15mm X-COM Farm board finished.

I got all of the scenery for the Farm board done. Stable's painted, interior for the Farmhouse is finished, even got the Mutons done.



Sectoid guarding the ship



Muton waiting in outbuilding to ambush X-Com agents



Ground floor of the farmhouse with interior walls and Muton soldier

Mutons are an evil alien race that look like muscle men in green suits with purple face masks.

Mutons made from Rebel Minis 15mm Super Hero Pack A

Size comparison with a Rebel Minis Super Hero (Muton) and Khurasan Minis Sepulvedan Resistance Fighter (X-Com Trooper)

Well, that's it for now. Scenery's done. Need to keep working the minis. Thanks for looking.

More 15mm X-Com

Hi, folks. A little update on the 15mm X-Com project. I finished the barn. It now has the interior stairs, hay bales, a corrugated roof, and I painted and stained the exterior wood on the second floor. The floors of all of the buildings are print-outs from "X-Com: Tactical", a very nice free download from BoardGame Geek. X-Com: Tactical not only has the rules for playing X-Com on the tabletop, it also has some very nice 2-d graphics of the terrain, tokens, and ships. If the authors, Paul Pounds and Evan Leybourn, see this, thank you very much for making this excellent resource available.

The farmhouse is mostly finished. I need to finish the interior walls dividing the rooms, then it is done. The interior walls are mat board (I took a page from Vampifan's book). I will glue on some wood print-outs from the Fat Dragon Rio Draco set to simulate wooden interior walls and doors. The windows used for the farmhouse are 15mm resin from GameCraft Miniatures.

The stable is the last building for the farm board. I made it from craft sticks and gave it a corrugated metal roof. The roof is cereal card run through a crimper and glued to thin plasticard (that's how I did all of the rooves).

Also did a small UFO based on print-outs from "X-COM: Tactical" and pics from the interweb. The hull was made from a mixture of 1/2 inch quarter round wooden molding from a home improvement store and some Hirst Arts sci-fi bits. The interior bits are from Hirst Arts Sci-Fi bits, also.

I just received a couple of packs of Critical Mass Games excellent Astragar Fighters to use as Snakemen. That's an idea I stole from ThorLongus when he posted his a while back. If mine come out half as nice as his I'll be happy. So far I've got them primed and based. A few of them have been included in some of the pics for size comparison.

Hay bales. I made these from green pot scrubber pads. Painted them yellow, washed with Golden Brown craft paint, used a rubber coated black wire for the bale straps. They're a little larger than the ones in the X-Com: Tactical print-outs, but they'll work.

Stairs. The stairs were made using Dis's excellent tutorial here.

This tutorial was a big help and I made 3 pretty nice stairways for the barn and farmhouse very quickly. Differences between mine and his are I needed to make my stairs much smaller to fit the template of the buildings. I used a 1/2 inch Hirst Arts brick between the stringers and only 1 thickness of thin plastic card for the stringers. Also, the scissors I used were an old pair of pinking shears my wife gave me, and I think the zig zag pattern is a little smaller than his. Otherwise, pretty much the same except his are much nicer.

I like the way you can fit the miniature's base between the steps to hold it in place. When I saw that pic of this feature on his blog I knew I had to try it. So, Thanks, Dis, for the excellent tutorial.

Well, that's all for now. I was able to pick up some extra shifts at the part-time job so I won't be blogging much for the next few days. Upcoming projects list just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Upcoming Projects:
X-COM
Post pics of Mutons
Cyberdisks
Chrysalids
Chrysalid-Zombies (These last three are gonna be from 15mm.co.uk)
Floaters
Ethereals

Thanks for looking.

15mm X-COM Farm Game Board & Sectoids

Hi, folks. I've been doing a little more work on my X-COM project.

The board is 2'x 2' and made from four 1' vinyl floor tiles which have had model RR grass mat glued to them. It's further subdivided into 16 six inch squares, each with some different features, all of which represent the terrain seen on-screen in the farm in the X-COM computer game. It amazes me how much variety you can get in such a small space. There is a small apple orchard, a grove of stumps (Zuzzy Minis) some crop sections made from sections of outdoor carpet or pipe cleaners, stone walls (JR miniatures) and some walls scratchbuilt from cork coasters; rail fences (JR minis), tall and low hedges (Pot scrubber variety), and a WIP scratchbuilt barn (built to scale from screen shots). I still need to stain the wood (coffee stirrers) on the barn and add a staircase and second floor. Still pending also is a farmhouse and stable complex. The buildings will all have playable interiors.

