Sunday 20 February 2011

Pizza Base Aliens

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We had a cinema night last night. A full-blown Chinese take out followed by ALIENS: The Directors Cut. Damn! It's still a great movie.

To my mind the best role in the film is Hudson, played by Bill "How do I get out of this Chickenshit outfit" Paxton. Hudson has some of the best lines in the movie and his anti-hero character gets to take the audience on a one-man emotional roller coaster from being cocksure wise cracker, to competent com-tech, scaredy "you can count me out"  'villain' to when he finally redeems himself as "state of the badass art".

So, I must make more of gaming Aliens, well, more Aliens vs Colonial Marines, whether in 15mm or 20mm. Jon at Khurasan has some more new(ish) menacing poses for his Space Demons that I must buy.

TC901A Space Demon  Assault Warriors (textured head)
TC903A Space Demon Infiltrator Warriors (smooth dome head - not shown)

I also came across this photo (below), which made me think - hang on, there's a really good room and corridor design hidden in there for 'pizzabase' gaming.


Sure there's little real logic to the layout, but why does there have to be? Do I really need crew quarters, state rooms and the like? No! Think "Ambush Aliens", a labyrinth of infiltration routes, fire lanes and hidden corners. In true Mass Effect style, the larger open spaces can be altered with crates and containers to provide additional cover, impenetrable walls and ad hoc corridors.

 Mass Effect 2: N7 Hahne-Kedar Facility

I have a good selection of crates and containers from Jon at GZG, but I think I need to add a pack of Antenociti Workshops G.O.T. Secure Crates. These have a definite Mass Effect feel.

The fight in the Hahne-Kedar Facility is one of my favourite side-quest missions in ME2. It's a straight firefight between yourself and 2 companions against up to 40 combat androids amongst a maze of crates and containers. You continually have to keep pushing forward to stop the avalanche of robots spawning from their storage/shipping containers.... but it has to be timed right, between each wave and you need to maximise use of cover, shieid regeneration and firepower.

 That's next weekend's project sorted.

Cheers
Mark
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6 comments:

  1. Sounds like you had a very, very fun night! :D

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  2. Trying to finbd the time to watch Alien 3 myself, I had to watch the last two at 2 in the morning, when my other half was in bed! She's scared to death of them!

    Sounds like you had a good time, with some good ideas bubbling over!

    Pendraken do some 10mm aliens, which are cool for masses of them. As for 15mm, I am going to get some Khurasan ones too.

    Rob

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  3. We both love Aliens (1986), which helps, and hadn't seen it for a while.

    It was right on the button for a fun night.

    Rob, thanks, I keep forgetting about those Pendraken xeno's.

    Cheers
    Mark

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  4. There's a lot to enjoy in Aliens, and the final smackdown with the powerloader is rightly iconic, but some of the plot-spannering going on is just silly. An officer who sends his troops into combat unarmed? Really? I know Gorman's set up to be an inexperienced berk, but there's a big difference between inexperienced and just plain idiotic...

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  5. I think what they were trying to show was Gorman panicking and how these bad asses would fare with all their technological weapon advantage removed.

    They still had pistols, flamers and at least one shotgun - and I think they could have made more of that. Also, I would have had Apone going down fighting madly, holding a rearguard action.

    There's plenty of holes in the movie if you care to pick. 50 rounds apiece for the Pulse Rifles and how many did they use up on the facehuggers in the Med Lab? Did they really need both sentry guns in each tunnel to be armed at the same time? Why was the dropship dirty when it was leaving the Sulacco? Completely non-Corps. Why didn't they have showers when they came out of hibernation. Even just to warm up?

    But it's still a great piece of gritty Sci Fi entertainment.

    Cheers
    Mark

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  6. That is alot of holes. But, they can easily be explained with this. Hollywood.

    They make sure that all movies have action within the first five minutes, or it can't even be a movie. :/

    That aside, I have about 70 or so of Khurasan's Xenomorphs including their queen. They come out really nice if you use GW paints. Start black, use Chaos black to touch up the remaining metal spots missed by the spray, then dry brush any darker grey (I used Codex on some and the newer Adeptus Battlegrey on others. They came out the same)over raised surfaces, then wash with asurmen blue wash and drybrush with grey again over some spots (Unless it came out heavier the first time, then those spots should still show well.) Bam. done. Fast. Being lazy I just used basalt on the bases, painted the bases codex grey and then dry brushed Space Wolves grey over it.

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