Blue Helix Defense Solutions - An awesomely painted (i.e. not by me) 6mm Mercenary Force!

I came across this force on The Wargames Website a couple a month ago while cruising the net, trawling for inspiration and trying to get a sense of what to get to start playing Horizon Wars...

Mathieu Moyen AKA Mr Average AKA Mike One Echo kindly allowed me to show the relevant lead porn and matching fluff (which I edited from a couple of forum messages into a single blog post) on my blog! So, Ladies and Gentlemen...  

Blue Helix Defense Solutions LLC is a "Dispute Resolution Organization" headquartered in Québec City and operating throughout the Americas and Western Europe.

Somewhere near the Sulaco-Costaguana Border, a Blue Helix Intervention Unit starts its day…

Tommorow's Wars meets Horizon Wars - A 6mm Democratic People's Republic of Glory (DPRG) Battlegroup?

Although Horizon Wars and Tommorow's Wars have nothing but the editor and book production value, reading the recently bought former inspired me to (beside buying a 6mm British Battlegroup) go back at the later to look at some miniature porn!

It's not the first time I think about gaming in that universe: I already wrote down some thoughts about which infantry models to use for the Republic of Arden and for the Democratic People Republic of Glory...

Brazilian built grav tanks are starting to equip select People's Republic Guard formation (the one that didn't displease Dear Leader). All pictures (except the Darghaur hereunder) from their manufacturer website.

Horizon Wars - First impression & shopping for a British Battlegroup

I just bought Horizon Wars...

The rules seem promising and I actually have other interested parties in my gaming group. 

One thing I like very much is that the small scale hasn't lead to an explosion of mini count.   

In most games, the smaller the scale the larger the scope: 28mm is for platoonish games, 15mm for company-sized games, 6mm for battalion and so on... Table size, number of elements (bases with either a single or several minis on) and game duration remain more or less constant around 4' to 6' by 4' (120cm to 18cm by 120cm), 30 to 50 elements and 2 to 3 hours a game.

After having been exposed to games like Mordheim and more recently X-Wing, I've come to appreciate games with a limited number of elements (a dozen) and short games (around one hour, allowing for two or three games on ), but have been missing the miniature diversity (infantry, ground vehicles, "air"-crafts all together on a table) of larger scope "combined arms" types of games...

Horizon Wars goes for a more "skirmish" (from a number of elements point of view) approach which should allow to enjoy varied "combined arms" miniatures while remaining in the realm of fast paced "skirmish" games... 

 

Pictures from the author collection... "A 'typical' Horizon Wars force (less airframes), it has a mix of infantry, armour and mechs; and elements can be dropped to create smaller lists or manipulated to create a list up to ~30 points, what I consider to be a large game that would take about 2 hours to play out."

I paint... I fucked up something! - Brigade Model 6mm vehicles - Proxy Dropzone Commander UCM

The events chronicled in this post actually happened last winter... It took me that long to be able to face it and blog about it!

I don't enjoy the painting part of the hobby (did that sounds GWish, or should I say the Hobby™?) and don't have any ambition to become an expert painter... I just like playing with painted (not to mention based and taken out of their package) minis and don't have the disposable income to have them painted.

It looks even worse in real...

So after a lot of research (cough procrastination cough) I went with Army Painter and their "basecoat your mini directly in its primary colour without an airbrush", "paint everything that's not that primary colour in bright uniform patches" and "dip the mini in Magic Goo™ that shade and highlight all the right parts of the mini without any work or talent" system...

Delta Zulu Six - A (6mm proxy) Dropzone Commander UCM army

I'm not too found of Hawk Wargames: I wrote about this before but I'm not sure where or when anymore, so here I go again (feel free to skip the next paragraph, the good stuff is underneath)...

When I first heard (well, read probably) about Dropzone Commander I was very eager: air-mobile-centric game, beautiful and original models (the Post Humans and United Colonies, that is; the Scourge goes from OK to "hey look, evil flying CD-rack at 3 o' clock" and the other aliens gear looks like a mix between Native Americans headgear and BDSM accessories)... And then I found out it was all going to be 10mm-scaled! I came over to 15mm for the sheer pleasure of freely mixing and matching whatever toy form whatever manufacturer, so I'm not about to buy into another scale that's compatible with pretty much nothing else, thank you very much! I'm sure there are plenty of arguments for that specific scale (air-mobile tactics need a lot of space; but then why not go 6mm, another widely accepted standard?), but that choice of scale seems a very GWish "let's make sure if they taste our product they can't go anywhere else to get their lead - or resin or whatever- fix" move to me. Not meant as a compliment. End of ranting.

