“Into the Wasteland”

Well the best laid plans as they say, I know I said at the start of the year that I wasn’t going to buy any more figures this year, but I didn’t say I couldn’t win some now did I? As you may or may not be aware, a few of weeks ago I had some really great news. Bryan of “Vampifan” fame (check out his excellent blog via the link at the bottom of the post) informed me that I had won his “One Million Views” competition. £50.00 to spend with any wargames vendor of my choice (Hooray for me!!). Now strangely enough I had spent the night before looking at the “Wasteman” range of figures by Thunderchild Miniatures, now I first saw these at Salute last year, and I was impressed by the characterful sculpts back then, and I was really inspired to do a bit of “Post-apocalyptic gaming”, but the spanner in the works was the prices! £7.00 for a single 35mm figure, I don’t think so (I really am that stingy, you know). So where to get some “post-apocalyptic goodies” from without breaking the bank?… Moonraker Miniatures of course! They produce the old Grenadier “Future Warriors” range sculpted by one of my all-time favorites Mark Copplestone. Now I already own many of these figures from back in their Grenadier days so I know they are nice (you really can’t go wrong with Marks stuff though), and at £1.50 a figure much more within my budget. So a list of what I thought I needed was made up (£48.00 with £2.00 postage) and sent off to Doug at Moonraker, and I sat sweaty palmed awaiting their imminent arrival…but after a couple of weeks no sign, turned out Doug had put the wrong address on the parcel (luckily they were sent recorded delivery, so went back to Doug, how he does this at £2.00 P+P lord knows!!), apologies were made and he chucked a couple of extra figures in too before posting it out to me again, so I now had £51.00 worth of figures, Win,Win!

I have now also downloaded a set of rules “No Future”, from the free wargames rules site, and dug out my old “Ainsty” scenery (I might re-do the bases on these, or might not haven’t decided yet), I’ve sorted out my “factions” and a couple of “heroes”, now all I have to do is paint them. Anyway, I thought I’d start with the “Fed’s”, (Lewis, Bodie, Shaw and Doyle), these are the Federation Border Troopers tasked with keeping the “great unwashed rabble” out of “Salvation City” and out in the “Wastelands” where they belong, along with “Colonel Lynch” head of the Troopers, “General Cowley” (erstwhile leader of Salvation City, since imposing military rule), and his personal bodyguard “Collins”. I’ll add a bit more to their backgrounds in later posts.

Painting was begun as always with a spray coat of matt black that was then touched up by hand, before all the weapons were dry-brushed with chainmail. Next the boiler suits were undercoated in dark grey before being highlighted in light grey, the pants and accoutrements on the other two figures were undercoated in coffee before cream highlights were applied. Then the jackets and pieces of body armour were undercoated in navy blue, before royal blue highlights were added, to give the troopers a more “worn” appearance the body armour was then dry-brushed with chainmail. Turning to their flesh next, I mixed flesh tone seven (dark flesh) with European flesh and this was used as a base before highlights were added (after the eyes were added of course) in a mix of European flesh and pale flesh. The “black” trooper had his flesh done in chocolate brown and when I was highlighting the others I mixed a spot of that into more chocolate brown and used the result to highlight him. Hair came next this was either more chocolate brown with chestnut highlights, chestnut with orange highlights, sand with lemon yellow highlights or black. I used a little bright red, porcelain blue and shamrock for the ribbons of “Cowley’s” ill-deserved medals and then added some details on the three “senior ranked” figures in bright and pale gold. Lastly I added “Collins’s” lips in pink burgundy, and a few details on the trooper’s equipment in “day-glow” green.

All the figures were then given my usual coat of quickshade “strong tone” before being based as normal, except that I added less flock than usual (not sure why, but I think they look better this way), a final coat of matt varnish finished them off. I shall be staying with this project for at least the next few weeks. So expect things to get a little “down and dirty”, as we meet more denizens of the Wastelands…

Till then, cheers Roger.

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