Zona Alfa - More Hostiles - Bandits and Crew

 Original Draft - 2020-09-21

So i subscribed (for now at least) to the anvil digital forge thingy and downloaded a bunch of stalker-suitable bits. The Anvil models are great (their actual physical models) but very expensive once you add postage and conversion rates etc - also the accessories to make the models individual stack up. I online window-shopped a while back and ended up with crazy expensive crews.

I started with just the parts for a complete stalker at original scale. Was too large compared with the eureka miniatures which are my 'standard' to work towards. I then printed one at 91% scale and this was suitable. In pic below the 91% is on the left, the original scale on right.

This shows the 91% against a Eureka mini in a vaguely similar stance. If anything the model might be a fraction too tall still, but not so much that it bothers me. 

Over the weekend I printed out batches of parts for assembly - printer working beautifully throughout BTW. Waiting for the sun to get up and give everything a final solid curing. 

Basically there are enough parts here to make 24 basic models.

I REALLY need to get a big bottle of isopropyl as the sludge i'm currently reusing is just filthy - so even cured models can end up slightly sticky. 

Over the last few days i ditched the sw legion bandits and also the print 'military' I made. They were both far too large to be convincing in my homebrew meta so they're now gone. adios, thank you for your service [salute].

Given that the Eurekas will be taking any military faction duties on the board i now just need some replacement bandits.

The idea is that i make enough for 2x groups of 6 or combinations thereof - 12 all up. The official rules only ever use groups of 4 bandits, but i thought maybe on the Tier 3 maps groups of 6 might be suitable sometimes... anyway it's good to have options. Even with groups of 4 that's 3 groups available - perfect.

Something that's easy to miss on first reading is that hostiles of the same type can spawn at different points on the board at the same time. So theoretically on a T1 board you could have 3 groups of 4 bandits booting around simultaneously. One group of 4 bandits might not be enough to satisfy the dice rolls, though of course subbing in 'next hardest' hostiles based on what you have is entirely legit and sane (if you can't print off excessive quantities of models).

So 12 bandits still leaves me 12 sets for a new crew. I'm thinking of making a... 6 to 8 person crew... with obviously more 'stalker-aesthetic' than my current 'contractor' crew. The 'stalkers' will probably be my backup set though - the Contractors are still ace.

With the bandits... i'm not 100% sure what to do with the weapon loadouts. options include: a) everyone gets an ak47 and a knife, or b) everyone gets random loadouts (leftovers), c) combination of the above.

I'm actually liking the idea of having random loadouts and then rolling up the bandit crew at random when they're deployed. So you could be facing pistols, snipers, shotguns, aks, even knives... all at random. This actually kind of fits the setting quite well given bandits are going to be using scavenged/stolen equipment and are unlikely to have uniform gear (unless it's stolen of course).

A local gaming comrade of mine has ordered some 'scientist' models too so some interest around which is nice. Plus a different local guy already has a bunch of Eureka minis already painted up.  So hopefully some Player vs Player fun to be had in the future.

Update 2020-09-29

I put together 8 or 9 new crew people.

Will need greenstuff to get it to all stick together nicely. It has a bit of an issue with not assembling super-easily. i mean, it works, but it's fiddlier than what i expect with i.e. commercial plastic models. Then you need to hobby the pieces together, filling gaps, sanding sticky-outy bits down etc.... just yeah, little annoying. 

Might be an alternative to pre-model the pieces together in the windows program and print as a single piece. Saves the assembly hassle at least.

So i have another bits left for easily my 12 bandit models. i started despruing the legs and then realised i didn't have enough of my mdf bases. order 100 in but not sure when they'll get here so the project is on a bit of a hiatus.

update ends

Update 2020-10-12

The bases arrived and the bandit assembly started.

First set of complete bandits, boxed and ready for the table (a day late). These 4 will be the 'default' batch if I don't want to think. The other 8 will have a mix of weapons (leftovers).

In general i'm happier with them then the SW legion minis. The models are... not anywhere near the quality of the eureka: specifically the clothes are quite 'bloaty', so they're not specifically 'heroic scale' but they're just modelled 'fat'.  And obviously the weapons are huge - not a huge fan of that. They will suffice.

As more bandits and the crew are completed i'll add update pic on here, but this project has a start and an end so i'll call it done. 

update ends

Until next time...