Pulpy Retro-Sci Fi - War Rocket

War Rocket is a quick and simple retro-sci fi space battle game, by Hydra Miniatures,  This is a tie-in
with the existing line of 28mm retro-sci fi miniatures, and soon to be a game, Retro-Raygun.

There are currently five factions to the game.  Each are distinguished in the game by the movement style of their ships and visually by the era they are inspired from.

The Galacteers, the good guys, are inspired by 50s era jet airplanes and fly around accordingly.  They boast some of the fastest rockets in the game.  In fact their strength is their Class I War Rocket.  Their weakness is that, most of their weapons are in their forward arc.  All but the largest of the Galacteer rockets have any weapons covering their rears.

The Imperials are inspired from the 30s era Flash Gordon series.  They are similar in game performance as the Galacteers, but slower, less maneuverable but are some of the best armored ships in the game.

I find the Imperial Class II War Rocket one of their best rockets, especially with the extra forward gun upgrade.  The Class IV War Rocket packs a wallop, but is incredibly slow.  Best if one buys the Atomic Engine upgrades.

The Class I Imperial War Rockets are tough but very hard to maneuver and only seem to work well in large numbers.  In small numbers they find themselves outmaneuvered by most every other rocket out there.

The Valkeeri appear to be inspired by 40s era pulp magazine spaceships and have a unique movement type called Pulse Movement.  I describe it best as movement similar to your rocket in the old video game Asteroids.  Where Valkeeri rockets can change their facing along a straight line movement.  Valkeeri ships are almost as tough as Imperial and their larger rockets often pack more of a punch than the Imperials.  Their speed is roughly just behind the Galacteers.

The mysterious Zenethians are inspired from 50s era flying saucers and their Saucer Movement pretty much allows them to have most if not all of their weapons always on target.  Their weakness is their paper thin defense.  Best to buy force fields on the larger craft.

Inspired by the War Rocket collection, I picked up this really cool old re-issue of a space station model kit from Lindbergh models. 











It makes a nice centerpiece and objective for playing War Rocket. Also the two shuttles on the landing pad snap on and off easily and could be mounted on a standard flight stand. They are about the size of a Class I rocket.









The newest faction is the Space Pirates.  These sleek and fast rockets have wide weapon arcs and a unique movement style.  Sticking with the pirate theme, I kept in mind the Jolly Roger flag and went with white and black, or the metallic alternative.  I used Reaper Adamantium Black as the base and gave them several coats of P3 Armor Wash, thinned with acrylic floor wax.   Then used Reaper True Silver and Polished Silver for highlights.  They look quite dark and stealthy, yet pulpy, under normal lighting and very shiny under a flash.



 
















Another project I had been working on is a Mother Ship for the Pirates.  I found this re-issue of an old AMT model kit.  It makes a nice 'static' target for the relatively faster and more maneuverable War Rockets.  However, my idea for this was to use the mother ship rules in the War Rocket rulebook, but to allow this ship to move forward one hex at the beginning of every turn (essentially all models on the table move back one hex) to simulate it's slow speed.  The other nice thing is the shuttle included can be mounted on a flight stand and used as a Class I or II rocket.

The newer releases come with some cool battle damaged and pirate decals.  It's molded in glow-in-the-dark plastic, but I primed mine grey, thinking I'm going to paint mine to match my Space Pirates.

Pulpy Retro-SciFi Projects - Hawkmen

Hands down, the coolest part of just about any incarnation of Flash Gordon has been the Hawkmen, well except for those stupid bird calling trechcoat wearing guys from that stupid SyFy production of Flash Gordon.  Anyways, I really wanted to make some classic hawkmen for my Retro-SciFi collection.

I ended up starting with DC Heroclix Hawkman and Hawk Girl. There were a number of variations of the same characters, all of whom had the same costume and could be easily obtained at a vary reasonable price.  This was ideal for creating an army of Hawkmen and of course Hawkwomen.  Furthermore being soft plastic they were easy to convert and fortunately all of the examples available were good sculpts too.

I had to re-arm them by cutting their arms off at the shoulder, elbows and wrists and re-working the pose to to accept a rifle.  I found ample retro-looking rifles in a plastic set of Mongoose's Gangs of Mega-City One Gangers.  The swords were pewter parts from my bitz bin, I think they were from Reaper or Iron Wind Metals. 


Cutting the heads off and repositioning them also helped add to vary the poses.  I had them all mounted on standard 30mm lipped bases, but made it appear that they were just taking off from the ground. 



For my leader, I clearly needed someone inspired by Prince Vultan.  Using one of the Hawkmen bodies, who was clearly much more ripped and not as rotund as any of the previous depictions of Vultan.  I called him Prince Ta'Lonn, as not not confuse the body build.  I replaced the Hawkman head with a bearded head from a plastic Mordheim sprue.  I removed the wings from the severed Hawkman helmet and applied them to the Mordheim head to keep with the winged helm theme and create more of a crown for him.