My Sectoids are Rebel Minis Greys. These are great little minis for a great price. I did a simple pj on them, based on the Sectoid colors from the X-COM PC game. Primed them with gray primer, painted the eyes black, ray guns are green and silver. A couple of leader types have a blue cape as well. (You don't see that in the PC game, no clothing on the Sectoids, but I don't mind.) Then just a black wash, sand and flock the bases and seal with a matte spray acrylic sealer. Here's pics.

Pic above shows the Sectoids, ready to begin their evil mission on Earth.

Pic above shows an X-COM Heavy Weapon Platform (GZG missile drone) finding a Sectoid hiding in the old orchard.

Pic above shows an X-COM trooper (Khurasan Minis Sepulvedan Resistance Fighter) investigating the strange light coming from the old barn. A Sectoid Leader is waiting for him to come into his line of fire. The blue light in the barn is from a little battery-op Christmas tea light that strobes through different colors of light.

The last pic shows one of those sneaky Sectoids getting into a sniping position.

Thanks for looking. Next up will be more work on the farm buildings, and maybe a Cyberdisk and small flying saucer.

15mm X-Com

Hi, folks. I recently started playing the X-Com UFO Defense PC game again. It was released on Steam with an improved DosBox version that actually works on my laptop. If you're not familiar with X-Com, this was a great series of PC games from the early 90's, wherein you control X-Com, an organization tasked with combating an alien invasion of Earth. You control research, there's an economic element, but the most fun part is the squad-level tactical combat, with troops and weapons that get better over time and missions and enemies that get harder. It's a great game, and last time I checked it was about $5 to download on steam. If you've never tried it, give it a shot. I bet you'll love it.

Anyway, I can't claim the idea of trying X-Com in 15mm is original to me. Fellow TMPer Thorlongus posted some pics of his Critical Mass Games Snakemen for 15mm X-COM while back. I've stolen... erm... adopted some of his ideas for my own effort. (Also have some Snakemen on order from CMG. Here's what I've got so far.

I chose to use Khurasan minis for my X-Com forces. The Sepulvedan Resistance Fighters (now listed as Low/Mid-Tech Humans in Ballistic Vests)
are a pretty good match for your initial, unarmored, low tech X-COM squaddies. As tech level goes up I'll use Khurasan 15mm High-Tech Humans in Body Armour, and eventually Khurasan 15mm High-Tech Humans in Assisted Power Armour.

In X-COM you can add small tanks to your squad called Heavy Weapon Platforms (HWPs). They come in increasing tech levels, armed with either cannons or missiles, and either tracked or hover. To represent these I got some Ground Zero Games Wheeled Drones with Autocannons and some Wheeled Drones with Missiles, as well as some UAV Hover Drones armed with guns or missiles.

Here's a few pics:

Pic above shows the basic sqaddies.

Pic above is a couple of the HWPs with a Khurasan mini for scale.

Pic above shows all of the HWPs with the same mini for scale.

Squad needed a transport plane. X-COM uses a plane called a Skyranger which resembles a space shuttle. I found a Revell Snap-Tite Space Shuttle model that was pretty close to a Skyranger. I did a little converting but it could be a lot better. It's too long and too narrow, the wing should be on top, and a lot of other little things. Here's some pics.


Pic above shows the team disembarking, led by a couple of HWPs.


Different angle.

Pic above shows the whole unit deployed.

Well, there's the first of the good guys. Now for the Bad Guys.

There are a bunch of Aliens who fight X-COM. Sectoids, Mutons, Snakemen, Floaters and assorted hangers-on. These will also have to be close proxies as nobody makes them. However, there are some pretty good choices out there on the market.

Sectoids: Rebel Minis Grays. The armed ones. I got a pack of those primed and ready for painting.
Snakemen: Critical Mass Games. Mercs-Astagar Fighters.
Mutons: Rebel Minis Super Heroes. Mutons look like heavily muscled men in tights.Several of these will make nice Mutons. They're primed, too.
Chrysalids: Chrysalids are close combat support troops that work with some of the main alien types. I'm using Khurasan Minis Plutonians to represent these.

I'm also working on a small Alien Scout ship, and a 2x2 foot terrain board. The terrain board is going to be one of the farms where many of the missions occur.

Thanks for looking,

Luckyjoe