A Sci-Fi Salvage Crew, and Six Reason to Support a Kickstarter

At the club we often trade projects, and here's a look at one such transaction. My end of the deal included this small chem station terrain piece and a yet-to-be-finished vehicle. The figures below are Pat's side of the deal. I based them up and gave a thorough review of these guys more than two years ago, so it was high time to actually get some paint on these models. A project exchange seemed like the perfect chance to finally get this diverse crew of space salvagers painted up.

Like the Van Saar, this crew also gets its own cigar box carrying case. I've really enjoyed converting these into classy storage for miniature warbands.

Let's open it up shall we and see what surprises Pat has in store for us?

 
First off, we have an Alpha Forge Salvage Crew member, Reaper Chronoscope's "Rosie Chronotechnician" and a Rezolution "CSO Classic Field Engineer." The Salvage Crew member is out of production, but the others are still available. The Field Engineer is a particularly good bargain. He and most of the CSO Classic figures from the Rezolution game retail for only $3 each, and that includes some nice sci-fi troopers.

I love all the gear on these guys. Rosie doesn't even have a gun, and it's up to the gamer whether the instrument in the Engineer's hand is a weapon or hand tool. It's rare to find so many unarmed sci-fi figs, but they're great for a ship's crew.

The next six figures are from the "Salvage Crew" line. Originally made by Alpha Forge for the Star Mogul game and later re-released by Mega Minis, they represent six fantastic reasons to pledge for the the Salvage Crew Kickstarter that is wrapping up this month.

When he closed the doors on Mega Miniatures and sold off its masters and molds, owner Johnny Lauck kept a batch for himself, and now they're available through this Kickstarter. It may be one of the last chances to get ahold of these figures, and it's certainly the biggest bargain they've ever been offered in. The $30 buy-in includes shipping and currently gets you 27 miniatures! Here's the breakdown so far.

• 15 Alpha Forge Salvage Crew (modified from separate head models to single piece)
• 5 Demonblade Games figures (some with minor mods, mostly removing mutations)
• 5 Multi-part droids from Alpha Forge 
• 2 Additional droids 

I'm a fan of both these lines of figures, was glad when Johnny got them back in production the first time and am very pleased they've got another another shot here.

So here's a taste of what's in the Kickstarter. Note that the figures below are the previous versions that had separate heads chosen from a random selection, so they are slightly different from what's in the Kickstarter. Also I've done a bit of modding that I'll note where necessary. The bases and angles may make their heights irregular, but they're all solidly heroic, averaging 28mm from sole to eye.

Here's the SAW gunner, a crew member security guard and salvage tech.

Like Rosie and the engineer, I love that the technician has some heavy cutting equipment and a torch that leaves it up to the player whether he's armed or not. With a chunky assault rifle (boltgun?) and a shotgun on his back, the guard could easily serve as a bounty hunter in Necromunda.

Here's the last of the crew. The trenchcoated leader has a Pig Iron head. The woman with the center is a missile launcher trooper in the Kickstarter, but I've swapped in a Heresy Miniatures assault rifle.

There's nothing too interesting on the back, just a nice assortment of packs for stowing salvage. I probably should have removed the brace of missiles from the lady, but they could be some sort of salvage.

There you have it. a very nice flavorful salvage crew. I've got a couple more working-class sci-fi crew figures like these. Hopefully I'll find some way to con Pat into painting them and grow the team a bit. I've got a soft spot for these kind of rag-tag space travelers. The sort of folks who just want to survive in the 'verse, find a crew, find a job and keep on flying.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Fully Painted: Void Junkers and Neo-Soviets

Last week I finished two groups of figures: a Neo-Soviet warband for our upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign and a huge batch of Void Junkers Legionnaires that will likely see use in may different games.

Neo-Soviets 

This project was initiated by my acquisition a couple weeks ago of 6 Soviet NKVD troopers from the 25 cent bin at Wolfcon. As with most of my impulse buys, I knew if I didn't get started on them it might be a while before they saw any paint, so I got right to work. The painting is my usual method: a quick spray with Rustoleum Camo Green, followed by base colors, a brush-dip of Minwax Polyshades Antique Walnut and a brush-on matte varnish.

