Hawkmen from The Scene

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I am trying to reduce the lead mountain a little bit during this lockdown period, but it’s very hard when you have two to three active projects on the go and Battlefront are doing daily deals at 40% off,

The tactic I’ve decided to use is to paint one “new project” unit then one “lead mountain” unit in turn…and it’s amazing what you find at the back of the cupboard. Today’s treat is a platoon of 15mm Hawkmen - think Flash Gordon - from The Scene.

Onward my brave Hawkmen! Let this be known forever as Flash Gordon's Day!

I bought these as relatively low-tech allies for my Hauk force from Khurasan Miniatures to be used for Quadrant 13, the sci-fi adaptation of IABSM.

I undercoated them, painted two, then just fell out of love with them. I think it was something to do with the work needed on the wings to get them to look good…because, let’s face it, get the wings right and the rest of the figure doesn’t really matter!

Step forward GW’s Contrast Paints. One coat and the wings pop beautifully. I finished off the whole platoon in a matter of hours. Apologies for the crappy pictures, btw.

All I need now is to convert a spare into Mr Blessed’s Vultan himself and I’m good to go.

Q13 AAR: I Did See A Putty Cat!

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Regular visitors will know that at this year’s Salute I purchased a bargain pack of mdf sci-fi terrain from TT Combat and have spent the last couple of months building it. It was now time to get some figures onto the table and actually use the damn thing!

The scenario was to be a simple attacker/defender game, with the Hauk (sci-fi birdmen from Khurasan) defending the industrial complex against an assault from the Felids (sci-fi lionmen, also from Khurasan). I would play the Hauk, friend Neal would play the Felids, and in order to make things interesting, there was a time limit for the Felids to take the complex.

Click on the picture below to see what happened:

Q13: Hauk Re-inforcements

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Regular visitors to this site will know that one of my regular complaints is sci-fi figure manufacturers who produce a lovely range of basic infantry but then never get around to providing all the support teams that you need to make up a proper fighting force.

Okay, so some of these infantry squads are so loaded with their own weaponry that it could be said that they don’t need any support, but this doesn’t really gel with me. As the Marine Corps saying goes: always hit a nut with the biggest hammer possible…the nut gets cracked and the hammer is untouched!

It was therefore great to see that Khurasan Miniatures, that wonderful if somewhat erratic source of the esoteric, have released a couple of support weapons for their 15mm Hauk range.

The Hauk, for those of you who don’t know, are avians: birdmen to the non-Latin speakers. The existing range had some nice infantry and a couple of officers, but nothing more. Now, however, they can field mortars and their equivalent to a medium/heavy machine gun.

Mortars

Each weapon comes with the same stand, and the option of either a mortar, shown above, or a machine gun, shown below. There’s also a sniper figure, two new types of officer (one pointing, one with clipboard) and a casualty figure. I have ignored the casualty figure, and couldn’t be bothered to see if I could make the stands multi-purpose, so bought enough packs to give me four three-man mortar teams, with officer, and six three-man MMG teams, with officer. Add two snipers, and I still have lots of casualties and snipers left over, but I’m sure they’ll come in useful some time in the future.

Machine Guns

As you can see, I paint my Hauk with a simple but very colourful “parrot” pattern. Undercoat in white, immediate heavy wash with Agrax Earthshade; paint talons and beak yellow; paint wings, tail feather and head crest dark green then highlight with bright green; highlight all the armour in white; weapons are painted black highlighted in grey.

Well done Khurasan!

The Hauk

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Originally posted 25th November 2013

I have now finished my platoon of Hauk airmobile troops. These are superb figures by Khurasan that go really well with my existing Harook. 

One can see the Harook as descendents of the prehistoric Titanis or giant terror bird, with the Hauk as descendents of raptors such as hawks and eagles, both species living together in reasonable harmony, one on the plains of their home planet, one up in the mountains.

To celebrate the arrival of the Hauk, I've also updated the Harook army list to include them as an airmobile option, using the equally superb Aerie dropships mentioned below on 8th November.

Grav Transports for the Hauk

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Originally posted 8th November 2013

the start of my Hauk troops: avians from Khuarasan who will support Mad Robot's Harook as their airmobile arm. 

First to be finished are the Aerie grav transports. I'm particularly pleased with the cockpit canopies: carefully copied, albeit in a different colour, from the examples on Khurasan's website.

These are arriving just in time to be used in the final playtesting of my Five Planets scenario pack for Q13, which is due for publication before the start of December. Although designed for 15mm Q13, it can be used with any sci-fi rules, so start saving your pennies now!