I'll post shots of the infantry when they are done but for now I'm going to concentrate on the vehicles.

 Lets start with the Command/Comm Truck. 

This one was an interesting and fun build. I have only done a few conversions and most of those have been small changes. This was a complete kit bash. The body is the top section of a medium sized AT43 walker. The treads are from an Axis and Allies Churchill mini. The door on the back is a 28mm wrist shield off a Warzone fig I had. Most of the bits are epoxy casts using instamold. I borrowed a lot from other various AT43 stuff. 

The antenna is made with EZ-line. This stuff is cool. Bobe's Hobby House sells it on their site. They use it for Telephone lines in model railroading. The airplane guys make antennas out of them. They also make great bow strings. It stretches a lot and doesn't snap.

The truck has a magnet on the top. This allows me to make some cool accessories for it.

The Radar Setup:

The Comm Setup:

It was a fun build. I wanted something alien looking but also military.  That is part of the reason I left the body as tall as it is. 

I also put together a small APC for the unit.

This is another AT43 body with a zvezda 1/100 scale German half track for the motor system. I had to do a lot of buildup in the back to give a good place to attach the tracks. I was going to make more of these but destroying a $5 kit to make each one wasn't in the budget. I also need to find more AT-43 bodies like this one as well.

On to the tanks. Both of them are Schwerer Kleiner Panzer kits from Pegasus. They are small tanks so the work well down sized from 1/72nd. The Jaguaundi is another good kit and will probably make it into this force at some point.

The Commanders Tank

The other tank

The stowage and other bits are mostly from kit bashed 72nd scale kits and a cast of the top to a match box armored truck. The same model comes painted as a fire truck as well I think. Big square vehicle with a lot of bits in the top. Jerry cans, Shovels, and some wrapped baggage. I made a few copies for future use.

The next unit was simple to make and looks cool but I have no idea what to use it for in a game. I call it the Artillery Walker.

After stealing the bodies off the top I had several of these legs left over. I turned one of the hip pieces over and thought it looked cool. One of the large guns from another mech fit perfect on the back. So the Artillery Walker was born.

I figure they will be more objectives then anything else. They cannot shoot at anything on the table that's for sure. 

I also have a few AT-43 power armor suits that look cool but I am not sure if I like them or not. I think they need something. I'm just not sure yet.

I think the Quar and the Mangalors will have to be eternal enemies as the steady and resolute Quar will inevitably clash with the militaristic and conquest driven Mangalors.

They figs are still a work in progress. The vehicles are Mechwarrior figs that I thought worked for them. The vehicles are a little small for normal 15mm. The Quar are a smaller stout race and look nice with the vehicle size.

The other fig in this out of focus picture is a Rebel Mini Kurgen. Lets face it they are Mangalors

I'll have a post about them soon. They are in progress as well.

I also found these at the flea market at HurriCon last week.

I have no clue what they are. I figured I could use them as a Quar village or military outpost. I think I'm going to make it an outpost. The doors are a bit small but I think I can live with it.

I'm going to experiment with them a bit. I want to try and give the portholes a soft blue glow and make the other bits look like solar panels. The theme will be a self sufficient military base that is semi permanent. So the buildings are small but well built. Here are some more shots of the various buildings.

One of the buildings is going to be a communications hut. I have some experience as a radio engineer and that will make this kinda fun. I'm trying to mockup a few microwave and satellite dishes as well as a few antennas. I broke my cutters a while back and keep forgetting to replace them. I'll have to do that before I can continue this build.

I think the Quar army is coming along. I had a few more vehicles that I was going to use for them but the Mangalors stole them. They where normal 15mm size and seem to fit them a lot better. I'll try to post their progress soon. I just finished a lot of kit bashing for them. I came across some AT-43 stuff really cheap. I'm well on my way to having a few nice force selections. In addition to the Quar and the Mangalors, I have some Earth Force Marines and Sahadeen from Rebel Minis.

That said I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and hopefully get some gaming in. In my travels I came across and interesting post and wanted to spread the wealth.

The Dicecreator has some interesting custom dice on his site and built his own dice engraver. He also came up with an interesting technique for printing your own dice faces. It borrows from a well known technique for etching custom PCBs for electronics. You print the design on high gloss photo paper and iron it onto the die. He goes into much better detail. check it out!

