A quixotic lurch into 15mm Mutants and Death Ray Guns

After having a lot of fun with MDRG recently, my thoughts turned to 15mm. Why? Well, I've got lots of 15mm fantasy and sci-fi figures lying about, but I've rarely made huge advances with them before getting drawn back into 28mm, with all of its kitbashing and conversion potential.

It might seem mad to duplicate a set of miniatures in a smaller scale while you're still working on their larger equivalents. And it is! But it's a lot of fun too. This repurposed Copplestone barbarian makes a fine blue-skinned mutant, I think, and I have lots of other fantasy figures that will work perfectly in some glowing wasteland or other.

Meanwhile, I've long observed that a lot of 28mm terrain works just fine with 15mm. Small shacks in one scale are big shacks in another, and a surprising number of doors work just fine for both scales. 

One of the things that's stopped me painting more 15mm in the past is just that I run out of enthusiasm for the slightly more mechanical painting that's required and return to the creative freedoms of the bigger scale. 

But a small-warband game like MDRG, with perhaps just four or five figures a side, allows forces to be put together very quickly. And there's built-in variety with the various mutant types, so there's no need for any boring repeats (often a problem with 15mm forces). 

I've got various 'true 25' Ral Partha creatures lined up for this project, along with some 1/72 beasties from Dark Alliance and Caesar. With some nice, cartoony colour schemes, I think there's plenty of scope for fun.

Mutants and Death Ray Guns: a mini-campaign!

I got six games of MDRG in over the weekend, including a four-game mini-campaign with three players. Work pressures meant that most of the new scenery wasn't quite finished, but it did the job. 

We rustled giant bugs, encountered the Wretched, mutant crabmen and an outlaw hyena man:

Bounty hunters turned up now and then as 'wandering monsters':

The toad-rider and his leader swept all before them, winning every game they played.

 

A winged mutant and her warband

This is the third full warband I've completed for Mutants and Death Ray Guns. It's a mixed warband: one mutant, one human, one android, one robot and one mutant animal.

The leader is a Reaper Bones demon I've had for a while. As the random profile came up with Flying and Telekinetic Disarm, the wings and pose of this figure fitted the bill. The blue skin gives her a touch of the X-Men, I think.

If I'd had more time, I might have swapped the trident out for something more modern. But perhaps the campaign will throw up a gun or something, in which case, she'd be easy to convert. She'll do for now in any case!

 

A Mutants and Death Ray Guns warbands in progress

I'm well into my third warband for Mutants and Death Ray Guns. This lot have an android (a straight-up Stargrave automaton), a robot (from some board game), a mutated wolf (see last post) and a human champion (more or less a straight build from Frostgrave Cultists 3). There's also a flying mutant leader to come - I'm hoping to finish her today.

In the background are some of the shanty-town-style buildings I've been putting together for this project. My aim here is to get lots of things that look OK done rather than making them particularly detailed or convincing. My attempts to corral or bribe the kids into making lots have so far borne only limited fruit ...

 

A mutant ... wolf? Hyena? Aardwolf?

 The first of a new gang for Mutants and Death Ray Guns: a mutant 'wolf' - although it looks a bit more like some sort of hyena.

Toad rider

This fishy fellow is the final member of the first mutant gang for my forthcoming Mutants and Death Ray Guns campaign. He's kitbashed from five different kits and mounted on a green-stuff saddle on a Reaper Bones toad.

He gives his gang some much-needed mobility, given that they're saddled with a leader with Short Move and another character with Slow. The toad rider is Mounted and so can carry a passenger. He's Amphibious too, which could help with manoeuvres. 

Here's the whole gang:

 

More mutants!

Here's the core of an Mutants and Death Ray Guns warband: a heavily armed mutant leader with a sonic gun and a power weapon (the latter rolled up by his green four-legged comrade that I posted earlier, who lost the ability to use it with the Bestial mutation), impaired by Short Move and blessed with Savage; the peg-legged lady with the flamethrower (Slow Move and Difficult Target); and a goat-faced chap with Danger Sense and Energy Adaptation.

With the green guy, that's four out of the five-strong band done; I hope to complete their mounted colleague today or tomorrow.