Tag: Martians

Steam Wars – Full Size Martian Tripods

I have showed you the majority of the Steam Wars Martian ground forces already.  The core of that force has to be its Tripods though.  Especially if I want to stay in HG Well’s world view.

The tripods on the market range from tin boxes on legs to huge insect like constructs.  Thankfully a cheap and easy source exists in the form of a little game called ‘All Quiet On The Martian Front’.

As far as I can tell AQOTMF has stopped being made.  It was up and running for a while, after its kickstarter was funded, but its parent company appears to have gone bankrupt, at least that’s what I think happened.

However, the AQOTMF Facebook chatter has the licence for the game being picked up by another manufacturer, so it may not be as dead as we thought…

Either way these tripods (originally designed for 15-18mm figures) work fine for my needs.  With the average tripod currently selling for £10 or less on eBay they are a steal as well.

 

Spending All My Time Building Stuff, Not Much Painting.

I have been stuck at home again due to this viral chesty ‘thing’.  That, somewhat unsurprisingly, means that I have been very bored.  So I have spent a few moments every couple of hours popping out to the shed to see if it is remaining dry with all this changeable weather we are having at the moment.

One of the jobs I still haven’t had a chance to get to is undercoating the growing collection of bits lined up in the shed…  Rain and spray cans I have learned don’t go well together.  It does mean that the painting queue is longer than ever.

More Steam Wars Naval stuff awaits.  Two more roller bots and a submarine.  A host of Scheltrum divers and an Ironclad transport.

Too many Martians.  My nice harbour and jetty pieces.  The Steam ship (and ironclad top) that those nice boys at Black Pyramid gave me.

Plenty of Horizon Wars tiny tanks and Mechs.

So, I have made a bit of a start by getting even more bits into the queue.  Slowly building stuff and then putting it back on a shelf to wait for a dry day…

One interesting point…  I have managed to mislay a couple of wheels from one of my Ironclad flyers already. So, unless I find them, the second flyer will have to have some skids made up for it instead.

When the weather dries up, the Martians are currently foremost in the queue (at this time anyhow. That may well change…)

Oh, and one more thing to add to the queue.  This nice big Reaper Bones bin!

Steam Wars – More Martians And More Navy

My Martian force has been enlarging slowly as I pick up more bits that will work for the force.  The Steam Wars rules favour small 5 man units that are supported by various specialists and vehicles.  My Small tripods are going to be used as light vehicles and the infantry will be some Ironclad Miniatures Sanwar.

I picked up these guys at Partizan and bought enough figures for me to have 4 units.  One will be a 6 man close combat squad and 3 will be 5 man gunmen units.  These will have short ranged weapons to represent their short barrelled guns.

Some big tripods have turned up now too.  More on these later…

Partizan also allowed me to pick up these new flyers from Ironclad Miniatures.  These are not in production yet but should be up on the site at some point soon. They come with open spoke wheels and a pilot with a selection of differing heads.

As it remains wet here I am continuing to build stuff but cannot get any undercoating done yet.  I will keep my eye on the weather and try to get a few batches done as it clears up…

Steam Wars – The Martians Are Coming 

I may have mentioned that I was looking to start a new project for our Steam Wars games.  Martians have been on my mind lately and I have now read a bit too much of HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burrows works.  My interests on the Martian front appear to be more bias towards the original Wells theme at this point… (With some poetic licence as needed to get a more balanced army list, I must add).

So, Triopds are the way forward…  To start with, smaller tripods appear to be my first purchases.  This example is a Miniature Figurines Tripod (available from Cavalier Books).  This blighter was a pain to build as it is an earlier sculpt of this design.  All three legs need to be pinned in place on this model.  Later models that I have picked up appear to be done with the front two legs already attached to the centre section, so I only had to pin the rear limb.

He works fine with 28mm and our new passion for 6mm forces…

When it comes to problematic builds the whole of the Martian force looks likely to try my patience.  This Cephalopod from Ironclad miniatures is a beautiful figure but was also a pain to put together. Tentacles do not stay put when not pinned!  This blighter took 3 attempts and left holes in my fingers as the pin sites were tiny spaces to drill into.  However I now have new skills (and a new set of pin size drill bits, direct from China again…  The drills that is, not the skills!)

Now all I need to do is get Coronasan to figure out some heat ray stats so these boys can light up his troopers.

I plan to have four of these finished in the next few days, so now I need to decide; are they a unit or individual vehicles..!

One of the smaller Tripods comes with grasping tentacles, not a heat ray, so this will be the first of my handling machines while the others are more likely to be the infamous Martian fighting machines.

Either way these guys take a lot of effort and fuss to build for such small tripods.

Sadly that long job only looks longer with everything so far having at least 4 tentacles…

It will be worth it in the end.