In which our hero remembers what fiction is

So, we like to joke that I am essentially illiterate. Not that I can't read, or that I don't, because I actually do read quite a lot. Rather it is The case that I partake of nothing resembling literature. For what it's worth, I simply am more compelled by non-fiction - and as a science fanboy you can be sure to find me daily with something along the lines of Pinker, Dawkins, or Diamond queued up on my Kindle.

This, however, was not always my sorry state of affairs. Long ago, when I was far less obsessed with reality, I was an equally-voracious sci-fi reader. The point of all of this biographical grandstanding being that one of the books I read as a teenager was a collection of David Drake's Hammer's Slammers short stories.

Turns out that all these years later, the Slammers are a pretty well-served gaming property, with the glossy new edition of Hammer's Slammers: The Crucible at it's heart.

To be honest, it took me a long time to finally pull the trigger on picking these rules up. Despite a very favorable review on Meeples and Miniatures, lots of positive chatter on TMP, and a website with some of the best eyecandy around, the final decision to buy was not easy.

First off, I just wasn't sure what kind of game was hiding in that book. Reviews typically lingered on how beautiful the book is, how much Slammers world background they included, but other than some vague positives, actual discussion of the game mechanics was nearly impossible to find.

This uncertainty, combined with the high price, in the neighborhood of fifty dollars, left me pretty hesitant to buy.

Eventually, though, I could resist no longer.

And so, book in hand, I can say that it's a pretty good armor-on-armor game, and the book itself is straight up tank porn.

I can see why few reviewers can get too far past the book's aesthetics. The full color pages are jammed with photos and illustrations. Pretty much every page has something to stare lustfully at. The models photographed for the book are all big 28mm pieces, most painted by Kevin Dallimore, who is far too talented, and are shot among some wonderful scenics. The eye candy in this thing stands up with any of the biggest names in the mini biz, and surpasses many. The thing can almost pass for a coffee table book.

And lest I be guilty of penning another drooling review with no mention of mechanics, it has a pretty fun game mixed in with the pretty pictures.

First off, know what you getting. Crucible is a light, tank-on-tank game, and unapologetically so. It is not a deeply technical armor sim with lots of penetration charts nor is it a game that is rooted in the lessons of contemporary conflicts. The Drake stories are rooted in cold war-era conflicts recast in iridium hovertanks, and this game has that feel. This is a game about blowers, and the MBT's are the kings of the table, swift, deadly, and stout. All of which make for a game that is flat-out fun, uncomplicated, and purposeful.

The mechanics are slim and (usually) efficient. Units are activated in detachments, of which a player will control one or more of, depending on the game size, and the order is determined each turn by a combination of base leadership added to a die roll.

Once order is sorted, players roll again to see how many command points the active detachment has for the turn. These are mainly used for movement and are modified by leader quality and casualties. I like this mechanic, as it adds some random chaos to the way battles unfold as a point-starved or poor leader, or a hot streak can have a real effect on how units scurry about the table. A good commander with a small detachment, though, will usually have little pressure to deal with, though, which is probably accurate, but can be less fun (all the more reason to avoid the superhuman fluff character optional rules).

After the tanks have rolled around a bit, it's time to blow something up. For a game that is otherwise very light and abstract, the four-step shooting process does feel a bit drawn out. Still, compared to the calculus exams buried in many armor games, it's easy fare that builds dramatically to completion rather than getting mired in figures and cross-referencing.

After everyone has wrapped-up direct fire and the blowers have left smoking piles of molten goo all around them, missiles and indirect fire are resolved, troops roll to remove suppression and so forth and then the whole process starts back up from the top, to under-describe the whole thing, but still say more than I usually find, which makes this a public service of sorts.

Generally, there's just enough flavor and detail to just barely miss the beer & pretzels label, but not so much detail to cast the game in the simulationist mold either. It's fun, flows reasonably well, and gives treadheads the kind of outcomes they probably wanted even if they didn't get to argue about points of fiddly minutia while doing so.

