Munchkin Aerostat Corps – Hot Air Balloon with Crew (Wars of Ozz)

In building out my available troops for my Wars of Ozz games, I have focused on infantry, cavalry, and artillery units for the most part. I started with the Munchkins in this vein, then moved onto other factions as I have shared in previous posts in this blog. My Munchkin forces are excellent with musketry, but as far as mobility on the battlefield goes, well, they do have very small feet and do not move quickly…

Meanwhile, as you may remember, the Winkies (the oh-we-oh dudes) in  Wars of Ozz have very mobile units, especially in terms of cavalry and the Great Flying Apes.

I decided that it was high time that I got the Munchkins some air power of their own. While I have in some games given them allies (like the Great Owls), there is one organic flying unit available to the Munchkins. It is OZZ-110 “Hot Air Balloon & Crew“. The model consists of a foam balloon, three crewmen, a basket, and some wires. In the game, it is called a part of the Munchkin Aerostat Corps” located at the Emerald City. The Aerostat Corps is commanded by Professor Wogglebug. Balloons in the game are 360-degree aerial sharpshooter firing platforms for the Munchkins. They are faster than the Munchkin infantry and their movement is described as semi-magical (not just by the wind). While they cannot under normal circumstances engage in melee, other flying units may engage them in melee. As befits a sniping unit, they just engage the enemy with harassing attacks of sharpshooters and bombs – from above. While there are only three figures in the basket, it takes 5 hits on the balloonists to eliminate the unit – the balloon itself cannot be shot down.

This post will be quite WIP photo heavy as this was a stiff modeling challenge for me to be sure. I started on June 20th and finished on July 3rd.

I bought the model a while back and decided after looking at it to delay working on it until I had a few more other Ozz units done. I really wanted to make it cool (in my own way) – and I could see this would take some effort – so it languished in my collection of unpainted Ozz stuff – daring me to take it on. It is 28mm in scale. The figures and the basket are metal, while the balloon is a foam casting. There is an acrylic dowel as a stand that goes into a metal flight stand base, plus some wires for attaching the basket to the balloon. The rules stipulate that the base should be 4″ x 4″, so I used styrene for that..

WIP Shots…

I had visions of trying to recreate the font on the balloon to match that of the movie, but I decided otherwise as this is Ozz not Oz, and the foam cast needed some TLC.

Now, I take on modeling challenges not expecting that everything would be perfect – and here is a good example. You have to be reasonable as what you buy is a starting point, not a finish line. Let me be clear:

I LOVE THIS MODEL!!!! I highly recommend it!

However, there were a number of voids that needed to be fixed, and I just channeled my innovative juices. I needed to address that – as well as how exactly would I mount the basket and more that you’ll see shortly. The figures themselves are really nice. So what to do?

Sculpt with green stuff! That would allow me to bulk out the sculptor’s intended design as well as make the balloon “pop”…ok sorry about that…

This took more time than I wanted but I did need to let one part cure before moving on and this was a 360-degree operation. Once this was done, the mounting options swirled around in my head. I did not like the idea of using the wires – plus I was hesitant to run the wires through the foam balloon itself. I wanted the look of ropes – and that meant something to tie the ropes onto – so I made an “oreo cookie” of sorts with styrene, green stuff, and screw eyes to fit the bottom of the balloon, and let that cure. Then I drilled lined-up holes in the middle of the cookie and the balloon for the insertion of the acrylic flight pole. Once these lined up, I affixed the cookie with more green stuff and made it part of the balloon itself.

After this had cured, I covered the outside with more green stuff to make it match the balloon body.

At this point I moved on to the crew and the basket. Because there were tiny prongs on the boots of the crew and corresponding tiny holes on the basket floor for their mounting, I took two approaches. One was to use a pin vise to drill tiny holes on three popsicle sticks to accommodate the boot prongs and secured the crew with a drop of PVA glue. The second was to modify the basket bottom with matchsticks so as to hide the holes in the basket bottom.

Back to the crew, I primed them then covered them with a dark wash (Secret Weapon Washes “Heavy Body Black”. Once this had dried, a strong white dry brush application was made.

Returning to the balloon, I used my airbrush cleaning pot and an old brush handle to mount for priming and painting. As Munchkins love blue, I decided to follow the pattern of colors shown on the OZZ-110 “Hot Air Balloon & Crew“ picture on the website. I did have some trouble with one panel section that necessitated a repriming and repaint as the light blue contrast paint did not fully adhere – but that worked out fine (after a bit of repainting frustration of course). The basic sequence is shown in the gallery below.

