Squat Exo-Armour

As you will be aware, I have been putting together a small Squat army lately. Now, I don't want the army to be a copy of the old Squat lists from 'back in the day' but there are certain components that I like and that I want in the army. These include transport vehicles, bikes, Squat mechanics (engineseers) and of course, Exo Armour.

Exo armour was the Squat equivalent of Space Marine Terminator Armour and was a handy addition to the Squat inventory. With my objective being to create a plastic army, I have been looking around for some 'counts as' Exo Armour and have recently unpacked some miniatures from a kickstarter that may fit the bill. They are Forge Guard from Mantic's Deadzone range and here is a picture or two:

Click the Pic!

Click the Pic!

As you can see, he's a big lad and stylistically, he's a bit more ornate than the standard Squat but I reckon, with a bit of tweaking, I can put that right. Looking at the scale image above, I think that if I lowered the codpiece a little, a Squat would realistically be able to fit inside but his feet would sit at ankle level. Fortunately, there is space on the miniature for that to happen so it isn't too much of a big deal. 

Onto the (hard plastic) sprues:

Right click and open in a new tab to get BIG pix!

Each of the bodies has a letter and the legs/shoulderpads that fit that particular body have the same letter. Although that means that each body is in a set pose, there is a variety of poses and the fact that the arms are not restricted to particular bodies (except for the melta weapon) means that it is fairly easy to get quite a variety from your sprue. Each sprue has six troops on it; one of which is a leader and the other is a melta trooper. There is also the option of adding a heavier machine gun to a further standard trooper so, in theory, you could have two heavies, a leader and three standard troops if you wanted.

Preparing the miniatures was not too bad. Clip them from the sprue with side-cutters, clean up attachment points and remove mould lines with a sharp scalpel and glue together with standard polystyrene cement. I would suggest scrapping the standard Mantic bases and putting the troops on normal plastic bases... but that is up to you.

Overall, I am quite pleased with these. They will make a great basis for some Exo Armoured Squats and could be used straight from the box if you wanted. They are also pretty cheap so if you decided you wanted to convert them, it won't break the bank if you mess them up.

Here's a link to find them in the shop: LINK

See you from the workshop!

Midweek Extra

I know it's midweek but I forgot to mention something on Sunday's update... I went to see a movie last Friday.

So... Avengers: Age of Ultron (without spoilers):

First of all, there are the familiar characters with a few extra thrown in for good measure. The Avengers have the usual rapport and there is still a little bit of humour BUT there is a darker tone to the movie... almost one of impending doom. As a result, it isn't as light hearted and there are times where it becomes a serious film... but overall, it is even better than the last Avengers movie (which is saying a lot because I loved the last one). There is the usual mix of toned down violence but there are a few bleeding bullet wounds so if you think your child is going to be upset about that, then go to see the movie without them... then if you think it is OK, take them along the second time you go because it will be a great excuse to see the movie twice.

There is a lot going on in the film and the new characters hardly have time to get aquainted with the audience but I'm sure they will be expanded upon in the next film.

Don't forget to watch the clip after the credits... it's the big one!

I thought the film was excellent and I strongly recommend you go and see it.

So... I've been home for a whole week now and that means I have had time to add a couple of backpacks and the little gun tractors to the two Squat infantry squads:

Click the Pix!

I've also been clipping another platoon's worth of Squats from their sprues ready to be cleaned up for conversion and have started to work on a Dreadnought to go with them... so watch this space.

See you from the bigger chair than last time!

THE BIG BLOG UPDATE!

Hello again. It's Sunday and that means that it is time to update the blog, and what better way to do that than to make today's update... ENORMOUS?

Let's start at the begining and say that it is good to be home in England again, even though I am still shattered.

I started travelling on Tuesday morning with a 7 hour plane trip from the Falkland Islands to the Ascension Islands. I then got off the plane for a couple of hours and sat in holding while the plane was refuelled etc. Then it was back on the plane for a further 9 hours, arriving at Brize Norton at around 08:00hrs. An hour messing about in the terminal, followed by an hour in an MT vehicle (being driven by a nice driver) and I was dropped off at my door. I had time for a cuppa and a quick hello to my wife and daughter before I popped into work to let them know I was home and then I was home for a few days.

Things to note:

• I have not had a proper night's sleep since last Saturday (8 days ago)
• I am still on Falklands time (4 hours behind UK time)
• I am a little jet-lagged

So... that's the first bit out of the way. Next up...

...I was encouraged to go to Salute yesterday. Salute is an annual event run by the South London Warlords that is all about the wargaiming community. It was a change for me this year because I was not working on the Hasslefree Miniatures stand... I was just a punter. That meant that I could wander around and look at everything at my leisure. Here are a few of the tables that I noticed:

Battle Star Galactica (Click the Pic!)

Star Wars (Click the Pic!)

Beyond the Gates of Antares (Click the Pic!)

Alien VS Predator (Click the Pic!)

Warzone Resurrection (Click the Pic!)

Stingray (Click the Pic!)

