Thursday, June 28, 2018

The Marines Have Landed!

Finally.
The first contingent decided that a South African safari was in order. But Jon at Ground Zero Games quickly dispatched another box who hit my work bench in 7 days.
I've got two forces. One I'm thinking of as my Martian Marine Force and the smaller as the UNMC.
For the Martian Marines I chose GZG Outer Rim Coalition troops. I think they look closest to the suits in The Expanse. 2 packs of riflemen and a pack with squad automatic weapons gives me 24 marines in 8 fireteams. Each 8 figure pack has 4 different sculpt giving you quite a lot of variety. The castings were all very clean and minimal filing or trimming was required. I also like their big round bases.
Although the detail on the SAWs is so subtle that I'll have to mark bases so we know who  the big shooters are.

Supporting them are 18 Marines in heavy power armour. I used the Japanese power armour sculpt.
The arms and jump packs are separate.  For every three suits you have the option to do one with a heavy rotary barreled cannon.
The arms being separate allows some variety in pose as well.
Also in support are 3 gun drones. I will probably paint them fairly neutral so either side can use them. But I'm also thinking adding the sensor drones or pack of grav drones would make cool Patrol Markers or just recce assets.

For armoured support I got thinking that instead of a tank, something like a small shuttle or work pod with missiles and a rail gun would do the job better. The alien Kra'vak range has just the thing in their Strike Skimmer. The sharp, angular Kra'Vak design aesthetic makes me think it looks armoured up and utilizing stealth tech or something.

For the UNMC (United Nations Marine Corps), I picked the slightly older tech looking US Marine troops from GZGs intriguing Moongrunt range. These come in packs of 6. Two packs of riflemen and one pack of heavy support weaons giving me 18 men in 6 fireteams. The large life support backpacks are separate castings.
The riflemen all have automatic rifles with UGLs which is cool. But again the heavy support weapons are pretty subtle and I'll  need to mark the bases.


To support them I chose a pack of the ESU "Black Bear" power armour. Again one figure in 3 can have a big support weapon.

To round things out and look busy on the landing pad etc. I got a pack of Industrial Powered Work Suits. These are heavy vac suits, as big as power armour but the sets of arms come with a tool box, some kind of welding/cutting/drilling tool and pairs of cargo handling clamps. I'm sure they'll look great in dirty safety orange.

We'll see how this does for me. Later, adding some Command to the Martians and perhaps some more support weapon drones might be an option or they have kinda cool jet bikes. But since I'm imagining fighting in fairly low gravity, indirect fire weapons don't seem like an option.

1 comment:

  1. Very nice! I must get my GZG figures out for a game sometime.

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