Doctor Who Project - UNIT

This post covers my UNIT force for Doctor Who games.  UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) is a multinational force whose purpose is to investigate extraterrestial/paranormal threats to Earth.  UNIT's heyday was during the period of the 3rd Doctor and early 4th Doctor in the 1970s.  They have made sporadic appearances since then, including in the new series.  I use the Doctor Who Miniatures Game (DWMG) rules, available for free on the internet at http://www.drwhominiatures.co.uk/ and with an active Yahoo group.

My UNIT troops are painted in a mid-1970s uniform, though I have no qualms over using them in any scenario calling for UNIT, no matter the date.  It is no coincidence that is the time when I first started watching Doctor Who as a young boy on WOSU, the local PBS television station in Columbus, Ohio, USA where I grew up.  It is often said among fans that your favorite Doctor is always the first one you saw.  In my case that was Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor.  When I was in elementary through high school, WOSU showed Doctor Who on a regular basis, originally with one 25-minute episode each weeknight and a whole story on Sunday mornings.  I have fond memories of watching while my mom cooked dinner and of getting up early on Sundays to watch.  In later years, 1-2 stories were broadcast in their entirety on Saturday nights.

My UNIT force consists of 42 figures; most are from the Doctor Who range manufactured by Black Tree Design.  They were painted in batches from 2007-10.  I only bought six of the regular soldiers directly from BTD, which came in the Invasion Earth box set; the officer figures also came direct from BTD, while the rest were purchased over a long period of time off of Ebay.  There are a few figures from other manufacturers that I will note in the individual photos.  Several manufacturers offer Falklands-era British that can be used as UNIT troops.  For the purposes of this post, I have divided them into four squads, plus heavy weapons support and officers.  They are on slottabases with metal washers underneath to provide balance and for use in my magnetic storage system.

You can click on the photos for close-ups.

The 1st squad of seven:

The 2nd squad of six:

The 3rd squad of seven:

The 4th squad of seven:

Support sections (l-r): a 2-man bazooka team (BTD), a 2-man machine-gun team (BTD) and a 3-man mortar team (The Assault Group, purchased from Scale Creep at Cold Wars 2009).

Officers (l-r): Sergeant Benton, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart , and Captain Yates

This is actually one of the 4th Doctor's companions, Harry Sullivan, who appeared on the show during seasons 12 and 13 in the mid-1970s.  He was a Royal Navy surgeon attached to UNIT.  I found this figure in the UNIT box although he should be stored elsewhere, so I decided to take a picture anyway.  Consider this a preview of the Doctors & Companions post!

The last squad consists of 5 SAS soldiers.  I purchased them from Rebel Minis at the Cold Wars convention in the 2006-8 time period.  They were painted in 2010.

Finally, here is a group shot of all 42 UNIT soldiers, plus the Harry Sullivan figure.  This is the largest of my Doctor Who forces, which is just well.  They need numbers, as the UNIT troops are normally outclassed in the DWMG rules by the various alien opponents.  Although the DWMG does not have a point system, on the Yahoo group there are references to each alien being worth 'x' UNIT soldiers in order to balance scenarios!

I hope you have enjoyed this series of posts on my long-running project which is finally coming to fruition.  Future posts will feature various Doctors and their Companions, civilians, the Sea Devils and everyone's favorite villains, the Daleks.

Jason

Pirates!

This post covers my 15mm Pirate army.  These figures have traveled a long and arduous path to being completed.  The vast majority of figures are from Peter Pig, with a scattering of Museum Miniatures.  I purchased the PP figures at Brookhurst Hobbies in Los Angeles while visiting my brother for Christmas in either 1997 or 1998.  At that time, my gaming group was into 'Fantasy Rules 2', and I intended to build an army for that system.  I painted around 25% of them in the early 2000s, then set them aside.  Meanwhile, FR2 lost its allure and my group switched to the 'Hordes of the Things' rules.  I have never been a big fan of HOTT for various reasons; it just isn't quite what I want out of a fantasy game. 

So the Pirates sat in my closet until 2009, when I pulled them out of storage and decided to finish them.  The last figures were completed in November 2009 and I built the stronghold in December 2010.  I do still have a plastic ship model to use as a HOTT Airboat that I've assembled and put a basecoat on, though I still need to finish painting the details and build a stand for it.  The ship may show up in a future post.  The army is based for HOTT, although I rarely play.  Perhaps they will see action at the HOTT tournament at Siege of Augusta in January 2010?

Click on the pictures for close-ups.

First is the entire Pirate horde.  The entire force consists of 3xHeroes, 2xArtillery, 2xLurkers, 5xShooters, 1xBlades and 9xWarband for a total of 50+AP in HOTT.

Here are the 5 stands of musket-armed pirates (Shooters).  The front center stand could serve as a General if necessary.

Two stands of ship's cannon (Artillery):

 Blackbeard, accompanied by a female pirate, serves as a Hero General.  Blackbeard is taller than all of the other PP figures which makes him suitably imposing:

Another Hero stand.  These are both Museum Miniatures.

 The left-hand stand is another Hero; the right-hand one is a Blade and could serve as the General if so desired.

I photographed the nine stands of common pirates (Warbands) in groups of three.  Here is the first group:

The second group of three:

And the last group of three:

Two stands of shipwrecked pirates with sharks circling (Lurkers):

Last is the Stronghold.  Long John Silver has retrieved the buried treasure and dealt harshly with his untrustworthy shipmates.  The parrot on his shoulder is a nice touch.