He brought a directorate i alliance fleet with some dindirendzi gunship backup. 750 points each.

This is a nice shot of the mat before we cover it up with our ships. No my fleet isn't pink... Not sure why that color looks that way in the camera.

My opponent.

This was my initial setup. Off to the side is another frigate unit. The ended up joining the turtle anyway but I needed something on the other side of the planets for the first few turns. They cam in handy later.

My opponent moved his heavy cruisers at an angle and quickly followed with the gunships. That nut was hard to crack but eventually he had to swing around the planet and leave the battleship alone for a turn and that spelled doom for it.

I moved up and got a lucky shot from the shield ships at range band 2. The battleship moved up as well and split its fire between the battleship and those evil gunships.

The Directorate battleship closing fast as my frigates move up to take on the approaching directoate frigates.

My frigate score some hits,

The Directorate Battleship takes some hits and the heavy cruises take some shots just before disappearing behind the planet. Looming in the distance is the directorate carrier and its frigate killing bombers. Good thing our formation is still close together.

The neglected terran cruiser squadron sneaks around the side for a full broadside criting a gunship for its second hard pounding.

The Directorate battleship takes another crit and losses motion control.

Thing sare getting tight now. The carrier is fully committed but the heavies are spending a turn out of position while the terran fleet still holds strong with one functional shield cruiser.

The frigate swarm is to close for torpedoes but is trying to stick together as the bombers close in. The battleship is positioned for a devastating attack.

The gunships get a crit on the battleship and the heavy cruisers get to take a shot. This is the last chance the directorate players has to win. the frigates have moved in to take the gunship that took two hard poundings and is down to 1 cp and 1 ap. A 2 to 4 roll off and I loss one and the gunship crew losses one. That never plays out because the battleship does what it does best and lines up a full on shot at the battleship and a full broadside at the carrier. The Directorate battleship takes a hit and dies and a double crit on the carrier ends the game. At that point we gave up our table for a Battletech Quickstrike game and cleaned up.

It was a good learning experience and the newbie directorate player only made a few tactical mistakes.  The omni-stands performed great and the mat looked amazing. It was the first time I had it out on a table. It makes a great backdrop to any game.

An observant gamer might see a little sneak peak at a furture product that will be in production soon after some slight changes and fine tuning.

The insparation:

Final product:

Working on a moon type next with craters. Also have plans to make a toxic green planet and fiddling with a binary star from a broken 6" kit prototype I had laying around.

I wanted to go with a pirate look. Each ship has a little customization. I also wanted them to look dirty and not well maintained. After some searching I found this tutorial.

The basic are bleach and vinager plus steel wool makes rust. He paints with actual rust. The effect is interesting. Here is what I came up with.

Some of them are going to get another coat of rust but they are starting to look good. Here are some close up.

a few notes on painting.

Started with a German armor army painter primer.

Black on the inside and various details.

Gun-metal grey as a highlight

customization colors to add more detail

finally a wash of rust.

I'm happy with the look. It could be better but these guys are tiny :)

The idea was to replace the emitters with something a little brighter. I could have painted them and was given a lot of advice on how to make them look great but I wanted something more.

I found some 4mm beads in Hobby Lobby. I decided to buy them and use them as replacement emitters. I only have a few done because it is kinda labor intensive to do all 8 emitter ports, but the reward is great.

And a close up

The glue is still a wet but once it dries it will look great.

Just a few notes on what I did to add the bead. I used a pair of cutters to remove the first teir of the original emitter and then using two drill bits hollowed out a concave hole in the space. Getting it centered is the hard part and make sure the largest drill bit is large enough to fit the edge of the bead but be careful to not take to much of the base off. A little bit of hobby knife work and some test fits then just dip it in the glue and position it in the hole. Not to hard and it gives the ship a unique look.

Got to play on one of our fabric mats for the first time. It added a nice background to the game.

Ok the paint jobs still a work in progress but I did get some new shiny shield ships!

whats the crazy chunk of plastic in the corner? Our soon to be released turn template! Docks with 40mm stands to help figure out firing arcs.