Moving back to the crew and the basket – I painted each separately then assembled them. As I mentioned before, I wanted to use ropes (using twine) instead of the wires to connect the balloon to the basket. That required drilling out the four mounting holes on the basket and inserting two jewelry rings into each hole. The rings in each hole were then glued to each other with Gorilla Glue as shown in the sequence below.

As for the acrylic flight stand pole and the metal base, they were affixed to the styrene 4″ x 4″ base. I then added small stones and green stuff to support the pole as it was not overly supported by just the metal stand. I tried to level it out as best as I could.

The next section I dreaded doing, because rigging a balloon like this could easily come out horribly if not relatively level. I went slowly with the twine and measures out lengths carefully and tried to use appropriate knots.

I gave the twine a coat of PVA for stiffening, then gave them a speed paint hue to represent rope.

Then it was time to flock the base.

Eye Candy

First, the balloon in it’s entirety from three angles.

And three close-ups of the crew in the basket:

I really was happy to finally get this done – but wait – I need to transport this contraption! So, I took a 6.5 liter Really Useful Box, customized some foam padding, and voila!

This was a project that I am certain will be a lot of fun on the tabletop – until Great Flying Apes or similar attack – or the balloonists get shot up!

Next up – Gillikin stuff!

And yes, I still have more to come…

Miscellaneous details and references for those interested in that sort of thing:

For all of my previous posts on Wars of Ozz games, figures, units, and other related projects – please see this page.

PAINTS, INKS, GLAZES, SHADES, WASHES, PIGMENTS, FLOCKING, GLUES AND MORE THAT I USED ON THIS MUNCHKIN AEROSTAT & CREW:

1. Green stuff (kneadatite)
2. Plastruct styrene sheet
3. Vallejo Mecha Surface Primer “White”
4. Vallejo “Airbrush Thinner”
5. Gorilla Glue
6. Elmer’s PVA Glue
7. 4 small screw eyes
8. Secret Weapon Washes “Heavy Body Black”
9. Vallejo Model Color “White”
10. Vallejo Model Color “Red”
11. Army Painter “Speed Paint – Murder Scene”
12. Vallejo Model Color “Wood Grain”
13. Battlefront “Black”
14. Vallejo Game Air “Beastly Brown”
15. Citadel “Auric Armour Gold”
16. Army Painter “Speed Paint – Beowulf Blue”
17. Army Painter “Speed Paint – Royal Robes”
18. Army Painter “Speed Paint – Caribbean Ocean”
19. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Aggaros Dunes”
20. Army Painter “Speed Paint – Crusader Flesh”
21. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Aethermatic Blue”
22. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Pylar Glacier”
23. Army Painter “Tanned Flesh”
24. MSP Core Colors “Fair Shadow”
25. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Baal Red”
26. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Snakebite Leather”
27. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Contrast Medium”
28. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Magmadroth Flame”
29. Vallejo Model Air “Gun Metal”
30. Martha Stewart Crafts “Pale Bronze”
31. Vallejo Model Air “Wood”
32. Army Painter “Speed Paint – Hardened Leather”
33. Vallejo Model Air “Bright Brass”
34. Citadel “Agrax Earthshade” (wash)
35. Citadel “Nuln Oil GLOSS” (wash/shade)
36. Vallejo “Flow Improver”
37. Vallejo Varnish “Satin Varnish”
38. Vallejo Mecha Varnish “Matte Varnish”
39. Small jewelry rings
40. Wooden matchsticks
41. Cotton twine
42. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Skeleton Horde”
43. Small rocks
44. Vallejo Earth Texture “Brown Earth Gel”
45. Army Painter “Battlefields Grass Green” (flocking)
46. Army Painter “Battlefield Field Grass” (flocking)
47. Shadow’s Edge Miniatures “Tan Tufts” (flocking)
48. Shadow’s Edge Miniatures “6mm Light Blue Tufts” (flocking)
49. Gamers Grass “Wild”

Again, as you may want to check out the Wars of Ozz figures’ range – there are two places to get them (and I make no money from this btw). The game rules and the figures are available from the following two places:

In the US Old Glory has a site – Wars of Ozz Miniatures.

In the UK go to Sally 4th.