Ultimately, though, the game does need to thoughtfully brought to the table. While there are points, this is not an army-list, balanced force game. Not all tanks are created equally - the front three-quarters of the blowers are almost impervious to anything below their lofty station, and combat cars can spend all night rattling small arms fire off one another. Players need to be sure the scenario design and force composition are in place to produce an enjoyable game - a bring'n'battle could be ugly.

I doubt I will suddenly redirect my mini buying to include forces specifically from the Drake universe, but there is little other than the effort of hacking some unit cards between my current collection and these rules. The sample units are fairly comprehensive and a fair template can be found for most. I do wish there was a true pointing system available, both to aid in integrating non-Slammers miniatures and for balancing pickup games, but I wouldn't be shocked to see something of the sort appear in the community at some point either.

In the end, waiting seems to have been pointless. I like gaming tanks, I like light game mechanics, and I like drool-worthy pictures. When you get all three, seems to have been worth the money afterall. This is a game I will play a lot.

In which our hero receives packages from far and wide

Ok, I have had more than a few orders pop up over the last two weeks, so I am going to give some rapid-fire reviews here just to get them out. Might not be any pics, but I am not all that fond of the bare metal photos anyway to be honest, and was mulling over doing less of those anyway - it's rare my contribution is better than what's on the originators' websites after all.

Anyway...

I got in a pretty good-sized order from Khurasan with a variety of things in it. First, I got three of the big Felid transports. I am actually going to use these are assault transports for the GZG (space ork) alien mercs. The big trucks have an orky vibe anyway, and once I get them loaded doen with random stowage and a nice rusty paintjob they'll be absolutely perfect.

I got some Felids too, despite repurposing their designated vehicles. I am going to be using the Khurasan Cafaretta transports and their gun carriage cousins for the Felids. The Felid minis themselves are really nice. A bit on the bigger side, but that fits their concept very well, and they're definitely not anywhere near out of scale. I might have to snip some bases to get them on the 5/8" washers I've been using for infantry, though. The poses are what I like - they're not static, but also not frozen in some awkward pose. The armor is excellent, I like the angular armor, something you don't see all the time.

As for the Cafaretta series vehicles, these things are among my favorite scifi designs. I love the idea of a dual-mode hover transport, still able to use wheels for fuel savings and practicality, but launching into lift mode for fast attack above terrain complications. Makes for a very flexible force. The design itself is a bit derivative of the Aliens dropship, but that's not a bad thing. All in all, the abundance of rivets and a set of really nice lines makes it just look fantastic. I picked up the transports pretty early in my buying process and it took me a little while to settle on just which infantry force would get to use them, but there was never a point at which they were not going to figure into my plans. With the recent release of the Hunter gun carriage variants, I am even relieved of the uncertainty of what additional vehicles I would need to flesh out a full force. The Hunters' trio of armaments cover a variety of roles and provide a full set of options for a light vehicle force. The aspect of the new hunters I do find confusing, however, is the way that Khurasan has decided to package them. The kit includes all three payloads, but only one mounting bracket. You can, however, buy additional mounting brackets for a buck. Where this strikes me as odd is that it is a waste of metal and certainly is costing both Khurasan and the buyer more in the process. If you want the buyer to be able to build a swappable kit, include extra cradles. If you expect them to only build one, sell the vehicle with a single payload and make the payload+bracket an optional purchase. It just seems like the least efficient option.

Not done with Khurasan yet, I also went in for a Space Demon (Giger Alien)  force, or the start of one anyway. I still need to sort out thee guys from a gaming standpoint - there's not a very good army list for them in ASQL, as hive mind isn't quite right and none of the others are even close - but they're just too neat and too ubiquitous in the genre to pass up for long. I really like the Prince models, with their back crests and the hammerheads are a nice addition to the xenomorph concept. I need to come up with a non-black paint scheme, though, The canonical approach is so redundant at this point. I've seen the models painted red to good effect. I am thinking of a sepia/chestnut over salmon scheme right now, sort of an extreme fleshtone.

