28mm Moderns

Today's post features some miniatures that I started painting at the end of July 2024 and finished in fall 2024.  I recently got them out for photos on a sunny winter day.  I will use them primarily for my 7TV games.

Three American Agents from Brigade Games Cold War era Spies and Patriots range.  These will be part of my Miami VIce collection, hence the bright colors.  I didn't have any female undercover detectives, so these are a nice addition.  I think the one on the right is a good match for Gina Calabrese, one of the original cast.  I am still on the lookout for a miniature to use as Trudy.

Three Female Armed Civilians from Brigade's WW2 range.  These are useful miniatures that can serve in plenty of modern to post-apocalyptic scenarios.

 Two miniatures from Crooked Dice.  On the left is a police officer or well-dressed criminal, on the right is a post-apocalypse raider.

 A giant post-apocalypse mutant also from Crooked Dice.  It is hard to find size XXXXXXL shirts in the apocalypse.  He will smash you with his mighty fists!

The entire group.  You can see how large the mutant is compared to the others.

Purchases at Siege of Augusta

 I started off 2025 as I usually do by attending the Siege of Augusta convention in Augusta, GA.  This year, along with my 2 high schoolers, my friends Mike and Jenny drove down from Ohio to attend.

I am planning on running a Stargate game later this year and was on the lookout for some more terrain pieces.  There was a new vendor with a variety of 3d printed items, Garrison 3D from Florida.  He had some leftover Egyptian statues he wanted to get rid of, so I picked up all 7 of them for $10.  They are 6" tall so will look suitably imposing on the table.

Garrison 3D also had a large structure, diameter 12", that reminded me of a classical temple similar to the Pantheon in Rome.  I kept eying it all weekend and eventually gave in and bought it.  I am still working out a paint scheme but it will make a good central objective.

I also wanted to find some accessories for the temple.  Miniature Building Authority had some Egyptian columns and a snake statue that fit the bill.

Bad Goblin has a line of different fire items using LEDs, and I got 2 of their fire pits for $5 each.  You can see some lit up on my friend Mike's blog Lead Legionaries.  Bad Goblin have a great line of terrain for their upcoming Trailer Park Warlords of the Apocalypse game.  They also gave my daughter one of their miniatures after she played in one of their demo games, which is currently on my painting table.

I had a find in the Saturday morning flea market with 2 boxes of Perry Hundred Years War English for $20 each.  This was great timing as my copy of the new Age of Chivalry book for Saga waiting for me whrn I got home after the convention.  I've already started painting 24 of them.

I'm not sure if I will make any other conventions before Historicon, but Siege was a good start to the year.

Zombie Reinforcements

 I started painting 28mm zombies back in summer 2020 with a group of 14.  I have added more over the years in small groups and my shambling horde numbered 42 as of 2024.  

My friend Mike started playing zombie games in 2024 using the rules set Zombie RV (available on Wargames Vault).  He added some mechanics for a larger game that I was interesting in trying.  But I needed more zombies.  Additional motivation was provided by Mike's collection of 75 zombies.  I was in between painting projects so decided that I would seize the opportunity to regain zombie supremacy.

I started with a batch of 14 Studio Miniatures plastic zombies.  I got a bunch of them as free rewards to a long-ago kickstarter and had painted a few in the past, also converting one of the bodies into a living biker for my motorcycle gang.  They come on sprues with 4 different bodies, 8 heads and various arms.  I had some left-over heads and arms from the Warlord/Wargames Factory male zombies, so used those to add more variety.

I have grouped each of the body types together.  I experimented with some different methods of doing skintones to add more variety.  From left to right, rotting flesh, light gray, and blue, all lightly washed with purple.  The blue-ish ones didn't turn out like I had hoped at first so I added a light drybrush of light gray.

I wanted to do some different miniatures next, so I checked ebay and found a set of the Warlord/Wargames Factory female zombies along with 6 of the original Wargames Factory zombies for a good price.  The original zombies were made before the box sets that Warlord re-released.  They are definitely cruder sculpts than the later versions and have 6 on a sprue.  Unlike the later ones they have separate torsos and legs.

I already had a set of the female zombies in my collection, but thought I could make these different with a combination of different heads/arms/painting.

