6mm SF -An impulse buy.

Nearly finished pulp plane, haven't got started on the game yet... but...

Wandering around a local garden-centre-come-shopping-precinct spotted something that looked interesting.

Golf cleats. £11.99 for 18 of the things - 6mm tank size crawlers(?) at a bit over 60p each.

They fit in quite nicely with my other forces - possibly as either transports or personnel carriers? Not even going to repaint them.

Here they are matched against 6mm Garrison SF hovertanks. Not sure that they would want to be in this particular situation though.

Checked on ebay - can get them a lot cheaper so worth a look...

6mm Leven Miniatures

Order has now arrived from Leven Miniatures.

Nicely packed

Models are cleanly cast - no flash though the ends of the railway lines will need trimming.

Bought 1 of each of the 3 churches - again, nice models, cleanly cast.

Need more of these. Not exactly like the ones of my childhood but the streets will be based on the Team Valley and Askew Road Gateshead! Need lots more of these.

At the bottom end of Rose Street were a couple of green Gas Holders - quite a distinctive part of the area.

Arrived today and some already have a white undercoat. Painting will not be to a high standard!

Expanding the terrain boards.

Getting started on the updated boards.

One thing I looked at was extending the range of colours for the fields.
 

The 'new' colours are just too garish.

So back to 'old' colours - board before...

and board after... just needs things like walls and hedges, but a lot better even if it does result in a very restricted pallet for the terrain.

Meanwhile the Irregular order has arrived, Leven order should be here soon.

6mm Terrain Boards

Years ago I worked for a company making doors. This produced a lot of 2mm plywood offcuts that were... useful.  However, when I original started using them for 5/6mm terrain boards they were different sizes. The idea now is to start putting together standardised boards.

So I've bought a load of A3 2mm MDF boards. I have sprayed some grey and glued the original boards on top. Hopefully, the height of the old boards won't affect things too much. I've also ordered a load of extra terrain pieces as well - should start arriving next week sometime.

The original boards are OK on my games table - but their uneven sizes are still obvious.

Four boards with no additions. Using a grey base coat on the board depicts roads, etc, and means I can at least make them easily!

At some time I'll be adding more fields, buildings, etc - the grey will also act as hard standing around buildings or car parks.

I've already got a load of high rise buildings from Empires at War - see the Swarm Wars sequence. Most of my other current buildings, hedges and buildings are Irregular, fields are flock, a lot of the walls are simply matchsticks.

There's an order in  for some terrain from Leven Miniatures. I've still to put in another order from Irregular - should do that tonight. When the stuff comes the 'new' terrain boards should be finished reasonably quickly.

Rather old 5/6mm WW2

Or 1/300th or something.

There is more of this stuff lying around somewhere, like infantry, artillery and Russians, just not easy to get to. No idea who made any of this stuff...

Some of it is looking it's age.

British and American. These are plain green but there were lots painted a bit more ambitiously.

Germans showing early use of a 3 colour paint scheme by me.

Easy to give a rough date for these. Back then I worked as a Research Chemist and did a lot of TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography). The plates for this came in just the right size boxes. I left there in 1981...

6mm Swarms finished

Quick paint jobs so soon finished - though not varnished yet.

The other thing needed to go with them is a transport system, so sort of sorted that as well...

Swarms plus transport.

4 swarms, 2 of each type. Should be enough(?)

Transport was bought a long time ago. Sadly, I only bought 3 of them so 1 short...  Actually they're not models. They're pens I bought on the off-chance they would come in useful some day.

6mm Alien attack overview.

Garrison had quite a nice (if now old fashioned) range of sf tanks. The first lot I painted up were loosely based on German WW2 schemes, recently I started painting up more of these but in a more British scheme. Then I spotted a load of 15mm Stargrunt 'spider drones' on the Ground Zero stand at Salute and thought they would make good 6mm alien machines. The idea is that they are fast-moving lightly armoured swarms that like to swamp their enemies - a bit like fast zombies in zombie games.

The result is a very quickly painted set of sf models... more spider drones on order, human infantry there's a load of Brigade Models infantry on order, still thinking about a source for suitable alien infantry.

The 'British' armoured division as it stands at the moment.

It nominally harks back to WW2 so the first/Senior Regiment has red markings, first squadron triangle on turret, 2nd square and 3rd circle. However, the HQ I've gone for 'R' instead of a diamond - so closer to German WW2 in that respect. Vehicles are 'standard' grav tanks and I may add a second Regiment of these.

The second Regiment is a heavy regiment - 2 squadrons of tracked heavies and an 'anti-tank' squadron of grav tanks with missile capability.

Artillery support - lots of missiles on a grav chassis.

Scout Regiment but liable to be used as infantry carriers until I get that lot sorted.

The only non-Garrison element - some Ground Zero walkers. In 'this' universe they would have been designed and produced as a partial response to the swarms.

Two different swarms of Ground Zero Spider Drones. Each swarm includes 15 vehicles - not really drones of course, but might as well still call them that - quite simply painted.

This lot are quite weird - I'm using them as basically support/assault with an anti-infantry Gatling type gun plus a very short range weapon capable of taking out the heaviest armour - if it can get close enough.

 

General purpose swarm. Two guns with limited anti infantry capability and not really able to defeat the heavy tracked tanks... think Sherman 75 against Tiger...

(While typing this the post arrived bringing with it the next two swarms...)

6mm Terrain

Seem to be posting a lot at the moment - it won't last!

So, many years ago I had a load of 1/300th scale WW2 stuff - still, actually. Some of them were the kind that had metal wire as guns - can't remember who m,ade them now.

Also had loads of terrain, quite a bit of it being from Irregular Miniatures in fact. Anyway, some of this I put on various bits of scrap plywood and added things like walls made from matchsticks. I've sorted out some of that old terrain and put it together with the new MDF buildings - some restoration may be needed but overalkl I've got enough to act a functioning terrain board.

Space Tanks - the Garrison ST range

Perhaps a bit crude compared to modern day castings, I admit I like these and some day will field a few more...

Meanwhile, SKT released up to ST7 with several variations of other codes. The total number released was 15 different vehicles - but far more actually existed unreleased. They were officially listed as 1/300th scale.

I don't have photos of everything, in fact, a couple of codes I haven't identified yet, but this picture gives an idea of some of the range.

I started building up my forces a few years ago then stopped - the usual  loss of momentum. Colour scheme is based on German late WW2 camouflage, the figures in the first picture are ST1b, GEV Tank with old style turret.

These would be a scout platoon ST4 Light Scout GEV followed by missile units based on the ST1 chassis.

A couple of ST2 Tracked Heavy Tanks lead an ST8 GEV Heavy Mortar and an ST11 Series Dozer Tank with an ST2 turret.

 

The buildings are slightly over scale - perhaps better for 10 or 15mm models rather than 6mm - but look OK. They were picked up on a trip to Santorini.

Main failing of this range is the lack of infantry. There aren't any. Still, lots of other 6mm infantry figures on the market so no real problem.