[Project News] Back on Track...

Well it's been a few weeks since my last update here, but things have been ticking away in the background at Martians & Machine Guns since the last time I posted.

First of all I've started painting two battalions of highland infantry, these will end up as the 1st Battalion The Gordon Highlanders and the 1st Battalion Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs), with ten men per company (and per stand) and eight companies per battalion that ends up as 160 tiny little men to paint. That'll only need another 80 infantry to complete the British infantry contingent. Progress is a little slow as 160 jackets, helmets, packs and kit all takes it's time but they're slowly starting to come together.

I've also started painting 2 batteries of 12pdrs for the Royal Artillery, these will be 16th Battery, 2nd Brigade Royal Artillery and 33rd Battery, 2nd Brigade Royal Artillery. These were created using the Baccus Artillery creator, this allows you to mix and match crews with artillery pieces from different ranges, for these I used the Royal Artillery crew from the Colonial range and the Prussian 12pdrs from the Franco-Prussian War range. It's probably completely inaccurate but good enough to my eyes.

Finally I've been working on four more landships for the British, three old Epic scale hellhound models  and a custom made artillery tractor. Once these are finished it'll be a case of looking on to the next army, I'm undecided who will be next, the Prussians, the French or a contingent headed by Captain Nemo. 

[Finished] The First Martian Tripod

Well it's been a long time between updates, pretty inexcusable but a combinations of things has prevented me from having much hobby time. Hopefully this has all changed, I finally managed to find a decent job lately so I should have the funds to start expanding this project into the areas that I want to.

Anyway enough of the excuses, time for some pictures.

First up we have a shot of the first Martian walking machine to emerge from the cylinders on Horsell Common.

The first Martian walking machine emerges from it's cylinder.

The first Martian walking machine passes by on it's way towards London.

The Martian tripod was painted with a combination of Games Workshop and Vallejo Model Colour over a base coat of GW Chaos Black spray. Base courtesy of an old CD, covered with GW sand and static grass with the odd dot of Woodland Scenics clump foliage.

And just because I haven't had any updates posted on the site for over a year some bonus pictures, it's all been covered in previous updates but the landship is a converted Pendraken British WW1 Mark V and the ruins are Games Workshop Epic 40,000 ruins.

HMLS Defence confronts the Martian Tripod.

Baccus 6mm Colonials support the Pendraken 10mm Mark V. The two scales match up quite well here and I'm hoping to plunder the Pendraken range for more Landships in the future.

The 2nd Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment supports HMLS Defence.

[W.I.P] Martian Tripods.

Welcome back,
                                well after a long absence they are finally back. After a long delay, a lot of pondering and much worrying I finally plucked up the courage to do something with my three Martian tripods, I wasn’t that keen on the idea of drilling into these fragile resin models but I decided that the only way that I could reasonably support them was to drill some holes and mount them on brass rod.So on my way back home the other day I popped into Model Active at Durham and bought a couple of lengths of brass rod. Cue more worrying and thinking and well mainly procrastination if I’m completely honest and it’s taken me a further week to get to this stage.

I began by using my pin vice drill to drill some little holes in the underside of the tripods, a brief test fit and it was obvious 

that the hole was about 0.5mm too small, fortunately I had a larger drill bit that unfortunately wouldn’t fit in my drill, so I had to gently turn it in my hands. I was kind of glad about this as the soft resin was easily drilled and I felt that I had much more control this way. I made the hole in the bottom of the tripod quite shallow and added a blob of greenstuff to the top of the brass rod to secure it in the hole. The brass rod was attached to the base (an old unwanted CD) with more greenstuff, as were the legs. The base was covered with sand and pieces of cork to break up the flat surface. 

Since I'd feared moving on from the previous stage for so long I decided that whilst I had the opportunity I would basecoat them straight away, once that was done I couldn't resist splashing a little paint around (no pictures of them at the moment but an update soon hopefully.

Haarken

[NEWS] Brigade Models preview Salute releases!

The industrious chaps at Brigade Models have released preview pictures of a new faction to their range of Land Ironclads and two new Seaplane Squadron packs for their Aeronef range.

Austrian Land Ironclads

The Land Ironclad release see’s the Austrians introduced to the Land Ironclad range with what seems to be a fully fleshed out range of Land Ironclads and contraptions.

Austrian Beweglicher Artilleriewagen

 

 

Austrian Chemische Giftzufuhr

The two new Seaplane Squadrons are released for the Austrians and the Italians with both faction receiving Seaplane fighters and Seaplane bombers.

