Exosus Empire completed (well almost).

Finished the troops that I currently have for the Exosus Empire.  These are from the gorgeous CMG ARC troop range and GZG spider drones.

First up is the Grav APC platoon and troops.  There are 3 squads in the platoon (a theme I stick to for each platoon) and one officer leading them.

I've kept it quite simple, to differentiate between troop/NCO/officer I painted the left shoulder a different colour. Orange for NCO, red for platoon commander and blue for company commander.

Next up is the infantry platoon.  Again, these are similar to the first platoon minus the APC's.

Up next is the 6 GZG spider drones in two teams.  Again they are quite simply painted, I'm not nor have I ever been a golden demon painter, I prefer to keep it basic for the games.  I've added 25mm GW round bases in a simple bright colour to represent the shields on each drone.  I've kept them different colours to represent the 2 squads of drones.

The CMG jet bikes are excellent models and I wanted a squad of them to represent the Exosus' technological superiority.

I don't think one grav tank is enough and now plan to buy one more medium tank and a heavy tank from CMG later in March.  I love how they used the same hull as the basis for most of the ARC vehicles.

Finally up is the company officer and the two snipers.  I'm debating about getting/converting a medic and engineer from the models I have left over but I don't know if having a medic would fit into the theme of the Exosus Empire who use conscripts/volunteers like cattle.

Here is an overview of the two platoons and support.

The Revell Star Wars shuttle I got on ebay dirt cheap (at £3) so I plan to use it as a prop in some games at a later stage.

Now onto starting work on the Kraskian Federation Marines.

See you on the other side.

New shiny items.

Some new items arrived in the post today including my CMG ARC fleet buildings and one extra item from ebay.

For £3 on ebay its a steal!

A quick update

I'm not very good at updating these things, but I haven't had a chance to do much painting due to work and catching the dreaded manflu.  A couple of new things arrived, some terrain from Wargames Tournament on ebay which is some very nice North Africa buildings and they'll be painted to look like slums/old buildings for my new board.  I also picked up (on the cheap) a KR Cardboard model case.  It's made of a hard cardboard and holds around 200 28mm mini's.  It comfortably fits the minis and the soft foam doesn't appear to scratch the models.  I'm quite impressed with it and with their range of cases, I'll definitely get one of the cases for a bloodbowl team or Necromunda gang.

I did manage to finish a CMG medium grav tank along with 4 CMG ARC jetbikes.  Again I kept them simple as I'm not a great painter.  But I'll stick photos up later.

With the Exosus troops practically finished (only 2 officers and 2 walkers to complete) I started to file and base the Khurasan Federal troops.  These will be playing the role of the Kraskian Federation Marines.  Much like the US Marines of today they put an emphasis on manoeuvre warfare.  With highly trained and motivated troops using the latest in technological advances they carry the fight to the enemy, attacking and harrying them before their fearsome heavy tanks and gunships pulverise them.

With my love of 2nd edition 40k I started to collect the codices (codexes?) and the 2nd ed box.  What I'd love to do is use the rules for 15mm combat.  Obviously certain things will either have to be toned down or removed, like psychic powers, characters and the abundance of wargear along with the insane 90% fire arc for troopers.  I'll have to wait for them to arrive before I start making plans.  I just wonder if anyone else would be interested?

CMG Grav tanks

I typically do 10+ hours a day in my job so I only get to paint on my days off.  I managed to get the CMG Grav APC's done and thought I'd stick a few photos up of them plus the CMG ARC Fleet Recon troops.  I've started the spider droids and should have them finished shortly (oh the joy of night shifts).

I sometimes hate doing vehicles and I'm always wary when it comes to lots of flat areas.  To fix this and to attempt a weathered look I drybrushed the APC's.  Building up from a dark grey to a lighter grey then adding some splotches of watered down brown paint to represent mud or obstacles that the forward ramp hits.

Exosus Empire

These are to be the bad guys of my gaming universe, one of two initial factions.  As I said before I fell in love with the CMG Arc fleet troops and decided to use these as the Imperial troops.  I wanted a white/grey colour scheme and as these were to be the first models I painted in 6 years I wanted to keep it basic.

Keeping with what I know I started with a black base, then codex grey with a medium drybrush of fortress grey finally a light drybrush of space wolves grey to bring out the edges in the uniform.  Over any armour sections I put a few thin layers of white followed by regal blue then a highlight of enchanted blue on the visor.

When it came to basing I think I made a mistake by putting the sand on the penny before spraying as it left a lot of noticeable gaps and no amount of painting could hide the shine of the penny breaking through.  Lesson learnt, don't put the sand on until you have sprayed the model.  The models were painted with Scorched brown, with a drybrush of bestial brown followed by graveyard earth.  Finally it was topped off with some grass in random patterns.

As I said this is my first attempt at painting in some years so please be gentle with the criticisms.

I've finished the last two squads (in Gruntz they are squads of 8) and plan to start on the two walkers, 4 jet bikes, 6 spider droids, 2 grav APC's and 1 grav tank.  I'll start to post more images when I finish them along with the background for the Exosus Empire.

Thanks for the memories.

I started with models as a kid, painting and building some star wars kits then working my way onto airfix kits.  I had an obsession (some would say unhealthy) with WWII planes and I routinely spent my pocket money on a new airfix kit or paint.  I'd rush home and frantically build the model and paint it.  Whilst my enthusiasm was great, my modelling skills left a lot to be desired.  That all changed when my cousin came home with Heroquest and something changed, we now had games to play with the models. That changed when I saw this ad on tv.

 I had to have it, luckily Christmas was around the corner and Santa was good to me.  Although the models ended up looking like they were dunked in paint I was hooked on the futuristic element to it.  We quickly discovered 2nd edition Epic Space Marine.  I built a massive Space Marine and Guard army.  Luckily GamesWorkshop opened a store near us and we converted to 40k 2nd edition.  This was to be the staple of our wargaming diet for the next few years, a foray into Warhammer but I never enjoyed the fantasy element.  I'd built several armies (Dark Angels, Eldar and Guard) with every penny earned going towards new models, paints and books.  Then GW did something amazing and within a short time released both Blood Bowl and Necromunda.  Now we didn't have to have massive armies to control and games were a lot more competitive, especially in a league game.  These games were exciting and fast

A few years ago I worked for GW in a store and during that time I caught the airsoft bug.  After leaving GW I sold all my stuff including some paints from the early 90's (groan!) and I forgot about gaming with the occassional foray into my local GW.  Content to airsoft instead with friends and game on the PC instead.

About a year ago a friend of mine (and former GW manager) opened his own gaming store Arkham Gaming Centre.  He started to entice me with pictures on his facebook of shiny new miniatures and rules.  The geek in me couldn't resist looking but I couldn't do another GW army and not on their prices.  During my research I started to find a lot of 15mm stuff online and fell in love with the Khurasan feds and CMG ARC Fleet troops.  After finding the Gruntz ruleset I finally bit the bullet and ordered enough models for two armies along with support troops/vehicles.  This brought about a panic buy of brushes, paints, glue, day lamp and other things to help get me started.

And this is pretty much where the blog picks up from, admittedly I've skimmed over a lot of things, but I felt it necessary to give you an idea as to who I am and where I came from in regards to gaming.  I intend to document my painting and gaming along with any crazy ideas I have.