Needing some distinctly-scifi primitives to fill out some ASQL armies, I ordered in a few dozen Micropanzer Swarm Alien packs. These are well-intentioned figures. Unmistakably alien, with a definite hat-tip to District 9's extraterrestrials among others, they're exactly what I wanted for ASQL - primitive troops that can't be mistaken for figures poached from a fantasy line. They won't harsh your scifi buzz. The figures themselves, though excellent in concept have a couple of blemishes. First, the legs are really fragile. While the spindly appearance makes the concept work, the thin joints can bend and break much to easily. While I didn't get any broken ones in my order, I did manage to break a couple while shoving some bent ones into place. It's fixable, but you are going to have to go easy on these guys. They're also kind of big. For whatever reason, I wanted them to be a bit diminutive rather than imposing. That's not Micropanzer's fault, just my aesthetic. Still, as melee troops, a bit of hulking isn't a bad thing. I figure on painting them up a bit like cockroaches and sending them to war as the cheap cannonfodder in front of the space orc mercs as an ASQL Alien Imperial army.

The third shipment (or third and fourth, actually) is a force I wasn't really planning to do until I saw some models I couldn't resist - the Heavy Gear Trooper and Recon Drones. There is just something irresistible about them. I wasn't sure when I ordered them if they would be big enough to pass as a vehicle of some sort, but was not above using them as droids if not. Envisioning an Eastern Bloc industrial aesthetic, and knowing that if they could pass as vehicles I would need some really short drivers, I chose to mate these with the Rebel Minis Sons of Thunder. Together these form the core of a machine cult or industrial combine alien force, and with some green-grey paint accented with red stripes here and there should look very nice together. Once I got the metal in-hand, I found the drones to be right at the very edge of being plausibly driven by a Son of Thunder pilot, but it is not out of the question. A moot point in the end, however, as I have more or less decided that these will be a very nice option for an ASQL Mechanical army - the squat infantry being sufficiently robotic in character and fully-augmented to be indistinguishable from an all-machine force. As an excuse to get the HG drones, this works fine. I do, however, still need to sort out some more assets for the army, or else they will be relegated to being either only usable for small games or only having light units and infantry. I think I can make something out of the Heavy Gear Naga Strider, with a sculpted nose that more closely matches the tall bubble motif of the drones, this should serve well as a heavy mecha/MBT unit, albeit an expensive one.

I have way too much stuff all ready.

But there's never enough, is there?

I already have another core army incoming from GZG, and want to add some more primitives in the form of Khurasan Plutonians and some Hydra Minis plant people. On top of that I really want to build a pharaonic alien army based around Critical Mass Games' Protolenes, Old Crow's Alien armor, and GZG's not-Stargate aliens. And buy more of everything, and a pony. And, and, and.

I have a problem.

In which our hero receives a package from Old Crow

So, I was out of town for a few days and came home to find a few packages piled up on the doorstep. After marveling at the neighborhood kids' lack of ambition, I set to the task of cracking them open.

First up was the parcel from Old Crow.

I had placed an exploratory order for some vehicles that I thought would compliment my Rebel Minis Titan Marines (the jackbooted Siedler Landwehr as they are known locally). The Old Crow Dragoon halftrack and Goanna scout both echo the Sd Kfz transports and armored cars of WWII, and evoke just the right vibe for my despicable, predictable, and derivative bad guy army.

Here's the Goanna. It's actually a little bigger than I expected, and altogether cool.

The models themselves are fantastic. Clean casts in a very nice resin, with very few bubbles or pits to deal with. Surface details are sharp and the pieces have a definite and clear artistic direction.

Here's the Dragoon as parts.

And a shot of it assembled, which took all of five minutes. The bits fit together perfectly.

I do need to figure out how I am going to arm the Goannas. They don't come with any weapons, but do have plenty of roof deck for adding some sort of turret. I am going to have to start pawing around and see if I can get any Sd Kfz machine gun turrets separate from the rest of the model, as these would be perfect. Failing that, I may just kitbash something from my growing pool of bits, but they deserve a finishing touch that's at least up to the standard of the rest of the model. I may do some sort of fixed-forward gun blister on the hood instead of a turret to keep them sleek, or skip the obvious armaments all together and keep them as-is. Experiments are in order.