Recently I read a blog post about using 6mm proxies to try out Dropzone Commander rules without taking on a new mortgage... Nothing new so far, I thought about it before but the idea kind of broke down with dropships (and other flyers): they are a key component to the game and each faction has several different very specific ones; not that easy to source in 6mm. But Raskal just used suitably sized Firestorm Armada ships (he had, I assume, laying around) for the different dropship. 

6mm not-UCM proxy army by Raskal over at Raskal Central.

Sure they're not the correctly scaled next to the 6mm infantry and ground vehicles, but...

• Visual scale clues are usually pretty limited on spaceships model;
• A bit of scale wiggle room is apparently allowed when two scales are not in the same plane (i.e. air versus ground à la Flames of War 15mm ground forces with 1/144 airplanes).

I think Raskal intended this experiment as a crude placeholder (he ended up buying the official stuff), but I think it could work as a permanent solution... Especially if you go for spaceships that stylistically match your ground vehicles and blend them further together with your paintjob...

So here we go with yet another project (as usual just a gedankenexperiment, I probably won't go very far with it)!

I'll call this project Delta Zulu Six: "delta zulu" for "dropzone", off
course; "six" for 6mm but also for the commander call sign in military
radio procedures, so "DZ6" can actually mean "dropzone commander";
the triangle is both the Greek letter delta and the APP-6 symbol for a
dropzone... I'm quite proud of this ;-)

15mm GI Joe - Snowcat

Comments on TMP about my previous "New Guinea War" post highlighted how the Antarctica War briefly mentioned in the chronology could also be an interesting setting! Here is just a random idea that popped-up while thinking along those lines...

Back when I was 6, I got the GI Joe Snow Cat toy as a present from my grand mother...


Picture from YoJoe.com.

New Guinea War (2099) - Pacific Federation versus Indonesian Republic - 15mm Sci Fi

ADHD strikes again... Here I was browsing miniatures porn on Brigade Models website and minding my own business when I clicked on "6mm" and found a link to the "New Guinea War" campaign on Wessex Games website... Take a few oldies but goodies add a pinch of new releases, google some paint schemes and roundels et voilà!

Quick background summary:

• 2005: coup in Indonesia Republic (IR) & IR takes over Sarawak and Brunei;
• 2020: uprising against France in New Caledonia, rebels supported by AU & NZ;
• 2026-27: IR takes over Malaysia;
• 2027: AU, NZ, Papua New Guinea & various Pacific Territories forms South Pacific Treaty Organisation (SPTO);
• 2031: IR takes over the Philipines;
• 2048: Hawaii and US Territories join SPTO that becomes the Pacific Federation (PacFed);
• 2048-2051: IR (with covert Japanese support) and China at war over Cambodia, Laos, Thailand & Vietnam; peace treaty mediated by PacFed; IR gets Cambodia, Thailand, South Laos and South Vietnam, China gets North Laos and North Vietnam;
• 2065-68: Antarctica War I: PacFed & UK versus Argentina & Chile; statu quo;
• 2078-79: Bengal War: IR versus India; IR gets "considerable territory" on India eastern seabord including Calcuta and Madras;
• 2082: IR takes over Burma;
• 2083: Antarctia War II: Brazil sides with PacFed & UK, Argentina territory split between Brazil and PacFed;
• 2099: IR and PacFed at war over Papua New Guinea...

Quick and dirty map of SE Asia & Oceania by 2099: PacFed in blue,
IR in red, China in yellow, India in Green and flash zones orange...

Royal Salamander Navy (RSN) & Marine Corps (RSMC)

I'm (re-)reading (and enjoying!) the Honor Harrington (HH) books and, of course, toying with a "not-" version of its various military forces...

The Star Kingdom of Salamander is thus your quintessencial "Brits-in-Space" space nation... Relatively small but controling an important space nexus, its strategic value is backed by a powerful navy (and an extensive merchant marine) which traditions go back all the way to the 16th century (British) Royal (Wet) Navy!