Obviously, there were many more tables to see but I thought I'd just take a few of the ones I liked rather than spamming everywhere with too many photos to look at. On my travels, I was glad to see that the guys from Hawk Wargames had finished their spaceship for Dropzone Commander:

Click the Pix!

It was a truly epic ship, with tens of little dropships, tanks, vehicles and other details that really made the project pop.

So... onto the next thing... what did I buy? Well... here's a pic or two:

The Miniatures: Clockwork Goblin 'Grizzly' walker, 2x Vulkan Battlesuits from Prodos, Robotic arms from Blight Wheel Miniatures, a creature from Twilight Miniatures and a pack of Angry Beavers from North Star (bought from the Dice Bag Lady):

Click the Pic!

The food: Three lots of jerked meat from Artemis Black's:

Click the Pic!

Other Stuff: Two dice bags from the Dice Bag Lady and also (not shown) a Salute mug which is full of tea at the moment:

Click the Pic!

I bought the bags for my wife and daughter because they are extremely well made and I knew that they would find a use for them.

While at Salute, I met many people but due to me being so tired, I only stopped for a few moments so didn't have time for a propper chat... to be honest, I was little more than a zombie so I probably did them a favour! That said, I was very glad so see them and felt a little guilty about not spending more time with them but I was on the train home by 13:30hrs and was lucky that I didn't miss my stop (I may have dozed a little).

So... onto the hobby.

I have not done anything hobbywise yet, apart from digging out a pair of heavy weapon tractors for my finished Squat platoon and also the back-packs that I need to fit to my weapon loaders. Mind you, I have also clipped a second platoon of plastic Squats from their sprues, ready to be cleaned up and assembled for conversion... so I haven't been totally 'hobby idle'.

I think I have filled this post with enough for now. Once I have started to fill my space better at home, I will start with more hobby stuff and also get stuck into selling stuff on E-Bay... the time's they are a changin'!

See you from the open door!

Home, Home on the Range...

I have left the Falklands and am now back at home in sunny England. I got home yesterday and have been tying up a few loose ends so that I can relax for a couple of days before going back to work.

There are a few things afoot that I will share on Sunday so watch this space.

In the mean time...

See you from familiar territory!

An interesting week

Hello again.

It’s another Sunday and time for another blog post... so what has been happening this week? 

Well, to start with, there have been a lot of arrivals and departures so I have had quite a sociable week in the bars and mess. There was a foam party on Friday in Timmy’s which was more of a light snow party but it was a good night (apart from a small amount of a disagreement I had with a para who decided to be a bit too overbearing with one of our female colleagues... fortunately, it all ended well). We also had a couple of leaving speeches (including one for me) before the foam party and the Pengie I have been working on was handed over. Here’s the finished item:

 

Click the Pic!

I have blotted out the names again.

Yesterday we went back to Port Stanley and had a lovely meal in the Malvenas again. I had venison and it tasted superb. We all enjoyed the evening and even had time to stop on the way back and look at the stars... out here there is hardly any light pollution so you get to see many more stars than you normally would. Then it was back to the mess for a night cap. Unfortunately, I seem to be a magnet for disgruntled army chaps, as I had to tone down another drunken bloke who just appeared in our group and scared everyone off... what followed was an hour of counselling that is an hour of my life I’ll never get back...

And that has been my week. Days to do are getting few so I am now thinking about packing and sorting things out before my return to England.

I can’t wait.

See you through the veil!

There's a change in the wind direction.

Welcome to Inso’s World again and this week I have managed to get a Sunday post sorted out for Saturday instead.

This week has been a bit of a strange one with weather demanding a few changes in the order of play. First of all, I was due to be on exercise on Wednesday but due to very strong winds, the exercise had to slip to Thursday.

The exercise was a practice evacuation for a pretend island. It was geared towards training troops to deal with evacuating civilians during a time of civil unrest and rebel actions. It was to try and replicate what may happen in real life if British citizens are caught up in fighting and need to be rescued. I played a civvy for the day and had to act out a role as a local who was glad to be leaving but had a grudge with one or two of the other evacuees. That meant that I had to do a bit of shouting and pushing and shoving and generally being a small nuisance to the troops. While this was going on, rebel forces turned up and the troops had to defend themselves while making sure we were kept safe. The cool bit was that we were evacuated by Sea King helicopter to a hangar for processing and then loaded onto a Hercules for a lap of the airfield. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take any photographs so I can’t share any of the day’s events.

All in all, it was an interesting day away from the usual sort of work I do; even if it meant quite a bit of hanging around... or ‘military milling’ as I call it.

The following day, I was due to go to Mount Usborne with a group of our lads to renovate a war memorial. We had all the equipment, paint and polish ready for the trip but this happened:

 Click the Pix!

Painting and polishing in the rain and snow wouldn’t really work so we had to scrub the trip. It looks like it will now have to wait until the warmer/dryer weather turns up later in the year because it seems that winter has finally arrived. The temperature has certainly dropped considerably over the last few days.

Fortunately, I’m only here for another couple of weeks so I won’t have to deal with too much of the colder weather. I can almost smell the home-fires burning.

See you from the airport!