Been lurking around here for a long, long time, but I just finished up a 6mm project that I'm quite happy with, so I decided to sign up and post about it, since I've been enjoying everyone else's work for so long. Hopefully I'm not being presumptuous by diving right in with such a big post but, well, here goes.
The unit is the Third Federated Rifles, formerly of the Army of the Federated Territories. After the end of the Second Upheaval, the Federal military demobilized and sold off a lot of their hardware to local forces and mercenary outfits as war surplus. The Third Federated Rifles are one such unit, whose commanding officers bought not only their old equipment but the name rights to their former unit. For insurance purposes, they prefer to call themselves a "Dispute Resolution Organization." They are battalion-sized and mostly take on local conflicts, peacekeeping functions, colonial interventions and counter-insurrection tasks. This is a selection of their armored units. All are manufactured by Plasmablast Games, and although they're based in Europe (Greece, I think) while I'm in the United States, they were extremely economical and turned around my order in less than two weeks, even with the notoriously slow customs delays between the EU and the US. I was profoundly impressed on all counts with the figures, service and speed. So here we go with some Offworld Mercenaries!
The unit has a full armored company, with two troops of main battle tanks and one troop of support tanks. Both use heavy coilguns as the main weapon; the support tank sacrifices additional electronics for a second one, but packs a serious punch against point targets.
The Infantry Section consists of two platoons of what the Rifles call "Zero Point Infantry," basically refurbished powersuits of ex-Federal Marine Corps vintage. They'd be outgunned if they went toe-to-toe with the Federal Military, but they're more than enough to handle most threats in the outer colonies. On the ground they're transported in APCs, but they can insert from orbit with the company's dropships Scylla and Charybdis (which are still being painted).
Onto this basic structure is grafted a set of support units of platoon and troop size. Command, Control and Communications:
Artillery:
Dual Anti-Aircraft/Anti-tank Support:
Infantry Fire Support:
Main Force Reconnaissance:
as well as aerospace support, which I haven't finished with yet, but will include a flight of VTOLs, a flight of Ground Attack Bombers (from Reaper's CAV line) and a pair of Atmo-Interceptors from Plasmablast.
The unit command staff ride to battle in the prized possession of the Third Federated Rifles: a superheavy command tank, of dubious legality, supplied to the unit through a friend of a friend in the Ministry of Defence who owed someone a favor.
The figures are all of remarkably good quality. Being cast from 3d printed masters, there are some layer lines, but they're easily filled, filed down, or just ignored, without any difficulty. The paint is a base of Testor's Model Master Armor Sand, with Dark Green and Rust. The base I thinned 2:1 with mineral oil thinner, the overlay about 1:1. I wouldn't use oils again, though – if I expand the force later I'll find substitute acrylics. The wash was Reaper Black Ink thinned about 4:1, and then the insignia I did with Reaper Pure White. The Distinctive Unit Insignia, the Blue and White, is Reaper Pure White with Sapphire Blue, both applied pure with a wet superfine brush. I'm considering adding a little weathering, and they need a good dullcoat spray. With these closeup photos all the imperfections are probably visible, but at table distance they work very well more or less as-is.
So there you go! Thanks for listening… er, reading. This was a fun bit to paint up – now to work on the OPFOR – someone to give the Rifles a hard time on the Offworld Colonies.
--M
paints and individually bases some 6mm sci-fi infantry.