My shield cruisers where doing their job and paying for it. The escort made a wrong turn so it was useless. But I did get a nice shot of my experiment with dice holders on top of stands. It works great but requires a lot of dice... We are working on several project right now one of them is a stand system that these might be part of. Check the CorSec Blog for more info on that later this week.

MicroFOW

We borrowed this term from the WhatWhouldPattonDo.net guys. They have a great podcast and amazing site for Flames of War. Basic idea used 6mm figs with a 15mm rule set by converting inches to cm. Works great and you can run thos big armies you always wanted to but never had the cash or space for. We commonly see 6000 point games finished in 2-3 hours. Helps to have Jim there because he is a walking FOW rule book.

This was just a throw together game for our game day because one of the games was canceled due to illness. The boards are the genius work of Bob Davison at Bobe's Hobby House. 1' by 1' squares that all link together to make great looking boards for 15mm or 6mm. I want to cast them and it is on the list of things to work on. If I get one to work then I will try to commission Bob to make a few masters for us to use.

The Sorylian fleet and the Terrans faced off with the Directorate and the Dindrenzi.

The Terrans advanced facing off against the Dindrenzi. The heavy cruiser squadron moves to round the asteroids and the frigate screen slashed in front to take the first incoming fire.

The cruiser squardron takes some heavy hits and is out classed by the two heavy cruisers on the Dindrenzi side. With the heavy cruiser almost gone it moves in for a last ditch boarding action and the other cruiser turns to support the frigates that are starting to take losses.

The cruiser dies and the Dindrenzi frigate squadron that has taken tons of shots and still survived finally dies. Now the gunships are closing in but around the asteroids finally the battleship brings the big guns to bear.

The heavy cruiser fails to accomplish anything with its assault and is in turn assaulted but the fight isn't resolved in one round.

The Dindrenzi battleship moves in and takes a critical from the Terran battleship. Fire rages on the decks but it keeps coming. Things are starting to look bad for the Terrans. The other side of the table is getting messy with a the Directorate battleship heavily damaged but still in the fight.

The Heavy cruiser sucumbs to the boarding parties and is taken while Dindrenzi battleship moves in and takes damage from the fires on its decks.

The Directorate Battleship falls and the Sorylian fleet sends some help towards the stuggling Terran battlegroup.

Terran fleet is not looking good. All cruisers squadrons are gone. One lone frigate remains. Will the Sorylian fleet make it in time?

The Terran Battleship orders a full broadside with turret support into the Dindrenzi battleship. Punching through for a critical hit and in a blinding flash of light the battleship and one of the gunships dissapear into tons of space junk!

The Dindrenzi cruisers move forward to attack the carrier and then the carrier takes advantage of the fact that all the assaulters from the cruisers are gone and sends its own assaulters over to take the ship. Before this can be resolved the Directorate take some more heavy losses and thier carrier starts taking damage. With a fresh Sorylian battleship now commanding the field the game is called as 4 weary games step away after 8 hours of intense action.

Conclusions:

We learned a lot from this game. One of us had never played before and the other three where only on our first or second game. We had a taste of almost every mechanic in the book and had a good time. The highlight was definatly the Dindrenzi battleship exploding. Terrans and Sorlyians walked away victorious but with heavy losses on the Terrain side.

Personally I learned a lot from this game and I have to say Firestorm is an amazing system. I can't wait for Firestorm: Invasion and all the new ships they have planned. Next time I am deploying my fleet with the battleship and carrier our front with as clear a LOS as possible. They may take some long range fire early on but the frigate screen and cruisers can pass them up quickly and that should help to keep the smaller ships alive and pounding away longer.

Heavy Cruise Details:

Engines Details on the Battleship:

More Details on the Battleship:

I also have some experiments being laser cut now. One is a turn template that "docks" with the 40mm base. It has a firing arc on it to and will hopefully be easier then trying to position it on top of the base.

The other idea is this:

The red part is an add on to the base that can be used to hold dice. Colored dice can be used to indicate Hull, Crew, and Assault. If I like the way the experiment comes out it might make it to the product stage. Cool thing is its designed to fit on bases already in use. Just slide it over the peg and glue it in place. Final product will be clear. I used red here for visibility. Ok back to painting.