Now I just need to find some more vehicle that fit the vibe. I'm yet to stumble upon any near future tanks that really scream 'Panzer III knockoff,' nor can I find any good Stug standins. Old Crow's Sabre isn't terribly far off, though it's still more Abrams than Panther. I am also tossing around the idea of incorporating some Gear Krieg walkers into the force.

In which our hero judges books by their covers

So, now that I have minis, I need a game to play, or three.

While the generic nature of the 15mm SciFi miniatures scene has the advantage of being liberated from specific systems and restrictions, an embarrassment of freedom is the difficulty in settling on a set of rules.

But after much intertubes and skimming books, I seem to have narrowed the field down to three games that I will probably actually bother playing.

The first set of rules I splashed for was the .pdf pre-release of Tomorrow's War from Ambush Alley Games. This game gets great press and enthusiastic reviews everywhere, thanks mainly to the near-universal fondness for AAG's previous titles, Ambush Alley (rules for contemporary asymmetrical fights), and Force on Force (small, symmetrical fights anywhere in the last century or so). I had also heard the creators interviewed on the Meeples and Miniatures podcast (I am addicted to podcasts, listening to Stuff You Should Know as I type this), and I liked their vibe.

All of which is to justify spending 20 bucks on a .pdf file. Or two actually since I got the bundle with TW and FoF, as the pre-release version on TW is a bolt-on rather than a full game.

Still, I expected a great game, and a great game is worth it, and to be honest, with an iPad, a .pdf rulebook isn't bad.

So, is it a great game? Yeah, it is, but I won't play it a lot.

To explain, I typically prefer games with high levels of abstraction, very simple mechanics, and a firm tilt toward the game side of the game:simulation continuum. Not that I don't enjoy a good realistic game too, but I am for better or worse a member of the beer & pretzels crowd when I am playing with other people and looking for something without a deep tactical detail when playing solo.

TW is a fairly detailed, reality-grounded game. The mechanic are excellent and interesting, but nine times out of ten, it just isn't the game I want to play, which is entirely my fault, because it is a very good game and I look forward to enjoying it when it is the game I want to play. FoF has definitely made a return to WWII gaming more possible in the future, given how much I disliked Flames of War and how much better FoF would be for the period, and will definitely be in the mix for any game I play set in the 20th century.

As a fistfull of dice aficionado, I really like the core mechanic of TW/FoF, which boils down to the attacker and defender rolling a dice for each model in the fight and matching up results. Combined with the use of multiple types of die for different quality troops (d6, d8, etc) this basic system is both surprisingly effective and just plain fun. The tendency of firefights to degenerate into confusing webs of reaction fire is probably my one real complaint with the game - while this system is at the heart of the realistic outcome of the game, it can be a bit much on a crowded table and is not fun to negotiate in solo play in particular, where some of the 'F you' charm of reaction fire is lost.

The next candidate was 15mm.co.uk's Alien Squad Leader. A game with massed basing, claiming to mix the best of DBA and Warmaster and espousing a pulp ethic - pretty much catnip to Our Hero. And stylized abstraction is something ASL delivers on, along with a set of excellent army lists, and a good bit of unapologetic fun.

As mechanics go, the movement, spotting, and shooting systems are all pretty standard fare. The mechanical highlight for me is a command system reminiscent of Warmaster, which is still one of my favorite game mechanics ever. Driving the game with the command roll mechanic is a good way to inject random chance and tactical foresight simultaneously, and the sudden shortened turn or impossible but critical success enliven the table every time.

While the game mechanics are understated but effective, the heavy lifting of the game's design seems to be in the 14 army lists included in the book. The flavor which isn't overly-developed in the rules to differentiate forces is instead lavished on the force selection guidelines, in their variety of units available as well as their few special rules which are nowhere near as heavy-handed as the force-specific rules in, for instance, Flames of War.

An interesting aspect of these lists which makes ASL look different on the gaming table are the large number of archaic, primitive, and feral units used as auxiliaries and cannon fodder by many of the armies profiled. These options are a welcome change of pace over the ubiquitous Halo-esque troopers that make up the force lists of most games.