I was still 2 short of my goal.  Then I remembered that I had 2 metal zombies from Studio (also free from their kickstarter) that are larger and more disgusting than your average zombie.  I dug them out of storage and voila!  

With the 34 new zombies, I now have a total of 76, 1 more than Mike.  I retain an undisclosed number of the plastic Studio zombie sprues in case of emergency.

28mm Classical Indians for Saga

After I had finished painting several armies for the Saga Age of Alexander book (Macedonian, Successors, Greeks), I thought I was done with that era.  I enjoy watching the games that Graham's Wargame Vault posts on his Youtube channel.  One of the armies that regularly shows up is Indians.  I liked the style of play, it was different from any other army I had, and I like Indian bistory.  So in early 2023 I began calculating if I could build a relatively inexpensive army, even with the elephants and chariots.

My first thought was to use Old Glory for the bulk of the troops as they are less expensive than the other options.  I contacted my friend Keith to see if he was going to order from them anytime soon.  There is a saying among my friends that "Keith has everything".  It turned out to be true in this case, he had some old RAFM Indian infantry that he was generous enough to give me.  There were enough to make 2 units of 12 levy archers and 2 units of 4 hearthguard with a couple left over.  Keith ordered 2 elephants and 2 4-horse heavy chariots from Old Glory for me.  A couple of weeks later I had everything in hand ,except models for the general. and could start painting.

It doesn't make any difference game-wise, but I decided that I was going to model the army of Ashoka.  Not the Star Wars character, the 3rd-century BC emperor of the Mauryan dynasty.  I saw one of the Pillars of Ashoka erected during his reign on a long-ago trip to India.

The centerpiece of the Indian army is the Elephant General.  I wanted a nice model for this, so splurged on a resin one from Aventine.  It is larger than the Old Glory elephants, but that is only fitting for the general.  It came with plenty of quivers, some of which ended up on the other elephants.  It is escorted by 2 maiden guard that I had left over.  The general figure is wearing gilded armor and a tiger skin.

There is also an option to have the general either in a heavy chariot or on foot.  I liked the look of the 1st Corps chariot models, so ordered a command one from them along with some miniatures for another project.  It was very easy to assemble.

The two Old Glory heavy chariots assembled easily after a bit of filing.  They are made of metal, so quite heavy.  The crew are packed tightly.

The metal Old Glory elephants came in two halves with separate heads.  The poses are different and there is some variety in the crew so you can individualize them.  This one is known as blue elephant.

This one is known as yellow elephant.  I've added some more decoration to it since I took these pictures.

RAFM are older, true 25mm miniatures, still available today.  I was fine with that since the focus of the army would be large models that would draw the most attention.  They are clean sculpts with fair detail.  There is only one pose of each type, although half of the archers had armored torsos.  I grouped those together as mercenaries, which are often referred to in period accounts.  The only drawback is that the archers required some assembly.  It isn't unusual to have separate bows that need to be glued on.  What struck me as odd was the separate heads.  Separate heads that are all the same, for bodies that are all the same.  Why?  At least they glued on easily.

These bowmen were the first miniatures I painted for the army.  You can see that I was experimenting with several different skin tones.

The armored bowmen with leather bands around the torso.

A unit of swordsmen.  Unlike the bowmen, I used some color on these, going with saffron clothing and green for their quilted armor, with a red plume.  They are classed as hearthguards in Saga.

I painted a unit of Maiden Guards, although they are attested later than the period I had chosen for my army.  It is also unclear whether they ever saw the battlefield or only had palace duty.  But I had the miniatures, so why not?  Two are painted with lighter skin as Greeks from the remnants of the Indo-Greek kingdoms.

There were enough spare crew left from the 1st Corps chariot to make a general on foot as well.  It is an option I probably won't use, but I like these poses, wanted to paint them, and couldn't fit them in the chariot.

My Indians made their debut in the Saga tournament at the Advance the Colors convention in October 2023.  I won two games against Greek Cities and Republican Romans, then lost the third against Achaemenid Persians.  Not bad for their first outing with no practice.  I will have a better handle on their intricacies the next time I use them.  Most importantly I am happy with how they turned out.