Boxes, pods, and cops

Hey, look at that!  I'm updated two times in one week!  Actually, I have some stuff to show off.  So, for starters, I'll show a few figures I've been working on the past few weeks. 

A little while back, I picked up the Wargames Factory Apocalypse Survivors set.  This was the set of the men.  I think the women should be coming out fairly soon.  I actually really like this set.  There's not a ton of customization you can do since certain arms and heads are meant to go with certain bodies, but it can be done.  I love the fact that this set can not only give me kids, fat guys, and a preacher, but also generic cops and FBI types.  So, naturally the law enforcement guys were the first ones I wanted to do.  I dub them, Team Justice!

Yes, I am using the crazy guy withe the blood covered baseball bat as an FBI agent.  He cracked under the stress.  Opposing them, for now is one man.

A lone convict brandishing a machete!  He WILL protect that unlabeled soup can.  Its his!  He found it first!

Bat wielding FBI agent says otherwise!  I love posing these two opposite each other.

Here you can see how one of the cops sizes up against a GW Space Marine.  Not too badly, I'd say.

Speaking of Wargames Factory, I love their Dreamforge stuff!  Supposedly wave 2 is shipping about now, so hopefully that means they'll get off their butts and get wave 3 into production and at retail before the end of the year.  Why is that?  Because wave 3 has Space Marines!  Yep, Germanic power armored infantry.  I can't wait to get them.  Once they're out, I don't think I'll ever buy a GW Marine ever again.
I've been slowly (very slowly) working my way through their 10 rifle team box.  While the figures are awesome, they've all got what are basically MG-42s.  That is not a standard infantry weapon.  So, I'd ordered some Imperial Guard scaled weapons from Anvil Industry with the intent to rearm them and to make a pair of combat engineers for my two 5 man squads.  Here's how the first one came out.

My camera didn't capture it too well, but I actually camouflaged this guy and he looks pretty bad ass in person.

Now, I actually got something new today.  As an experiment with the material, I had ordered some MDF scenery from a place called Warsenal.  I've never worked with the stuff before, so like I said, this was an experiment.  So, I'd ordered two things, a small cargo container and a single escape pod.  Now, I know I ordered the single and my bill says as much, but they actually gave me, get this, 12 of them!  Crazy.  I've put two together and while they're very flat looking and boxy, I actually really like them.  So, pictures.

Here we have a so-so picture of the container.  All four sides look the same and there's some detailing on the top panel and the bottom panel.  You may notice those nubs sticking up.  The door panels actually pull up so you can open the thing up (you can also replace the doors with ones that have symbols etched into them)

As you can see, plenty of room for a figure inside.  Or several.  The convict seems to have claimed it and the cops are here do evict him.  See that thing off to the right?

Those are the escape pods.  Like I said, very flat and boxy, but I can't help but like them.

Size compared to some figures.  Now, as with the container, the door actually can be removed from the pod and a figure can be placed inside.

Here a pair of 1/48 VOTOMS figures model that for you.  As you can see, there isn't a whole lot of room in the pod.  While you can fit a guy in there, he'll need a pretty neutral stance and he can't be based.  But, if you have such a figure, like these two, you can actually fit him inside and close the pod.

These will be nice little objective markers for Deadzone.

Overall, I really like the things.  Very simple to put together.  The container isn't using any glue, but the escape pods need it.  The nice thing though is that they can be put together with plain old Elmer's white glue.  A nice little feature with the escape pods is that Warsenal allows you to choose what color you'd like the window to be.  It's really just a little piece of clear acrylic, but I like the touch it brings.  I haven't painted these yet, obviously.  Depending on how easy/hard that goes will determine whether or not I ever get any more MDF stuff.

Fire Dragons!

This past weekend, I managed to come into possession of a bunch of metal figures.  An Aleph Thorakitai from Infinity, a Panoceanian Teutonic Knight (also from Infinity), and six metal Eldar Fire Dragons.  Unfortunately, due to a bizarre mishap with my spray primer, I've had to send everything into the Simple Green and start all over again.  However, I have managed to put together a concept color scheme for my Fire Dragons.

