Making "V"-miniatures on a budget

I got very inspired by John Yorio at the 54mm or Fight when he painted his Sci-fi Warhammer miniatures and a Space Marine for his son. I'm impressed how he managed to bring out the details in the miniatures. I found this so inspiring that I wanted to try a similar project my self, but as I'm not into Warhammer miniatures it had to be some readily available 'Space Marines-Army men' I brought to the workbench in july (but not completed before now).

Since I'm not into GW I had no preferences to paint these 'Marines', but this year it's actually 40 years since the TV-series "V" was aired, and I saw it on Swedish television the first time. Perhaps I could turn a handful of these 'Space Marines' into lizzard troopers??

The miniatures

The bucket of futuristic soldiers are usually available in regular toy stores from time to time:

I picked out the reddis/brownish figures as these were closer to the uniform-color I was looking for in the first place.

I'm also very impressed by all the figure-conversions made by James at Quantrill's Toy Soldiers, so I decided to try a simple one and just remove a bayonet and add visors to their helmets with miliputty.

This time I only primed them with 'plastic-primer' from a rattle-can...

...and a orange color-primer. I hoped that the primer would serve as base for the uniform color, but it didn't match so well...

So the uniform needed to be painted as well. Here are all the basic colors added:

And then they're given a dirty brown-ish wash, drybrushed with a lighter color and adding texture to their bases:

Some close-ups of the completed figures:

The Spaceship

My figures needed a space-ship so I found a 'Skyfighter' for free at Thingiverse, re-scaled it so it would look about right size for my figures and 3D-printed it. Even if it was 3D-printed as a kit the Spaceship needed a lot of filling and sanding:

Then it was given a couple of coats of spray filler, which revealed that further filler and was needed.

Then it was given a couple of final layers of spray filler, and the last parts added:

Finally some paint to bring it all together:

I'm looking forward to finally deploy these V-miniatures and their landing-craft in an upcoming game soon. Please follow the blog for updates.

For a Few Dollars More - Deleted scenes

When first playing the scenarios from the movie "For a Few Dollars More" and letting the results create the final storyboard, there was unfortunately some footage and scenes which was removed from the "Storyboarder's Cut" version. I regret that so much as there was scenarios from the movie I wanted to play to see how they turned out. Therefore I I played those scenes added the Deleted scenes:

On the way to rob the bank in Santa Cruz

As a diversion maneuver Indio sends 3 gang members and Manco to rob the bank i Santa Cruz, while Indio and the rest of his gang robs the bank in El Paso. Manco has no intention robbing the bank in Santa Cruz...

...and fans 3 shots rapidly on the outlaws...

...and are only hitting 2 of them. The third shoots back at Manco...

...and Misses (!)
Manco does not, and this was a success for Manco even being shot back at.

Wild challenges Mortimer to a duel

When Wild - The Hunchback recognizes Colonel Mortimer in the cantina, he seeks revenge for being insulted by Mortimer in El Paso earlier and challenges him to a duel...

-He shouldn't have. Facing the best shot in the Carolinas, The Hunchback is chanceless.
Another success for Mortimer.

The Final Duel

Mortimer eventually faces Indio in a final duel. Mortimer has lost his gun on the ground and Indio think he has the upper hand in this duel. -Until Manco arrives and add to the favor for Mortimer by lending him his gun:

And Mortimer draw and shoot slightly faster than Indio (needed a re-roll) and guns him down.

The deleted scenes played in these scenarios turned out more the way they did in Sergio Leone's final version of this movie, and our heroes probably lived happily ever after....

Unless Manco accepts Mortimer's invitation to a partnership 'next time'....

-Time will show.

For a Few Dollars More - The Storyboarder's Cut

What would the movie 'For a Few Dollars More' look like and how would the story go if the Storyboard was to be influenced and created based upon the results of a tabletop (war-) game where the scenario was based upon the original script??

 

Starring:

Our Hero:

His Competitor:

The Bad Guy:

-And the rest are just the background actors:

Directed by: 

The storyboard is directed by the ruleset 'Once Upon a Dice in the West' (3rd Edition) with some minor modifications. Being a classic spaghetti western I think the heroes needs another +1 'hero-point' for shooting and fighting H2H than just being a 'Gunfighter'. The main villain are just treated as a 'Gunfighter' though. Bad-Guys usually dies when being hit in the movies, except for the main character villain, so no wounds for 'bad guys' except for the main villain in this game. Besides I think the heroes should get to activate first in those scenes and scenarios from the movie where they actually acts first. It seems like the Good-Guys gets a lots of benefits in this game, but they are fewer and are facing a large number of outlaws. -Besides they usually does in these movies anyway.

Location: 

Dinner Tabletop Movie Ranch and False Front Town (wifey was away this week)

Screenplay: 

The game are played and the Storyboard created through several chronological small key scenes and scenarios from the original movie, where the outcome in an earlier scene/scenario will influence the next.

Music: 

By Morricone of course. Open this YT-clip in a new tab and let it play in the background on your PC for the right ambience, while reading about how I played 'For a Few Dollars More' key-scene by key-scene as long as possible and how it evolved... 

Chapter I - Mortimer's Bounty Hunting  in Tucumcari

Colonel Mortimer halts the train and did get off in Tucumcary:

Guy Callaway tries to run away...