 Thanks for Looking!

Jason

Scots Isles & Highlands

This post covers my 15mm Scots Isles & Highlands army,  1050-1493 AD (III/77  in DBA).  It was painted over the summer/fall of 2010.  All of the figures are from Feudal Castings, now sold by QRF.  They have an excellent range of figures for dark age/medieval Scotland and Ireland.  A few of the figures are from other FC ranges such as Vikings.  I purchased some of these figures from Rudy Nelson at Time Portal Hobbies and the rest directly from QRF.  Although almost all of the figures are armed with an axe, there are a lot of variations among the figures and they have a lot of character.  Of the 48 heavy foot, there are 2 poses with 6 or 7 figures and the rest of the poses have 1-4 figures each.  That made them a lot more fun to paint.

The Scots Isles & Highlands army covers the medieval Gaelic areas of Scotland.  For a great historical article on the army, see: http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/armies/III77.html

The DBA army list consists primarily or entirely of blades and is: 1x4Bd (Gen), 8x4Bd, 3x4Bd or 2x3Bw and 1x 3/5Wb.  These figures will also serve as galloglaich for a project I have wanted to do for a long time, the invasion of Ireland by Edward Bruce in 1315.  I have been working on a scenario for 4 DBA armies a side, and the number of galloglaich I will need is 12, exactly the number in this army.

Click on the pictures for close-ups.

First up is the general's stand (1x4Bd).  Although this is a foot stand, I used a mounted figure for the general.  This is the first time I have done this in a DBA army; I got the idea from a Visigoth army I have that was made by my good friend Mike Demana (see his web page at: http://home.earthlink.net/~mikedemanagames/index.html).  I think it looks good and helps the general's element to stand out from the mass of similar-looking elements.  As a fan of Celtic music I couldn't resist putting a bagpiper on the stand!

Here is the first group of 4 highland warriors (4x4Bd):

The second group of warriors (4x4Bd):

And the last group of warriors (3x4Bd):

Here are the clansmen (1x5Wb on the left, 1x3Wb on the right).  The base on the right is borrowed from my Pre-Feudal Scots army.

Next are the 2 stands of highland archers (2x3Bw).  The base on the right is borrowed from my Pre-Feudal Scots army.

Last but not least is a picture of the entire army assembled.

Thanks for looking!  I'll be adding more posts over the holidays: 15mm Pirates and 28mm UNIT for my Doctor Who project.

Doctor Who Project - Cybermen

The second force in my Doctor Who project to appear on this blog are the Cybermen.  One of Doctor Who's oldest and favorite villains, the Cybermen were once humanoids who gradually replaced their worn-out body parts with robotics, ending up as emotionless cyborgs.  They first appeared in 1966's The Tenth Planet, the last story of the First Doctor , and have appeared often since then.  In some stories, they convert prisoners into more Cybermen.  I would love to have some 'partially-converted' figures to use in games.  If you know of any suitable miniatures, please let me know!

My Cybermen force consists of 32 figures  They were painted in 2008-2010.  Eighteen of them are 28mm Black Tree Design and 14 are plastic figures from the 1980s Citadel Cybermen & Daleks box set.  The BTD figures are a mix of different models, as the Cybermen have changed in appearance over the 40+ years of the show.  It doesn't bother me to use them together though.  The Citadel plastic figures are slightly smaller, but once based I think they look okay in separate units.  I have included a comparison picture.  This force is rather too big for a normal-sized game, so the plastic ones serve to bulk out the force for larger multi-player games.  The difficulty in getting BTD figures nowadays makes the plastics a reasonable way to have a larger force.  All of the figures are on slottabases, with metal washers underneath for use in my magnetic storage system.  The washers also give the plastic figures some weight so they don't tip over. As stated in my previous post on the Sontarans, I use the Doctor Who Miniatures Game (DWMG) rules to play scenarios set in the 'Whoniverse'. They are available at http://www.drwhominiatures.co.uk/ and there is also an active Yahoo group.

Click on the pictures for a close-up.

First is the merciless Cybercontroller:

The 1st squad of 5 Cybermen (1980s Earthshock era figures):

The 2nd squad of 5 Cybermen (3rd-4th Doctor era figures):

The 3rd squad of 5 Cybermen (3rd-4th Doctor era figures).  The front center figure has part of his helmet painted black to indicate he is a Cyberleader:

Next is the 2-man Cyberlaser team, the Cybermen's heavy weapons support  These figures are not on Slottabases, but have had their tabs removed and are on a GF9 base.  They are earlier figures from the 2nd Doctor's era, as can be seen from their more primitive design.

These are the 14 Citadel plastic Cybermen.  They are unfortunately all in the same pose.  The one in the front center has had part of his helmet painted black to indicate that he is a Cyberleader.

Here is the entire force of 32 Cybermen.  The 3 BTD squads are lead by the Cyberleader, with the Cyberlaser team and the Citadel Cybermen supporting from the rear.

This is a comparison shot.  The figure on the left is one of the Citadel plastics; the one on the right is an Earthshock-era BTD figure.  The difference is apparent when they are next to each other, but separated into different units I think they look okay.

 

Thanks for looking!

Jason