28mm Sci Fi Project, Pt III - Pig Iron Heavy Infantry Showcase

After posting the painting guide I was more than excited to get these guys done up this weekend, and it looks like I finished them just shy under 8 hours - not bad! In line with what I mentioned during my initial review, these Pig Iron figures painted up fabulously. I'm a bit bummed that additions to their ranges look to have slowed down a bit over the years as they seem to be focusing more on head options, so hopefully they'll come out with some more exciting stuff in the future!

I see some AAR's from this force very soon most likely using Tomorrow's War. For now however, I put together what is essentially my first staged miniature showcase to hold you all over until then!

28mm Sci Fi Project, Pt II - Pig Iron Heavy Infantry Painting

Before painting this force, as usual I decided to get a test-figure out of the way to make sure I was happy with the planned scheme. As you'll see below, these Pig Iron miniatures paint up really nicely and have some well defined detail without being too busy. Since these figures will be played with in a unit, I didn't want to go overboard on the paint job, shooting for a tabletop standard with minimal effort. 

See the image annotations for the steps I used to paint this test figure below - I will be using the same steps to complete the rest of his unit.

Mounted on a 20mm MDF base, the tab is covered with a mix of spackle and sand for ground texture. The figure is primed with a light gray and then given a zenithal dusting from above with white.

28mm Sci Fi Project, Pt I - Pig Iron Heavy Infantry Review

If you were an Imperial Guard player back in the early 2000's, chances are you've heard of Pig Iron.

Even today, they hosted some of the best headswaps available to Guard players who were looking to customize their armies. I remember picking up some head variants myself way back in 2004, and remember being very impressed with the quality of their casts and spread of head options. 

Revisiting their website throughout the years, I was always interested to see their other figure lines, and often wondered who used them and why - specifically their Kolony range. To a 13 year old who only new 40k, it seemed odd to me that such a range of Sci-Fi figs existed and seemed so much different than your regular guardsman.

Thankfully now, it is clear to me that multiple rulesets for Sci-Fi exist and are quite good, and these figures fit the bill perfectly. Alas, it was finally time to get my hands dirty and dig into these ranges which I had been eyeing for over 15 years now. 

I decided to pick up the entire Heavy Infantry set from Pig Iron. Shipping was quick, although post-Brexit shipping prices were a bit heavy, and stopped me from adding more (like some of their awesome looking Resin vehicles). Packaging was great, and you can see the figures as received below; 

Simply put, these figures are fantastic. The sculpts are clean, the casting is great with minimal to no flash, mold lines aren't too harsh, and they have a great weight to them. Most importantly though, they look badass.

The one downside I'd knock them for is that the heads are a bit fiddly to get to fit right, which is partially due to the the way they are gated onto the metal sprue they come on. You'll need to be careful removing them and won't want to snip too much off the neck portion. If you have any experience with metal models though it shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. 

With just an hours work I was able to clean them, base them up on 20mm rounds, and get them ready for basing. Currently, we're looking at using Tomorrow's War - a Sci-Fi variant of Force on Force - as our ruleset, but thankfully these figures are generic enough where I'm confident they can fit a wide variety of systems. All in all, I'd definitely purchase these again and am excited to see more from Pig Iron in the future. Keep your eyes on this space for Part II where I'll begin to paint these up.

Oldhammer Dwarves In Oathmark, Pt I

Welp, it's finally time for Oathmark. 

Since it's original announcement in late 2017, it was an exciting time to get back into fantasy rank & flank since Warhammer Fantasy's destruction just a few years earlier. Kings of War was on the rise as the "signature" fantasy mass battle game, but to me was overcrowded by competitive gamers and lacked a lot of theme and story-driven gameplay. Campaigns being one of Oathmarks key features was enough to drag our group finally into it. 

Although Northstar does create their own miniatures for Oathmark, it's clear the author (Joe McCullough) wrote the rules to be figure agnostic, allowing players to use whatever is in their collection much like in his other system Frostgrave. I've never been much of a fan of plastic kits, and hate to say Northstars plastics are among some of my least favorite - not because of their themes and modularity which I find quite nice, but because of the soft detail on the plastics. 

Hence, I've decided to go the "Oldhammer" route for this Dwarven army I have chosen; white metal figures only, tons of character, tons of history. 

Oathmark makes a point that the world is set in a "dark age", where gunpowder, plate mail, and even technology like crossbows haven't been created. Thankfully, given it's "create your own narrative" type formula, our group has decided not to worry about this and is allowing things like crossbows to be used as regular bows, figures to be wearing heavy armor and the like. 

It doesn't go without mentioning that Oldhammer figures nowadays are increasingly difficult to come by, especially for a large sized force. Naturally we'll see to substitutions.

Reading through the Oathmark rulebook initially I saw there was a lot of promise for spearmen units, although figures of that type were very limited in scope even during the Oldhammer days. From what I can tell, only a handful of variants were ever produced, with the Marauder "Landschneckts" line being one of the most popular and most rare. Seeing these figures online throughout the years I knew this would be a perfect opportunity to get my hands on some and paint them up. With a little handy eBay sniping, I was finally able to find some and make them my own! 

Next, following some solid recommendations from the Oldhammer group on Facebook, I was pointed to The Assault Group for their Imperial Dwarf line sculpted in an Oldhammer style, who had plenty of spearmen in the Landschneckt style - nice!

Assault Group Dwarves

Once my order had arrived the time had come to begin the mass of metal assembly. The major core of the army has been cleaned, based, and almost ready for priming, and I found The Assault Group figures an absolute pleasure to work with. Deciding on colors and a process for painting such a large batch of figures is up next, and I'm excited to get started. Until next time! 

Humble Beginnings for the Dwarves of Oathmark; TAG Dwarves (Left), Marauder Landschneckts (Right)