Unfortunately, I actually don't like the Eldar studio colors.  None of them.  Well, maybe Altansair's.  I kind of copied their colors afterall, but the rest are generally horrible colors to have your soldiers in.  What soldier would go to battle in bright yellow and blue?  Or white and minty green?  Or in the case of the Fire Dragons, bright orange with a yellow hat?  Now, while I hate the normal Eldar colors, unfortunately the figures also tend not to look very good in more realistic colors either.  I think Ulthwe's black and bone color scheme is probably the best looking one, but a paint to paint because the black just causes you to lose all detail.  So, for these guys, I'm thinking I'll try a compromise.  I'll tone down the goofiness, but keep just a little bit to add some color.  So, my Fire Dragons, if I keep this scheme, will be primarily black, with a few bits of red, and five spots where I'll have a transition from red to yellow to simulate "flames".  I put a little bit of white onto him to try and bring out some of those armor details.  Not sure if I'll keep them or not.  I've left other details off for now, like the eyes and the gem details.  The reason being, I'm probably going to dip him, which is also why I haven't inked him either.

Eldar of Clan Takeda

Well, I've done it.  I've finally finished a full set of figures.  After about a year painting miniatures, I've actually completed a set.  I'm proud of myself!  Anyway, here is my finished Dire Avengers squad.  I'm sure they aren't game legal due to the guy dual wielding, buuuuuut.... I don't really care.  Oddly enough, I've got nearly enough leftover parts to make a whole sixth figure.  I just need some legs.  I'm thinking I'll wind up using him as a hero character/Warlock.  I need a magic user so I can fry my brother's Tyranids.  Also, I managed to find the sprue from my 4-man Guardian box.  There's two figures left, so I figured I'd try working on this group's colors for standard grunts.  You can kind of see the finished product standing next to the Exarch in the back.  They're mostly going to be dark grey with only a bit of the bright red.  I figure if I get around to doing some Storm Guardians some day, they'll have an alternate color scheme, probably mostly red with a bit of the dark grey.

So, I imagine if I ever get any of the other Aspect Warrior types, I'll probably do similar colors on them with the base troops using the mostly red scheme while the Exarchs use the reversed colors.  Standard Guardians will use the mostly grey with a bit of red scheme while Storm Guardians will match more closely to the Aspect Warriors.  Vehicles will probably be predominantly grey with a red trim and if I ever get and Wraith troops, like the Wraith Guard, I'm actually going to do something totally different for them.  They're going to be done up in a Tron-esque scheme, since they're constructs.  Should look decent, plus it's what I plan to do when I get my Asterian Cyphers from Mantic.

Is that a Devourer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Okay, minor update.  I've been slowly working on my Tyranid troops.  I've got the first one done.  Now I just need to get off my ass and work on the others.  On the plus side though, my Eldar Dire Avengers are almost finished.  Just one guy to go, and he's almost done.

So, here's the first of my Tyranid Legionaires.

Yeah, his rifle is a bit.. erm... suggestive?  ....Yeah...  I think I'd like to get some different arms for the rest of them.

Some blocks that are mega

A certain ObstinateBaton8 didn't really believe me when I first told him that the new Halo Megabloks sets have come out.  There's some pretty neat stuff, including human vehicles that are reverse engineered from alien tech and a whole bunch of new figure and weapon sculpts.  While wandering around Target this evening, I found a bunch of the new sets.  It was quite surprising because Target never seems to want to put new stock out.  There must be a reset coming up, because GI Joes appear to have been completely removed.  No pegs for them at all.  Which of course continues the curse of never being able to find the later assortments from a movie line.  Naturally those are usually the assortments that have the best figures, in this case, Data Viper, Night Viper (a personal favorite), Ultimate Duke, Flint, and Cobra Commander, and a new Crimson Guard.  Figures that would happen.  Word was that we'd see the new assortments now to promote the DVD, but it looks like only TRU may be getting them.

