Sunday 24 January 2016

Manchester Guard Weapons Team

Here are some photos of the Guard's HMG, probably the single most potent weapon on our future battlefield (unless you count mammoths...)



Sunday 17 January 2016

Manchester Guard Infantry

I was going to post some background for the City of Manchester, as it exists in our game-world, with this post, but it's late and I've got to get up early tomorrow so, for now, here are some pictures of the completed Manchester infantry.


I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out in the end. Granted they are the drabbest forces I have ever painted, including my 15mm paras in camo! They don't really scream post apocalyptic either, but that's ok as again, Manchester is supposed to be a visionary re-inventor city state. They have the textile industry to clothe their troops identically and the logistical capacity to standardize their weaponry.


In order to escape the curse of true uniformity, I tried to mix headgear up a little, adding WWII helmets, and - as shown in the forefront in the photo above - a greenstuff sculpted helmet.


I tried adding a little colour in the bases as I've been experimenting wit meadow flowers. They are a bitch to get stuck down, and the solitary bloom I put on the Highland Spring Water Traders has already fallen off. I'm probably applying them incorrectly.


The miniature above will serve as an NCO and probably my command figure for the game, unless I can find the time to put some more HQ figures together.


Wednesday 13 January 2016

Left for Lead 2: Electric Boogaloo


Here's a photo of the final (entirely) unpainted unit for my forces.

Something tell me they're going to be a royal pain in the ass... It's nagging me...

I can't believe I let Xander bully me into adding mounted forces to the game, and then into adding them to my force, and then giving me some cavalry...

Seriously though, I hate painting animals, although I've found a great - but extremely involved - tutorial for painting horses.

Tuesday 12 January 2016

Quick Update - Highland Spring Traders Banner Bearer


The banner is at a slight angle due to the fact that I don't want to affix it for travelling purposes.

I'm thinking of ageing the flag, maybe by putting it in some old tea? Suggestions on the back of a postcard.

Sunday 10 January 2016

Manchester Guard Veterans

More regular that Thing A Week, it's another squad of troops from the anti-nomad coalition!

The men below are the elite of the Manchester Guard, the small professional army created to defend the City of Manchester from external threats. Have some pics:

From the front

From behind

I'm actually very pleased with the way they turned out. At first, I thought the squares on their cloaks were going to drive me insane, but they seem to have paid off.

These men are drawn from among the longer serving members of the "Mud and Bloods" (I'll provide fluff for both Manchester and the Guards soon enough) and keep many of their operating procedures and weapons from before "the reorganisation".

These men are armed with SMG's, while their sergeant has an assault rifle. One of them carries a Rocket Launcher, Single Shot, Disposable, Mammoth, For the purpose of hunting.

Beneath their cloaks they are wearing the "new" uniform of the Manchester Guard. Persistent legend has it that their cloaks are made by, or bought with the last pennies of their wives or sweethearts, and there is even a song to this end, however, this is mostly untrue. While they provide their own cloaks, as with all non-standard issue equipment, they are usually not bought by doomed lovers. Veteran troops are extremely possessive of their signature look, and many regular soldier has got the boot in when innocently trying to emulate them.

While they are the veterans of many battles with raider groups and smaller settlements, they have never faced a foe as large, as experienced or as cohesive as the Karns horde.

Saturday 2 January 2016

Left for Lead


Just a quick picture of the Manchester "line infantry" for lack of a better word.

They're made of half Warlord Commando! half Redoubt enterprises ACW dismounted cavalry. I hope once they're done that they will look like the sort of troops a pre-industrial but wealthy post-apocalyptic city might be able to put together.

I also hope once they're painted that they wont look like:
  • Normal ACW troops
  • Normal British or German WWII troops
  • A bunch of clowns
You cant see them in this picture, but a couple are carrying swords (including the Leadership 0 officer, front right) and the one at the rear right has a motorcycle helmet greenstuffed onto him. I decided quite early that uniformity would be the true dead of the post apocalyptic aesthetic, so while these men are the standing, standardised infantry of a city state, they are still working with post-apocalytic resources and have brought some of their own equipment to the fight.

To be honest, I'm pinning a lot on the paint job. The manner in which I chose to produce they was expensive, time consuming and I cut the tips of my fingers to shreds in the process.

Friday 1 January 2016

Highland Spring Water Clansmen

Happy New Year readers! While most of my time has been hoovered up by various parties and the 150 pages of prereading that I need to do for my next module, all my spare time is now being dedicated to the ATR project and I can happily report that I have my first unit completed, with the other now completely built and awaiting paint.

Here are some pictures of the Highland Spring Water Clan, otherwise known as the Highland Spring Tranders.

Basic Musketeers
The standard bearer - front and centre - still has to have his banner added. I've made the flag, I just need to get it to a printer. As it turns out, I am simply not good enough to paint intricate design.

Some more colourful figures
The second photo contains some of the "characters" of the group. At the far left is the squads LMG gunner and to his right, with the ornament on his turban is the squads 0 Leadership leader. The figure behind and between the two is the NCO for the Clan detachment.

The Highland Spring Water Clan came together when I envisioned a more post-nuclear setting for our game. They were pulling double duty as a stand in for Clean Water Cartel/Generic civilised wastelanders for Dariwns World. As the setting for our game become more unspecified, generic human die-back their mode of dress became rather odd, but I do have an in-story handwave for that.

In all honesty, I probably should have given these guys a desert wasteland basing, rather than a generic wasteland basing.

Ahem

The Highland Spring Water Clan

Soon after The Fall, the families of the Highland Spring group took refuge at their bottling plant in the Brecon Beacons National Park. The isolated location afforded safety and an abundance of game. It soon came to their attention that there were plenty of concentrations of people without access to sufficient quantities of clean drinking water. Soon they were back in business producing and transporting bottled water. As people learned to deal with the new realities of the world, the bottom quickly fell out of the water market, but by then, the Highland Spring Traders had an established network of contacts and clients and began to trade in other commodities.

Their idiosyncratic mode of dress was established early in their history. During a period they refer to as "The Burning Years" they came to believe that increased solar activity was a major threat - due to whatever reason, global warming, use of nuclear weapons in other parts of the world - and began to dress accordingly. They claim that this threat has now passed, but by then the new style of dress had become cultural. In reality, this paranoia was provoked by a series of nasty sunburns suffered by their children during an unusually cloudless summer in the higher altitudes of the Welsh Mountains.

Membership of the Highland Spring Water Clan is restricted to family members, thus the Clan part of their name. Everyone currently in the Clan is related, at least by marriage to the original families who took shelter in the bottling plant. This proved problematic during their initial expansion as manpower was constantly stretched and resulted in a rash of adult adoptions, arranged marriages and rumoured bride and groom kidnappings. Now the Clan's presence has stabilised, reaching from Manchester to London.

Their northern interests have been severely damaged by the presence of the marauding Northern Nomads and it was the Highland Spring Water Clan that first truly realised the threat posed by these new, powerful raiders, and proposed the idea of a multi faction coalition to the Mayor of Manchester. While they incessantly promote the coalition as a cosmopolitan group, the majority of the forces involved belong to Manchester, with the Clan itself providing a distant second. Unfortunately, the Clans warriors are little more than caravan guards and have never fought anything like a pitched battle. They are desperately unready to face the seasoned raiders of the Karns forces.