Dreamforge Kickstarter unboxing: Part 2

Part 1 is here.


In part 2 of the unboxing I take a look at the DreamForge stormtrooper infantry.  Tons of pictures of the sprues themselves are at the bottom of this post.

The stormtroopers are hard plastic, injection molded and are 10 parts each.  While this may seem like a lot, it's the same number for Space Marines.  Mold lines are faint and easily scraped off with a blade, details are crisp and the plastic will flex.  I love the peg on the foot of the model and the hole in the base.  It makes for a sturdy join and allows you to easily build a model without needing to glue it down first.

10 parts each, plus base.  Notice the peg on the foot?

Before you build: certain arms line up with certain rifles.  The stock of some rifles have a section cut out of it so it will perfectly align with one of three right arms.  The left arms are also meant to work with certain right arms, so read the little color coded chart that comes in the box before you build!  I was not so careful and I ended up carving a small part out of a rifle stock to get it to fit.

Left to right: GW IG-based Bloot Pact, DreamForge Stormtrooper, GW Space Marine.  In the background are the older metal Stormtroopers from DreamForge, another plastic Stormtrooper and a GW Space Marine scout.

Dreamforge has gone above and beyond to make negative space work for you.  The backpack is a perfect negative of the torso back.  The detail is so fine that the backpack clicks into place when it aligns thanks to four tiny ribs that insert themselves into four tiny vents in the torso back.

Torso (with vents) on top.  Backpack with matching ribs on the bottom. Click!

The rifle stocks are the same way: any part that would have clipped through another on the 3d model has been removed, leaving a perfect negative space to receive its neighbor.  Even the drum magazines have an imprint of the rifle's side!

Even with mismatching arms and a chopped rifle stock I couldn't make him look bad!

Not glued to the base.  Attached only by the peg.

The plastic version took half as long to build and involved 100% fewer glued fingers.

Stick legs in peg on base, build torso, glue gun to right arm, glue arms to torso, glue torso to legs.

Squad option box and squad box dwarfed by Leviathan box.

Stormtrooper box.

Stormtrooper squad and diagram.  Pay attention to the diagram!

Stormtrooper sprues.

Stormtrooper sprue #1.

Stormtooper sprue #2.

Stormtrooper sprue #3.

Dreamforge kickstarter goodies arrived! Unboxing part 1

Intel reported an Eisenkern force moving aggressively into my area and for once they were right!

A big brown box sat on my porch when I arrived home.  So without pause, and with fervor equal to the littlest Eisenkern on Weihnachten I tore it open!

Inside was part one of my Kickstarter bundle from DreamForge games.
(Click the pictures for larger images.)

Stuffed to the gills!

The plastic baggies are the kickstarter extras stuffed in on the left and the lower right.

Kickstarter bonus figures Ada with Shadokesh & handler.  Excaliber sword option on the right.

Huge base and some foam padding for the Leviathan.

Instructions and sprues.

Leviathan sprues just keep going down into that box.

Two sets of sprues & some foam on the side.

There's more underneath?

All the parts without frames come in their own formed-plastic holder.

Leviathan bits without framed sprues.

Screwdriver and screws included.  Wait, nobody said anything about screws! :-)

New Pacter, Dawn of War Blood Pact and a Paper Tank

I shook some of the rust off and built a new Blood Pact trooper.  I found the bits to make him as I was organizing the consequences of my hording: boxes and boxes of models.  I think I've heard it referred to as the Cupboard of Shame and I should certainly find a cupboard to hide mine.

Not my greatest work, but it felt good to get out the plastic glue and sprue clippers again.

In other Blood Pact news, I found a paper model of an AT83 Brigand that looks pretty familiar.  Click the pic to see the papercraft site.

They did a great job!

Which reminded me of a Dawn of War mod from a while back who's tank also looks pretty familiar.  Click it to see the mod's page.

Looking pretty sharp there, Blood Pact mod group!

My AT83 "Big Red" for reference.  Click it for a screen full of dirty red awesomeness.

