The Ion Age Project Update

200 30mm x 30mm square bases arrived just yesterday, some of which I am turning into bases, and testing my idea for the ultimate Ion Age board.

The idea as I outlined in my previous post was to glue the bases to 30mm washers available on the cheap from Wilkinsons and hopefully that will be enough to hold the individual squares to some magnetic craft sheeting which I'm still waiting for. If that fails to work I'll try adding some stronger magnets to the underside of the bases, and if that fails, I'll have to glue them down.

So either way, on to decorating the bases. The tiles for the Ion Age game are mostly concrete blocks, dumpsters, piles of rubble and futuristic vehicles. I've just got theories at the moments but I'm hoping to cast some of the concrete blocks using plaster and a rubber ice cube container. Rubble can then be produced by breaking up some of those blocks, mixing that with cat litter and throwing in bits of sprue and broken match sticks. Dumpsters should be easy enough but I'm not sure how good they'll look, so I'll look into the commercially available options, and finally the futuristic vehicles, possibly the hardest option, but I think I've found at least something:
http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=217_218_42&products_id=2742

I'll check back after the magnetic sheets arrive and I've done some tests.

Thanks for stopping by!
WGP

Ion Age Touch Ups

So getting going on the project I posted about yesterday, I decided to touch up the figures I already had. Here's what I had already:

A pretty basic, kind of dull paint job. And after a little while of working at it I came up with this:

I'm migrating them from the plastic bases to washers, but aside from that I've gone with blue trousers with a yellow stripe down the outside of the leg, yellow shoulder pads, and I've added a good few highlights to the reds to really bring them out.

I am a really big fan of that yellow stripe. I'll check back once they're all done and based, and while I'm working on that I'll think about how I can touch up the Knights.

Thanks for stopping by!
WGP

The Ion Age Firefight Project to End All Ion Age Firefight Projects

I've had a hankering to paint some Ion Age figures for a while now, and I've had my eye on some of the Legion Pioneers, which have been on my to buy list for a very long time. To go with this all a plan has been brewing to build a completely modular and three dimensional Firefight terrain set. The first step is to cover a flat and hard surface with magnetic sheeting, the second step is to mount 30mm square MDF tiles to washers, texturing the other side with sand, rubble or placing on various items of cover. The hope being that the magnetic sheeting will hold the washer tiles in place well enough for a game to be played on top. I could even make destroyed versions of certain terrain pieces to really go to town! I haven't forgotten my Retained House of Kroy and am hoping to put them into action against some Khanate scum.

So experiments will be under way in the coming weeks, but I do have to get married first and go on a honeymoon...

Thanks for stopping by!
WGP

The Retained House of Kroy

A small package arrived this morning from 15mm.co.uk so I'm looking forward to painting up my new, shiny, Ghoulani and Automaton forces. But until then, I thought I'd say a little something about the Retained Knights and Muster Troops in my Gallery.

 The miniatures are from Alternative Armies and can be bought from the ion age website. Mine are the 16 that came with the Firefight 2.0 set, I haven't got round to buying any more yet but when I do I'll definitely be getting some Legion Pioneers for a budding Shia Khan force.

The initial idea behind the House of Kroy is really an amalgamation of a few things. A while back I realised that parts of the Ion Age fluff were very loosely based on the Wars of the Roses. It seemed to make sense to me that Canlaster and Yordan were Lancaster and York. It shouldn't take anyone with a few braincells to realise all I did then was reverse the letters in York to get Kroy. I felt a little cheeky calling my force that, as if it was a previously rejected name for Yordan. Apart from noticing the connection between Yordan and York and so coming up with Kroy, there really is no other similarities between Kroy and their historical equivalent. This is because I was fascinated by the story of the Ion Age universe as I read through the fluff available in the Firefight 2.0 rule book. One story in particular drew me in, the opening of the Matter Gate on Aldan IV, and the spewing forth of the Khanate Legions. The battle that ensued around the Matter Gate is something I just had to game (and haven't yet but am hoping to in the not too distant future). The House of Kroy then, just had to be one of the forces that arrived and attempted to stem the unending tide of the Shia Khan.

When it came to painting my little band of Retained and Muster I didn't have much money to hand, so I went with what paints I already had. I was really confined to red, white, silver, a tiny bit of green and some washes. The fastest way to paint power armour, is to first paint the whole model black, then drybrush it heavily with silver. You can then paint whatever colours over that by mixing them with some black wash and layering up the colours decreasing the amount of wash in each layer. Muster uniforms were just painted red and then washed. Working this way with the limited colours I had, I painted the 16 models all together in one evening. The beauty of the above method is that anything you miss does not look unpainted but battle damaged.

Here are some shots of some of the models:

I'm looking to expand on the story of the House of Kroy in the future, and put them through their paces, facing off against the Khanate, so watch this space!

Thanks for stopping by!
WGP