Saturday 18 June 2011

Small Scale Sci-Fi Reboot: 2mm Drone Army


A re-visit to an old project now, thanks mainly to the Lead Mountain trade with David Crook of A Wargaming Oddysey, that enabled me to bulk out the available forces in teeny-tiny scale. These came in the form of some of the excellent 2mm minis designed by Jeremy 'Germy' Claridge, available from GZG.

Having had a look at some traditional Alien and Human protagonists previously, I thought it might be fun to have a go at an army of automatons or drones - I was recently re-enthused by the great work being done by Andrew Beasley and his 'Earth vs. the Flying Saucers' project:


His own Human armoured units had me reaching for the brush to do a necessarily basic, but I hope effective scheme to represent automated armour and support, that would be used to counter the heavier weapons and capabilities of an Alien enemy - sort of a 'quantity overcomes quality' type of strategy.

Germy's 2mm is, in spite of its diminutive scale, very clearly sculpted and has bags of character, without looking too cartoonish or overblown. A great example is the GMM10 Medium hover APC - I'm going to use it as a type of 'swarm' light vehicle - here in a couple of colour schemes, so I can do a sort of two-echelon army, brown and green:


Next up some support units - I did little more than the base colour, grey hover skirt outlines, and pick out the weapons; a rather skew-whiff attempt at a sensor window with red stripes over white stands as the marker of their homogeneity:


Moving on to the meat of the units, namely the GMM02 Heavy armour, which on my terms serves in a more medium role:


These are backed up by the GMM01 Super-heavy, probably closer to heavy for my purposes:


I reserve the moniker Super-heavy in this case for that other amazing sculpt from Germy, namely the GMM CYB1 Cybertank - I figure this army of diminutive drone vehicles will need a Drone Controller - it could even, in an Ogre style, be an artificial intelligence in itself, not necessarily crewed, but would obviously need to be much more hardcore than its tiny minions:


As you'll notice, I've made my own interpretation of the Cybertank - Germy's version can be found at the GZG website, but they kindly provide the whole in what is effectively kit form, with all the various turrets and weapons separate, allowing you to go wild with your own versions:


I threw in some plastic tubing from an ink pen, and a radar/comms dish from who knows where to mark its role as controller, oh and plenty of guns and of course the land-train style missile carriage to go along too:


It will be a while before I have time to get these guys based and furthermore re-boot the original small scale forces I did some time ago, but I thought a quick effort would encourage me to get some work in wherever I could - obviously the Cybertank is next on the list.
Just one slightly left-field idea occurred to me whilst I was working on these - the shape of the Heavy Tank in particular got me thinking.... a very quick and rough paintjob later, and we maybe have some re-booted maniacal pepperpots on the horizon too.....?


3 comments:

  1. Nice painting. I do like the light rim on the hover skirts - stands out a lot better than the dark lumps I have with the dark green paint.

    If I have time I will give them a light dry brush.

    Thanks for the kind words.
    Andrew

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  2. Hi SoS,

    Way to go amigo! These look really good and I like the 'drone controller'!

    Very well done that man! Any thoughts on rules at all?

    All the best,

    DC

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  3. Thanks guys, glad you like them so far - It was very much in 'splash and dash' territory.....I hope to be putting more time aside for the Drone Controller itself - as to rules, Homebrew, I think - that is if I can find where I put them, having written them out many moons ago.....

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