Posts Tagged 'Wargamming'



Lego Clone Army – AT-PT

Continuing on with my clone army next up is my version of an AT-PT . I basically needed a small light walker, all the existing Lego sets are quiet big, bulky and tall at least for wargamming. Due to line of sight rules in most games and the bulkiness of lego I try to keep my models thinned down so I suffer as smaller a disadvantage as possible when playing against a regular lead/pewter/paper army. After checking through Wookepedia under AT’s it seemed the AT-PT would fit the bill nicely. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel I had a look around at what other Lego AT-PT’s had been created. Saber-Scorpion had created  a rather nice AT-PT and after looking at the pictures of his design and comparing it to the wookepedia article I designed my own AT-PT, incorporating some elements from saber’s design and some of my own:

Saber uses a large lift able square lid part which seems to be ultra-rare not something you want when you need 3-4 of the unit for wargamming. Neither of my two designs allow the lego minifig to be removed either way it’s trapped in there:

The first design (detailed in the instructions below) makes use of only very standard and common parts and should be fairly cheap to build up from a stockpile of bricks and order anything missing from ebay/bricklink very cheaply . The second design (The ones in my photo) make use of a flip lid (part no 4857) although not expensive it can be difficult to track down and only comes in light grey  not the new light bluish grey (see photos for colour difference), you also need a few tiles so it doesn’t seal closed :). Other than that minor difference the two designs are identical. You can fit a clone trooper into both with a helmet on although the arms do need to be place down by his sides. However it looks good when you look through the windshield to see a minifig in there:

I had enough parts to build 3 and I’m a few bits short for a 4th. At this stage they all have different coloured windshields I wanted all red ones but that part in red seems to be another rarity so I have a blue trans and grey trans version. When gaming I just stick a different colored tile to the top to help id each one. As with the Speeder Bikes I did an action shot in GIMP:

I assembled the instructions using Ldraw/Mlcad and a set of PDF instructions are below, I didn’t quiet get the legs at the correct angle but they are very close:

Instructions Lego Star Wars AT-PT

Got to get back to cleaning up the house :).

Lego Clone Army – Combat Speederbikes

Since last year I have been working on a star wars lego clone army for use during wargamming.  I always planned for this to be a long term project due to the costs involved, basically you don’t save any money by assembling an army in lego but it does let me combine two of the hobbies I enjoy. The clone army is now getting close to completion so I’ll start some posts on this little side project, Starting of with the speeder bikes.

So I purchased two packs of set 7655 from bricklink they came with no lego minifigs which suited me and were hence very very cheap. I disliked the stock lego design:


However I had some ideas on how to combine all the parts from the set plus a few additions into something more interesting. I wanted a more heavy looking build to indicate the speeders are designed less for scouting and reconnaissance and more for a support/anti-infantry role during a frontal assault battle. The speeders would also be a single seater but appear to be highly maneuverable. After a few hours playing around with bricks and build combinations I settled on the below to fill the role as Combat speederbike.

As it turned out I didn’t have enough of the correct colors to completely outfit two in the correct colours but did have enough bricks to at least have two I could use during gaming. Next time I order up some bricks I’ll get some correct coloured bricks/tiles. The flags are used during gaming for tracking which unit is which:

from the pictures you can see the minifig has some protection along the side rear and front, although I’m not sure id want to ride one into battle it’s  a significant improvement over the stock lego version.  I played around in GIMP for 5mins a pulled the below together, racing across the deserts of Tatooine into battle or possibly some other desert world:

In case I lose the above or someone wants more detailed assembly instructions, I’ve put some quick instructions together on how to assemble:

Instructions Combat Speeder

I have been working on the last few troop types of my fox army as well so I’ll be posting an update to those hopefully in the next few weeks as well as some more lego stuff, well back to the projects for me 🙂

Core Fox Army – Paper Miniatures

One monk runs a monthly Paper standee figure submission on his website. As I had not submitted anything for a few months I thought I’d try and complete a few standee’s for this months hoard. As it turned out onemonk also offered up a bit of a prize for his months hoard, so I ended up working up a whole core army of standee’s (Which explains why no progress on other projects this month).