Anyway, I'm ranting and getting a bit off topic.  Halo!  While the McFarlane line seems to have disappeared completely (they weren't even at SDCC), Megabloks continues their line.  Some new vehicles found tonight, new Pelican Gunship, Hornet vs. Vampire set, Last Man Standing (halo 3 zombie mode) which had a number of glow in the dark figures including a Recon Spartan, green energy swords, and a blue Security Spartan, the 3 Armory/EVA Booster sets, the UNSC Attack VTOL, and all four Cyclops mecha.  The Pelican and Hornet both have lights and sounds.  The soundbox seems to be located at the cockpit, which looked very detailed and the nose guns on both craft lit up.  The Pelican has completely new figures including Sarah Palmer (not named though, it refers to her as a generic Scout Spartan, much as they did with the Noble Team figures), the FOTUS armor, which was only available if you preordered Halo 4, and some other type as well.  This set also included a completely new Battle Wagon Class Promethan Knight construct.  That figure had a bunch of clear orange spikes on his back and unlike the other Promethean Knights, this one had its mask opened exposing the skull of the person embedded inside it.  Pretty cool.  The Hornet set had a bunch of new armors for the Spartans and completely new figures for the Covenant figures included as well.  The Covenant in that set were a Storm Elite, an Elite Zealot (mold isn't entirely new, but the colors were), and there was a new Storm Grunt included as well.  The only other set with a completely new figure that they had was the Attack VTOL which includes a Halo 4 styled Jackal with a new style beam rifle.  Haven't seen it yet, but there's a Treadbike with a brand new Spartan design from Halo 4 as well as two new Armory sets, one with a Watcher and it's beam shield and there's some new Collector's Set multipacks.  Apparently there's also a new Gauss Warthog with lights and sounds and a Promethean Knight and there's some kind of siege truck with a railgun that can unfold a bunch of supports to become a stationary turret.  Haven't seen either of those yet either.

So, what did I get?

Why, I grabbed the Arctic Cyclops!  I'll admit, I have a thing for environment specific stuff, especially snow themed sets.  This one really appealed to me.  Partly because it's Arctic themed, and partly because this one and the Black-Ops one both include weapons that the Cyclops never used in the games.  The Black-Ops one gets dual shoulder mounted gatling guns while this one gets an arm mounted flame thrower!  I love it!  You can also kind of see my desert one in the background, but that one's boring since its only weapon is the game accurate pile driver.

I also picked up one of the Armory sets that's can be combined into the EVA Booster Frame.  These are kind of neat.  There's three sets, 2 human, 1 Forerunner.  Whereas the traditional Armory sets include a bunch of nicely painted weapons and a fairly basic looking figure, these sets include only two unpainted weapons (though mostly all new sculpts) with well painted figures.  Unlike the regular Armory sets, they also serve a double purpose.  While they make good looking scenery, once you get all three, you can combine them into a funky little one-man space fighter thing.  I have no pics, but it totally looks like it belongs in a top-down shooter video game.  The one I picked up is the Forerunner Terminal, which includes an Alpha Crawler.  Of the 3 sets, the Alpha Crawler is the only completely new figure.  The other sets have either a Halo 4 style Marine medic, whose mold has been used a few times now or a teal Halo 3 style EVA Spartan, who has been seen numerous times now.  The set includes two totally new weapons as well, the Suppressor and the Scattershot.

 Halo 4 Chief models the new Scattershot

And the Suppressor.  One nice thing about the Suppressor is that it has a hand grip on the bottom.  He's actually somewhat gripping that two-handed, which is hard to do with these figures.  The Suppressor is a bit on the large side, but I can forgive it.  Both weapons have a funky little peg on their left side, but aren't visible in these pics.  They're a little too short to plug into the figure's back.  What they're for, is that you can mount these weapons onto the right arm of a Promethean Knight.  Pretty neat.