The basing is just premixed wall plaster sculpted up to try and disguise the cast-on bases that are glued directly to the slotta. To their number I added a long-OOP Corporation Commander from Demonblade's now-defunct Shockforce game and a Neo-Soviet Rad Trooper figure from Vor: The Maelstrom

Here are some of the troopers.

They're NKVD figs from Black Tree Design and are apparently still available quite reasonably for less than $2 per figure.

These figures looked a bit small in the bin, but when I got them home, I found that they are 28mm to the eye. Their cast-on bases add a further bit of height, making them a good fit alongside more modern 28mm models that often stretch to 30mm.

They are stock except for backpacks that I ordered from Mega Minis. These are backpacks that normally come with their sci-fi trooper figures, but if you ask nicely they'll sell them separate.

Here is the commander figure and his enforcer/bodyguard/brute.

Though most Shockforce corporation figs have been re-released by Mega Miniatures as Frontier Defense Force, this Commander figure hasn't. I figure it's probably because the figure is so big -- he measures 33mm sole-to-eye without even counting his massive hat, making him significantly larger than most Shockforce troopers. Like most figures from the line, he's pretty clearly intended as a Games Workshop Imperial Guard proxy.

The Neo-Soviet Rad Trooper figure is still available from Iron Wind Metals. He's supposed to come with a backpack. Mine came in a random pile of loose lead, so he got one of same Mega Minis backpacks as the troopers.

These guys were finished in a week of spotty painting and will probably see the table next week as we continue to playtest In The Emperor's Name as our probable choice of rulsets for our upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign.

I'm especially happy with the effect that the Minwax Polyshades Tudor dip gives to their dark green uniforms.

Void Junkers 

I've been trying to finish these guys for the better part of a year now. I thought I'd get them done quickly by doing a batch of 47 figures at once, but that only made me enjoy the process less and procrastinate more. Anywho, they're done now!

Along with the basic troopers, there are 5 sergeants (guys without helmets), 1 chaingunner, 4 grenadiers, 5 flamethrowers and 2 figures with thermite lances that I'll be using as grenade launchers.

Fans of Void will note that these troopers are missing their shields. I've also noted their absence and somewhere in my house there's a bag of shields primed white and waiting for paint. I decided to paint the troopers anyway and deal with the shields when I find them. I think you'll agree that they don't look terrible sans shields.

They were painted with the same process as the Neo-Soviets, except they were primed with white gesso. The basing is simply sheetrock paint texture (finely crushed pumice) glued on, painted brown and dry-brushed.

I really rushed these guys, but they didn't turn out too bad. There are two figures with really bad pooling of the Minwax on the lower leg, but even that isn't very noticeable on the tabletop. So it's not my best work, but they do look quite impressive in a big group, which is how they'll likely be used. My Junker army now numbers more than 70 foot soldiers, a vehicle, 7 mounted cavalry and a couple other largish figures. Which means I'm a bit less than half finished!

As with the Neo-Soviets, I'm really liking the effect that the black pigmented Tudor shade has on miniatures. This was one of my first uses of it on lighter shaded figs (usually I use it for darker colors), and I'm very pleased. Here's a quick tip. After the Tudor dip has dried, if you find a few places where you missed, a bit of black paint mixed into matte medium gives you a nice thick-but-translucent mix that you can paint on to darken up the areas you missed.

The best news is that now my painting desk is cleared of in-progress projects, and I can start on my two next undertakings: a Squat army (yeah, you heard right...) and a post-apocalyptic salvage crew.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Two reviews: Inkwell Industries and Mega Minis' Salvage Crew

Today we'll review two groups of miniatures: resin bases, barrels and wheels by Inkwell Industries, and the Salvage Crew from Mega Miniatures.

Inkwell Industries: Bases, Barrels and Wheels
Inkwell Industries is a one-man side project that has some good quality resin products at remarkable prices. This review will showcase their bases, barrels and tires, all of which I purchased a few months ago.

At present the only way to buy Inkwell Industries products is through the Post-Apoc Wargames forum's Traders Shack, which is where I found them.

The 25mm round bases come in 9 designs and are sold in batches of 20 for $5. In the past I've tended to view cast resin bases as a bit of an extravagance. With most bases costing nearly the price of what I try to spend for miniatures ($1 to $2) I didn't see the point. At 25 cents each, however, I couldn't resist trying them, especially when I have a slew of post-apocalyptic figures that would look good on them.

