Tag: Bow Wow Wow

Back when I was acquiring the Texican Space Rangers from Michael Thomas’ site, classicminiatures.net, Michael let me know that he had some other cool figures that were not listed on his miniatures list.  One of these was a cool robot that he called “Advancing Robot”.  Supposedly, it was from the now-shuttered Mega Miniatures company as part of its Salvage Crew Robots & Vehicles line, with a product number of DEAL-0372.  Michael sent me a picture, and I bought 11 for a squad for Combat Patrol™ games, along with some others that I will hopefully be able to share with you all when they are painted.  The figures are 28mm in size.  Certainly, Michael is great to work with if you have any interest in buying from him

This unit is also one I can use for the June Community Painting Challenge from Azazel as my second unit for the month.

However, when I looked at the Lost Minis Wiki, I was perplexed – it was not there!  I reached out to the Old School Miniatures group on FaceBook as I thought these might be old, but no luck was to be found there.  Then I tried The Miniatures Page (TMP), and got a bit luckier with this information.   So, my newly acquired robots were indeed from Mega Miniatures but circa 2008, which ironically makes them relatively young in my collection.  Still, I had no luck with any catalog or descriptor info, until Neil at Lost Minis Wiki helped me out with a 2012 Mega Miniatures catalog and there on page 60 was my robot.

I now knew the figure was DEAL-0372, Robot Peacekeeper from Mega Miniatures!  It was armed with an automatic weapon left hand and a claw on its right hand.  As I had 11 of these, I decided that it would be a squad of two teams of five robots (four each plus its own team leader) and led by a squad leader.

I cleaned the figures,  and filed and cut away any flash (of which there was very little).  I mounted them on ¾” steel washers with Gorilla Glue.  Then I affixed them to poster tack on top of specimen jars for painting.  I used my airbrush to prime them white with Vallejo “Surface Primer-White”.

As for a painting scheme, I decided that I wanted them to pop color-wise, so I again used paints that are more likely to be used models of muscle cars.  Createx makes some really cool pearlized colors that I like for metallics – they really work well as long as you use the proper pressure in your airbrush and you thin them appropriately.  What I really like is that they put the appropriate pressure setting on the bottle.

For the squad leader, I used “Pearlized Red”.  Each of the two team leaders got “Pearl Copper”.  Team A got “Pearl Tangerine”, and Team B got “Pearl Plum”.  Each of these had different pressure requirements, but switching between paints was extremely easy and cleanup afterwards was a breeze.

At this point, my daughter Ellen, who was visiting with her daughter (our granddaughter) Tabitha, saw them and said, “cool, they look like Skittles”.  As a result, I kept thinking about candy as I worked on them!  Of course, a song crept into my mind, and so from 1982, here’s the theme for this blog post, from Bow Wow Wow for no other reason that it stuck in my head.

Try getting that out of your head now!

Back to the project!  I then used a series of washes and paints on them to bring out details better and to make them easier to use on the tabletop.  I decided that the optics (can’t really say that the robots have eyes) would be the key differentiating feature between Team A and Team B.  I painted the optics white, then lined them with “Nuln Oil Gloss” (the gloss version works much better on metallics).  Then, using fluorescent colors (yellow, magenta, and green) from Vallejo Mecha Colors, I painted each robots peepers (I needed another word for optics) multiple times until I got a nice radiant glow from them.  I highlighted the group with brushing on more of the aforementioned pearlized paints.  All the paints that I used are listed at the end of this post for those interested.

I then used an airbrushed gloss varnish to protect the paint jobs.  But wait you say, gloss?  On already shiny minis?  Yes – and after that dried it allowed me then to work on my bases.

For this group, I wanted to use a less Martian-like red on the bases – and go with a more lunar look.  For this, I used Citadel’s “Astrogranite”, a texture paint on the bases.  With all of Citadel’s texture paints, I find it useful to use a hand-held hair dryer to get better effects from them in terms of cracking or making crevices.  I did not see that effect with the “Astrogranite”, but it did dry enough for easy dry brushing later.  After it dried I was able to effectively apply a wash of Citadel “Nuln Oil Gloss” to darken the low spots.  For dry brushing, I applied Vallejo “Wolf Grey” to the bases.  That turned out to be a bit too plain for my tastes, so I added a glaze of Citadel “Gulliman Blue” which made a nice tint on the bases.  Now I had a good lunar look.

Lastly, I finished the models with a second coat of varnish, this time Vallejo “Mecha Varnish Matt Varnish” with my airbrush.  This did a nice job on the models and the bases.

I am pretty satisfied with how the unit came out.  The sculpts are retro-looking enough to work with my other Archive stuff – I think they look “Robocop-ish”, and I’m sure I can use them to augment any force, maybe even the Texican Space Rangers.  The Lost Minis Wiki is now updated with the Salvage Crew Robots & Vehicles range.

I hope you enjoyed these Robot Peacekeepers!  Please leave your feedback in the comments section – I enjoy your thoughts and suggestions.  Thanks and hopefully I get another group done soon.

PAINTS, INKS, GLAZES, WASHES, AND FLOCKING USED:

1. Vallejo “Surface Primer – White”
2. Createx “Pearl Red”
3. Createx “Pearl Copper”
4. Createx “Pearl Tangerine”
5. Createx “Pearl Plum”
6. Vallejo “Flow Improver”
7. Vallejo “”Airbrush Thinner”
8. Createx “4012 High Performance Reducer”
9. Citadel “Nuln Oil Gloss” (wash)
10. Citadel “Ceramite White”
11. Vallejo Mecha Color “Metallic Blue”
12. Vallejo Mecha Color “Green Fluorescent”
13. Vallejo Mecha Color “Magenta Fluorescent”
14. Vallejo Mecha Color “Yellow Fluorescent”
15. Vallejo Model Air “Gun Metal”
16. Vallejo Model Air “Black (metallic)”
17. Vallejo Model Air “Chrome”
18. Vallejo “Black Grey”
19. Vallejo “Gloss Varnish”
20. Citadel “Astrogranite” (texture)
21. Vallejo Game Air “Wolf Grey”
22. Citadel “Gulliman Blue” (glaze)
23. Vallejo Mecha Varnish “Matt Varnish”

Thanks again for looking!