A quick sketch of a RSN roundel...

Brigade Models Belgians (or Syldavians)

I used to fairly uninterested by the whole "Hammer's Slammers" and air-cushion tanks meme... Without going into why I have a more difficult time suspending my disbelief about that specific technological path, I always found HS tanks aestetics to retro for my sci fi taste...

Too retro for my tastes!

And then came the latest batches of Brigade Models 15mm!

Some of the newest Brigade Models products: three variants of the AmRep APC...

So of course, I had to find them a niche in my imaginary world... I've been toying a lot with Franco-Belgian comic books inspired imagi-nations, like Tintin/Hergé Syldavia and Borduria... In my mind, I came up with quite a few iterations of a war between those two countries:

• The obvious: a fairly logical continuation of "King Ottokar's Sceptre"; an not-early-WW2 Blietzkrieg-style invasion of not-Belgium-Syldavia by not-German-Bordurian...
• And its implied sequel:  Late-WW2 liberation of not-Belgium-Syldavia from the hands not-German-Borduria!
• Various iterations of a (limited) Cold-War-Gone-Hot ranging for the fifties to ultra-modern (well, yeah: the Bordurian mustachist regime might have survived its soviet sponsor).
• And even a Napolenoic prequel involving French-inspired Syldavian and Prussian-inspired Bordurian.

Syldavian M113 in NATO three tone... I probably should figure something a bit
more tactical for the national markings... Black pelican with just a yellow outline?

Basicaly:

• Syldavia = Belgium with a layer of Balkans paint and...
• Borduria = (East) Germany with the same cosmetic layer. 

So back to Brigade Models models... Altough air-cushion tanks have grown on me, I still associate them with "70s/80s in space"! So I wen't digging in the Belgian late-Cold-War orbat...

Like many of its neighbours, Belgium used to gets armoured vehicules from three different sources:

• German MBT (Leopard and its AA, tank destroyer and engineering variants);
• US APC (M113 and variants) and SPG (M108 and M109);
• And UK recon (the CVRT familly).

So here is my Belgian/Syldavian Brigade Models pick (not all models are available in 15mm):

• German Thor MBT, Thor Gatling AA Tank and Fenrir Tank Destroyer;
• AmRep M-41 Baumann APC, including unique Belgian/Syldavian variants like an ATK not-M113-Milan using a US body (the Baumann) and a French missile system (from the EuroFed Tassigny or Catroux missile variants);
• Amrep M-88 Doherty SPG (not available in 15mm);
• And Brithis Hermes light tanks (not available in 15mm, yet?) as not-Scorpion/Scimitar and modded with the Artemis APC turret or some missile turret for not-Spartans and not-Strikers respectively...

APC, MBT, recon tank and SPG of the Syldavian hover-AFV inventory...

Not that I need (but which wargamer actually buy only miniatures he needs?) or intend to model the entire orbat (which is a good think since a couple of the vehicules on my list don't even exist in 15mm!): my scope of choice for 15mm sci fi is about a platoon (usually a rather small one to make room for a couple of vehicles that have nothing to do operating at that level) so I'll try to stick to a single MBT and a couple of APC! But I like making up extensive orbats so that my force doesn't exist in a vacuum...

What about infantry? GZG new Germans look uber-cool and I've been wanting to use them for quite a bit too... But I'd love to had some oversized-beret wearing guys for a Chasseurs Ardennais/Zymylpathian Rangers units... Headswap from Khurasan Sepulvedan Jungle Fighters?

And air support? Belgium fighter aircrafts at the time used to be French Mirage V and US F-16, while our only helos used to be liaison/observation French Alouette II. Something French would be a nice addition to the German-US-UK mix I've got so far... But I'm not too fan of the Caribou...

What's in the box? Orange Monkie Foldio

A couple of month ago, I pledged some money to the Foldio Kickstarter, intending to give it to my brother (the serious miniature painter of the family) as a late birthday gift. Foldio is a portmanteau of "folding" and "studio" and is a folding, so far so good, lightbox intended to allow quality pictures of relatively small objects. Like miniatures, for example (totally random example of course). While at it I also ordered one for myself...

A couple of weeks ago, both Foldios showed in the mail and I finally managed to buy the two 9 Volt batteries needed to power it just a couple of days ago (a nearly impossible task!) I first used it to take pictures of my (not so) freshly painted and previously posted Brigade Model Power Armour.