The bases look like the pictures below, though they now all come in white.

The bases all seem well cast. Some of them are a touch uneven on the bottom, but nothing you can't fix with a bit of sandpaper.. A few of them had what might be very minor flaws in the casting detail on top, but since these are all modeled after broken ground, scrap and salvage, I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't had two of each base to compare to each other, and I doubt anyone else would notice.

Most importantly, the sides all seemed nice and smooth, with no bubbles. The heights of terrain modeled on the bases do vary a bit. Inky informs me that he originally made the bases for himself to balance out the height of the various figures he was using for his own post-apocalyptic games. Differing heights don't bother me, but it's interesting to hear this perspective

My final observation is that while a wide variety of bases are great for post-apocalyptic figures, players seeking a more uniform look might not appreciate all the variation. I would love to see the selection expanded so there were 4 to 5 different sculpts for each "theme" that appears in the mix (gears, rocky terrain, wreckage, etc).

Be sure to read through the miniatures review below to see photos of these bases black-washed and attached to miniatures.

Inkwell also has a 40mm round base cast in a metal plate pattern. It's a nice design, and while the plates aren't perfectly level (I'm not sure if this is intentional or not), they're a steal at 50 cents each and would be a nice choice for basing Space Marine Terminators. I'll probably use the one I have to base up the Ape-X figure from the Reaper Bones Kickstarter.

Hint to Inkwell...If this metal-plate design was available in 25mm or 40mm, I'd buy a batch tomorrow!

I also purchased a pack of oil barrels. They are very simple, with basic rim detailing and a valve on top. The bottoms are a bit uneven on some, but that's to be expected on barrels cast from a one-piece mold, and it's easy to fix. They are entirely adequate, and at 10 for $3 they are quite a bargain.

 
Lastly, I bought some resin wheels. These are purchasable individually at 15 cents each, and I got 16 of them.

They are 16mm in diameter and size up well with the wheels on the bargain 1/43 Bburago cars I reviewed earlier. These cars were nicely made, but they had some really cheap-looking wheels.

While the diameter and detail of the wheels are all the same, the thickness of the wheels varies quite a bit. There seem to be 3 or so different thicknesses. For folks using these for terrain detailing, this is not a problem, but for those intending to put these on vehicles, it might be worthwhile to specifically request wheels of the same thickness.

I had no problem making a few sets of wheels out of the batch I purchased, though a few will need to be sanded down a bit. The resin is easy to cut and modify, so I have no doubt it will be easy to drill out holes to fit these onto the wheel posts of the Bburagao cars.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the products received from Inkwell. They don't have quite the polish of some higher-priced resin products, but at a third of the cost or less they are more than adequate for my uses. I highly recommend them, and it's very likely that I will be purchasing more of the bases in the near future.

Salvage Crew Miniatures on Inkwell Bases
Last year I briefly reviewed the Salvage Crew miniatures from Mega Miniatures. They were originally produced by Alpha Forge for their Star Mogul game, and Mega Minis acquired the line last year (which includes many other great figures) and released the game as a free download on their website.

The purchase of the post-apocalyptic bases from Inkwell Industries seemed like a perfect excuse to assemble these figures and base them up. I've mounted them on the Inkwell bases and given them a quick-and-dirty black wash to bring out some of the details. Here's a group shot and another from above to show off the bases.

My observations from the initial review are largely unchanged. They are very nice figures with separate heads, though the quality of the heads are are hit-or-miss. The casting is good, with minimal flash and mold lines. For the most part, they are loaded with packs, tools, gear, etc. as befits the subject matter.

Be aware that each figure comes with two random heads, so you might not end up with the heads I used, or the heads pictured on the website. Also, some of the neck pegs are a bit skinny; a bit of putty or just some extra superglue will fix this. I've listed them with the names that Mega Minis has given them. For those looking to acquire these figures, they are available here.

Gang Member with Shotgun and Cutting Equipment 

Love the character of this figure, though he's the one figure I couldn't get to photograph well, so you'll have to take my word for it. Uniquely among this batch, he does not have a separate head. Also, he doesn't have any specifically futuristic gear. His main equipment is a double-barreled shotgun and a cutting torch on his back. His aviator cap and goggles, trenchcoat and lack of sci-fi equipment would make him a good fit for a steampunk setting as well as sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, etc.

