Davros

Another one of my quick conversions...

Not the most accurate of conversions, but cheap, quick and really quite effective!

Some of the Daleks I have have the odd missing eyestalk or gun. Add to that, I'm not going to use all the Silence figures I have so I've put them together.  I feel I should put some filler on the left arm at the the elbow but...

Actually this was my second attempt. With the first one, sprayng it black and the spray started shooting thick, claggy bits at it. Couldn't get it clean easily and this was the end result. Might keep it to represent Davros if you ever has a serious accident!

The Herd

Not sure whether this lot owes more to Lovecraft or Pepperland but they seem to be potentially useful background inhabitants of a dreamscape or alternate dimension.

There are two types of these, painted in as garish a fashion I could think of. I was going to add spots, stripes and (possibly) checks but...

Still got these undercoated and ready for their blitzpaint.

Plus these that have been degreased...

And I've still got some more soldiers to get finished - the two spray coats will do for the uniforms and the rest will be blitzpainted.

 Blitzpainting is my new word. It feels right to describe quickly painting figures to the minimum standard to be be able to do the job! Think I'll be using it a lot in future.

The infantry have arrived

Going through all the cheap Chinese figures looking for vehicles, etc, that might fit in with the current obsession I came across a load of larger size figures. Two squads quickly painted up...

Not sure what I can say about the figures themselves - generic figures carrying generic weapons of indeterminate type... painted to an appropriate standard....

The war machines would probably be better used against smaller 28-32mm foes.

The Greys fit in quite well.

Likewise the Robomen

This robot, honours even? Useful for all scales.

Against the human figures, great fit with the male figures, but the 'little' girl... In fact, she is the one most out of place!

 So there I am at the moment. Working on pulp/horror figures in 1/87th, 1/76th, 20mm,25mm, 28-32mm and 45ishmm scales, generally at the same time. Life used to be so much less complicated.

Robomen and a waterhorse

Another unit group plus a 'special'! I really seem to be getting through these though it helps that I'm keeping things simple.

This lot represent (for now) radio-controlled slaves of other races such as the Daleks. I've painted them in a scheme to suggest a sort of lower class or agrarian group - no shiny black uniforms for this lot, just peasant style clothing.

Not sure what this figure is meant to be, either a Scottish water horse or a hippocampus. As I've got others I do a brown one as being more horse-like - blue just seemed the 'right' colour when I painted it.

 

Grey Aliens

So when it came to painting up units I went for a figure that I hadn't painted for the test phase. Having sprayed this lot with a couple of coats of grey it seemed obvious that it would be easier to just leave the undercoat and paint a few details on. This lot were finished in one evening. As you can see, not bothering on fantastic work - I didn't even bother to get rid of all the flash!

Monsters, Robots and People

Not getting much done at the moment - Steven's here for a few days, he's had a day diving, we went to Hunstanton, Watatunga and stock car racing. Add to that internet and ride on mower issues, it's been slow. However, did this lot as initial test painting jobs on the two sets of cheap figures. They look to be more of a bargain every time I look at them and would seriously be worth spending more painting time than I'm giving them! As it is, for low cost budget figures with a basic paint job they will fill out various ranges quite nicely!

Some very useful robots. They also have a lot of conversion potential.

 

I admit I really like the humans. They deserve much better paint jobs but their 45-50mm size limits their use.

Like these. They have a lot of potential in a number of ways.

The monsters I really like. The white faced creature I see as 'dream' creatures - haven't decided on a 'final' colour scheme for these. The Cthulhu Mythos type figure I may do a better paint job on the next one - a few of these would make a really nice invasion/infestation force for Newhaven. The purple creature - two different variations, with mixed colours I see these as making up a good alien 'herd' for Mythos lands.

 So that's the first batch. They take paint well and are very effective. Most of the figures in the two sets I can see a use for both as individuals and in small groups. I'm really rather pleased with these two sets.

More cheap monsters

I suppose one of the advantages of being retired is that I can spend time just aimlessly searching for things. One such aimless search found these on Amazon.

This lot are 'SCS Direct Humans v Aliens Space Monster Action Figure Toy Playset' 90 figures for £20.39 - so a bit under 23p each!

Size check - human figures are 45-50mm in size so way bigger than I expected (before buying I saw a review saying 'figures definitely not 28mm, more like 32mm'!

Of course, I also brought out some of my original cheap Chinese plastic figures and found THEY were the same size as the Crooked Dice figures! Suddenly Daleks and Cybermen have a lot more to worry about!

It's a pity about the humans. They're really decent figures! They almost look like 3D Printed  - most with no sign of mould lines or misalignment. Also the quality and detail are excellent considering the fact that they are cheap toys!

For the monsters, the slightly larger size is an advantage. Haven't checked whether there are 90 figures in the box. Some of these are so Lovecraft/Cthulhu in looks that they could have been (might have have been!) designed with this in mind or inspiration! I mean - look at the one in the middle!

This one was described as SCS Direct Robot Fantasy Sci-fi Action Figures - 52 Ready for Futeristic Space Battle Toy Figures with 14 Unique Characters' Not bad for £16.24 - 31p each.

Like the humans and aliens box they come in two different colours.

