Science Fiction Diorama - Base Mockup

Its been a while since I have posted anything that I have actually worked on. I have taken to carrying around a little notebook that I can jot down my thoughts in so I don't forget them. This has been working out fairly well and today I decided to see if one of my ideas was going to work or not. I had this vision of a little sci/fi diorama featuring British troops from the Colonial Period (Zulu War kind of feeling) trying to ambush a "patrol" of aliens. All the minis are going to come right out of the Reaper Miniatures Chronoscope line and I had them already in the pile of unpainted lead.

I grabbed my favorite material for creating a mock up and off I went.

Matt Board, Ruler, Mechanical Pencil, some Titebond Glue sitting where I won't spill it.

The Sketchbook I have been carrying around

Deep into construction at this point

Coming together

"The Interior", I think I'm going to work in two windows instead of one.

The interior with a floor now!

On the outside the stairs in the alley

Street side which mostly features the sidewalk and a bit of the street

I think this will be the main viewing angle

So how the miniatures in the alley might fit. Some conversion work is going to be required

Two in the alley and one inside

The aliens make their appearance. You can see the alien shadows on the wall. When I paint this I'm going to try out a lower light coming from directly down the street so that the aliens will be casing shadows in front of them. That's what the British officer will be watching, timing his moment to strike.

Another view with all the minis in the scene

At the moment I'm pretty happy with how things worked out with this mockup. I can see some places I will need to make adjustments and where some conversion work will be required. I think its going to work out pretty good. The story seems pretty solid at this point.

Kickstarter - Critical Mass Games - ZAS Mercenaries

Critical Mass Games' Kickstarter campaign is coming to a close, about 44 hours left at this point, and it seems to have lost a bit of steam. You know you need a 15mm Sci/Fi army for "Tomorrows War" and this is a good time to jump in and get that army started. The ZAS mercs would be a good starter force for just about every ruleset out there. After my exposure to Ambush Alley's Force on Force rules I'm pretty content to go with that right now. Of course, nothing will prevent me from playing other rules either.  I also received my reinforcements for my Mech Company this week, although I'm going to set those aside for a bit while I work on Calamity and my entries for ReaperCon this year.

So here's your selections for the ZAS mercs:

What you get

How much it will cost you later. Its a steal right now.

Because you know you want it all

What you get

How much it will cost you later

And of course I need to show off the reinforcements that my mech company will be using. This arrived on Wednesday, great service from CMG!

Hellfire - Self Propelled Anti-Aircraft (Grav Version)

Vanquisher - Self Propelled Artillery (Grav Version)

Warmonger - Heavy Tank (Grav Version)

All of these images came from either CMG's Kickstarter site or their web site.

Another Kickstarter - Critical Mass Games - ZAS 15mm Mercs

CMG has decided to take their ZAS mercenaries and expand them into a full range through Kickstarter. Talk about bad timing for me! With Traveller5 getting ready to ship by the end of February I know I'll need some kind of major military force (not really) to go along with the miniatures that I have been slowly working on for the RPG campaign. And then there is the Tomorrow's War rules that have just been sitting around gathering dust but I have been itching to crack open and work up a game or two. So I'm jumping in on this Kickstarter. I'm in at the mechanized company commander level, which includes £56 of vehicles, so its looking like a pretty good deal especially as stretch goals get hit and more stuff is added.

And because you know you want to look: CMG ZAS Kickstarter

"Shopping" Street Scenes

I was messing around with the camera tonight and took some street scenes of the Shopping diorama and then de-saturated the photos to get that gritty reporter on the scene look.

"Shopping" a diorama with Hasslefree Miniatures

I have worked on the is particular diorama for well over a year at this point (although to be honest there is probably a 12 month stretch where it just lived in its box). It was mostly finished and entered at ReaperCon 2011 where it took a silver medal. I decided to try again at Tacticon 2012 with it. I added the glass to the window and tried to bring the highlights up on the girls and darken up the rest of the diorama. So I pulled all of that off although the bullet holes in the glass didn't come out very well but after three attempts I was willing to go with it. After the contest we were thinking that maybe the Vallejo Crackle Medium would have gotten me closer to the effect I was looking for. Anyway so I pulled off a second silver with this one. I need to figure out what to do for February.

The three Hasslefree Miniatures are: Debra (HFA048), McKenzie (b) (HFA054) and Ashlee (b) (HFA057)

Hasslefree is a great little company and people don't come much better than Sally and Kev White.
HassleFree Miniatures

A few WIPs before the final entry photos:

And the final result: