Interstellar Marines

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Intersteller Marines. Nice vid. Great looking Marines and superb 'Kark' beasts at the end.



Cheers
Mark
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Under the Radar..... Neo-Soviet Kombine Ramblings

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Back at the end of June I wrote about the suitability of the Flames of War 15mm WW2 Soviet Sapper-Engineer Flamethrower Platoon to become Traveller/Traveller Book 4: Mercenary mid-tech Infantry with laser carbines (Click here). Well, PROJECKT KOMBINE has been progressing under the radar since then.

My vision is a planetary Götterdämmerung! Continent sized cities are the battlefields, in a dystopian "diesalpunk" future inspired by Berlin 1945 and Grozny 1999-2000.

Initially I was thinking of only using the Flamethrower platoon figures as a Mid-tech energy weapon armed force. At this point I saw them very much standing alongside RAFM's ex-Traveller/Striker Mid-Tech Infantry. Discussing the project offline initially with Master Chef and latterly with Eli, I'm now aiming towards a Lower Mid-tech urban combat force which has a mix of high velocity Gauss neo-assault carbines (PPSHs) and early technology energy weapons (Laser/Plasma or similar).

Neo-Soviet Kombine
Urban Assault Batnova

To reflect the newness of this 'emerging' technology on TOE, one Plashnya per Kompnya will be armed with energy weapons. One box of SU803 Sapper-Engineers and 2 boxes of SU804 Sapper-Engineer Flamethrowers will give me a Batnova of 3 Kompnyas or preferably two understrength Batnovas.

The project received a boost when I discovered this superb Soviet era urban 'ameoba ' camouflage suit, which just felt like it had the correct Sci Fi and Neo-Soviet look and combined with helmet visors added from greenstuff would move the figures away from their more obvious WW2 origins.

At the moment I'm looking at using traditional FOW style bases for these miniatures and to make my life easier, the 4 man urban bases from The Scene are certainly worth considering.

Here's a rough impression I created as part of my 'mood board' to help me visualise the overall look of the Neo-Soviet Kombine urban combat force - naturally they will look better on urban terrain bases and to excentuate the urban devastation I've purchased a tub of GF9 Ash Waste Flock to try out.

For AFVs I'm looking at a mix of wheeled, tracked and early Grav technology. WW2 era T70s converted into troop carriers, Battlefront M3 Scout Cars (in lieu of a decent BTR 40), Skytrex BTR152s and GZG (grav) Light Gun/Scoutsleds.

I'm in no rush. This is a labour of love and I'll probably not get round to painting and basing until I have time off work at the end of October/beginning November. But, it's something fun to pull out and crack on with when I need a break from my mainstream Sci Fi projects.

Drasny Provovnik!
Mark
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Graffiti Camo Inspiration

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Driving to a work site in a depressed area of the Granite City, I noticed a graffitied roadside telephone exchange box. The box itself was 'battleship grey' and had been given wavy camouflage lines of red-brown and black. It stood out for complimenting it's granite and brick surroundings, and looked cool.

I'd been looking for a slightly 'different' camo scheme for my Khurasan Corporate Marines, so kept the image in my mind. Once home that evening I used Paint.Net, not trying to win any art prizes here, to painlessly try out the grey/red-brown/black camo look on Jon's Corporate Marines without even having to lift a brush - wait for undercoat to dry, you know.....

Even as I went along the line of figures in the photo, I thought yeah, that's not too shabby at all. All well and good, but how does it look in 15mm? My favourite graphic utility for photograph and digital images is IRFANVIEW. Free and completely painless to use for 99% of your everyday digital photography tasks.

I opened up the photo above in IRFANVIEW, held a Corporate Marine miniature to the screen and reduced the size of the photo until the two matched.

Click on the picture to get an idea of the difference.

I use this technique with camo schemes all the time, whether graphic swatches or photos of actual uniforms and soldiers all the time. It gives you an idea of what is likely to work and what will be simply too fussy when it comes to reproducing your chosen camo scheme in 15mm.

Once again, It doesn't replace trying things out on a 'test' mini, but it does help you decide on the colours and best approach before you apply the brush.

Subsequently, the Corporate Marines have slipped into my painting schedule unannounced and are now sitting undercoated Adeptus Battlegrey on my desk. I'll keep you updated on progress in the coming week.

Cheers
Mark
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Quick Tip...... Paint Palettes

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I've only recently started using Vallejo paints, and thanks to Maelstrom Games' 15% off promotions in July I managed to get a nice collection of drab colours suitable for camo schemes.

