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All Quiet on the Martian Front - ULLA!


Will Vale

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Hi folks,

Now that I've got Gerty to something approaching the paint stage, I thought I needed some light relief. I'm wary of doing more than one thing since my GB completion record is pretty poor, but these are very simple.

I picked up the All Quiet on the Martian Front starter box at the weekend after finding it for a decent price in a sale. Steam Tanks! Giant Tripods! Heat Rays! You can see how I might not resist such a thing.

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Production values from the box art - not great! It's printed from an extremely low-resolution JPG of all things - you can see the pixellation and even the compression artifacts. A bit embarrassing for the printer and whoever did the prepress work...

Thankfully the contents look pretty good:

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Six of these tanks, which can be built in a couple of ways, plus three tripods:

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and a several bags of metal infantry, MG teams, and "rough riders" on motorcycles.

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I'm not promising to build all of this but I reckon I can get somewhere with the tanks and tripods. Plus I'm just desperate to clip some bits off sprues that don't need to be sanded to death :P

Cheers,

Will

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Very cool. Would have to look for it if it had been 20mm,

It's quoted as "15mm heroic - i.e. 18mm" so it might *just* be usable with 20mm bits - and HO scale buildings are suggested.

I was hoping to mix with Flames of War stuff since that's really easy to get here. I guess with the tripods it probably doesn't matter much!

Will

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I was able to find some time (and some Jeff Wayne) to do a little assembly tonight:

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The plastic is soft and creates a lot of burrs, but it seems to clean up OK with extra-thin. For wargamey kits these are nice - decent detail and good fit, plus lots of options to choose from.

These are two Mark II Steam Tanks (the vanilla US tank) versus one assault tripod with heat ray projector. To give you a sense of scale the tripod's base is 80mm in diameter.

Cheers,

Will

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Is it me or does that tripod look like it's wearing a fireman's helmet!!

Great set and good work so far.

"No one would have believed, in the early years of the twenty first century, that human modelling affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.

No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered

the possibility of modelling on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, with scalpels and files immeasurably superior to ours they regarded this Plastic with envious eyes,

and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us."

"Dumb, dumb, dumb. Dumb-a-dumb, dumb-a-dumb!!"

Ulah,

Warren

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Hehe, sorry* Warren, didn't mean to make you spend money!

*not really sorry

I finished the last tank, drilled out the barrels and chimneys, and did a little filling and rough cleaning up. Then primer!

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The Alclad black primer goes on rather glossier than the grey one (this isn't the black base) so it's great for revealing sink marks, some of which I'd seen and some I hadn't. I shall ignore them all and hope that matt varnish will hide them again later :)

There's some nice detail on the tanks:

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and the tripods clean up much better than I thought - it felt like there'd be lots of burrs and mould lines but it's all sanded out beautifully. Even the ribbed tubes look decent:

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So I shall polish the tripod a little bit, and get some paint on these tomorrow hopefully.

Cheers,

Will

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Hehe, sorry* Warren, didn't mean to make you spend money!

*not really sorry

No problem Will, to be honest I struggled to decide what to get, it is a great range.

The Tripod head still looks like it should be a character on a children's programme about Firemen!! Maybe we should call your Tripod Sam!!

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Warren

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"Tripod Sam" :D

I lightly polished Sam's helmet (oho!) at lunchtime and did some spraying tonight.

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The tripod is sprayed freehand with various Alclads - polished aluminium on the upper helmet, aluminium for the lower half and legs. Steel for joints and the "pelvis". I did the tentacle tops in dark aluminium and the curvy bits in pale burnt metal.

Looks a bit weird now but I think a wash will bring all this together. I probably need to spray some inks or smoke or similar to shade things before I do that though.

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The tanks are a first experiment in "colour modulation" which I sort of disapprove of :) It's often described as making the model capture light more like the real thing does, but I think it's just another way to add contrast (like washes and drybrushing) to make things more attractive. Humans like contrast - we're built to detect it.

Anyway, on these things it's fun and it looks punchy and cartoon and wargamey :)

I need to brush paint the tracks and details - I'm going to leave the smokebox black since that feels more steam-ey to me - and maybe figure out some simple unit markings?

This is all very gratifying - poor Gerty!

Cheers,

Will

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I really like those tanks - very colorful and eye catching. The metal paint work on Sam is also particularly nice :)

How big are those tanks? I'm guessing they're quite small and it's your photography that makes them look bigger

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Love the shading on the tanks Will. I saw an unboxing of these on youtube and thought they looked a bit cheap and basic but seeing your build they look pretty decent. Do they sell the models separately from the box set?

Andy

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They look smashing :)

Don't suppose they have a Thunderchild do they? :D

They have a land based equivalent called The Land Ironclad but will put you back £130!

Cheers,

Warren

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Hmm this is different, very intriguing! No stoppit, I'm NOT looking at that website!

Tanks look very neat and that silver Martian fighting machine looks great!

Tripod Sam... you really are a sick man Warren you know that don't you...

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Hmm this is different, very intriguing! No stoppit, I'm NOT looking at that website!

Tanks look very neat and that silver Martian fighting machine looks great!

Tripod Sam... you really are a sick man Warren you know that don't you...

I like to think of it as a fertive imagination myself!

I fell victim to an ebay listing and now have a "Slayer Tripod"

Cheers,

Warren

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