As much as this bit of color excites me, there really is a paucity of SciFi-specific primitives and beasts on the market. Historical ranges can yield up lots of colorful troops, as with fantasy ranges obviously, but they will always look like a stand of fantasy elves or zouaves even if you paint their skin blue. Khurassan notably does make a number of pulp and SciFi creatures to fill these roles, and kudos to them for doing so.

The third system I picked up, almost as an impulse buy when ordering ASL, was USEME from 15mm.co.uk. While the handful of reviews of this system (whose name is an acronym for Ultra Simple Engine for Miniatures Engagements) were positive, I was skeptical that a game which was designed to be completely generic and very brief simply wouldn't convey much army character or mechanical novelty. Ultra-basic generic systems are an old standard in gaming, and few are wildly popular, though a handful, like DBA are. Given that the game was about six bucks, I figured it was worth a try anyway.

USEME is pretty much what I expected it to be, and for that reason, or perhaps despite that, it is the game I more likely to use for skirmish games over TW. The mechanics are thin but effective, stylized but not unbalanced, and yield a well-worthwhile game. There is very little to differentiate forces but what is available, chiefly the elan score and varied move rates chosen in initial force construction can yield two forces with core troops that play very differently and can model a number of concepts very well. While a player could simply construct a force that will min-max these option for tactical effect, players with a more purposeful objective can produce a surprisingly specific theme for their force through subtle profile sculpting.

As a long-time evangelist for simple games, USEME is a game I would point to as a success. It produces a fun and fair fight and rewards purposeful force design. Certainly it is not going to be a detailed, gritty, game which integrates many minutia taken as a requisite by many games, but if you want to play a quick, casual game with small-to-medium forces, it is an excellent choice.

In which our hero receives a package from Critical Mass Games

Arriving today we finally get some Critical Mass Games Astagar mercenaries to play with. 

First of all, they're big. These are guys I would not want to have to fight in some crumbling future city. They aren't out-of-scale big, but just imposing figure big. 

While that extra size makes them perfect for my planned fearsome alien raider force, and promises some nice minis to paint and admire, what is also does is make basing a fiddly thing.

The commander and the close-combat brawler are going to mount on my 5/8" washers just fine, the latter will need some slight base trimming to do so, but the three long-based figures have bases that measure pretty much right at 5/8". 

They will mount on the bases, but will look a bit awkward.

So, do I get bigger bases or do I adjust the figures?

If I was doing strictly single-figure-per-base gaming, a 20mm or 25mm base would be no big deal. However, I want to be able to have some multi-figure options available for different rules sets or just to speed up unit moving in others. The two base types I am trying are bases with a magnet and drilled templates.

The magnetic bases are just a wooden base with a magnetic sheet on top, painted similar to the miniatures' basing color. This approach is easy and flexible and would accomodate the 25mm bases well enough.

The drilled template bases look better though, as they can be given the full scenic treatment and look more purposeful. 

My head says magnets, my heart says holes. 

While that nonsense sorts itself out, though, one thing is certain, if I put the Astagar on a 5/8" base somehow, they will be fine either way. I think I will give one squad a try and see what kind of repositioning the tails are capable of. Watch this space for results.

After all of that, I still havn't said much about the minis, and they should be given a chance to be complimented for certain. 

These are nice, well-executed sculpts and are faithfully and cleanly cast in good metal. There is almost no clean-up needed on these at all. The figure mix, with the gauntletted close combat mini and the carbine-armed troops definitely points to these being well-suited to an assault role, and the heavy weapon could be classified as anything from a rocket launcher to a light machinegun or pulse laser. They seem a pretty usable mux, which is good as I am trying to build an army force around a pack of five miniatures.

Given the paucity of variants I am tempted to get out the greenstuff and enhance them a bit, but truth be told, I doubt I need to. While the odd specialist or high commander might be called for, the rank and file should have sufficient variety in poses and utility in represented gear to do the job. 

Another highly-admired delivery I am going to enjoy painting soon. 

