling the Warlord Era wasn't examined or simulated in any depth, beyond the outline our GM graciously gave me to kick start this project so I'm going to be working on my 28mm sci-fi minis with this setting in mind. There may be games.

***

Powered Battle Armour was used by all faction in the Warlord Era, but most extensively by Solarin and his lieutenants towards the end of the war after they had captured significant portions of the Earth's remaining industrial capacity.

The armour pictured here is a relatively advanced model of local produced armour, especially as the Warlord factions had little access to nanotubes from which to make the much more flexible combat suits used by the Juntas marines. Marks are hard to put on this era of suit production, as many secondary systems were a cottage industry and un-standardised compared to the main task of producing the main suit structure and systems. This is illustrated on this particular suit by the exposed filtration tube on the front left of suit.

This non-standard application may have been to do with where the suit was operating. Although we do not know where this photo was taken, the use of the urban camo cloak suggests an urban environment (Solarin forces rarely repainted powered battle armour as they had to be redeployed quickly). Additionally it seems strange that PBA units would be issued with sniper weapons given their relative utility as close assault troops. This all suggests that this particular unit was operating in an area hostile to unarmoured troops, perhaps an area of high CBRN contamination, uncontained industrial pollutants or even an area still heavily infected with JS1E1. There are at least 2 documented occasions where Solarin set up long endurance missions with PBA forces in infected environments, essentially operating freely along enemy lines while having a safe, uncontested area to retreat into.

COVID cup update 2

Alright, more painting done!

Not as much as I was expecting again, but I think being introduced to multiplayer Hearts of Iron 4 might be bad for my productivity...

The latest British Flames of War book has allowed each platoon to take 2 PIATs, so I made a few more, and converted the now obsolete infantry spotters to PIATs as well.

Also 2 regular rifle teams to convert a newly obsolete Airlanding Assault Platoon into a regular Airlanding Platoon.
 

Giant leaches! Inspired by this scene, and once destined for Darwin's World or Pathfinder before I caught the Pawns bug.
 

The bear, again, destined for RPGs before I fell hard for Pawns.

Thing a Week 14 - TESCO

"TESCO"

TESCO is part of my project to make some characterful figures from the lead pile while simultaneously making a selection of randomly generated level 1 characters for Darwin's World, for easy use, if I ever actually manage to get a game running.

We found TESCO squatting in the ruins of one of the Ancients' food markets. We named him after the store we found him in, filthy and alone. It's not like he's ever told us him name, or ever will, or will ever say that much. He's a mutant of some type, but there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with his voice-box. I think he's just never learned to speak.

Talking of being improperly socialised, he has no bowel control, gets inappropriately possessive of anything he considers his and wont stop following us. That's how he became part of the group. It's not like we asked him to come with us, we just blundered into his squat, catching him unaware, and after a tense stand off in which he hissed, growled and threw unmentionable substances at us, we went our separate ways. A few days later we became aware that he was stalking us.

He is fast, and very good at hiding himself. It took us a week or so to get him to come out of the shadows, another week to join us by our camp fire, and another two to get him to put on some trousers. Although that seems to have been done out of imitation rather than anything else

His most prised possession is an Ancient rifle. He clearly has no idea of how to use it, or even that it has any function other than a club. We briefly debated trying to teach him how to use it, but decided that it would be too dangerous for everyone involved. Frustratingly, he refuses to part with it.