Gang Member with Grinding Tool

This figure comes with a separate grinding tool with hands attached. He's unarmed, so I'll probably add a pistol holster. It's a nice find, though, as unarmed civilian sci-fi figures are fairly uncommon. The cutting tool could easily be modified into any number of tools by cutting away the blade and substituting some other techy bit.

Gang Member in Light Armor 

This is a female figure with a heavy automatic weapon. The head I chose for her is the best of the female heads available.

Gang Member in Trench Coat 

This is another one of my favorites. I gave him a Pig Iron Kolony Rebel head, though in retrospect that may have made him look a bit too bad-guy-ish, and he ended up resembling the most recent movie incarnation of the Batman villain Bane. He and the two following figures seem almost tailor-made to be Necromunda gangers, scum or bounty hunters.

Gang Member with Assault Rifle

Here's a nice pose -- and is that a bolter he's carrying? I particularly like the messenger bag laying across his chest.

Gang Member with Light Machinegun 

This is a typical shooting dude with an SMG.

Gang Member with Rocket Launcher

The rocket launcher is a separate piece, and as I already have various launcher-armed figures, I switched out the launcher for an assault rifle from Heresy Miniatures. I did have to reposition the left hand to be supporting the gun rather than steadying the rocket launcher. It's a nice figure, but unfortunately the original configuration with the rocket launcher isn't very balanced. Check out that huge tire on the base!

In conclusion, I'm very happy with the Salvage Crew figures. They're not state-of-the-art sculpts, but they fill a nice niche in my sci-fi collection. They would work well in most post-apocalyptic or sci-fi game setting and seem ripe for use in Necromunda. Also, at only $2.50 a piece for each 28mm figure, they are a great deal.

As a bonus, I give you Rosie, Cryotechnician. I had this Reaper Chronoscope miniature lying around for some time, so I decided to use her here. I think she's intended to be a "not" version of Kaylee from Firefly and Serenity. The figure comes with a wrench and gun options for her right hand, though I still haven't decided which to use. With the wrench option she is unarmed, and you can never have too many unarmed sci-fi figures in your collection.

Like most Chronoscope figures, she stands notably taller than other 28mm models. Using traditional sole-to-eye measurements, the Salvage Crew are a standard 28mm, while Rosie towers to a height of 32mm. Despite the height, she fits in well with the style of the Salvage crew figures, so I'm pretty happy with her. As with most Reaper miniatures, the detail is really well done, and she's a step up in overall quality from the others.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

28mm on the cheap: Mega Miniatures

Though not as cheap as the dollar-per-miniature goal that we strive for, a few companies today make quality metal 28mm miniatures that range from $1.50 to $3 a piece. Building a 100-figure, Warhammer 40k-style army can be expensive even at this low price — though less so than with Games Workshop products — but warband and platoon skirmishes are quite manageable, and being able to choose exactly what you need is a definite benefit.

One of my favorite companies in this price range is Mega Miniatures, aka MegaMinis.

Mega is owned by Johnny Lauck and produces a large selection of fantasy, modern and sci-fi miniatures. MegaMinis has some proprietary figure lines, some of which are as low as $1.89 a piece!

In the opinion of the author, however, Mega's best offerings are the defunct figure lines it has acquired and rereleased. This includes ranges of figures from Grenadier, Metal Magic, Demonblade Games and Alpha Forge.

This review will give you a brief look at some figures from the Demon Blade and Alpha Forge lines as well as a couple of Mega Minis' proprietary designs. Though they have been selling off the molds to many of their older fantasy ranges, Johnny has been re-releasing Demonblade figures at a rapid rate and assures us that he plans to keep releasing nearly the entire line in the near future.

Demonblade Re-Releases

Among other games, Demonblade was the producer of Shockforce, the game that originated the club-favorite ruleset WarEngine — as well as a massive line of figures, a few of which are described in detail below. Note that the figures are exactly as they came from Mega. No flash has been trimmed and no mold lines have been removed.