...but Mortimer place a bullet in the horse and stops the fugitive. 

Callaway starts shooting and actually mange to daze Mortimer for rest of the turn...

...-but as Mortimer activates first in next turn, he just finish Callaway off. A success for Mortimer except for he got dazed and almost hit by the murderer.

Chapter II - Manco's Bounty Hunting in White Rock

Meanwhile Manco are in White Rock looking for Baby (Red) Cavanagh...

-And finds him in the local saloon. This game doesen't go Cavanagh's way...

...and they get into a fistfight for 2 turns.

When our hero gets the upper hand in the fight, he are interrupted by friends of Cavanaugh.

Manco turns and fierce fanning his gun against the newly arrived gunmen...

...hitting just 2 of them. The last of them shot back at Manco...

...and missed (!). This gave Manco an opportunity to finally finnish him off as he activated first the next turn.  

Cavanagh tries to regain the initiative and fire his gun at Manco...

...and misses. Manco did not. This was a success for Manco, but as he didn't hit with all his shots he got fired upon twice. Luckily they missed.

Chapter III - Indio's escape

Meanwhile a rescue party approaches the jail to free their leader, Indio...

The first guard are taken by surprise...

To sneak upon the second prison-guard, the badguys tries to divert him, but he must have heard them coming and gets into a hand to hand fight with one og the badguys and manage to kill him...

The strength is in the number, and the diversion shoots the prison-guard in the back.

Finally finding Indio in his prison-cell.

They really need to fight their wayout of the jail again.

When almost outside of the jail Indio's gang are caught in a firefight with 3 guards, and the guards manage to kill another member of Indio's gang.

But the Villains finally manage to finish of the rest of the guards. They let one of them live as a witness. The freeing was successful, but the gang lost two members doing so.

Chapter IV - Indio's revenge

Indio feels courageous and seeks revenge on the bounty hunter who got him arrested.

Famous last words (!) Tomaso actually manage to draw and hit first and kills Indio in the duel initiated by Indio in the first place.

This surprises the rest of Indio's gang, and off course they opens fire and shoots Tomaso on the spot.

End Credits:

With the suggested storyboard, this version of For a Few Dollars More would be finished after just 27 minutes on the silver screen. Our main villain got killed before he managed to tell the rest of his gang his master plan involving the bank of El Paso, so there would be no further backstory to this film. And there would be no reason left for the bounty hunters to hunt him down either.

-And that's too bad actually as there were scenes that never got realized in this 'storyboard'. Personally I would liked to have played the now deleted scenes where Manco fights 3 members of the gang before the planned robbery of the bank in Santa Cruz, where Mortimer duells Wild and the final scene we never got to see in this cut:

On the other hand, I don't think this version of the movie would have been the success Sergio Leone actually made with his own storyboard. But this game was good fun game though. 

A July Workbench update - Concluding some miniatures, and starting some new ones

I'm really impressed when I see fellow bloggers and wargamers just paints a lot of miniatures in a short time. Due to nice weather and 3 garden railway running sessions within a week, my recent painting projects has actually taken quite long time to finish. Here follows some updates on my Airfix Cowboy knock-off since my last blog-post. Here they have finally got their basic colors. I've taken 'liberties' with the painting scheme, but perhaps you can see where I got the inspiration from?

I think they looks good this way, but I prefer to give them a 'dirty - brown wash', and bring out the details with drybrushing in lighter colors. The details were not so crisp on these knock offs. I also added sand to the bases.

Then they're sealed with another coat of ModPodge as this will give them a though surface which alow handling during games without the paint coming off again.

Even if the ModPodge is flat I prefer to give my miniatures an even more 'dead flat' looking, so I give them an overspray of flat varnish.

When the final layer of flat varnish dries, I think they are about done...

Click on image for larger photo

I think these miniatures are ready to see some action on the tabletop now. I like my home brewed 'Wild West' rules, but perhaps any of you recommend some other free, fast and easy to play 'Old west' rules as well?

More Knock-offs

A while ago I fond some really cheap Army Men in my local toy store. In the blogpost I asked if someone knew the origin of these knock-offs? - I found an answer to that on an excellent (new?) Army Men website and blog called Toy Soldier Central. The 54mm soldiers which looked like WW2 paratroopers, was originally knock-offs of Forces of Valor's WW2 82nd Airborne miniatures:

This photo is from Toy Soldier Central 

This made me think if the more modern Army Men in the same bag perhaps was Forces of Valor knock-offs as well, and probably they are:

So, what's next?

I've had a bucket of 'The Force' 'Starship Troopers'-looking  space marines for years and haven't quite decided what to use them for. Now I've finally got around to start painting a handful of them for an upcoming wargame.  I really hope that I'll not use 'a billion years' to paint these miniatures as well. 

I don't think a bayonet is needed on a blaster rifle, so I removed it. I also added visors to their helmets.

Another thing hitting the workbench this month is this 3D-printed model:

Even if they are printed as 'kits', the fit are usually far from perfect. In this case sanding was needed...

...followed by a good portion of filler.

I'm excited to see how this turns out.

Now I'm eager to use my recently finished 'Cowboys' in a game soon. Please stay tuned for updates.