Painting the Expanse

Of course with a rush of enthusiasm I have pushed aside some commission work and started bashing on with my Firefly in the Expanse project.

My friend at work who has been saving me the CNC tool boxes was asking me what I was doing with them, so that spurred me last weekend to start some cutting and gluing.

The big double wide is a store/brothel/admin center/community center (maybe all 4, I'm not going to judge). The small building is a workshop surrounded by piles of junk and barrels of printer matrix or chemicals.

While the epoxy was setting I decided to start painting figures too and try out some techniques. I black spray primed the buildings on Monday after work, promptly dropping them causing some damage that needed repair! During the week was painting more figures, painting the buildings and I started the ship's launch too.

Since the buildings are converted shipping containers I printed off some corporate logos and made stencils, deliberately positioning them underneath/behind the added windows and roof thingies. Assorted old warning labels are on the ends at the big doors. I also painted anything retrofitted to the shipping container in a a light grey so it will stand out as something not original to the structure.

Blue Sun corporation

Weyland Corp

Checking around the workshop

Launch

back of workshop

The bases of the buildings haven't been painted yet. But I want the glue to have 24 hours to dry.

The RAFM figures come with nice round bases, so adding additional washers or MDF bases isn't really necessary.

I should add some more signage methinks. Perhaps in a mix of English, Hindi and Chinese or Russian. But I'll have to hand paint that as my printer is not of high enough resolution to do crisp lettering that small.

What Colour is Your Spacesuit?

RAFM ran a 40% off sale a month ago so I jumped on it and ordered the first figures for what I'm thinking of as my "Firefly meets some Dark Matter in the Expanse" project. They arrived the day after the Long Weekend, but up until today all my time has been taken up with overtime or cadet administration and bureaucracy.

I got two packs each of 7012 and 7022 who are in space suits. Plus one each of the crewmen, pirates, space vixens (!) and guerrillas to be colonists, plucky free roaming ship's crew, rebels, terrorists or gangsters. So there's a good mix of male and female unarmed, wielding knives, armed with pistols and a few with shotguns. Two packs of the planetary militia (pack #7023) will provide the local corporate security contractors. I also ordered one of these:

If I take the gun off it can be a nice ship's launch. Light grey with a broad red stripe around the aft end.

Looking at their 28mm SF stuff I noticed a nice drone to back up the Security guys.
Although I guess it won't work in a vacuum. But the hallways in the colony will be big.

Two of RAFM's Imp APCs rounded out the order.



So now I"m pondering spacesuits. I'm thinking the space suited guys will be rebels/angry miners and security wonks rather than regular military. And because Major Matt Mason was a favourite toy as a child of the 70s, I'm thinking colours:

 Or maybe light grey with coloured insets/details.

One of the chaps on the CNC mills at work has been scrupulously saving for me the nifty plastic boxes that the cutting tools come in. I have big ones to make colonist buildings and smaller ones for containers in the planned warehouse.

Now to get cutting and painting!

Siege Lines

I'd always thought of gabions as being an 18th and 19th century thing. But really, basket weaving is an old skill so I wasn't all that surprised to learn that gabions were used at least as far back as the Middle Ages.

If we found a carving showing Romans using gabions during a siege I wouldn't be surprised either. They were quite familiar with using baskets to move dirt, so it'd be the next logical step to make bigger baskets and stack them up to protect you from enemy arrows.

The wooden bases I got at Michael's a few weeks ago prompted me to finish up the Renedra gabion set I got at Hotlead. So I fixed them to bases, making two gun positions and three sets of wall to set around bigger mantlets. For the gun positions I closed the gap with a rough box made from match sticks and coffee stirrers. The inside of the box got a chunk of foam to fill it and then covered with sand.

The large mantlets are from a children's toy. The  awkward onager was cut off and the dorky shield got covered in more coffee stirrer planks.

Other mantlets are from the old RAFM Siege Equipment line, some resin cast hide pavises that I got from somewhere and more scratch built from popsicle sticks.

RAFM swinging mantlets with RAFM large bombard

RAFM mantlets

Resin pavises

Popsicle stick mantlets

Now I just need a better castle to lay siege too. Nothing too big, since I don't see the siege itself as a game, but all the actions around it; sorties, foraging expeditions, relief attempts etc. which could all be played out with Lion/Dragon Rampant.