Here's a blurry picture of the terminal itself.  It doesn't look like much of anything other than some tech-y scatter scenery.  I do like the clear orange on it though.  It reminds me of the old Ice Planet Lego sets.  There are some clear pieces utilized on the terminal to give it the impression that the parts are floating, which is a neat little touch and fairly true to the game.  Those clips on the sides of the terminal are for mounting the included weapons.

Here's the figure that came in the set, the Alpha Crawler.  These guys act as squad leaders in Crawler packs.  They're generally going to be the ones you'll want to take down first, but, once you actually spot him, then you're probably already getting swarmed by the little bastards.  He's nearly the size of a regular Spartan figure, so he's actually pretty decently sized.  I think the base body has been used once so far in the Cauldron Clash playset, but that was a standard Crawler and I believe this one has a new back piece, which has the clear orange spikes and a new head, which also has clear orange in it.  With those new parts, that technically makes this a brand new figure.  The figure actually has a fair number of little minute paint apps detailing the light glowing underneath the armor.  Oddly enough, the back plate with the spikes can actually fit onto a regular figure.

I wouldn't mind getting the other two sets, but that's going to have to wait for a while.

Oh yeah, apparently continuing Target's multiplayer themed exclusives, like the Last Man Standing set, there will be some vehicles.  In this case, there'll be a blue UNSC Rocket Warthog with a Halo Reach styled Aerial Assault Spartan and a Reach styled Mk. Vb Spartan, both in blue and silver.  There'll also be a set with a Banshee.  It looks like it's blue in the pics, but it's hard to tell.  It's either blue or a blueish purple.  Either way, it comes with a blue Elite Pilot and a blue Elite Ultra from Reach as well.  Not terribly exciting sets, but hopefully there'll be more and they'll be easier to find than the previous multiplayer arctic Wharthog (though that was just the previous arctic Warthog repackaged).

Some things I've been working on...

So, here's some things I've worked on...

So, this guy was my prototype for testing out a paint scheme for some Tyranids.  I had two done up, the other was just black with some purple highlighting and the shell colors reversed (red shell with black feathering).  I took some votes and this guy won out.  Well, after asking around on Dakka, here's what will be the final color scheme, please a bit of a teaser of the Tyranids I'm working on.

I'm going to call these guys Legionnaires.  Something between a Genestealer and a Warrior.  I picture them as a type of fast attack unit for urban combat.  These guys will have another set of arms, but I haven't started working on them yet and I'm contemplating whether I should swap them for a completely different type of weapon biomorph.

And, it's kind of lazy, but here's some other figures I've been working on this week.

From left to right: Anvil Industries Exo-Lord (w/ GW head), Mantic Corporate Veteran (with "Thermal Gun"), Infinity Chandra Spec Ops, and my Kemvar Assault who's just there for a size comparison.  The Anvil figure is one of two I completed earlier this week.  I'm using them as Sternguard Vets in my Relictors First Company.  This particular squad will be an urban specialist team.  While it's hard to see, they have a German Splinter Camo style camouflage on them.  Their colors are a bluish grey with dark blue camo markings.  The Mantic Marine may get some further touchups.  I completed him last night.  He's got two buddies waiting for their paint apps.  The Infinity figure was just complete maybe an hour ago.  Her color scheme is WAY less detailed than the studio one, but I don't really care for that color scheme on her.  Plus, she is TINY!  It may not look like it in the pic, but she's really small, so she's very hard to paint.  I actually chose to paint her in the Nomads faction colors because I like how the red and white look with the dark grey.  Plus, I think she'll look good with my blue and white Kemvar troops.  I chose to give her blue hair because I felt like it.  Her eyes aren't painted, but thankfully on her I didn't screw up their details while I was painting.  She's likely going to be dipped tomorrow so I can preserve the paintjob.  I'll probably attempt to paint her eyes over the weekend after the dip has completely dried and been dull coated.  That's also the reason she dosn't look finished, no dip yet.  The picture makes her look kind of splotchy and bad, but she actually looks a lot better in person.  I may detail up her arms as well after the dip since the silver parts seem to be exposed mechanical bits.  I'll probably do a purple wash over them or something.