Do you hear the voices too?

Honestly I didn't hear the voice of chaos until I pulled all my painted models out and put them in this very nice Ikea case.  It was a gift from my adoring wife a couple years ago and is a quality set up.

Skulls, Blood Pact and coconut monkeys, those Dark Angels must be worried.

I put in a few painted models I had at hand.  Looked pretty good, too.  Then I remembered the Ikea light set I picked up to add more light to each level.  Surprisingly easy to put in!  Then I needed more models since all that light showed how few their really were.  Out come the boxes and all the Blood Pact take to the shelves.   

That's when I started hearing the voices.  The sibilant whispers telling me how great the Pact are, and how proud I am of them.  Just a few models. It couldn't hurt. Besides, lots of people play 40k and when's the last time you got a game in since you left 40k?  Lots of games out there, lots of scales and genres and beautiful models, it's true.  But how many games?  Not enough, that's how many.

So I poke around at the interwebs and find a few new Blood Pact armies online and come here to add them to the links.  (Blood Pact Links on the right, now moved up to the top of the page for ease of community access.)  Blogger has changed a bit since I last logged in, so why not have a look around, post something up?  Sure, I think to myself.  But then I realize that I'm not married to GW anymore, and there were always vehicles I wanted to do but didn't want to scratch build.  Uh oh.

Credit to SniperOne for the pic.

I had thought about picking up a Sd.Kfz 251 in 1:48 scall in the past.  Pretty good fit for size and scale.  Sadly the 1:48 kits are about $30, more for the variants with turret or 75mm gun. This is about the same as GW's $35 for a chimera.  Wait, why am I even shopping?  The voices tell me to hush, and mention that Warlord games just released a plastic half-track for their 28mm game Bolt Action.

Do you have any in red?

Why yes they do, and it's only $24.  Now I always leaned towards the US M3 half-track for the Blood Pact due to a line about a pacter standing in a pulpit on his vehicle, I think any pintle mount is sufficiently pulpit-like to make it work.

So now what?  Are 40k's flesh-hooks in me?  Will I ever pick a damn army?  Ooh shiny, a Bolt Action hanomag construction step-by-step.  Thanks Mr Hairy Painter sir!  Click the pick for more pictures on his blog.

Where do you keep the blood in this thing?  You know, for the blood god?

Painted 15mm modern USMC, Rebel Minis & Irishserb mini-review

Trial and error has taken me to the point where I am pretty happy with the paint on my 2009 era USMC in 15mm.  These are modern US infantry from Rebel Miniatures.  Unfortunately Rebel only supplies M240g with these infantry, no M249 saws which make these fireteams inaccurate for any US modern infantry.  The sculpting also leaves some to be desired as the marine with the M203 (far right, all three pics) appears to have his hand pushing into the grenade launcher and there is a significant (and inaccurate) space between his right hand and the weapon's magazine.  Their helmets are also massive and the ear protection almost comes down to their chin.  All in all, I prefer the Peter Pig USMC but their load-out marks them as 2002-4 and I was really hoping to use the Oshkosh MATV.  Then again I could be happy with Irishserb's armored Humvees, as they're beautiful, see the pictures below.

I like to leave the pictures of painted 15mm models small so they are seen at something like the size you would see in reality, but feel free to click on the pictures for each brush stroke and blob of paint in vivid detail.

I also picked up some vehicles for the USMC and some sci-fi forces.  In the pictures below the tan vehicles are from Irishserb and the grey is from Rebel Miniatures.  All are nice models, but the rebel minis vehicles I've received all have the laser texture on them from their rapid-prototype origins while the Irishserb vehicles are clean, smooth and crisp.

French VBL Recce car (left), Rebel Minis MATV Apache (top), Irishserb armored Humvee (bottom)

Marine from Peter Pig

Rebel Minis MATV Comanche (left) to be used as an Oshkosh MATV.

Rebel Minis MATV Comanche (left) to be used as an Oshkosh MATV.

