AE-WWII miniature. My first painted in 3 years

[Turtle]

It's Buffalo Power Armor from the AE-WWII game (Alternate Events World War II) where WWII has dragged out into 1946.  The D-Day landings failed due to the use of weird science abominations by German SD division, San Francisco is a plague and monstrosity ridden wasteland after a Japanese bio weapon attack, Manhattan is a charred Husk of a city in the aftermath of a German massive firebomb after the nuking of Tokyo, and more.  The allies liberated, then lost most of France, including Paris which is held by an Allied army equipped with the latest in Tesla technology.  The SS have begin conjuring up horrors of the occult, while the Russians are harnessing mysterious psionic powers that showed up after the tunguska event.  The British, embattled on all sides have called upon ancient druid lore to call forth horrors of their own.

It's a fun game to play and the miniatures are interesting to mix realistic WW2 troops in with these occult and weird science based units.  It's also skirmish, requiring much fewer models, as low as 5-6 models, to play, which is a nice break from large games like the Warhammer games.

[Kurt Stevens]

Looks good! I bought the rulebook and two of the starter packs last summer.  I really enjoyed the storyline and background.  The minis are still in the packages. I may have to get them out and assemble a couple today since it's raining. 

[hepcat]

I picked up the rulebook this afternoon.  So far I'm diggin' it.  Just need to order some starter sets now.  Who do you folks order your minis from?  oh, and turtle, you mention the druids but I thought they were only in the occult expansion, which doesn't seem to be out yet.  is that coming soon?

[Kurt Stevens]

I picked my AE-WWII starters up at a shop in Madison, Wisconsin when I was up there on business last summer.  I usually buy on line at http://www.thewarstore.com/ , https://www.scifigenre.com/index.aspx?sid=KW0X1SJMLVHU1NI , http://www.ccgarmory.com/ or http://www.miniaturemarket.com/home.  I've used the warstore the most and have been very pleased with them. The others I've only ordered from a couple of times each but have had no bad experiences with any of them.

[hepcat]

thanks!  the prices on ccgarmory are excellent.  i believe i'll pick up a couple.  anyone ever play secrets of the third reich?  that's the other one i was interested in, although i went with ae-wwii because it seems to receive better reviews in most places.

[Turtle]

I've heard of SotTR, however I didn't like the miniatures they had.  AE-WW2 has a lot of cliched aspects, but there things they don't do so obviously like there's no zombies, although the SD have an equivalent.  Likewise there's no walkers and such, but there are tesla cannons.  It just stays closer to WW2 in general so that the special stuff still seems special, and you get that nice juxtaposition of actual WW2 with weird and fantastical weapons.  SotTr has a cool side-game, I forget what it's called but it was supposed to be something that was a spiritual successor to Space Hulk, where you had WW2 powersuits delving into tunnels filled with German abominations, the miniatures looked a whole lot better than the base SotTR line, but

The Druids aren't out yet, but they're coming.  No word on when it's all being released right now but there's 3 things they have in the works right now, the Occult Expansion (mainly adds supernatural units and factions with supernatural agendas, also includes rules for using tanks), Europe Expansion (expands the whole game with man new units), and the new scifi game AE-Bounty, which will be more like Necromunda/Mordheim (where you have a small band of adventurers and each battle your units gain experience and money to get new skills and gear).  The occult expansion was supposed to be out this month, but it's looking like that won't happen this month, no word on whether it will come out.  They're preparing for some big stuff at Gencon Indy 2009, namely showing AE-Bounty, and running events.

Right now, I'm painting my Sturmaffe, which is a giant cybernetically altered gorilla.  I'm painting mine as an albino gorilla.

edit: and new news straight from the creator, they had problems with the printer, the book is done and it will be out well before Gencon, they'll get it out as soon as the find a new reliable printer.

[hepcat]

I'm probably going to attend Gencon on Thursday and Friday, so I'll make sure to check out their vendor booth.  I just wish they had zombies in the game.  That would be the weird war trifecta for me!

The Secrets of the Third Reich includes a few things that appeal to me (the aforementioned zombies, vampires and customizable mechs...along with what appears to be almost an rpg like rules variant).  I'll have to look into the upcoming AE stuff to see if they've added some of that stuff.

[Turtle]

Some early work on my sturmaffe (giant augmented gorilla).  I call it Schneeflocke, the albino sturmaffe.



Not finished, but I put a couple hours work into the skin and face, turned out pretty well.  I applied washes to the fur and will blend those back into the bright areas soon.  Overall blending isn't as smooth as I want it to be on the chest, but the face looks pretty good.

[hepcat]

Very nice!  I'm still digesting, and loving, the rules.  Please excuse my ignorance, but my experience with miniatures is very limited.  I'm about to order a couple starter sets and I notice that the sets come with arms, heads, etc.. I realize I have to assemble them, but is this difficult to do for an inexperienced player?  Do I use some form of epoxy?  Or do they snap together?  Again, sorry for the dumb questions.   

[Turtle]

You'll want to assemble these with superglue, or cyanoacrylate glue.

Well, here comes the bad news.  AE-WW2 is actually a true 28mm scale game, so the figures don't have that chunky, compressed proportion of "heroic" 28mm scale games like 40k.  This is nice in some ways, but can make them difficult to put together as the multi part infantry model pieces can be pretty small.  This leads to problems where you're trying to put things together and your fingers end up stuck to the miniature as cyanoacrylate glues all bind to the skin faster than it does metal.  Make sure you use very small amounts of glue, use a toothpick or something to spread a thin layer of superglue, don't glob it on as it just increases the setting time for not much more strength.  This is especially important on small minis like these.

It should be pretty self explanatory where things go, you can also look at the pictures included with the starter kits.

[hepcat]

thanks for not picking on my cluelessness, turtle.   

i haven't ordered my starter kits yet (since I'm the only one who has expressed any real interest in this game, I'll probably need to order enough for another person to play), so I'll drop by my local gameshop tonight and take a look at some 28mm figures to see if it's going to be too much for these old eyes/hands.  If it looks to be too daunting a task, I'll order them and have a friend who's an old warhammer player assemble/paint them and pay him back with his own set.

[Kurt Stevens]

I'll drop by my local gameshop tonight and take a look at some 28mm figures to see if it's going to be too much for these old eyes/hands. 

28mm isn't too bad on the eyes.  I started to paint up a 15mm Flames of War German force and it was pretty tough for me.  I think I painted a squad before putting it away and havent went back to it.   

[hepcat]

Got my American and German starter sets this afternoon in the mail.  My god, but the pieces are smaller than I thought they would be.   

Not sure how this is going to work out.     Guess I'll just have to dig in and give it the ol' college try.

[Turtle]

If you need specific paint colors, it turns out the Flames of War paint sets work just fine, they're also Vallejo paints, so they're good quality.

[hepcat]

I picked up the rulebook for Secrets of the Third Reich out of curiosity.  While the book is full of really awful artwork and more than a few misspellings, I really dig the setting.  It's much weirder then AE-WW2.  I see it more as a complement to AE-WW2 in my collection than a competitor.  Both rules sets are pretty easy to learn and the miniatures are interchangeable, for the most part.  I think I prefer the setting and tone of SoTR, though.