Post a Comment On: Fawcett Avenue Conscripts

[Image] Group shot of a platoon of 15mm "Red Faction" troops from Khurasan - vehicle from QRF In the midst of making a big push to finish a bunch of Austrian Napoleonics, I'm continuing to fiddle with 15mm sci-fi.  I painted up some "Red Faction" 15mm sci-fi infantry from Khurasan Miniatures, and I found that I loved the castings so much that I decided to base them individually, instead of the group basing we have been using so far for our 15mm sci-fi.   I have finished a platoon-worth of guys and one test vehicle - here are a few pictures.

[Image] Command group - Lieutenant in the middle, a medic on the left, and a communications dude on the right
Switching up the basing scheme will likely make some of the fellows' heads explode (sorry, Dallas). At one time, Dallas had a collection of 15mm WW2 stuff based individually and he switched to the group basing. Of course, at the time we all piously agreed that such a move made perfect sense, and individually based 15mm infantry models were silly...I think he has some Space Demons mounted on single bases, though, so perhaps he did not quit the single-based 15mm entirely...

Normally I'm up for causing a little trouble, but in this case I am genuinely not trying to cause headaches.  The group basing works very well for 15mm sci-fi, and I'm not about to go and rip my already painted troops off of their bases. I just really, really like the Khurasan 15mm figures, and since they are unlikely to every be available in 28mm (although we can hope), I thought I would try 15mm single bases.

[Image] Red Faction fireteam - one SAW (in the middle) and a LAW-rocket-style grenade launcher (back at left) At the end of the day, it doesn't represent much of an incremental investment - one or two packs of figures turns into quite a few guys.  I figured we can use these for systems such as FUBAR, Tomorrow's War (assuming we can ever figure out the rules), or a 15mm version of Space Krieg, our in-house skirmish rules system.


[Image] Another fire team So far I have four five-man fireteams, a three-man command group, a mortar and a sniper.  I have more figures painted, but I ran out of bases. For bases, I opted for Litko over the bases from Irregular Miniatures.  After a couple of tests, I found the ones from Litko easier to work with, even though orders from Litko tend to take an ice-age to arrive.

[Image] Mortar team and a sniper
Khurasan has a comprehensive selection of vehicles available for the "Red Faction" too, but I'm not wild about the Red Faction APC - just doesn't float my boat.  So I thought I would try for something a little different, and use a 15mm scale BMP-3 that I had lying around.  The BMP-3 is one of my favourite vehicles, and already has - in my subjective opinion - something of a sci-fi look to it. We'll just call it a BMP-300. 

The BMP-3 is not commonly available in 15mm - in fact, QRF Models has the only one I could find, and I had ordered one as a test model about a year ago (for a project that did not go ahead).  So rather than junk it (which had been the plan - see below) I primed the sucker up and gave it a coat of paint.


[Image] Close up of the BMP-3 model from QRF - quality of the casting was very, very bad
I had been nervous to order from QRF.  QRF has a very, very wide range of models available, and the proprietor is constantly on TMP pledging to have this-model-or-that-model out very soon. To his credit, the new models seem to appear regularly, and there seemed to be a number of positive reviews of QRF stuff from other TMP folks. But I have always been suspicious of figure companies with web sites that have few pictures, tons of pictures that won't load, and an "enlarge" feature that opens the picture in a separate window so that it is SMALLER than the original picture.  In this day and age, considering how much one person can do with an iPhone or comparable widget, a lack of product photos and a mickey mouse web site is simply inexcusable in my view.

When I received the model, my fears were confirmed. The quality of the casting was very poor. The mold lines were awful. The tread assemblies were a mess - had to be bent back into shape, and had all sorts of holes.  Fortunately, black primer and paint hide a great number of sins.  The regular retail price is 6.00GBP (that would be $9.50 Canadian at today's prices) for a single vehicle - not an epic cost, but enough that you expect decent quality. This was very frustrating.



[Image] Red Faction dismounts near the APC...not sure if this will work out scale-wise...  I'm not sure about the scale either - you can look at the picture and judge for yourself. The BMP-3 can allegedly hold eight fully armed motor riflemen. I don't think the "Red Faction" infantry are too far gone from current motor riflemen, and when you see the model, there is now way that eight men are in there (I like to call this the "1/56 effect"). On the other hand, Soviet/Russian APCs seem to be notorious for horribly cramped spaces, so perhaps I am over-reacting. I may mount the vehicle on a base to improve the perception of size relative to the infantry.

So I'm not sure if I will go with more QRF models to round out the APC line for these fellows, look for other BMP-3s in 15mm, or just give the "Red Faction" APC a try....I'm a big fan of the BMP-3, so in the end, I might just plump for a few more of them, and hope the black primer will hide the weak quality of casting of these vehicles.  It could be the quality of the casting at QRF will have improved over time too - you never know.

I'm working on some "OPFOR" for these fellows too - watch for more postings on the blog soon!