Heavy Gear Southern Special Forces Reinforcements

2022-07-13 Heavy Gear / Hobby / HGB-South /

Southern Special Forces

While not finishing some DFC Seattles and Taipeis, nor DZC battle buses and scourge crabs, nor even the elevated tracks and trees for all the games, I've instead spent my hobby time building painting and finishing some more Heavy Gears. The Special Forces and Honor Guard packs will give me some options other than horde mode which hasn't been working out for me lately.

Since everyone gets a decal number, it seemed fitting to start giving them call signs as well. And I need to put them on their bases when I get the label maker working again.

82 "Goulash", Chameleon

A glowing vibro-blade in one hand, and a silenced light SMG in the other, diving for cover or trying to slip a blade into the back of a gear. Angled light rocket pod on the shoulder, which I borrowed from the Gila packs because the angled pods just look cooler, and I wanted all the spec-ops dudes to have that same feature.

I wanted to model the Chameleons as more low-tech stealth, so they're painted in camo (I just painted little stripes and splashes on one color at a time) with ghillie rolls on their butt plates which came from the Southern bits pack.

77 "Twitch", Hunting Chameleon

As above for the stealth features and rocket pod, but with a silenced medium rifle and a more resting pose.

84 "Arbitrage", Command Fer de Lance

The commander of the bunch. You can see the satellite uplink in the middle top of his back. There wasn't enough room on the shoulders anywhere for my usual number placement, so I moved it to the lower leg, but there's still not room for the faction insignia, so the opposite leg has the gold version of southern eagle emblem. The Fer de Lance (FDL) are supposed to be prestige show pieces, so the extra bling I thought fitting. Packin' another medium rifle.

Absent is the rocket pod. You can see on the right shoulder where I put magnet in the collar. I've got two options magentized to attach there, one light and one medium angled anti-tank missile pod, and a light guided mortar I can't figure out what to do with yet. Much like the extra weapon options for the Naga, I'll get to it eventually.

36 "Donkey", Force Fer de Lance

The FDL have the most visible 'heelies' of any of my gears so far, which aren't that pronounced on the command version, but this guy has them posed very visible, like he's got the Disco Fever. Just a light pulse laser for this model.

69 "Mall Ninja", Barbed Gila

I've been leaving the melee weapons unmodeled on most of my forces so far, because I don't really dig that aesthetic, but I figured why not give it a try. So he's got a vibro-rapier in one hand, an over/under heavy submachinegun and light frag cannon in the other, medium panzerfausts on his butt plate, a medium angled rocket pod, and a light flamer sticking out of his chest. Just bristling with weapons.

You can see some scuffing in the stencils on the shoulder, which is due to a bizarre accident I had while varnishing them. my brush lightly grazed a surface with weeks old spray paint on it, and it somehow dissolved and reactivated the paint in a span of a second or two, just in time for me to get it on the model, right over the decals. I had to scrape green paint off the red surface, and this was as clean as I could get it. I then cleaned the brush thoroughly, and I guess I over did it because I scuffed the decals on the other Gila without the excuse of the paint mishap.

98 "Croaker", Barbed Gila

This one gave me conniptions. The arms and gun required a ton of fiddling and shaving and bending to get it to rest over the chassis like that. In retrospect, I could have probably done it better by bending the arms more, but it turned out fine.

90 "Kolache", Command Jager

Finally, the special edition Christmas 2013 command Jager. The metal Jagers are already worlds better sculpts in terms of detail and posability than the plastic sprue ones, but I can live with the cheap plastics for chaff forces. This dude though oozes character. I'm very happy with him.

Not in Picture

I finished 4 more regular plastic jagers, but they look like all the other jagers, and they're just for filling out combat groups.

I've got two packs of infantry and some field guns I want to work on soon, and maybe some bunker terrain for them, which is a purchasable field asset in the current rules.