Sunday, January 12, 2014

Sci-Fi Troopers WIP


New year, new goals. Here's a small platoon of troopers I've got brewing. Wargames Factory forms the basis of these guys, they're not slated for anything specific, just painting up a small force to get back in the saddle. I wanted to do some Pig Iron head swaps, but didn't have any on hand and didn't want any more delays, so here we go. I like the idea of a battle robot thrown in there too, nothing fancy, but a frame for general combat duty. The humans are your basic footsloggers, so I'm calling him a slog-bot, cobbled together using a Mechwarrior body as the basis. 

The box has got x18 troopers in so I've made a small platoon of two nine-man squads. Each squad can be further broken down into three three-man fire teams. There's a squad leader and a special weapon trooper per squad. These figures are a fantastic value for the money, but do leave a fair margin to be desired, especially in the weapon department. To that end I opted for a couple of GW weapon bits to supply a flamethrower and a plasma rifle. 

Spicing them up just a tad in the kit department are some more GW bits. I put a pouch, knife, canteen, or the like on all of their belts just to flesh them out a little further. Slows down the painting a bit, but the finished payoff is well worth it. 

I like this project, it'll be its own little army, maybe not hugely ambitious but when it's done it'll be a compact, efficient, and cohesive force. Now the bane of a lot of armies is the lack of vehicles. Whereas the troopers I've got might not be all that ambitious, I do plan on adding a pair of Pig Iron IFVs, one for each squad. I also plan on doing a light combat/recon aerial drone, and a recon jeep that it launches from. So there's where I'll be pushing myself a bit, again, I'm looking at the overall gameplan and eager to get the brushes dusted off!  Until next time, enjoy!

8 comments:

  1. Nice conversions the guard bits fit nicely with the WGF bits

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    1. Thanks Simon! Admittedly my bots box was a LOT more depleted than I remembered before I began this project so they're pretty minimal. But, if one had a deep bits box and some head alternatives, you'd have a great looking force with these WGF troopers.

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  2. Looking good Mik! I'm thinking about picking up some of those WGF Shocktroopers to make an enemy army for my NROT Rangers.

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    1. Thanks Major Steve! I tell you, for the money (what, a buck each?) it's really hard to deny them, see the bits comment I made above. If you need some bad guy arse to kick, you could do a lot worse than these.

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  3. It's good seeing you back in the modelling/painting chair! Often it can be nice to get started on something without any particular system or specific goal - like with these guys! :)

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    1. It's good to be back Martin! Those were exactly my thoughts on these troopers. Looking to the future I've had some interesting directions I've thought of taking, so we'll see how that pans out. First things first however!

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  4. I did something with the wargames factory guys. I liked their price, but i found some of the proportions off with them. These can be easily used for most skirmish games, like infinity or warhammer 40k kill-team. I like the robot you got in there. It's a very novel idea to use a battletech mini.

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    1. Yup, they're great value but they in small ways here and there you get what you pay for. Perfect for NPC and background bad guys/forces or whatevs though. Thanks on the robot too, it was one of those things laying around in the parts bin and I thought it just might work. Not all of the MechWarrior figs would fit but this particular sculpt was definitely good to go.

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