The Enemy, part II (80s Pulp)

File name, unknown. 
Primary military specialty: Infantry
Secondary military specialty : Sabotage

Five of the nameless, faceless legions of Cobra command. Each Cobra is highly skilled in the use of explosives, all NATO and Warsaw pact small arms, sabotage and the martial arts. 

Cobras swear absolute loyalty to their fanatical leader, Cobra Commander...their goal, to conquer the world for their own evil purpose. 

Five more Cobra troopers this week. 

The Cobra troopers are the "cannon fodder" of the Cobra organization, i.e. think of the classic James Bond villain henchmen. So they will be quite useful in the games I intend to play with this project. They were mostly inept in the cartoons, but I loved them nonetheless, as once again I had a soft spot for all masked evil grunts! Doing all the work with oh so little recognition! 

 Cobraaaaaaaaaaa!

When I first started on these guys, I thought they would be super easy to paint, what with them all blue, but I quickly realized the bastards have so much leg straps (and suspenders) they'd make a Napoleonic soldier proud! 

The Enemy (80s Pulp)

I was always a lot more into the evil guys, especially with GI Joe, and I loved all the masked soldiers and leaders from the evil Cobra organization. They looked so cool. My favourites action figures were often the ordinary grunts, from the Stormtroopers and the Snowtroopers to the Cobra blue shirts and Crimson Guards. So I decided to paint Cobra troopers first, the minions of the Cobra terrorist organization.

We start the project with 5 Cobra troopers, in their well known blue uniforms. The Cobra Troopers serve as the basic foot soldiers of the Cobra Organization, they are the nameless, faceless legions of the Cobra organization, loyal to Cobra Commander in his goal to conquer the world! (They also have an annoying amount of leg straps and suspenders!) Lovely figures, really, armed with Ak-47 and M-16, to give them a more realistic look, while still being true to the lore.

I went with a lighter blue than the cartoons and action figure art, mostly at first by accident but I liked the results so kept them that way. So the recipe (so that I remember in the future) is GW macragge blue as a base, then GW Altdorf Guard blue, with highlights of Foundry Bavarian Blue B and then C.

And I went for black for the straps and suspenders, white just looks silly!

Loads of fun painting these, this is a very fun and relaxed project. 

80s Military and Sci-Fi Pulp...aka American Hero

Hello, my name is Iannick Martin, and I'm a nostalgia junkie. 

I was born in 1979, and I'm really into everything from the 80s: cartoons, movies, comics, action figures, RPGs, and everything Oldhammer. The 1980s were the heydays of action figures, before the dark days, before the advent of Playstations and other Xboxes. I was obviously a big fan. Star Wars, Gi Joes, Master of the Universe...so many others. My father would often surprise me on friday nights with a new figure, especially a new GI Joe or Star Wars, which were smaller figures and very affordable. The packaging art was awesome, and each figure came with a "File Card" explaining the background of the trooper, his specialty, etc. Great fun for any young boy! GI Joe went on to become a very successful Marvel Comic, and a license franchise spanning movies, lunchboxes, and pretty much anything and everything. I still collect the action figures, yes I'm a geek and proud of it!

GI Joe's action figures from the early 80s

For those who don't know anything about the franchise, it was mainly about the covert war between GI Joe, an elite USA squad force, and Cobra, a terrorist organization bent on world domination with an obsession for snake emblems. It was very much a product of it's time, and you can smell the Reagan era a mile away. Not that my 7 year old self noticed, or cared about that anyways...

So not surprisingly, I was recently attracted by a small privately funded project by a friend of mine, recreating the GI Joe world in miniatures. It may seem silly at first, but the GI Joe world actually works extremely well as a wargaming setting, and offers tons of possibilities. It's a great setting for modern skirmishes, and lends itself well with the Pulp genre and rulesets. The black and white, i.e. the good guys and the bad guys, also makes for great fun in this bleak grey 21st century of ours.

This blog has been very quiet for some time, as I've been really involved with Sci-Fi and Fantasy (Oldhammer). But I've also been working on this "80s Military & Sci-fi Pulp" project for many months now, and I've yet to show pictures of it in my blog(s). I figure the project is a great excuse to make this blog more active! So apologies to the historical only crowd, but you're about to get a heavy dose of Pulp, with a most 80s of flavour. The 80s kids however should love what's coming next!

Here, let's finish this post with some 80s cheesy nostalgia goodness. Enjoy! 

We don't have enough ammunition to shoot them all in the head. The time to have done that would have been in the beginning. No, we let them overrun us. We are in the minority now, something like 400,000 to one by my calculation.

An entry coming out of left field today, with 6 figures from the original Zombicide board game. Zombicide is the only miniature board or wargame that my girlfriend actually enjoys. I think the cooperative nature of the game appeals to her more than the competition style of traditional wargames. It's also much simple. It's quite funny as she really gets into it and becomes a nervous wreck when the Zombies approach us from all sides! So she's been bugging me to paint the miniatures for the game, and I figured I'd give it a go in between batches of other miniatures. They are really nice figures, it's just that I have so many projects to do! 

Anyways, I painted these during the last Analogue painting challenge, but didn't post them on here.

For board game game pieces they are lovely figures, even though the face details are a bit soft. I'm also not a huge fan of the semi-soft plastic used, but having said that I'm quite pleased with how they came out.

You will notice none of them follow the art from the game. I just don't like being told what colours to use, unless it's historical or accepted canon! 

While obviously their main use is Zombicide, I based them the same as my Pulp project (more on this soon), and I can certainly use some of them, the police officer especially, in my Pulp games.

Now, I just have to paint all the Zombies from the game...next challenge, maybe?