Those missing Leading Edge Aliens photos

Uploaded those missing shots



the Leading Edge minis I managed to get





you can kinda see what I meant about the waist up matching 28mm



though Gorman is super weedy





Oh and some shots of the conversion to the female smart gunner to give her the eye piece and added the cable coming off the camera on all the smart gunners.

There's movement all over the place... ALIENS Continued

HUDSON
This signal's weird...must be
some interference or something.
There's movement all over the
place...

HUDSON
Twelve meters. Man, this is a big
fucking signal. Ten meters.

RIPLEY
They're right on us. Vasquez,
how you doing?

Vasquez is heedlessly showering herself with molten metal
as she welds the door shut. Working like a demon.



HUDSON
Nine meters. Eight.

RIPLEY
Can't be. That's inside the room!

HUDSON
It's readin' right. Look!

Ripley fiddles with her tracker, adjusting the tuning.

HICKS
Well you're not reading it right!

HUDSON
Six meters. Five. What the fu --

He looks at Ripley. It dawns on both of them at the same
time. She feels a cold premonitory dread as she angles
her tracker upward to the ceiling, almost overhead. The
tone gets louder.

Hicks climbs onto a file cabinet and raises a panel of
acoustic drop-ceiling. He shines his light inside.









You may have thought there had been no progress lately but I've been busy. I've been scouring ebay and forums chasing old Leading Edge Aliens, marines, doomed colonists and even the ever elusive power loader.

Thanks to Comsquare I was able to get a veritable hoard of LE Aliens and damn I am happy with them. They scale beautifully with the Eureka Chaos Weasels and look good with my 28mm marines.





From a local gaming club that runs the yearly MOAB convention I managed to trade some warmachine minis for this treasure trove. Considering my failed attempts to get the Power Loader on ebay I can't thank this guy enough. Seems they'd been tucked away in zip lock bags for the last decade so he was happy for them to go to a good home :D





Despite the standing marines from LE being somewhat squished proportions 25mm the Riply in the Power Loader is 28mm and totally in scale with my marines.

Speaking of LE marines I got a handful of them off ebay for £1 each while I was being outbid on aliens and a power loader.. (and I notice I forgot to upload their photo. Doh I'll edit this later to put them in) Odd thing about them is their scale isn't really 25mm well that's their height but if you compare them waist up they are the same as 28mm but with even chunkier heads, all the small scale part of them seems to be in the legs. I'm semi tempted to give them new legs or mod them. Since I don't have many flamers and I somehow ended up with 4 characters with flamers. The Bishop I got was missing his feet so he will get a bit of sculpting done to make him stand taller. The colonists last stand set minis are weirder still being more like 30mm minis but in funny poses or being dragged off by an alien (love that mini).

Back to my marines I got it in my head that their helmets weren't enough like the movie ones so I decided to add those plates to the front of all of them...





a bunch of gluing on then cleaning up plastic strips later. Since then I've been so very slowly filing off all the damn mold lines and getting them primed a group at a time.







I got this idea to print out sheets of the badges the marines wore on their uniforms, all about 2-3mm in size since I don't look forward to painting a US flag that size on every uniform shoulder so printed lots of them but had room left on the paper so decided to pimp up their carry case too











Also built these on the weekend. Why Merkavas you might ask. Well in the Colonial Marines Technical there is this little illustration



Which is obviously a Merkava with a funky gun and some add ons on top of the turret.

The Academy kit was really easy to clean up and assemble, the cheap chinese kit on the other hand was more detailed but was covered in mold ejection marks, flash and was generally a pain to clean up before assembly, also needed a hammer to get the drive wheels on their axel Also they seemed to have left off the bottom of the turret for some reason...





I don't mean under the middle bit, no kit has that covered, I had to make the disc there so I could shape the plastic to fill in the front and back of the turret ring and fill the visible voids around the barrel and the back end of the turret. Also the hull didn't line up too well and was too short, like the suspension had been lowered.



So I added extra to the hull at the front and back so the bottom and top sections would join up properly and the hulls of the 2 kits would match heights.





My issue is how to sci fi them up a bit and do they actually look any good next to the behemoth Khurasan APCs??? Makes me wish they made their medium and heavy tank in 28mm (that may take a while going by how long it took the APC to come out in 28mm) So I have ordered a somewhat more sci fi looking tank kit this week a Leopard 2 A5 in 1/48. I'll see how that looks with the APCs.

Lastly I've been cleaning up all the damn parts of the GW Valkyrie and the odd and ends from the hanger kits.



I hate cleaning off mold lines

JUST LOOK AT THE BONES!!!

I spent some time opening one of my Vampire sets and poking at the bigger models. Sooooo many little plastic bags to remove.



Can see the 2nd Vampire set in the next bucket. I opened up the monsters and put them with the 1st, not sure what to do with double of all the PC types yet.

People asked how is the quality? Generally speaking quite good. Almost impossible to clearly photograph though due to the white plastic.... In any case here are some standout models showing the finer detailed castings that caught my eye













This last one is a cool giant that I never would have bought in metal due to his size.

Now here are some comparison photos alongside their metal versions









You can see in this example that some of the detail seems a bit softer in the plastic but generally they are very comparable.



Now here is what I call my Good the OK and the Ugly:



In the second set the double of this gunslinger guy obviously got stuck in the mold or something cause his base and hat were very melted



Also had one guy missing his feet :O



And here are examples of the leaners:





I seperated them out as I was unbagging the minis. It's a common problem with prepaint and boardgame figures that you get a few that won't stand up or have bent weapons. I sorted all of these out together then fixed them by giving them a bath in hot water from the kettle in a bowl. Then pulled them out one at a time, straightened them up in their softened state and then put them under cold water to set them in the proper position. The same trick can be used on big anime and action figures since sometimes a hot day will make a character bend at the ankles. You can use a hair dryer or hot water to soften them up.



Another issue in only a handfull of figures is very thin limbs like this girls blurry thin hand. I only really noticed the problem on her and some skinny zombies.

After sorting through the hundreds of minis I only spotted these problems so Reaper has done a pretty good job. I'm getting replacements for a couple missing characters and the feetless and melted guy.