In which our hero receives a package from Rebel Minis and is very impressed

Another delivery today, this time a few packs of Rebel Minis' Titan Marines and Titan Marines Heavy Weapons.

Wow.

I loved these figures at the Rebel Minis website. They looked great, but I honestly expected those remarkable pics to have been the result of deceptively good paintwork or pre-production casts. Not a cynical expectation, simply a realistic one given how these things work - manufacturers want the best painting they can get and the first figures we have to get painted before going live with a release are the master proofs. 

But no, these minis are just that good.

They're a good deal, the regular grunts are 21 figures in five poses for $10.95 and the heavy weapon teams are $3.49 for 6 figures, which is two rocket launchers, two snipers, and two heat weapon troops. My only gripe with this allotment, and probably my only gripe with the figures at all, which goes to show you a) how little is wrong with these guys and b) how I can find the down-side of anything is that there isn't an obvious command figure and the mix doesn't part out to squads or fireteams logically without extras or deficits. 

The quality of these figures rivals some of the larger mini-makers out there in crispness and character. Excellent sculpts well-cast. These instantly became my favorite figures in this scale. Now, if only I could figure out how I am going to paint them.

The plan is to use these, as I am sure most people do, as "bad guys" in my space colony conflicts. Together with some Old Crow near-future halftracks they'll make some good stormtrooper types in the pulp neo-fascist vein. That rather unimaginative approach to using them definitely calls out for some grey armor, but grey armor is going to be featureless at a distance. I could go with an Afrika Korps tan, imitating the samples on the Rebel Minis website which I admire so much. I can also try to combine these two, with a brown jumpsuit under grey plates. I think I might try this and see what I think. It's not so terribly derivative of the stereotypical bag guy look that I won't feel like I've differentiated my efforts, but hat-tips the underlying reference well enough to make my gesture clear.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

In which our hero receives a package from Topgun Marketing

Today's unpacking courtesy of Topgun Marketing's Grav APC's.

I ordered four of these sleek little buggers to cart around some sort of aliens, I've not really settled on which ones, but am thinking they might be a good fit for the Critical Mass Games Astagar which I have a thing for. Seems a good fit for some nasty mercenary snakes.

Here's a look at one of the resin hulls plus most of the little metal bits that make up a single kit.

I'm thinking that I will do something geometric with the paint job. The vehicle is all rounded shapes, so something amorphous or similarly rounded will make surface details less distinct. Plus, I already know that angles look good on these grav tanks as it was a hexagon-camo tank squad that really sold me on the models in the first place. 

You can get these vehicles with or without the clusters of circular plating on the hulls. In the designer's description these serve an anti-personnel role, but could just as easily be reactive armor or just passive surface detailing. I decided to go with them because they would give a scale-like look to the tank, which would further boost their usefulness as reptile runabouts. 

I didn't build mine out exactly as intended by the designers. I didn't take to the look of the rocket tubes on the vertical boom after putting it all together. They rode pretty high, and even shortening the boom still left them perched too awkwardly for my taste (which is what it is, admittedly). I think it broke the extreme streamlining of the vehicle too much for my liking. Instead I dropped the boom and mounted the tubes directly on the turret at a jaunty angle that seemed to fit the curvy vibe. 

I like these tanks for two reasons. First, I like them because they look great. They look fast, they look tough, how could you not want some? Mainly though, I like them because they are clearly a labor of love, they're something special to the guys that made them and as a guy who once had a mini line just to get stuff I wanted to play with into the world, I support anyone who managed to pull off that feat as well.

Corresponding with Robert at Topgun it's clear that he's really excited about these. He'll tell you all about the little gizmos on the outside of the textured hull version, send you game stats, pictures of renders and painted tanks. It's not just an impersonal online purchase and a package that pops up a couple of weeks later, it's sharing a hobby and caring a lot about the stuff you make, and that's pretty cool.

And, now that I have a few of these tanks, I'm pretty excited about them too.

In which our hero receives a package from GZG

I came home to find a remarkably heavy little box sitting on the kitchen counter.

Much about this is surprising.

