15mm Dropship Comparison Photos

Due to requests here are some photos of the dropship conversion from yesterday's post with a variety of 15mm figures and vehicles. I don't think its as big as some of your thought it was but its plenty dropship for me.

An idea of how many men might fit inside, use your imagination!

And now with some vehicles from CMG, Old Crow and GZG.

 Looks like it'd fit to me. If not, sling it underneath in a gravity harness or whatnot. Its Sci-fi.

One of the military vehicles/aircraft I like the most is the Chinook, I'm not sure why precisly, I think its just how damn useful it is. Essentially what I'm going for here in feel is an up-gunned sci-fi Chinook, albeit one which can make orbit. The pictures pretty much sum up how I see its role:

Ok, well, maybe not lifting planes, but certainly ground vehicles. 

I reckon the inside would probably look like a higher-tech version of this, probably a bit smaller. As I think you can see from the photos were I stuck guys on top, you could probably fit about 15-20 guys in there in full combat gear once you account for the fact that people sitting down with weapons stowed take up less room. Could probably fit a reasonable number of PA troopers in there as well or a jeep or gun. 

15mm Armoured Dropship Conversion

Here's a modelling guide/conversion guide/'look what I made' article. 

I saw Old Crow's 6mm armoured dropship months ago and thought it would make a good dropship for my 15mm Arbiters force. The model is pretty big (over 13cm long) and looks about the right size to carry light vehicles and at least half a platoon of infantry. Also, at £6, for this much resin, its a bargain. After some fairly extensive work I've come out with two of these badass looking dropships (these are undercoated only atm as I haven't quite worked out what shade of grey I want them to be in the end). 

I wasn't happy with any of the dropships currently commercially available in 15mm, to be honest, they all look a bit boxy, retro and outdated. I wanted something resembling the Pelican from HALO (I LOVE that design) or the huge gunship in Avatar. I couldn't find either of those in the right scale or price range but luckily stumbled across this on Old Crow's 6mm range

All I needed to do was up-gun it to get the heavily armed, 'hot LZ' gunship, I was after. This was achieved by using a few sets of OC's 6mm turrets and some leftover guns on the frame I ordered from Rebel Minis for my Arbiter 'Space Hummers' (up-gunned Goanna Scouts from OC). 

The model wasn't hard to assemble, all I did was cross-hatch the large joins with a knife to create a key and use some potent super glue. However, the 2 models I received from OC did suffer from quite lot of air bubbles in various places, especially the wingtips. I did my best with Green stuff (as you can see below) and it looks ok now its undercoated. 

Some of the small details on the tail had such large air bubbles I ended up replacing one of them with some plasticard.

The models joins in the middle very visibly. I spent a long time trying to fill the various join lines. Its a shame because the model otherwise has such wonderfully smooth surfaces.

My attempts to fill them using super glue, green stuff and filing/sanding went ok but not great. Some of them are still quite visible unfortunately.

After slapping on the green stuff as shown above I waited for it to fully cure and then cut it away to gain a much neater finish. I find this much easier than trying to smooth and sculpt it while wet. 

The missile/rocket pods on the dropships wings required a little bit of dressing up to make them fit in. I added some gubbins with plasticard and guitar wire to the tops as well as a pylon to attach them to the wing with. They turned out to be a little bigger in the flesh than I anticipated, originally I thought I'd just be able to stick them straight to the wings. Nice casts though. 

The heavy turret added to the bottom of the hull was another OC 6mm range turret. I got a pack of 5 so I still have 3 left, I'll probably make them into immobile defence turrets. You can also see the holes I drilled in the wings in order to mount the guns from the Rebel Minis weapon sprue. These sprues are great and you get a nice variety of near future weapons for not a lot of money, not to mention a good gun shield and hatch. I'll probably end up using all these weapons on my other 15mm vehicles.

