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

Khurasan Caimen Easter Egg

While going over my kits sanding here and there getting them ready for paint I noticed something odd. The large turret on the Caimen is probably the biggest diversion from the look of the Aliens APC appearing to be quite a different shape and covered in gribblies on top compared to the very simple movie version. What I noticed though was that most of those gribblies were actually the runners that should be on the rails running along the back of the APC.





They had flipped the turret UPSIDE DOWN! I have no idea why they did this.







So what I did was cut off the tubes then sand the runner flat. Then use a razor saw to cut the peg off the other side then glue it to the runner.









Here is the comparison of the 2 turrets before and after the mod.















So what does everyone think? Improvement? Should I fix the 2nd one or have them different? Should I sand off that disc from the top of the turret?

Khurasan Miniatures Caimen Heavy APC: AKA the APC from ALIENS

"All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps!"

Oh man awesome new goodies. When I 1st saw the Caimen on Dwartist's blog I was so damn excited to get one. Kinda annoying it took like another 8 months before I'd get to throw them some money and another month to get my hands on my own.
 


























You can kinda see I was excited to finally add an APC to my collection of old Grenadier, EM4, Copplestone and recent Hasslefree marines so I bought 2 instead of 1 and an extra one still in the box for my friend Andrew.  The likeness to the movie APC is great, not 100% of course but instantly recognizable.
Giving the kits the good once over and dry fit assembly they go together very well, except the front mini turrets (they're upside down in the photos) I'm going to either have to drill out the socket to make it bigger or file down the pegs on the turrets a fair bit to make them fit. Everything else slotted in fine. The casting was very good with not too much flash or bubbles. I was surprised to note a few of the bubbles on the underside had already been filled with putty and sanded back already.

I was a bit surprised the entire main body of the APC was one big cast. It's about the same width as a Space Marine Rhino but much longer. In scale it's much more Main Battle Tank sized than APC sized but it has no problems giving the impression that a whole squad would fit inside. The rest of the kit is the the 4 wheels with big solid pegs that just slot in easy, you would have to do a lot of converting if you want to pose the vehicle turning but it looks good with the wheels straight. I guess you could try and drill in axels but I'm not going to have them spinning. The Top turret slots into a socket up top at the front of the rail. You could probably convert it with a bunch of dremmelling to be in the stowed position on the back but it would not be easy. The side door slots onto a pair of rail grooves and can be put on open or closed. There is a bit of an inset doorway but no internal detail. Lastly the mini turret which as I said doesn't actually fit yet. Maybe magnets is the answer. [Edit: Turns out getting the front mini turrets to fit was quite easy when I started cleaning the model, I just had to use a knife to trim the lip of the socket and it was fixed in just a minute.]


Hopefully the cleanup will be quick and painless so I can get to painting them.







I also grabbed the much smaller Polecat Armoured Command/Utility vehicle. It looks like a futuristic armoured Humvee but with only 2 doors instead of 4. I think it goes well with the APCs. Similar to the APC it was one big cast for the body of the vehicle with 4 seperate wheels and a choice of 2 turrets, the pictured sensor array with minigun or an anti air missile launcher with 8 missiles. I like the look of the little boxy turret I have on now but I'll paint both and maybe put in magnets. Again the casting is quite good apart from a big bubble in the right hand rear tail light.


The kits are from here http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/28mmscifi.html