But let's take a look at the Foldio itself...

I painted something! - Brigade Models Power Armour

It's been on a shelf for a couple of weeks now, awaiting a varnish coat and to be photographed (procrastination settles in at all stages!) but I painted something for the first time!

That is except for a 1/72 Blue Angel Phanter and a 1/720 French SSBN (painted entirely olive drab) when I was like 8, and most of (some part are very difficult to reach, you know) my house more recently. But I mean I painted my very first miniatures!

My brother has been painting Space Marines for a dozen years. He must have a couple of chapters worth of Raptors by now, a crapload of tyranids and then some Imperial Guard (I bought those, never did anything with them, didn't even open the boxes, they've got a better home now) and orcs... I mean orKs, sorry. And everything is IMHO (I mean, humility isn't my forte, but as far as painting go, with my 12 minis painted, I can muster some) beautifully painted. And he agree to teach me some basics!

I went with Brigade Models Power Armour not exactly because I wanted them painted, but rather because I had them laying around (bought them together with the PacFed vehicles), wasn't quite sure what to do with them and they seemed not overtly complicated to paint. Great practice fodder! Sorry if I didn't do them justice; they're actually great minis, that was just my thought process while selecting them for this endeavour.

After this lengthy introduction designed to highlight my (lack of) painting background and muster some sympathy for my (primitive) painting skills: drum rolls and... Cymbal!

Organization of Unobtainium Exporting Planets miniatures painted by Micropanzer

They took a while to get there (according to USPS, they went form Brussels (Belgium) to Nashua (NH) to Jamaica (NY) to Opa Locka (FL), back and forth three times between Opa Locka and Miami (FL), then to Kansas City before ending up in Blue Springs  (MO), the entire trip taking just under a month) but Jason at Micropanzer just finished the miniatures I commissioned him to paint for my Organization of Unobtainium Exporting Planets faction!

Units of the Robot Army of Organization of Unobtainum Exporting Planets

What's in the box? Brigade Models Pacific Federation Light Tank

I initialy only ordered the MBT, the APC and the "flyer", but that range grew on me and I went back for more, namely the light tank, in order to round up my Organization of Unobtainium Exporting Planets (O.U.E.P.) (I've got all the models now, just waiting for the bases and off to the painter they go!)

What's in the box? Brigade Model

I just needed some more tanks from Brigade Models to round up my Organization of Unobtainium Exporting Planets (O.U.E.P.)... But, inspired by Mr Harold's awesome colony table, I coudn't help myself from adding their two new advanced buildings. 

Ordered on 02AUG and received on 22AUG: slightly on the slow side even for across-the-pond delivery...

What's in the box? Brigade Models Pacific Federation Armour

Dry mounted. Left to right, APC, recce "flyer" and MBT.

Just placed a few orders at GZG, CMG and Brigade for the figs needed for the Organization of Unobtainium Exporting Planets (O.U.E.P.) In the mean time, here a review of some I already owned: the Cougar MBT, Wombat APC and Minigwal recce vehicle; the Ocelot light tank is ordered.

All vehicles form a very nice range of both original and internally coherent  vehicles... Usually not too fan of Brigade Models design (nothing wrong with them, juts usually not too my taste) but those, I couldn't pass on them!

The Robot Army of the Organization of Unobtainium Exporting Planets

Mini Metal Mayhem logo for their
Interstellar Mining and Extraction
Consortium...

Another army idea for my 15mm setting, blatantly inspired by another trade federation robotic army! The Organization of Unobtainium Exporting Planets (O.U.E.P.) is nominally part of my "alien empire" meta-faction but do show a significant dose of separatist ambitions (we don't want to close any game option)...

The O.U.E.P. has always had a policy of preferring robotic military forces over living ones (something about cost efficiency and no moral dilemma about fighting over natural resources).

The goal here (just like with my not-Tau) is emphatically NOT to model a 15mm Star Wars Droid army, but to use readily available minis to create an army that plays and feels like it without going crazy converting and sculpting stuff (or pestering mini makers to develop my very own fetish line, that just happen to be heavily licensed) to get a perfect scaled down facsimile... I actually like the generic fell better: I don't mind mix-matching not-universes like I would the originals.