The Apache MATV is a monster.  I think it will go to Mars with my Rebel Minis Earthforce to fight the Sadaheen army in a sci-fi, futuristic repeat of history, only on mars.

Falling out of love with GW

It may have been obvious, looking back.  It's certainly been a long time coming.  I've broken up with GW.  We've had our issues in the past and certainly had an on-again off-again relationship for a while but this seems to be it.  I've moved on and started dating other games.

What I want from a game has changed over time.  Money and time invested are both at a premium, which is where the beauty of 15mm and 20mm miniatures comes in.  An entire platoon with vehicles and support for under $100?  Yes please.  Quick to build and paint?  Smaller playing space and easily made terrain?  Yes to all.  Force on Force, GRUNTZ and Tomorrow's War are all solid looking rules sets, with a good online community if you're in to that sort of thing.

I've joined a blog of like-minded gamers to document the new happenings, so check it out over at http://otherwars.grim-dark.com/ if you like.

Here's a preview of my first article:

Models that can be used in 15mm games

Once I started thinking about 15mm gaming I discovered the vast world of 28mm models out there took on an entirely different light once placed beside a 15mm model.  Robots become mechs and dungeon monsters become city-destroyers.  Today I took a look at Reaper miniatures to see what possibilities they might have for 15mm.

First up are XAIRobots, which work beautifully in 15mm (and 20mm):

http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/robot/sku-down/50164

Left to right: 3x Reaper 28mm, Elhiem 20mm, Rebel 15mm.

Reaper also has the old CAV mo...

 Read the rest at http://otherwars.grim-dark.com/

Fiddling with Fantasy: Vikings and Grotesque Chaos Knights

So far I've only played one game of Warhammer Fantasy, but that's the same number of 40k games I've played in the last few months.  Inspiration has been lacking, but I'm leaning towards a pure Tzeench force using the brown/sepia paint scheme from my last post.

Using a Sanguinary Guard grotesque-helm from 40k to enhance a clean style.

I hate GW's marauders.  They're as bad as the Catachans.  I thought my army would lack Marauders for this reason, until I saw the historical plastics coming out from various companies.  Gripping Beast became my source for these depraved humans, and they're actually human size, unlike the massive Marauders!  Comparisons show they are about the same size as Empire troops, with slightly smaller weapons.  Here I've added a few Marauder Cavalry bits to the models (which are excellent btw), but the majority went together unmodified.

The only addition here is a Warriors of Chaos banner.

Head swap.

Shield swap.  Marauder shields are actually smaller than the ones in the vikings box.

 

Another head swap.

I think these guys will take the wash color scheme nicely.

Painting Chaos Warriors test models

I haven't been playing 40k for a few months and each project I start seems tiring.  But fear not gentle reader, this is not a complaining blog entry, but a start of something new: square bases.  Some friends of mine recently started Warhammer Fantasy (aka stupid square bases) and it looked like something new, something refreshing.  The latest edition took away much of what I disliked about the game and so I started looking.  Some research and number crunching later I settled on Warriors of Chaos (no surprise there) rather than Vampire Counts because frankly, I want something easy to paint and a hoard army does not fit the bill, even if they are mere skeletons.

Funny enough this article on Bell of Lost Souls talks about just my predicament.  I hope that painting Warriors of Chaos and starting something new will get the ball rolling again and all those languishing projects will once again hope to see the light of day.

I truly am living up to my blog name at this point and so, without further adieu, I give you test scheme A and test scheme B.  Please vote for your favorite on the side bar.

I tried to keep it as simple as I could.  Scheme A recipe: prime grey, block in gold, red, silver and bone, douse in Devlan Mud.

Scheme A

Scheme B recipe:  Prime White, wash armor with Gryphonne Sepia followed by Devlan mud, wash shoulder-spike, horn caps and axe blade with Badab Black, wash cloak, horns and axe handle with Gryphonne Sepia, wash boots, axe-haft and gloves with Devlan Mud.  No paints here!

Scheme B

Scheme A.

Scheme B

Scheme A

Scheme B