Then I replaced the mace with a raygun from Reaper's Futuristic Weapons sprue and keeping with spirit of the Brian Blessed depiction of Vultan, I used a warhammer and guantlet from Mordheim weapons sprue.  Great for thunking on the helmets of Imperial soldiers.  I made a princess figure using another winged DC Heroclix figure as well.  The only modification I made with that figure was to add a small raygun to her hand. 

Painting the figures, I followed the colors of the 1979 movie, also taking in some ideas from the 1978 animated series.  Starting with the flesh I used Reaper's Tanned flesh tones and icluded painting the legs, which the DC Heroclix figures wore rather tight pants.  Then the armor was done in dark leather and some brass detailing.  The wings were done with dark brown with grey highlights.

Pulpy Retro-SciFi Projects - Rocket Ships

I've always been a fan of the good ol'fashioned pulpy retro-scifi.  You, know Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, that sort of thing.

Anyways, I really fell in love with the models from Hydra Miniatures.  Both their Retro Raygun and War Rocket lines of models are simply fantastic.  I've also been dabbling around in some rule sets, Fantastic Worlds by Rattrap Productions and Slipstream from Pinnacle Products.

Taking a suggestion from someone on The Miniatures Page, one night after gaming I stopped at a local Denny's to have a late night dinner and to sample out one of their D-Fusion Rocket Cups.  So when my dinner arrived with my D-Fusion Drink I was so excited I went back out to my car, grabbed some 28mm minis some paper an and a pencil.  While eating dinner, I ended up sketching out some ideas on how to turn one of these marvelous cups into a rocket ship, and yes I was getting some strange looks from some of the other diners around me.  I ended up asking the waitress if I could purchase more of the cups.  She saw my sketches and sort of looked at me strange but then she went back and checked and got the OK.  I beleive I bought then at about $4 each.

With my recently painted Galacteers in mind, I sort of envisoned these rockets as a Retro-SciFi UH-1 Huey Helicopter, dopping in low on a planets surface with big doors opening up to drop troops off as it skims the alien terrain.  It could also be an old workhorse, where surplus have been sold off from the military and are now in civilian use where the hulls have seen lots of modifications.  Next I started amassing my other materials for the work.  As this cup is made from non-polystyrene plastic, I couldn't use simple model glue to hold it all together.  So I had to use cyano acrylate glue (CA).  For the cockpit, I ended up using a plastic spoon.  A really nice domed shape cockpit was formed from using a spoon I obtained from the Q'doba restaurant near my office.  Cutting the handle off and filling in the gaps with epoxy putty.  The epoxy puttysticks well and required some filling and sanding to get the smooth surface howevever.  I framed in the cockpit with some thin strips of plastic from Plastruct.  The framing also helped hide the seam between the plastic spoon and the epoxy putty.  Simply cutting the length I needed, applying some CA glue and wrapping it along the surface and trimming the ends as necessary.  The hole where the coiled straw went in looked ideal for a weapons mount just under the cockpit.  I obtained a good retro looking ray gun from my bitz bin.  Some weapons from the Russian toy company Tehnlog's Robogear line worked great.

For the rocket motor, I used sections of Plastruct tube stock.  Simply cutting them to length using a miter saw and packing them into the center section.  Sort of giving the impression of a old retro styled rocket motor.  Sort of inspired by Buck Rogers, The Planet Express and the animated series version of Dr. Zarkov's rocketship.

The landing gear were a bit more tricky.  They were built using brass rod and lots of CA glue with accelerant into the deep cavities of the fin sections.  I envisioned this thing being able to launch and land vertically and horizontially.  The landing pads were made from plugs found at a hardware store used to hide screw heads on furniture.  They were glued to a bead to represent a ball socket where the rods and the pad meet together.

I sort of envisioned that the horizontal landing mode would have the pads opposite to the cockpit to rotate 90 degrees and a gear to drop out from the nose cone under the cockpit.  Glued a photo-etched panel to represent the landing gear door under the nose.  Other panels were made by gluing on some paper price tags I got at a craft store.  The cargo doors were simply implied by bordering them out with strip stock and other parts from my bitz bin.

I coated these rockets using Testors Metalizer Flat Aluminum.  I sort of wanted a 50s-60s era jet airplane look about them.  So I dug up a bunch of old decals from model kits of planes from that era.  Also found some stuff like numbers and stripes from some NASCAR model kits useful too.

Unfortunately I don't have these finished yet because after a few play testing sessions of my Retro-SciFi variant of the No Limits! rules, my wife dropped some jumper cables on the box that stored these rockets and they have been damaged.  I'm still trying to repair them.

So these are the only pictures I have done of the semi-completed rockets.  I'll post more when I get these repaired.