Critical Mass Games has just opened their website. Their range of Arc Fleet (human) troops is first up, with several more troop types to come. Looks like they’ll have lots of aliens too, and vehicles to accompany all the forces eventually.
I’ve been a solid 28mm gamer for many years, but I can see some 15mm sci-fi troops on my painting table soon. Playing Stargrunt at the company level might be cool too!
A few years ago, I bought Mongoose’s Starship Troopers miniatures game from a friend. I still have yet to play the game (the rules do look pretty good) but I did manage to paint all the minis, both MI and Bugs. It took a long time. The MI troopers were multipart plastics (stress on multipart) and despite this, were very difficult to pose differently. I did a little cutting and repositioning of a few of them, just for some variety. The Bugs allowed for a bit more variation, though painting them was a but boring.
I also got a set of the Grizzly powered armor suits. These are some of the best powered armor minis I have seen and are among my favorite minis of all time. I took extra time and care painting them up. The color scheme isn’t exactly inspired but they did come out very nice.
I do apologize for my lousy camera skills (or lack thereof). So here we go:
Grizzly Squad – Heavy Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rotary Cannon
Squad Leader about to pitch a grenade
Troopers
Sniper – A bit of a conversion – I chopped up some of the weapons and put them back together to make a long-barreled rifle.
Grenade Launcher
I’ll get some pics of the bugs up later!
Continuing my Pig Iron Productions posts, here are some pics of my Kolony Militia platoon. These minis seem to be some of Pig Iron’s most popular, and you can see why. They have a retro look with the gas masks and Fritz style helmets, and I understand this makes them great stand-ins for the uber-expensive Death Korps of Krieg minis that Forge World makes for 40K.
This line represents Pig Iron really hitting its stride. They did a great job with their Heavy Infantry and vehicles, and the Kolony troops really hit it out of the park! The figures are well proportioned, cleanly cast in a variety of poses, and have the same distinctive look that the Heavy Infantry have. They also come with separate heads and combined with one of Pig Iron’s head sprues, allows for customization and conversion. This makes this line, like all of Pig Iron’s stuff, extremely versatile and cool to boot!
On with the pictures!
This is one of the rifle squads.
This is the leader. I used one of the Pig Iron heads and shaved the kepi down to make a peaked cap.
Here’s another leader conversion. This one is a Hasslefree head and a Pig Iron head. I had to file down both to make them fit together. This would have gone a lot faster if I’d had a Dremel or some such tool…
And a few shots of various troops.
The Kolony range is growing too, with some Rebels that would make great Chaos cultists or other rabble or militia. I just can’t say enough good things about Pig Iron!
As far as I can tell, one of the first things Pig Iron Productions produced was their resin vehicle line. This line of armored vehicles is made especially versatile by the line of turrets available. Basically, you can have a tank, an APC, or an IFV simply by putting on the appropriate turret on top of the basic vehicle chassis.
When I first came across it, I immediately liked it. First, it was big – it actually looked like it could hold 8 men and their equipment inside. Second, it didn’t have skulls all over it. Third, I could get it in any of three versions.
It’s a resin kit, but is very easy to put together. It has a few metal fittings that go right on without any real trimming or cutting necessary. The chassis is all one piece, so you just glue a backplate on to it, and then attach the turret. The IFV turret can be customized with different weapons too!
I got the Ironstorm. Mine looks like this:
Like the infantry miniatures, the Ironstorm paints up very easily. I used Tamiya spray paint to do this color scheme, and managed to get the camo pattern without an airbrush. The insignia on the side comes out of my bits box, where I have a stack of old model decals. I made the radio antennae out of a piece of plastic sprue stretched over a candle flame (an old modelling trick). The turret rotates freely, and the chain gun on the side is metal. If you look at the model closely, it really is a very simple design, but it’s really executed well.
Maybe the best thing about this model is you can paint or convert it in all kinds of different ways. I’ve seen 40K players stick 40K vehicle bits on it (read “skulls”), other paint jobs reminiscent of WW1 tanks, all kinds of stuff. This model really sparks your creativity!
And I also like it simply because it’s different. You don’t see this model on the gaming table very often, if at all. The few times I’ve had it out, people are always asking about it.
There’s another more in-depth review of this kit on the excellent but sadly no longer updated Wee Toy Soliders blog.
I’ll start by talking about my current favorite miniatures company, Pig Iron Productions. Pig Iron is a small U.K. manufacturer (as many of them are), making a very nice range of all-purpose sci-fi minis in 28mm. Pig Iron essentially has two ranges – their Heavy Infantry range (whose minis grace my header up there) and their Kolony range. In this first post, I’ll talk about their Heavy Infantry range, which initially drew me to Pig Iron.
The Heavy Infantry figures caught my eye about 4 years ago when I was looking for minis that would be a good fit for my 2300AD roleplaying campaign. These figures have a nice, clean, one-piece design that paints up really well and fairly quickly. You can use them as human troops for most SF games, as military or police. With the excellent packs of separate heads, you can make many variations. The first few sculpts had some issues with the proportions of the legs, but with the release of the Hevay Infantry booster pack, this was fixed and the figures designed to take separate heads.
The basic troops look really good as you can see.
My paint scheme is desert camo. They’re supposed to be French Foreign Legion troops in the 2300AD universe. The FFL always conjures up images of the desert for me, so that’s where this came from. The base uniform color is GW Commando Khaki, with brown and grey splotches. GW Catachan Green contrasts this nicely for the body armor, pouches and helmets.
The special weapon teams are cool, since they have both a “ready” (weapon set up) and “moving” (crew carrying the weapon components) poses. Here’s the missile team.
The command team includes a leader, medic, sniper, and everyone’s favorite, a pack carrying robot.
With Pig Iron’s extra head packs, I’ve been able to customize these minis just a bit. The guy in front has one of these heads.
So far, I’ve used these minis to play Stargrunt and they do look really nice on the table. I could easily use them as Imperial Guard troops, police, or any other near future type troops in light or medium body armor.
I bought the platoon pack directly from Simon at Pig Iron. It was a pretty good deal I thought, since I got 3 squads, all three weapon teams, the command squad and a set of casualties for about $90 (not including shipping). But that was 4 years ago and I was in Japan at the time and I forget the exchange rate, but it wasn’t too bad. You can get Pig Iron minis now through Rattlehead Games, which I highly recommend. A single 5-man squad goes for $14 at Rattlehead.
I also bought one of the Pig Iron vehicles but I’ll talk about that in another post. Here’s my entire Pig Iron Heavy Infantry force. This is one platoon pack, one booster pack, and one Ironstorm vehicle.
Currently, Pig Iron is expanding its Kolony range (of which I also have a platoon of – I’ll get to them too) and there haven’t been any new minis in the Heavy Infantry range for a while. I’m hoping there will be at least a couple of new minis for this versatile and exciting range in the future!
Next time: The Pig Iron Ironstorm IFV!
You And What Army? 