What can I say? I don't know yet how well they'll take paint but the figures themselves are really good, especially when the price is taken into consideration.

 

U.N.I.T. transport

While doing the killer tomatoes I also looked at the cheap Chinese plastic figures I had as possible opponents. I noticed some of the vehicles looked about right for the Crooked Dice U.N.I.T. figures, sprayed some trucks bronze green, blue for windows, black tyres and... that was it.

How do they look? Not too bad really...

A nice past memory...

 Sandra spotted this on MSN and recognised a couple of faces. Funny thing being, she hadn't noticed the picture in the Lynn News (I never read it)

Reason it's a nice past memory for me?

Back then I was Deputy SENCO at Downham and Sandra was a Children's Activities Development Worker with King's Lynn & West Norfolk Council. At the time they had been trying to put together 8 holiday playschemes at various primary schools in West Norfolk, including the one in Downham. 7 of these fell through including the Downham scheme which irritated me a bit. 

So  I said that I would take over the Downham scheme and use the Special Needs Department classroom/suite. The main scheme had already been trying to recruit staff before it fell through, I sorted things with the school, Sandra and I got together, set up new interviews, including involvement with the Norfolk Children's Fund,  got the funding from several sources, interviewed, arranged training for and hired staff based on the ones previously looked at and set up a scheme that ran for (I think) 65 days of the year during school holidays.

So basically I was the scheme manager working in cooperation with the Borough Council (the school had made it quite clear that apart from providing the room, technically hiring the staff, taking in the money we had arranged and paying out wages they wanted nothing to do with the scheme itself - it was all on me!)

The most satisfying part of it all was Sarah. She was working as Deputy Manager in a Pizza bar at the time even though she had a Degree in Childcare. Working on the Playscheme gave her the confidence to start getting other jobs within childcare and then going for teacher training! Funny part about it - at the end of the interview she said 'You don't remember me do you Mr Young. I was in your Form in Year 8'. Well, that was 10 years earlier, there were 30 kids in the form and being in SN I didn't see any of them apart from Form!

I should point out that the photo is copyright the Lynn News being used by me under fair useage terms!

Do you think they're friendly?

With shrieks and cackles the Tomatoes rush towards U.N.I.T. and are met with a hail of fire. Thin skinned, the bazooka shell went right through one! A 6 meant a hit/kill in the first part of the move. Sadly, a 1 means a misfire or something - safety catch left on in panic? Pity really...

I've given the tomatoes a 'final leap' move where they can jump 4" on top of an enemy. Or the hedge. Meanwhile 3 of them have gone down with large holes in them. Tomatoes have big teeth but thin skins.

Close combat phase. Killer tomatoes have big teeth but thin skins so any combat needed to be quick. I went for four dice for the tomato, three for the human - humans have an advantage distance shooting, tomatoes close combat. Roll dice then just go down the scale - as soon as one gets a lower score than another it dies. Having your gun fail, then getting jumped on, then roll nothing higher than a three while the tomato rolls a six - not a good day!

Reinforcements arrive and advance down the street. These are the figures I hadn't started painting when I set up the village...

The tomatoes continue their attack... one of them likes killing soldiers...

Not-Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart prangs a tomato!

And another dead soldier. 6-6, draw, 6-5 dead soldier.

No hits in first part of bound and tomatoes in combat before second part (6 kill in 1st part, 4,5  hit in 2nd part then need 4 or above to kill - see Zombie rules)

So in combat the Brigadier and soldier get one tomato (6-6, then 6-3 tomato dead). Meanwhile, the REAL killer tomato goes 6-2 up and kills another soldier!

So at this point the surviving tomato starts laughing and cackling again as it bounces over the wall and back to it's spaceship as the Centurion and bazooka move forward to send it on it's way.

So this is the point where you look at casualties - 5 dead tomatoes, 4 dead U.N.I.T.

But that doesn't tell the whole story! One tomato not only accounted for three out of the four dead soldiers, it was also the sole killer tomato survivor! Sadly, there was no happy ending. Back home, they pinned a medal on it. Very thin skinned - they couldn't stop the juice flow through the wound and it shrivelled up.

I'll get round to just adding the 'special' rules for these to the Zombie rules sometime - nothing much to add, 9" move, 4" inch jump attack, roll 4 dice and dice scores counted down until there was a result.

Oh - only kidding about the hero tomato. They don't give medals so really it survived.

Short intermission - new arrivals

As I mentioned earlier, there were other things ordered, these all arrived tday:

Firstly, a farmhouse and barn. Always useful for country scenes.

Next, another row of houses. There is really no limit to how many of these I could use :(  I'll probably do a downsized version of my card models to make up the numbers. These buildings make a useful template. The only other building I would put down as a 'need' would be a church (or two with different designs - one to act as a Christian church of some type, the other as a 'Church of Dagon.' (Confession: this is just one of my 'original' ones to save getting the new one out of the box.)

Finally, more of the Monster Army figures. This lot were an even better deal than my first lot - 60 figures for £12.39, so  a bit over 20p each compared to 55p for the last lot! This gives me enough Silarians to use plus ups my Cybermen to 2 16 figure units - I feel that, against, say, Daleks about 5,000,000 would be needed, I think that might be excessive so long term I'll aim for 3 16 man units!

So I'm getting there.