Soviet Reinforcements!

Hey Internet,

Painted these up a little while ago - Five 'T-62 Main Battle Tanks' (by GHQ) and Two 'Heavy Assault Tanks'  (by Plasmablast Games).

They are painted in a 60's Soviet Green colour to match their commander, Nova Streltzý.

Together, these machines will form the balance of the Eastern Bloc factions 'normal army stuff' in my upcoming Japanese Monster Movie Games.

Fun Fact: The T-62 was used by the entire Eastern Bloc: the Soviet Union, Red China and North Korea. This means that I can keep the number of 'normal army tanks' that need buying and painting up to a minimum. What with all the radioactive dinosaurs stomping around, the chance of someone taking issue with the historical accuracy of the Commie Battle Robots supporting tanks is probably pretty low, but, well, you never know. T-62s also look really cool. Really, really cool.

As ever, the GHQ tanks were fantastic. In particular- they managed to cast the things with the mold lines, faint as they were, only crossing flat surfaces. Fantastic!

The Plasmablast tanks will play the part of the mighty Mammoth Tanks from the Command & Conquer series of video games.

I did a review a little while back on these beasts - but to reiterate; they are superb little things, attractively designed and well made, and were a real joy to paint. There's another one waiting in the wings for emolsification, but I've got something special planned for him.

So, what do you think?

MM.

***

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +59       Painted: +74          Total: +14

T-96 'Anti-Kaiju' Guns - Image Stacking with new Camera

A little while ago I painted up this pair of T95 'Anti-Kaiju' Guns, but any photos of them that I took looked rather flat and strange.

With the delivery of my Shiny New Camera it felt like time to really get to grips with image stacking.

Image stacking is a process where you take multiple photos of a difficult subject focusing in on different points on it, then merge the images together so that the entire subject is in focus.

CombineZP is a great (and free!) peice of software to give it a go with.

Looking good, eh?

MM.

105mm Gun Motor Cartridge T95

Hey Internet,

Just a little progress in my Savage Worlds: Kaiju Project this weekend - a pair of heavy tanks.



The models are American T95 tanks from GHQ's 'what if' WWII range. You only get two in the pack rather than the five that you regularly get in a pack, making them really rather expensive. They are really nice though, being superbly detailed and cast. They are quite a size too - about an inch wide, half and inch tall and two inches long.

They are going into service as mobile Anti-Kaiju guns, as part of the Japanese Self-Defence Force. As such, I've painted them up in the same scheme as my other UN/JSDF tanks. I'm quite happy with how they have come out, although they look a bit crummy in the photographs, but that's just because I'm really bad with a camera.



They are real tanks, by the way;

"The Super Heavy Tank T28 (at one point and sometimes called 105 mm Gun Motor Carriage T95) was a prototype heavily armored tank destroyer designed for the United States Army during World War II. It was originally designed to be used to break through German defenses at the Siegfried Line, and was later considered as a possible participant in an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Sometimes referred to as a super-heavy tank, the T28 was re-designated as the 105 mm Gun Motor Carriage T95 in 1945 and then renamed a super heavy tank in 1946 as the Super Heavy Tank T28."

- Extract from This Wikipedia entry.

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +31       Painted: +4          Total: -27

6mm Bases

Hey Internet,

Just some quick photos today. I decided to base my 6mm figures in an effort to make them a little more sturdy and less prone to barrel-bending.

I've gone for a part-dirt, part-urban rubble base so that models can blend in whether the model is on in the open or in a built up area. I've let the grey dry-brushing spread around the piles of rubble to simulate dust.

I'm pretty happy with how the bases look, but I'm after a few second opinions before I set about basing a hundred or so miniatures in this style.

MM.

Tokyo was not built in a day

Hey all,

This week I've made a start on a small city. Not a big start by any means, just three buildings, but a start all the same. After a little bit of experimenting with wibbly-wobbly paper buildings, I decided that it would be better to just bite the bullet and make my city out of good 'ol resin. However, this is going to cost a bucket-load, so I'm going to chip away on this project a little bit at a time with the plan to make a decent 3'x3' urban layout by the end of the year.

The two smaller buildings are by Scotia and the larger one is by Battletech.

I make a point of not doing 'bad reviews' on this blog out of common courtesy, but recently I ordered a fair few Scotia buildings, after being impressed by their low price and decent looking quality. However, when I got them I was less than pleased. Most of them were not terrible models, but were terribly cast, with nasty flash obscuring their detail, and the bottoms on many of them being 'hollow', as if they had not quite pored enough resin into the mold when they were being cast.

In fact, for the first time ever, I asked for my money back for a few of the buildings that were so bad that I just couldn't see any way of using them!

In a similar trend, the Battletech building was also badly cast, with the same 'hollow bottom' problem that the Scotia buildings had. I've had some Battletech buildings before (that I irritatingly got rid of a few months ago, before starting this project) that were superbly cast with almost nothing in the way of air-bubbles or flash.

I did not buy either variety of building direct from the manufacturer, and what with the bad castings, I am more than a little suspicious that they might be poor quality re-casts, rather than the genuine articles....

In better news, I also painted up a Federation 'Long-Track' AT-T mobile radar recently. Its a GHQ model, and as with everything I've had from them recently, its nothing less than a miniature work of art.

Better luck next time, eh?

MM.

Type-74 Tanks (GHQ)

Hey Internet,

I've done a thing again.

This time its a few NPCs for my 'Monster Movie' games - a couple of 'Type-74' tanks, the mainstay of the Japanese Self Defence Force's armoured corps.

The models are actually AMX-30s (French MBTs), but they look sort of like a Japanese 'Type-74' tanks - well, at least close enough for me not to care. All the important elements are there; the boxy Infa-Red spotlight to the left of the main gun, the rounded turret and the basic dimensions all match the '74 quite well.

These models are by GHQ, and like just about everything that company makes they are nothing less than tiny works of art. The detail on these things is fantastic, easily equal too or better than that on many of my 15mm tanks.

Annoyingly, two of the copulas are missing machine-guns because they were not cast properly. I'm sure that no one would have noticed the missing square-millimetre if I hadn't mentioned it, but its really bugging me that these models are anything less than perfect.