Monday 19 September 2016

USARF Recruitment Office - Part 3

My painting table is still awash with tiny, patriotic Americans. 

I finally got round to finishing off my second Devil Dog team as well as another Foxtrot and the King of USAriadna himself - Van Zant!


Frustratingly, the standalone Devil Dog box contains the same body as the one in the army pack, just with an alternate set of arms holding a shotgun, which I find deeply unsatisfying.

If I wanted a simple arm swap i could you do that myself, right?


Well, turns out I pretty much can.

The left arm was rotated downwards by 90 degrees, had the gaps filled with greenstuff and the heavy pistol was replaced by an Ork 'shoota' from a Warhammer 40,000 sprue. When an ostensibly 28-32mm scale weapon fits comfortably on a 54mm tall one, you know there is some weird scale-creep going on! All it needed doing was a bit of filing and the barrel was drilled out.

In game terms this is going to represent the shotgun variant with some kind of drum magazine, although it could probably pass for a chain rifle too if I fancied using a pair of them.


The knife held in the right hand was replaced by a set of punching claws, again taken from a 40k Ork sprue. The claws were carefully shaped,sharpened and had notches cut in them with a craft knife to make them seem worn and I used greenstuff to create a strap for him to hold onto.

Lastly he was given a tail from the Antipode that came in the army box because, frankly, they look like they ought to have tails!


Naturally I couldn't then use a tail-less Antipode, and I didn't want to try and convert the army box version or have a duplicate anyway, so I picked up an odd one from the Antipode Pack box. It's missing the USAriadna iconography, but I really like the pose on this one.

Again, the Antipode was painted with an entirely too large brush and with entirely too little care because I wasn't too worried about having consistent shading or crisp lines. He just had to look rough, dirty and dangerous instead! They are definitely enjoyable miniatures to paint and fairly quick to do too. The colour scheme is designed to look quite natural and they almost blend into the base.

All the fur tones were painted with some combination of Bleached Bone, Space Wolves Grey and some white or black only.


Van Zant was the next model to be finished, although I'm yet to actually use him in a game.

Painting him gave a welcomed break from the rest of the army as the leather jacket gives him a very different look in terms of colours and textures when compared to every other model.

This is one of the models I'm happiest with as I think everything came out smoothly, particularly the jacket, fur lining and skin tone on the head. He definitely cuts an imposing figure, standing with one foot on his tactical lunchbox, and I'm looking forward to inflicting him on my opponents soon.



Lastly for this batch I quickly threw together the new Foxtrot. I'm not sure how I feel about the way she's holder her shotgun - it just doesn't look right to me! - but I love the stern look and the glasses.

She came out a little bit rougher than I liked, but this was probably down to the fact that I tried to finish her more quickly than normal.


Next up in the queue is going to be the Traktor Muls, hopefully followed by another Foxtrot or two (using alternative Infinity miniatures) and the Unknown Ranger.

In other news, they had their first tournament outing last weekend and did very well for themselves coming 1st out of 10 players in some hard-fought games. The list I used for all three games is below and the scenarios were Decapitation, Beaconland and Supremacy.

Yep, that's 2 SWC for a camouflaged Lieutenant and a total of 10 camo markers. No, I have no idea how I actually got away with killing a TAG.

USAriadna Ranger Force
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1
GRUNT Heavy Flamethrower, Light Shotgun. (0 | 10)
GRUNT Paramedic (MediKit) Rifle. (0 | 12)
GRUNT (Marksmanship LX) Sniper Rifle. (0.5 | 18)
GRUNT HMG. (1 | 21)
GRUNT (Forward Observer) Rifle. (0 | 11)
HARDCASE FRONTIERSMAN Tactical Bow, Light Shotgun. (0 | 12)
HARDCASE FRONTIERSMAN Tactical Bow, Light Shotgun. (0 | 12)
112 Light Shotgun. (0 | 12)
AIRBORNE RANGER (Forward Observer) Submachine Gun. (0 | 21)
MARAUDER (Multispectral Visor L1) Sniper, Heavy Pistol. (0.5 | 29)

GROUP 2
FOXTROT Lieutenant Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines. (2 | 17)
FOXTROT (Forward Observer) Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines. (0 | 18)
FOXTROT Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines. (0.5 | 24)
FOXTROT (Forward Observer) Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines. (0 | 18)
HARDCASE FRONTIERSMAN Tactical Bow, Light Shotgun. (0 | 12)
MAVERICK Submachine Gun, Light Rocket Launcher. (0.5 | 22)
DOZER (Traktor Mul Control Device) Rifle, D-Charges. (0 | 14)
TRAKTOR MUL Katyusha MRL. (1 | 11)
TRAKTOR MUL (Minesweeper). (0 | 5)

6 SWC | 299 Points

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