Austro-Hungarian Seaplane Squadron

Italian Seaplane Squadron

[Review] Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V Tank.

 Welcome back,
                                today’s update is another product review, one that I’ve been meaning to post for months now, namely a review of Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V Tank that I used as a base for my British landship.

Pendraken Miniatures only really appeared on my scope a few months ago, just before Christmas when I was looking at various options for some Martians for my current project. Although I didn’t find anything that I thought might be suitable for the Martians I was however intrigued and after a brief look around the site and their massive range of miniatures I decided that there might be other products that I could use.

Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V* Male Tank

First up is the website, the website is really user friendly and all the various ranges are clearly laid out on the left hand side of the page by period, clicking on each range brings up all the various factions or nations for it in the centre of the page. Once you have clicked on the faction you are taken to the miniatures themselves. Here however the experience is a little less smooth, the miniature ranges seem to be arranged by the date that they were released, this is fine but most of the miniatures lack any sort of picture and although all the miniatures are well described it still means searching through a full page of products and with infantry, cavalry, artillery and armour all mixed in together it could be really easy to miss what you were looking for. 

The pictures that Pendraken have added to their webstore are on the whole pretty average but adding a touch of wash would sort most of them out. It is not all bad news however, Pendraken do have a rather active Flickr page with many of their products featured on there, the vast majority of these pictures are far superior to what’s on the webstore but there is a certain amount of trawling involved.

Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V* Male Tank with Baccus 6mm Colonial's for scale.

Once my order was placed I received a confirmation e-mail to let me know what I had ordered and a further e-mail to let me know that my order had been dispatched, it did take about a fortnight from ordering to my product arriving but I did place my order just before the New Year at what I must assume was a very busy time (combine that with all the postal disruption pre-Christmas and I think Pendraken did extremely well).  My products arrived fairly well wrapped and without any serious breakages, though I would have liked a little extra protection for the small and potentially fragile sponsons.

The Mark V* Male tanks that I ordered were priced at £4.00 (this has since risen to £4.25 an unwanted but more than acceptable rise with the rising cost of metal and the increased rate of VAT figured in) which I believe is a very reasonable price once the size and the weight of the vehicles is figured in. The casting on a whole was incredibly good with only a couple of small area’s needing any cleaning work, one area of concern however was the thin guns, one of which inevitably snapped off, not a massive issue and one that was easily rectified. On a whole the models were incredibly easy to clean and work with and once I’d converted them they were really easy to paint.

A converted Pendraken Miniatures 10mm Mark V* Male Tank

In summation I wouldn’t hesitate to order from Pendraken Miniatures again but I would be much more likely to order from them if they added some of their lovely pictures from their Flickr page to their webstore.

Ease of Ordering:  6/10

Quality of Service:  8/10

Quality of Product:   9/10

Packaging & Delivery:  8/10

Value for Money:  9/10

[Finished] 2nd Battalion York & Lanc's & my 1st landship

Welcome back,
                           Well it’s been a long time in the making but I’ve finally got another update ready and this time there are even pictures to prove that there has been progress (I must apologise for all the picture free posts recently but without a reliable computer it has been difficult to get them sorted). 

I’ve made progress on three new units, first of all I began by continuing with the 2^nd Battalion of the Yorkshire and Lancashire regiment, this unit has frustrated me since I started it before Christmas, the Baccus marching strips were a lot more work than I originally thought and left me severely de-motivated, however they are finally finished and are looking decidedly splendid.

The 2nd Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment flank the HMLS Defence

The 2nd Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment flank the HMLS Defence

Four companies from the 2nd Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment escort the HMLS Defence

 

 The second unit that I began was the first of my Landship’s, based upon a Pendraken 10mm Mk V Tank it turned out even better than I imagined, the size of the model fits quite nicely with my Baccus and looks quite convincing (in my eyes at least) as a Landship.  I was in two minds about the colour scheme, I was initially drawn to a predominately white scheme that I’d seen on some 28mm VSF tanks but I’m not really that confident painting white and so I considered painting them in the same scheme as my British aeronef’s but I felt there was too few areas that I’d be able to paint buff, that just left me the scheme that I finally settled upon, not too much white, a little brass and a little colour.

HMLS Defence

HMLS Defence

HMLS Defence

Ad-hoc British Brigade supported by the landship HMLS Defence and naval brigades from HMS Atropos & HMS Panther

The third unit that I have made progress on is the 17^th Lancers, no pictures of these at the moment as all I’ve done is paint the horses, I do hope to have them done within a couple of weeks though.

Haarken