More Onslaught Miniatures

I painted up a stand of Onslaught Miniatures' Prowlers with an Overseer. I thought it would look good to have an Overseer with the whip "leading" the Prowlers into battle.

I used the same technique as I did with the Mantis Beast. I painted them white, washed them with purple, then picked out the white (flesh), red (bone), and purple (chitin) areas with a spotter brush.

Basing is a little white glue on the base, coarse sand/fine volcanic rock, then a heavy coat of Matte Medium or Matte Varnish (both about the same consistency) to fill in the cracks (but not too much). I then painted it with craft paint (Cocoa), washed it with Army Painter's Strong Tone (the new inks, not the older varnish – I cannot stand the smell of the latter) before flocking it.

Here you can see a comparison shot with the GW Epic Space Marines and Eldar. The Prowlers are shorter, because they are stooped, but a bit chunkier. The Overseer is definitely taller.

The proof in compatibility will be when the not-Tau are released. Those should be the same size as the newer Eldar sculpts, hopefully. Maybe Don Carr (owner of Onslaught Miniatures) will comment and tell us!

UPDATE: Here are more comparison pictures, using unpainted miniatures. In all of the photos:

• A – Ork Stompa.
• B – Space Marine/Imperial Robot
• C – Chaos Dreadnought
• D – Chaos Minotaur
• E – Space Marine (new sculpt)
• F – Space Marine (old sculpt)
• G – Eldar Guardian (new sculpt)
• H – Eldar Guardian (old sculpt)

Prowler

The Prowler is 8mm to the eye line (9.5mm overall, not counting the base). The Space Marines are 7.5mm (8mm overall) and the Eldar 8mm (10mm overall).

Overseer

The Overseer is 9.5mm to the eye and 10mm overall.

Mantis Beast

The Mantis Beast is 15.5mm to the eye and 27mm overall. The good thing is that if you are careful, you can bend the scythe 'arms' into other positions.

New Idea

As if I did not have enough projects on my plate…

I have a lot of GW Epic figures. I started collecting them in one of my 6mm collecting binges and I will break them out every so often and wonder what to do with them. I used to play Epic Armageddon, but I did not like the tournament-style play, nor the "capture the flag" style victory conditions of the rules. Everyone I played would not deviate from that style of play, it quickly got very boring (especially as I had a Eldar Jetbike army, and mobility is King), so the figures went into a box and languished.

I tried Baccus' Command Horizon, but was not really a fan. Future War Commander was out because I do not like the Warmaster-style command and control rules. Really, until In the Emperor's Name (ITEN) came out, I did not find a use for them. Of course, something wasn't right with ITEN: it did not use enough figures! What was I going to do with my multi-figure based troops? (Please, no recommendations. … Ah, what the heck. Go ahead.)

I saw a blog post of a gamer using 6mm figures for Command & Colors: Napoleonics – he was using based figures directly onto the game board, nothing fancy – and it really looked good. As I have been playing a lot of Command & Colors-type games of late I thought: why not make a Sci-Fi version of Command & Colors? I could use my standard 40mm wide basing (fits in the 50mm/2 inch hexes of the boards) and use tokens with numbers on it for strength points, the way that Lee (of the Napoleonic Therapy blog) did. Either that or use blast markers to show hits.

Of course, as I have pointed out in previous blog posts, there are a number of "variants" to the Command & Colors rules that Richard Borg has come up with over the year. (And I have not even take Samurai Battles into account in that old blog post.) So, I have to figure out which bits and pieces I want to take from each game.

I know that support and formations will be a part of the game, but I do not want really high troop density, so I have to think about that one a bit. My main gaming buddy does not like managing a lot of different resources – one of the primary reasons he says he does not like BattleLore and the reason I think he will not like Samurai Battles – so I think I want to mix non-command "combat tactics" cards into the main deck. Of course, is a player gets his hand clogged with non-command cards that could be problematic, but I think I have an answer for that too. Mixing those cards in one deck – and in the single hand the player has to manage – will make it less cumbersome to manage.

The main change I want to make is the scale of the game. I am almost thinking a 1:1 scale (i.e. one figure on the stand is one man or vehicle), but will have to think about that too. It could also work with one stand (unit) as a platoon. The main thing is it would allow a little more detail, such as allowing an infantry unit to mount up into an adjacent transport (altering its defense profile), flyers (moving over enemy units), and other crunchy details like that. I think it will also make scenario creation easier, as you can simply take any number of commercial historical scenarios and convert them.

What I want to get away from the the GW math. Space Marines have a certain level of power and resilience in Warhammer 40K and I don't think I want to maintain the balance (or perfect imbalance, as was discussed in a Second Founding podcast) as it would require I buy all the books, which sort of defeats the purpose for me!

So, expect some ideas to float around every so often.