First, that it is here at all. I placed this order with Ground Zero Games only a few days ago, I would have to look back at my emails, but it wad certainly only a week ago at most. They turned this thing around and tossed it over from England fast. I am impressed sirs.

Second, that it is so heavy. I didn't realize that the 15mm Stargrunt vehicles were all-metal. The website displays them in flat colors, which had led me to expect resin casts, but now I see that they were just base coated to show detail better rather than would brightly shining metal bits.

So, having ordered 8 tanks and three dozen infantry, it was a pretty dense block of tin that hit my doorstep. No wonder shipping cost was what it was. I think my lesson here is to only place smaller orders from GZG in the future to save my mailman's back.

And there will be a next time.

let's take a look at the first item I plan to put brush to, one of the Grav IFVs. Here is a look at what constitutes a single kit.

I ordered four of these in a platoon bundle, which with the vehicle kits, four all-metal flight bases, and some extra communications gubbins to stick on the tanks.

The casts are generally very good. The upper hull has some fixable mold lines and some shallow pitting, but the other parts are very crisp. Being a metal kit, and knowing what to expect from spincasting something this big, I was ready for some extra effort in getting everything to fit together, and there was some effort required to get the pegs that position the hull halves to work right, but nothing heroic and I did't feel like there were any gaps or pits that needed to be filled once it was all together, so the production quality is very good (the infantry figures I got, which I will profile later, were very good casts as well).

After assembly, here's an IFV sled (left) and MBT sled (right) as an added bonus.

I really like the assembled tank. It's a shade small to be hauling around six or seven scale-creeped 18mm troops, but not by enough to be incongruous at table height (and no more so than it looks to be the case with most troop carriers, judging from photos I have seen). Still, the design is very cool. I like the grav wings a lot, they seem to be a very well-played interpretation of what early efforts at such a tech would look like, and make the vehicles in this family from GZG very distinctive. It's a nice tech level bridge piece between something like a skirted hovercraft and a far future/alien smooth hull design, giving it a nice niche in a game world. Above the wings, it's a perfectly reasonable fighting vehicle design. Put wheels or treads on it and I would believe there were hundreds of these rolling around some failed state or another today. All in all, an excellent near-future design.

My only worry with this model is what to do with the basing. If I use the included base plate and post, I will definitely cut the post down a lot. Sticking it at full height as GZG does in their catalog would be trouble. The heavy tank would have an impractical center of gravity up there and would fall over constantly. Even mounted on a shortened post to appear to fly just a couple of scale feet off the ground, I fear there may not be a glue strong enough to hold the post in its mountings under the stresses of table use with the substantial weight of the tank itself. I may skip basing altogether and just let it sit on the grav fins. Experiments are in order.

In which our hero receives a package from Khurasan

The first of my 15mm purchases arrived today - including three of the the Federal Army squads from Khurasan Miniatures. 

These guys are a brand new release, and I like them a lot. For $5.99 you get a dozen unique minis, thoughtfully composed to form a typical squad - one fire team with a leader, SAW gunner, grenadier, and two riflemen, a second fire team with a leader, an ATG launcher, loader/spotter, grenadier, and a rifleman plus a squad leader and a medic. This assortment can be used to concoct all sorts of organization combinations, though I'd like to have a second SAW gunner in there (that said, there will be a pretty cheap add-on release soon with normally-armored, as opposed to bikini-clad female troopers which will include an extra gunner which I can use for that purpose).

Here's a photo of one squad set.

The poses are excellent and the sculpting probably was better than it looks in metal, but the castings are a bit rough. There are some slight mold misalignment signs and some surface details, the legs for the most part, have a bit of irregular texturing. It's nothing that painting can't obscure, and is hardly worth the effort of smoothing with a scalpel in cleanup, but I'd have been a bit frustrated with the casts had they been my minis, so I feel for the Khurasan guys on that point. Happened to me too, but hey, those were the best selling minis I ever had, so maybe it's a moot point.

Anyway, and all in all I like these figures a lot. Poses are great, assortment is really practical, price is excellent, shipping time was not unreasonable, and only some mold/casting issues keep them from being perfect. Can't wait to get some paint on them.