I spent a few days a bit stuck for any ideas on what to do for an army I didn’t want to do the normal elf/dwarf/human fantasy armies as these are well covered already. Greywolf offered that anyone could colour his fonts available on his site for the contest. Flicking through the fonts I saw this guy and thought it would make for a nice standee:

inspiration

Originally I was just going to colour the above and submit it. I started work on colouring the above but wasn’t happy with the result he was to twisted sideways and didn’t look good next to other standee’s. So I decided to redraw the above using the font image above as inspiration. After a bit of work I ended up with the below as a range of figures. I did 3 different hair types to add a bit of variety:

Once I’d finished the above the ideas for different unit types, fell into my head, archers, cavalry on dinosaurs, mages, clerics, etc. I decided to match the troop types up to the HOTT core troop types list, discarding the troop types that didn’t fit in with how I visualized the army:

Paper Fox Army Troop Types

Type Description Fox Resolved
Aerial Heroes Heroes who can fly, or have a flying mount Fox on Teradactyl
Airboats Large flying platforms, like zeppelins N/A
Artillery Powerful, long ranged missile weapons Dino ballista
Beasts Savage creatures, like wolves N/A
Behemoths Elephants, Giants, Dinosaurs, etc. Archers on Brachiosaurus
Blades Well equipped foot soldiers, like the Roman legion Heavy Sword Infantry
Clerics Religious leaders who perform an anti-Magician role Fox Cleric/Monk
Dragons Large, super-intelligent flying creatures N/A
Fliers Giant Eagles or other dangerous flying creatures N/A
Gods Powerful supernatural entities, like Zeus N/A
Heroes Mighty warriors of renown Fox Hero’s
Hordes Endless seas of poorly trained and equipped fighters. Light Sword Infantry
Knights Armored horsemen who charge ferociously into mêlée Heavy Cavalry
Lurkers Creatures that hide in dark places. Water lurkers are a specialised version that live in aquatic terrain. N/A
Magicians Spell casters, sorcerers and conjurers Fox Mage
Paladins Warriors of Great Virtue Fox Paladin
Riders Mounted soldiers who fight with missile weapons in preference to mêlée Light Cavalry
Shooters Soldiers who fight with missile weapons, such as archers and crossbow men Bowman
Sneakers Ninjas and other sneaky assassin types Fox Scouts
Spears Well ordered soldiers fighting in phalanx Fox Spears
Warband Ferocious soldiers who lack discipline but not bravery Possible Wild Fox’s?

Next up was the Longbow men, they turned out looking a little robinhood-ish and I only did 3 different poses and limited the legs to left/right/center. Next was the Light infantry equipped with light chain mail and leather armour. Then I worked up some Light cavalry mounted on dinosaurs with the fox’s wielding short bows. At this point I went back and worked up standard bearers for the 4 troop types designed so far. I did a vertical and Horizontal Standard bearer for each troop type, except the cavalry which got horizontal banners only.

As I’d designed each of the troop types to have a unique look I decided the banners should be of a consistent design to help give the army a consistent look on the table. I used images from the open clipart library as bases for some of the banners but recoloured the images. Some designs I drew myself. I did 8 designs of each vertical and horizontal in red and gold/yellow theme:

Once the banners were done, I designed up a Mage and Hero to give the army some special characters. The last troop type I worked on for the Hoard was a set of pikeman. Once the troop types were done I worked up the craftrobo cutting files and did some test builds of each of the troop types, frustratingly I seem unable to get a consistent result with my cutting files sometimes they cut very accurate and the next time not so accurate.

Below are the test builds of each of the troop types mounted on one monk hinterland bases:

I plan on working on the missing troop types over the next 2 months as well as doing a set in 15mm so I can use them for HOTT/For the Masses. For any who are interested the PDF’s/GSD’s are below if your looking for bases, onemonk has a great set:

Fox Sword Infantry Fox Standard Bearer
Fox Pike Infantry Fox Longbow
Fox Light Cavalry (Red) Fox Light Cavalry (Blue)
Fox Light Cavalry (BannerHolder) Fox Hero and Mage
Fox Banners

For the GSD files below you’ll need to right click save as the files and then rename the extension to GSD rather than odt

Fox Sword Fox StandardBearers
Fox Pike Fox Longbow
Fox Light Cavalry(Red) Fox Light Cavalry(Blue)
Fox Hero_Mage Fox Banners
Fox Light Cavalry(Banners)

Zip File containing all files, hosted on 4 shared so if I’ve forgotten to login in for amonth it maybe unavailable (sorry):

Fox Army Zip

Also avaliable over at One monks site in Hoard 60 – 68:

One Monk hoards

I hope you enjoy using the paper fox army. I’ll move back onto my project list now 🙂

Dragonfly-Wargamming Model(Design:Part 1)

I finished up stage one of the design of my flying wargamming model. So I’ve decided to do a 3 part post series rather than one big post once it’s finished. So this one will cover the evolution of the sketchup design.