Frontier Defense Force
These figures were originally released as Shockforce Megacom Troopers. They're well sculpted, though perhaps with not quite the same level of clarity as the classic Games Workshop Cadian troopers that they are fairly obviously based on. So far there are 15 to 20 sculpts released for this line, covering all manner of troopers armed with a basic lasgun and a selection of special weapons such as grenade launchers, missile launchers and flamethrowers.

These figures were originally scupted by the great Bobby Jackson to supplement the K-Force troopers that Demonblade had acquired from Grenadier. These earlier troopers are similar in style, but a bit bulkier and not quite as crisp (I have almost the entire line) but have not yet been reissued by Mega.

Here's a trooper leader and a kneeling trooper.

Here's a trooper with a plasma gun (called a heat gun by Mega) and a flamethower. The flamethrower is called a "Heavy Machine gunner" by Mega.

Despite its similarities to the smart gun from Aliens, this long-barreled weapon has a hose on the bottom of the barrel and is attached to a set of tanks on the back of the model, all of which strongly suggests that it's a flame weapon. That said, with a magazine and removal of the tanks, this would make a great SAW.

Mega also makes a flamethrower trooper with a more traditional GW-style Flamethrower that they call a vaporizer.

As a nice touch, these figures come with separate backpacks. I liked the backpacks so much that I contacted Johnny, who sold me some separately.

Here's a pair of scouts. There are four of these in the figure line. Each is armed with a sniper/assault rifle and is posed in a crouching or kneeling position. The backpacks for these figures are cast-on.

The treads on the boots seemed like a nice touch and the detail overall is good.

All in all, I'm very pleased with these figures. I ordered about 10 of the Demon Blade trooper miniatures

Moonshiners

These figures are a rather goofy range of cartoony rednecks previously released as Brethren models for Shockforce. The figures below are the only ones I purchased from this line and I chose them because they looked more like post-apocalyptic survivors than the rest of the range, which is a delightfully wierd mix of cartoony inbred redneck men and Daisy Duke-looking women.

The overall sculpting is a bit softer than the troopers, but the look is well excecuted and they will fit right in with my other post-apoc figures.

Alpha Forge

Alpha Forge was best known for it's Star Mogul game. Mega has released all these figures, which includes two races of aliens, human troopers and salvage crew, androids, robots and even a vehicle or two. They also had a line of zombie survivors, two of which I purchased.

Salvage Crew

I've purchased most of the Alpha Forge Salvage Crew figures. The link above has them, as well as quite a few Demonblade figures, mixed in the same section. The Salvage Crew models come with 2 random heads from a selection of 10 to 12.

The heads are hit or miss, some are quite nice, some are just OK.


Zombie Survivors

These are really nice figures with lots of character. They are mixed into the "Modern Civilian" section of the MegaMinis website. You can tell them apart as they are the figures that are shown unpainted.

I liked all the figures that I reviewed, but these had the sharpest detail and were the best sculpted.

MegaMinis' Designs

Here's a couple of examples of scupts that Mega has commissioned for itself.

Robot Small is a really cute fig, and the model is notable because he may have use in a 15mm as a full-sized robot or 10mm as a hard suit.

I picked these animals from a few different product codes and packs just to give you an idea of the size and sculpting of Mega's animals. Even though many of the larger animal molds have been sold, at 166 different codes, Mega still has what is probably the largest selection of 28mm animal figures on the market today. The cat and dogs pictured are all only $1.43 each!

Overall, I'm very pleased with these figures. No one is going to confuse them with the hyper-detailed high-end figures from companies like Infinity or Privateer Press, but they are all well sculpted figs that are a good representation of their subject matter.

While many of Mega's propriety sci-fi and designs and reissues of classic fantasy figures are somewhat dated in scale and style, the ranges they have acquired from Demonblade and Alpha Forege are mostly from the late 90s and early 2000s and still compare very well with current styled figures in size, style and proportion.

It is also worth noting that the casts are very clean. Mold lines are no more than you would expect from the major brands, which is surprising when you consider that Mega does their own casting!

I do have to mention that one of my troopers did have a very small miscast hole in the side of his boot that will have to be filled with putty, but it was not a major issue.

I highly recommend these figures to anyone seeking sci-fi figures on a budget. Mega Miniatures has done the hobby a great service by making these great figures available again and at such a low cost.

— Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member