From the Shed: US Rangers and Special Operations Forces.

I’ve just finished up some quick US Speical Operation Forces types.

First up we have 4 men armed with MP7 Personal Defence Weapons (the fancy new name for SMGs that fire modern body armour defeating ammunition), great for clearing buildings .

We have a 2 man command team for the Rangers: a soldier with a map and a radioman. Useful for bringing in off- table assests.

Finally a pair of snipers manning the huge .50 Barrett sniper rifle. Witha massive range (and massive weight to go with it) it is an immensly powerful weapon.

Again Elhiem figures were the manufacturer of these figures; can’t wait to get them into a game of Black Ops or similar soon. All of the figures were painted in the latest multicam cammo pattern uniforms.

 

From the Shed: More Elhiem figures.

A couple of quick pics here…

 

First up I painted 4 USMC figures, enough to form a fireteam, to try out the colours to paint Woodland MARPAT pattern see here for an example. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. Although a full platoon of them would take a while…. Will try the desert scheme next.

I also painted up some assorted Cold War Soviet figures for a couple of scenarios I’ve got planned, the guy with the white helmet is a Military Policeman on traffic duty:

Finally I got some of the insurgent gun crew to go with the improvised mortars I featured a bit ago:

https://www.elhiem.co.uk/

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Blogger Azazel rus a regular group challenge clicky where by you all paint/ make something according to a theme and post up the result. It is not competitive just something to get you motivated.

I’ve been meaning to join in for a while but I’ve not got had the enthusiasm for a while… until this past month. Octobers theme was to do units. This fits in nicely with my fast painting techniques so I thought I’d go for it.

I did say I was going to do some Van Saar gang members for Necromunda but I’ve yet to finish them. What I have done though is a lot of 20mm figures. This is the first of three post of my month’s work.

First up with have a mixed unit of RUC policemen and women (well woman) from Elhiem clicky . Ostensibly they are for the trouble but I intend to use them for some 70s Winter of ’79/ urban disturbance type gaming, see my earlier post about card buildings. They have a wide variety of weaponary: G3s, SLRs, Sterling SMGs as well as semi automatic carbines. This combined with the police uniform and bulky flask vest give them a different feel to modern SWAT teams.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

 

Twilight 2000/ Post Apocalypse Soldiers.

Growing up, as I did, at the tail end of the Cold War one of RPGs that really drew me in was Twilight 2000; a game that I’m sure most of you are familiar with too. I never played many games of it: the combination of modern weaponary and 19th century medical care meant that and wounded characters didn’t last that long… I keep thinking of returning to it but as a battling warlord skirmish campaign type thing rather than a straight RPG. Nonetheless in the meantime I keep collecting bits for it as and when, in fact my earliest modern figures started of being collected for Twilight 2000.

 

Elhiem Figures have released a very nice set of mounted (ex)soldiers suitable for the game. Even better, due to the modular design of the figures you can have the same figure mounted and dismounted.

To give them a ragtag look I mixed in bits on non- camouflaged clothing. They have a nice mix of weaponary too. I think it would be worth making them up as a special group of NPCs for the player characters to encounter if you were running a campaign.

First up with have a guy in a black T-shirt carrying a shotgun.

Next we have a guy in the earlier M1 helmet talking on the radio.

Man waving pistol about- there is a slung rifle on his horse.

One man carrying M16 and binoculars- probably my favourite one.

Bareheaded with an M16.M203 combination.

Floppy bush hat with an M249 Minimi Squad Automatic Weapon.

The horses have the legs of the riders suclpted on them- the torso fits in with a plug, a sperate set of legs are available for the dismounted figures so you can mix and match until you are happy with poses. It is nice to have this much flexibility when putting together the minis. If some more were to be released but with Soviet/ Russian weaponary I’d be very happy as they’d complement this set immensely.

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

 

Whoop, Whoop: das Geräusch der Polizei.

(With apologies to KRS-One)

Elhiem Figures has recently released two version of the (in)famous East German Trabant car: one civilian, one police. These are 3D prints and are rather nice, much better than the Shapeways ones I bought several years back.

The pair of little Trabants.

Believe it or not over 3 million of them were made.

This Police one should really have lettering on it but I didn’t fancy trying out my freehand on it so left it off.

Both were painted in acyrlics before being weathered with oil paints. The blue police lights were done with Games Workshops range of gem paints; they look OK but I don’t think they were really worth the extra effort. Still given how little paint I used they should last for years.

 

They make a nice little pair and should be some nice set dressing if I ever set a Cold War game in East as opposed to West Germany.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Some Elhiem figures.

I’ve painted up some example of Elhiem’s [clicky] work that I’ll share with you. One of the good things about Matt the guy behind Elhiem is that he is very responsive to customer requestsd and suggestions, he has a Facebook page just for to post ideas to. The first group of figures is one that I said I’d be interested in when the idea was broached an a now defunct forum.

This are men and women in suits, ideal as bodyguards for some VIP. I painted their clothing a fairly light grey to contrast with the dark weapons; unfortunately the silver paint for the mirrorshades didn’t worth that well, I may yet got back over it with black….

This next group is 12 near future/  SF Amerrican types. Wearing full face helmets and advanced armour, they have exo- skeletons to give them a boost. It is a nice touch that only the LMG gunners have the exo- skeleton extending down their arms.

To distinguish the different fireteams I painted each group of four’s guns different colours: here we have the ‘greens’…

… the ‘tans’…

 

… and the ‘greys’. 

 

There are some suggested rules for near future tech in the recent Osprey rules Black Ops so I will dig those out to. Also revisiting the novel Ghost Fleet should provide some inspiration for games.  I found this video too that gives me some ideas. I’ve got 12 near future Russians too to paint up so they’ll have some potential opposition. 20mm science fiction figures are rather thin on the ground so these area nice addition. I wouldn’t mind some more poses for both ranges, Officer and NCO types would be useful as well as some with rocket launchers of some kind….

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.