The idea behind the design is that it’s a single seat attack craft VTOL capable, while packing a significant punch to be a credible threat to more heavily armored  tanks and vehicles.  Two light weapon mounts  are present on the lower sides of the model, I’ll texture these as MG ‘s and possibly small lasers as an alternate. Under each wing are some small 5-6 shot rocket launches which can be filled with anti-vechile rounds.

The design went through 4 main phases:

  1. The first was very blocky, although easy to build other than launcher pods
  2. The second provided some shape to the front cockpit so as to appear more glass like,
  3. The third improved the lower weapon design so they are triangular and easier to build,
  4. The fourth and last lengthed the wings slightly and turned the round missile racks to hexagons for simplified building.

The below photo shows the four sketchup models, Top left=One, Top Right=Two, Bottom Left=Three and Bottom Right=Four

I did three test builds in paper to help refine the design and developed the clear mounting post from transparency to give the impression of flight. Below is a picture of the final design although I did move some of the fold tabs around to simplify building in the future, the builds pretty rough but I was in a little bit of a hurry :):

Next step is to move onto texturing which I’ll detail in part2

Miniature Painting Warmup

So I selected a miniature to paint from my bucket of D&D miniatures. I picked on the Azer Fighter from the War of the Dragon Queen Set, here’s the promo picy, mine didn’t look anywhere near that good out of the box:

I decided to put this guy onto a washer base to add a bit of heft and to make storage in the future easier, it also meant I could try out a different idea for a dungeon tile look base. First up I glued four small pieces of plastic to the top of the washer and filled the hole with some cheap air dry clay. I then removed the fighter from his plastic base:

Next I had to get the little guy ready for painting, the only effective way I’ve found to strip the paint wizards puts on the mini’s is to use acetone. It does damage the plastic the mini’s are made of so I have a soft toothbrush I dip in the acetone and then softly rub the mini and then rinse in water. Normally the paint comes right off although sometimes I can’t get it out of all crevasses without risking damaging the mini. It’s surprising how much detail is normally covered up by this layer of goo paint. After the paint stripping I stuck a pin in the base of each foot and mounted him to an old plastic soft drink bottle top. Then it was of to be primed with a gentle dusting of white primer. Sorry I didn’t get a picy of him undercoated but here he is cleaned up and mounted:

Then I started to paint him. I tend to do metals first followed by plain colours, I’ve found I get less odd glittery bits that way. I’d also decided to paint him up as a standard dwarf rather than as an Azer Fighter. I’m fairly happy with how he turned out although the shield is pretty terrible, I struggled with trying to get any kind of shading/highlighting onto the flame patten on the shield. I also need to go to lighter shades when highlighting as he still appears fairly dark and muted. His dungeon tile base turned out fairly good although it could use some bones or something else. He’s not about to win any mini painting contests but he’s good enough for gaming with, He looks slightly better in person I find the camera is always a harsh critic when you photograph miniatures (probably just me):

I also finished off two others I was painting mid last year before I got sick. First up was my metal practice guy Hammerer from Blood war, heres the promo wizards shot:

I basically wanted to practice metal highlighting and blending, initially I really didn’t like how this guy turned out, but looking at him now I don’t think he turned out to badly. As with all my miniatures I need to work on my blending and paint smoothness. Mine always seem to come out grainy, I did like how his mud base turned out:

Last one I finished up was a ranger originally a Grey Cloak Ranger from Archfiends, here he is in his promo shot (sorry it’s pretty small):

I gave him a forest themed base and mounted him so he’s balanced on a log, This does make his cloak look bunched slightly funny but I’m not really ready for sculpting yet. I’m not convinced using herb’s and spices as leaf litter in a forest really works but I figured it was worth a try. I’m happy with how he turned out although he still suffers from graininess the other two suffer from as well:

I may post these up onto coolmini but I’m not sure I’m ready for that again. Hopefully with enough practice my painting will get better.


Project Status


WWII Project First Release

80%


B-tech Buildings Five

20%


Design Victorian era City

15%


Something Different

5%


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