Although it doesn't seem like much, doing all of this twice over took the best part of a day, including drying times and faffing. Good job I did it a few weeks ago when I didn't have exams pressing! Worth the time for the result though I feel:

As I said earlier I'm not entirely sure what shade of grey I'm going to end up doing these. I'm definitely going to wait until I can use the airbrush at home though before going much further, it can get really nice smooth results. I think I'll also try and give them some decent weathering such as paint chips, dirt, wear, blackening around the engines etc and make the pair a bit of a project. 

The stands you can see in the photos are rubbish, I just knocked them up for painting/taking pictures and I'll take them apart once I receive the omni-stand I've ordered. These models are pretty heavy and really need some decent support. I've heard good things about the omnistand so hopefully they'll do the job and make these things storable and transportable as well. 

Anyhoooo, need to get back to not doing enough exam revision. Procrastination is an art, and I am a Maestro.

EDIT: You can find comparison pics of the dropship with other 15mm figures and vehicles on this post

Update: I am still alive...

In case anyone was wondering, I am still breathing. 12 days without a post is quite a while and I hope not to leave it so long again but pressing matters (read: Civil Service Assessment day and two summative assignments) conspired to press miniatures into the corner of my mind. Saying that, I did manage to get a few 15mms finished off and base most of my expanding force (pictures will follow soonish). Although I have serially forgotten to send  the mdf bases I have off to warbases.co.uk to get holes cut so I can use them as sabot bases. 

The 15mm project is starting to come together now. I'm still mucking about with rulesets (I've  had a look at Strike Legion and Future War Commander but am so far undecided) but hopefully will be able to start getting some test games in in the next few months ahead. I've also just made a biggish order to Old Crow; some vehicles for a opposing force force to take on my fledgling Autosentia. Namewise I haven't given it much thought yet but these certainly arn't meant to be your archetypal 'good guys'. I'm thinking along the lines of the peacekeepers from Farscape, overall, they're 'good' but their means and motivations are unpalatable. Essentially, they're defending the galaxy from mass genocide by a machine race (the Autosentia) who believe organic beings are a virus, an inferior life-form which must be eliminated. However, I'm thinking that their means of achieving this aim will be somewhat callous and self-serving. 

Below are some of the infantry and vehicles I plan to include in the force, those from the UK  have already been ordered for the most part. 

(CMG) For the grunts. These will mounted up in the Goanna Scouts and Claymore's from Old Crow. CMG also make a large selection of support weapons including grenade launchers, missile launchers, laser cannons and snipers. Excellent.

I considered using Khurasan federal infantry but on close examination the CMG sculpts look much cleaner and have much more serviceable looking weapons. 

(CMG) For the elite droptroopers, these will be lifted  into battle by the Armoured Dropships from Old Crow.

Power Armoured Infantry from Khurasan.  The best looking 15mm PA around imo (altho Blue Moon's comes close). 

(CMG). Gravbikes for recon/fast attack. (Budget permitting...)

Medium tanks from Old Crow

Heavy Armour from Khurasan

These Goanna scout cars from Old Crow will have the weapons sprue from Rebel minis added to give them some punch. Think future Hummers for the grunts. 

A heavy APC for either grunts or power armour. Not sure whether to include these or save them for another army. 

This Armoured Dropship from Cold Crow is meant for 6mm but measures in at 135mm long, making it perfect as a heavy dropship for 15mm. I've ordered two of these to carry a full platoon of up-armoured drop-troopers or power armour. 

I've also ordered these turret pieces from Old Crow to add some firepower to the dropships. 

I'm toying with using these 'Alien AFVs' as space fighters on CAS missions. 

I'm still debating what kind of colour-scheme to use on these. My Autosentia are a sandy beige colour and are mounted on rocky arid bases. These guys need to have the same basing so they'll probably end up green with desert camo although I'm sorely tempted to do them in orange/red and dark grey for no other reason than it would look awesome (if completely lacking in sense) and I like painting those colours.  

Well there's a window into my current plans. Hopefully I'll be able to persuade someone at the Warlord's to actually give me a game!