Backup, vehicle shopping, and an Opfor

Besides working on some terrain and a few other side projects, my current main project is almost complete. First up, some back up for my ash waste infantry.

This guy is sold by Khurasan Miniatures as "Red Faction" power armor, but as promised, is easily serviceable as a decent sized mech in 15mm. I've decided to call it a "heavy combat drone" and the fluff I'm writing for it is going to point out that it's a re-purposed mining drone.

Just to show you how large this model is, here's a size comparison next to an Amakudari infantryman and light mech from Micropanzer:

Pretty big, right?

The only thing my ash waste guys are missing now are some wheels to get around in. I debated whether I wanted any heavy vehicles in my rules, for a long time I was aiming more for commando raids than full on battles but I've come around on it (at least a little, I don't want Prokhorovka on the table) and have decided to include some. With that in mind I put in an order to Combat Wombat for some of Scott's excellent looking 8x8's and 6x6's, both with his awesome "Fat Bob" tires

 A Combat Wombat 8x8, this is the standard turret, I opted to go with a low-profile autocannon turret for mine. 

The "Fat Bob" tires, no getting stuck in the mud with these!

Either way, once these guys show up in the mail I think that the "ashies" will be complete!

Now for the Opfor: Thematically, I wanted a drone/hi-tech army as the idea for the Opfor are PMC's that serve as proxies for a large system-wide corporation. For me this meant that the actual number of human troops would be low, instead they'd be backed up by a large amount of non-sentient combat drones. Surprisingly, this force was the one I worried aesthetically the most about, as I used figures from four different miniature ranges to make up the different units.

Rebel's Shalur Mercenaries

For the "grunts" of the army I chose to use Rebel's Shalur Mercenaries. I've always like the looks of these guys though I wondered how cohesively they'd blend in with the unit. The detail on these are amazing, as the synthetic muscle strands stand out incredibly well on the casting!

Next up are the unit's officers and NCO's, and the only humans in the force, for which I chose to use Micropanzer's Amakudari infantry. I'd been looking for a suitably "hi-tech" and well armed force to use in this role and the second I saw these guys I fell in love! Micropanzer has some previews of the artwork for their future plans to  expand the line on their front page that I'm really excited for, I hope they come out soon.

While hi-tech typically means "shooty" to me, I did want the army to be able to deal with some cqb threats. Unfortunately, man-sized drone and cqb were a hard combination to find, at least they were until I stumbled on Khurasan's police bots. Wrist mounted sub machine guns, hydraulics, and some very crushy looking claws made these guys the natural choice for the role.

 The two "big boys" of the unit are Micropanzer's Amakudari Seeker and Hunter walkers. These were some of the models that convinced me to make the jump from 15mm historicals over to 15mm sci-fi and they're just as awesome in person as they were in the preview pics that I saw on Dropship Horizon oh so many years ago.

And finally we've got more of GZG's ubiquitous (at least in my armies) "mini hover drones" to round out the role of scouts, skirmishers, and flankers to deal with snipers and crew-served weapons. These, much like Khurasan's Federal power armor, are pretty common in all the armies I'm working on. Thematically I think it fits the narrative I'm building and I think both models can work well with a variety of different ranges.

All in all, I'm very happy with how cohesive the Opfor feels for coming from such a diverse array of manufacturers. I think the only thing that looks somewhat out of place are the Khurasan police bots, but as they're role is radically different than the rest of the army I'm perfectly comfortable with that.

Finally we come down to the transportation for the Opfor, which unfortunately, isn't released yet! Renowned mini-painter Dwartist though was kind of enough to preview two future Khurasan models that I plan to use for vehicles for the unit in this TMP post.

The first is a "Soriog Tank" 

And the second is the "Soriog APC" 

With how great the armor looks I'm curious as to what the Soriog infantry will look like... it might be time to start an additional project once these drop ;).

What do you think? Would you have made any changes? Got any suggestions for additions or for a substitution in the ranks?