Vallejo has several different ranges of paints with subtle differences in shade. To help me choose the paints I wanted from across these collections I saved the paint 'swatches' as jpegs in a folder on my desktop. To make ordering and future identification easy, I gave each of the colour's jpegs were a simple name which described the specific Vallejo range such as Model, Game, Panzer Aces etc and then the colour title.

Once saved, the thumbnails are easy enough to move round in the folder to create a complimentary colour palette. You can use Windows' PrintScreen facility to take a snap of this palette and save as a jpeg in it's own right.

When it comes to choosing colours for camouflage paint schemes, I can now simply compare the camo against the Vallejo palette to see which colours are most likely to work.

Again, a quick PrintScreen will capture the palette and camo scheme side by side and can be saved as a jpeg on your desktop for quick reference throughout the project.

You can also use a simple free graphics utility such as Paint.Net with which you can copy the colours from the palette and drop them into the camo scheme (when you have a clearly defined picture as above it helps) to test out different effects.

Now, this doesn't replace trying out the actual colour paints, and I don't pretend it does, but it does quickly give you the ability to try different camo patterns, effects and determine if you need to buy any new paints before starting the project.

Cheers
Mark
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'O' GROUP....... High-tech FWC Battlegroups

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The following are the basic generic building blocks of my Mid/High-tech Hyborian armoured forces. These are basic structures I use to collect my models before I start adding on robotics, drones, UAVs, point defence and other support weapons.

This is a typical TOE I use for a tank heavy High-tech Mech Battlegroup within FWC.

Each of the 'sabre' Gamma units has a scout car Recon/FOO whilst Gamma HQ has an armoured scout vehicle and two fire support AFV. The armour predominates with the Mech Infantry undertaking a true specialised panzergrenadier role rather than just being infantrymen carried in an armoured box.

This is the Mid/High-tech Mech Infantry variant. Gimel is 'Camel' in the Phoenecian alphabet which I thought described an APC/MICV unit perfectly. Res is 'head', ergo 'HQ#. Just sounds a bit more off-world than "Company A" "Bravo Company" etc and more fitting for my 'Eastern' influenced 15mm Hyborian forces. The 'Gimel' battlegroup is doctrinely focused on the primacy of the armoured infantry with embedded armour support.

Given the cost of 15mm armour, I tend to buy one Gimel/Gamma at a time. If I want a tank force - eg GZG Grav Gunsleds (v15-08A) it's the Gamma TOE, if Mech then I go for the Gimel structure.

Why don't I have 3 Gimels/Gammas? Primarily cost! Second is space on my tabletop. Equally important lastly, I have enough robotics, Guncrabs, UAVs or even wheeled mech to have a third unit consisting of these and ring the changes tactically as I require.

Cheers
Mark
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'O' GROUP....... Ultra-tech FWC Mech Battlegroup

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Heather bought me a little extra for my birthday from GZG - 2x V15-55A Advanced Heavy Grav Tanks & 4x V15-56A Advanced Grav Lift Assault Vehicles. These are destined to create the 'sabre' elements for a FWC Ultra-tech Mech (Grav Panzergrenadier) Battlegroup. Here's a rough TOE I've sketched out:

HQ Company will comprise a GZG V15-57A Advanced Grav Fire Support Missile Vehicle & v15-58A Advanced Grav Command Vehicle plus two Old Crow Grav Outrider Scout Vehicles.

I'm planning the 'boots' for this force to be Rebel Minis' new Infiltrators with plenty of embedded bots and UAV drones to act as force multipliers.

My vision for this Battlegroup is for the armour and MICVs to do most of the fighting. The dismounts, similar to those assigned to a Bradley 2, provide a network of human and electronic 'eyes and ears' capable of directing massive netted fires or supplementary bot/AI forces.

I like my tabletop TOEs to have the ability to be scaled up or down easily. In this case the Epsilons can just as easily be platoons or companies to suit the scenario.

Notice that with the exception of a single 'command' AFV in Epsilon HQ, command elements aren't defind. This is deliberate. I believe that Ultra-tech forces will be 'self-ordering'. Mission and intelligence updates, fire control and what we know of as 'orders' will constantly be fed into their individual 'crosscom' (a la GRAW2). The 'command' vehicle is a network node and uplink. If the main network goes down, it continues with the mission based on the last known updates and will try to link to other similar nodes for more Intel, mission updates and to share battle situational awareness data whihc can be fed into the overall mission profile for units to act upon whilst the main uplink is being restored.

Cheers
Mark
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