Tap, Tap, this thing is on....

Excuses, excuses that is all I got, My mom came back from Japan with Cancer, my very old Dog Died, Etc. etc...

Anyways I'm Back! Today I got a package from Ground Zero Games, always a good thing. I got one of his new Civilian Utility Skimmers (V15-147). My it is quite the model. Here are the pieces as received.

As you can see this is gonna be a fun model to assemble thankful Jon has provided a bunch of pictures on the ordering page to see where the bits go.

Also included a 4 sets of the "D" style running gear for the new Aircars. Though Jon hasn't gotten them up in the store as my posting this.

Blog necromancy.

Wow I still can get in here!?!

Well I better see if I can do any better this time.

Lost Time and other shit....

It's been a long and rough year here in the Walled Garden, started with my last funding source drying up and then by an Obstructed Bowel requiring emergency exploratory surgery which was followed by a return to the hospital with post surgical complications... Which in all means I spent all of April in a Public Hospital and all of May and most of June here at the Casa in not much of a mood to model or paint (a Healing 7 inch long incision in ones abdomen tends complain when y'all are leaning over the work table concentrating, not to mention the omnipresent vacuum pump keeping said incision closed (while being a visible cyborg is kinda neat, external hardware tends to make every move a chore)). The Doctors, Nurses and Staff of Highland Hospital in Oakland, Ca. were all fantastic. Weirdly while the medical aspects of this sound gorey and painful, it mostly wasn't, frustration is mostly what I felt, while stuck in the hospital (attached to multiple tubes) you pretty much stuck with TV or reading and waiting.... This isn't bad if you are still getting intravenous Pain Meds, but once you are past that and having one bag putting fluid in, antibiotics etc... etc... it pretty much becomes a grind... I had lots of ideas wrote a few of them down, sketched a few out, but mostly waiting....

And The weird/new/untried ideas.

This was supposed to be a Mecha/Dreadnaught sort of year, yet I have not either played, written/modified rules for or built any.

I have a number of Speeder Models that were started as various times in the past 24 months that still languish for final detail work or more. But there is a bigger issue here in that I keep vacillating between 6 mm and 15 mm or do both (the latter is probably closer to the truth, Have you seen some of the stuff from Angel Barracks?)

I have also circled around on Terrain and table ideas a couple of times, mostly in the frame of full 3d or 2.5d, the idea of using hand drawn maps a base then layers of foamcore rising up out of the map. Then for selected bits of terrain could be built on base for 3d accents.... I may just have to build/draw a board and take pictures to really get the idea across. Architectural models do things like this often.

Anyways these are the ideas in this 1st week free of any free-floating medical devices that are attached (the wound is almost healed) and with the long list of things should have gotten done in the past 12 weeks, I am adding to it for the fun stuff....

Test build kinda...

Ok this started as a none-GW Universe ship for use with the Battlefleet Gothic Rule set, and it has turned into a shape test for 15mm GravSkimmer. (Yes, technically this is part of my NewSpeeder model set of vehicles, but in styrene instead of epoxy putty)

Following are the standard three views. Yes, I need to clean my desk off, so I can get better lighting set up.

How big is that Starship on the worktable...

A cargo lighter in the middle of a very long process... It has been sitting a a half finished Idea for years, and I have questions.... Asked on the TMP .

The Water Works and Associated Madness

Well last I posted it was Machine Coalition Terrain, and  in the process of making room of the painting table I found Five Ground Zero Games Shanties and the Water Works ready for paint. The Water Works is a bash-up of a pill bottle, a couple of desiccant cylinders, some wood bits and a small nickel snap (look in the notions department of your local craft and sewing shop). The curb work at the bottom is just a bit of epoxy putty (Could be either greenstuff, Procreate or Magic-Sculpt, can't remember which and it was primered when I started painting)

Water Works

GZG Shanty

Another GZG Shanty

Next we have a little car I like to call the Slabmaster, it is in the classic American style, in that it is a slab of metal gently resting on beefy repulsers that propel it to agressive highway speeds. On the straight-away.....

Modeling-wise, it is sitting waiting for that bit of inspiration of what finishing details it needs beyond the the obvious. For once this isn't a point of hating the looks of a model, but one I love it so much I don't want to muss it up.

Slabmaster One

Slabmaster One

Slabmaster One

Here is a picture Angry Arthor, Monster Skinner, all dressed up in his Pandora Working clothes. In miniatures terms he is Gath from Rebel Minis 5150 set, he was sitting on the bench thus a picture.

Angry Arthor

Lastly a picture of "28mm" scale figures that are perfectly usable in 15mm, Bob is standing in for referance. The floating Robots are "Small Floating Robot #1" from Black Cat Bases, the lizards are Cynoraptors from the Viridians faction of the Void 1.1 line now available from Scotia Grendal. As for their various basing options shown here, Bob is on 15mm round from Litko, the Robots are on their supplied flight bases, and the Cynoraptors are on hand cut 12 x 20mm handcut plastic bases.

Bob and Friends

Machine Coalition Outpost

1st off I really need to clean my desk, or at least figure out a better place to shoot my pictures. I have been tied up doing summer stuff and working on my obsession very little, kinda I cleaned and sorted the painting table and am slowly making my way through the huge back log of figures/models that need paint, so in a word I am not meeting the pledge at all this year.

With that I have assembled and am painting GZG's Shack Set set I should have some pics up soon. Pictured below is the beginnings of a Machine Coalition Out Post. Basic construction uses the Platformer and Hexagon sets from IMEX that a mate of mine gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I recently discovered the boxes again in my vast collection of junk, and while looking through huge number of sprues a Idea occurred. A thus was born the Network Hub and Accommodation/Storage Unit of a Machine Coalition Outpost. 

MC Network Hub (front)

MC Network Hub (side)

MC Network Hub (rear)

MC Accommodation/Storage Unit (front)

MC Accommodation/Storage Unit (rear oblique)

Some more random notes from the desk;

I have a bunch of terrain warming up in the bullpin for further blogs, as terrain sits around the edges of my projects taunting me with the facts that my little metal guys need a world to play in. Or that is how it feels. With that I am still trying to figure out what my PA fuel station is going to look like.

I used to use GW's 60mm round flat bases for incidental terrain pieces, such as Moisture stills, gardens, rubble piles, etc. etc... But in their infinite wisdom they have now priced these like they are gold, so a new solution needed to be found, and I realize that I could just cut my own out of plastic card, but I am lazier than that. Or I should say the processe that produces said terrain is driven by inspiration and having a handy base means it gets done. So any ways, I have settled on Flames of Wars Large Bases, the size seems good. So far I have mounted GZG's Shacks on them as well a Well/Cistern unit that fits well with the shacks, all six pieces are on the painting table as I write this so there should be pictures of them soon.

In a freak fungus/closed paint box incident here at Casa MacDude I have been having a jolly old time sorting out my collection of Vallejo Paints, the fungus in the plastic tool box ate mos of the labels off the paint bottles along with the reference smear of paint, so I am having to redo them all, In the same process I am finding which bottles where quite close tight enough. The funny thing is the Old GW brand Coat'd Arms post cam through the incident quite unscathed. So the up side is that my 20+ year old inherited collection of GW paints are still getting broken out for use in pinch still. An ex-roommate of mine bought several boxes of the GW paints when they came out, and left them behind when he moved on. While I am not a prolific painter I have used a lot of other paints over the years only dipping in to this collection when in need, thus the longevity.

More Soon.

Evyn