Latest Intel.......Critical Mass Protolene WIPs

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Latest WIP greens of Critical Mass Games' Protolene range. If only many human ranges could look this good!

HUNTERS:

SCOUTS:

WWW.CRITICALMASSGAMES.COM

Cheers
Mark
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More 15mm Headswops....

A couple more WIPs. Another Vargr and my favourite; a 15mm Colonel Steiner, Michael Caine becomes a 15mm 'Space Marine' Merc Commander.

My name is Michael Caine...

The minis are brilliant (even if I say so myself) despite looking far too washed out and rather unimpressive in the pics. That 'light' blue is Citadel Shadow Grey which drys darker than you expect, then with an additional Asurman Blue Wash. The lighter 'flesh' colour is Citadel Tallarn Flesh which if you know, is actually quite dark. Nevertheless, I'm so impressed by how effective 'Steiner' looks here in front of me that I'm going to create a 15mm WWW2 Götterdämmerung unit of Waffen SS types in pea dot camo.

Bit ruff this morning.......

So, how difficult is it to do swop heads? The answer is, not very as long as you are not fussy. At worst, it can be time consuming and incredibly boring after your first half dozen or so. I took a pair of sharp wire stripping snips, snipped off the heads and removed the resulting ridge along the cut with a sharp knife.

Did I drill a hole to pin the head? Did I bollocks! Took the edge of the knife and gouged out a small hole approximately where the neck (spigot) would sit within a blob of glue. I use cheap knifes with those reusable blades you snap, 5 for £1 from Poundland. I snipped the neck spigot down to about 1 or 1.5mm. Steiners head was attached using UHU Superglue gel, the Vargr using an epoxy resin.

If the head is at a high angle or doesn't have much purchase, I would suggest an additional 'sock' of epoxy resin to secure the attachment for all time. If you are worried about longetivity, I have headswopped miniatures which are 7-8 years old and short of a nuclear apocalypse, nothing is going to remove their heads.

The Peter pig human heads are really small and trying to position them with your fingers is only going to end up in tears and stuck fingers - believe me I know! Instead, roll out a small amount of Blutack, stick this to the top of the head and hold the other end of the Blutack to control placement on the shoulders.

On my first headswops I carefully built up new detail using expoxy modelling putty, but you know what? This is 15mm and once the figs are painted, even holding them up to your nose, you will barely notice any roughness or small blobs of glue you missed. Unlike the camera, our eyes don't have a Macro setting.

Cheers
Mark

15mm Vargr Mercenary Conversion

GZG 15mm New Israeli 'leader' body

with Beast Wolf Head from Peter Pig

Still very much a work in progress. Before you ask.....why yellow combat enviroment armour? Not only did I want to paint something radically different to blue! But it's believed wolves can only sense red and yellow. So, as a Vargr Merc commander, Grav'RR bought himself a distinguished yellow battlesuit. Unfortunately, like his rifle, it's seen better days, better battles.

The head is greyer in actuality than it appears in the photo - probably due to the Citadel Devlann Mud Wash. I still need to sort the Vargr's eyes to my satisfaction though.


His troopers are going to be painted in Citadel Shadow Grey (almost similar to RAF grey-blue), possibly with Black & Codex Grey tiger stripes.

Cheers
Mark

Blue is the Colour!

My search for an adversary worthy of my Victorian Science Fiction army is over at long last courtesy of SPACE CAPTAIN SMITH by Toby Frost.

Imagine GZG Ixx as the Ghast Empire hive intent on exterminating square jawed Victorian hero, Captain Isambard Smith, his eclectic crew, oh and all humanoid life!

I've only just begun this frivolous Victorian Sci Fi homage to Flashman, but loving it already and left somewhat inspired.......

......And my painting is too, following yesterday's good talking to by myself. This evening I finished 'Blue' Spartan Platoon No.1, Company Command and two scout/recce bases. OK, not a lot of figures compared to what I could potentially achieve in an evening after work, maybe, but through breaking down the task into smaller much more manageable chunks, I'm actually enjoying what I'm doing. So much so that I also completed from scratch an unplanned and very much ad hoc 'strike platoon' (blue armour, silver helmets and green visors). And oh! They do look cool!

But, it didn't stop there! Bouyed up, I also converted a couple of spare New Israeli minis into Vargr Mercs using Wolf Beast Heads from Peter Pig (Range 6, pack 42).

(pics to follow once green stuff is dry)

All in all a successful but more importantly, enjoyable evening!

Cheers
Mark