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I had a chance to really take a good look at this kit from Monster Model and Laserworks and pull the parts out of the box and work my way through the assembly and painting instructions. Translate this to I remembered my paints but left the miniatures I was going to work on at home. However, this is something that I have wanted to do since I got the kit. First thing was to inventory the parts against the listed parts in the assembly instructions. No problems everything there and was either clearly labeled or pretty darn obvious based on the pictures in the instructions. Bonus, everything is there! I actually figured it would all be there so I didn't anticipate any problems. I'm very pleased with the detail on this kit, especially the brickwork. This one will be right up in front of everyone when you are looking at the layout. I think this will be the stand in for Commonwealth Steel  on my version of the "Patch".

Next up step through the instructions, identify the parts for each step and make sure that everything made sense so I wouldn't run into any problems when I had the glue and clamps out for the real assembly. All the major components (the walls and roof) fit together beautifully as you can see in the pictures below.

It was at this point that I did kind of stumble through the Instruction Manual, and this is a pretty minor quibble on my part, but a bit irritating. The Instruction Manual clearly indicates it will be indicate when you should paint certain parts in which case you would refer to the details in the painting and weathering instructions. So far so good. My issue is that the painting and weathering instructions also contain the assembly instructions for a number of the sub assemblies like the windows and concrete loading platform on the rail side of the building. On top of that there are two #5 steps in those instructions, one for assembling and painting the rear platform and another one for painting and weathering the roof. Plus the the instructions in the painting and weathering booklet are not really in order. It would have been much easier for them to match up with the Instruction Manual.

Let me emphasis though that the instructions are well written, clear and include very good pictures of the kit being assembled. I followed through them without any problems. The painting and weathering instructions include some techniques that I haven't tried before and I'm eager to give them a try and see how they work out. I think this kit is going to pretty much fall together, if I had my clamps and wood glue with me I would have started to assemble this one today.

I have some pictures below of the kit "dry-fitted" together and it together very well since it uses a tab and slot construction that is kind of a hallmark of laser cut kits now. I have included a half inch die for my wargaming friends to get a better sense of scale. I did pre-order this kit and received the clerestory for the top but I didn't have that kit with me today.

This is the freight truck side of the building and will be the portion that visitors will be seeing on the "Patch"


 Here we see the long brick side wall and the rail side of the building. This will probably only ever be visible in photographs once its installed on the layout.

I have been painting this week and I have finished off the next batch of Ground Zero Games miniatures for the Traveller Campaign. I'm not really happy with the paint work on these but for gaming purposes they will get the job done. I have three more sets of GZG miniatures left to go, they are armed civilian packs and hopefully they will come out better than these.

SG15-V01 - Civilians/Colonists Pack A

Since there was a sale at GZG, I figured I should get another line of miniatures just, you know, to compare. My order from Khurasan Miniatures arrived today. I'm really happy with these miniatures.There are a couple of packs that are just fantastic sculpts and I'm looking forward to painting them. Overall, the mold lines are pretty light so clean up should be pretty easy. So when I finish off the ones I received from GZG, I'm really looking forward to getting started on these.

TTC-3002; 15mm Citizens or Commercial Freighter Crew, Male and Female
I think this a Not-Nostromo crew

TTC-2501 15mm Small Spaceship Crew (x5)
I think these are Not-Star Wars episode IV personalities
 TTC-1403 Sci Fi Superhero and Spirited Sidekick
The 11th guy appears to lying down on the job.
 TTC-2700 15mm Defense Force Squad

The battle of the Mice has begun. Check Anne's blog for the details, this week should be really amusing, I'm sure  that they will be to busy insulting each other to actually paint anything.

Anne's Attic: It's Go Time Rousell!!

Like I said it was a productive painting weekend. Here is the second set of GZG miniatures that I painted. There is one more on the table that's close but I'm not sure if I will finish it today or not.  Now here are the Technicians. Oh and one for scale as I have had several people ask about how big these really are. So with a  US Penny behind one of the miniatures.

I'm preparing to get a Traveller campaign started next year and of course that requires miniatures! So its back to the 15mm, the classic size for any Traveller campaign. I received an order from GZG (Ground Zero Games) and I spent a very productive weekend painting. This is the first group that was finished, my Colonial Security.

I should have taken a side shot. If you see what appears to be a stray bit of red on the paints, that's actually a red stripe running down the outside of each leg.

I have had a lot of calls and texts this morning asking if my family is all right. We are fine. Neither myself or my two boys were at that movie theater last night. In short a gunman kicked in an exit door into one of the theaters and proceed to rake the crowd with rifle fire. Twelve are dead as of this morning and another 50 injured.

Oddly enough none of us were even at last night's show. The boys couldn't get tickets because they wanted to see it on an Imax screen. So all of us were safely in bed.

Its a horrific incident and I'm saddened that it happened here. But it could have happened anywhere. The fires are mostly out at this point so please if you have plans to visit Colorado don't change them. We need your tourist money!