First 2026 Hobby Project: Flames of Orion Terrain

I don't just play my own games; I love playing games from other creators too. I have recently discovered Flames of Orion, a grimdark 6mm - 12mm mech-fighting game that checks a lot of my boxes for a great skirmish scale game: 

• Miniature agnostic -- use whatever you want! 
• Small model count -- about 4 per side. 
• Campaign friendly -- comes with campaign rules baked in. 
• Small play area -- 2' x 2' is where it's at for me these days. 
• Solo / Co-Op Adaptable -- while mostly PvP, this seems like an option. 

The game has a very intentional punk rock aesthetic in its art style and presentation: 

I have pre-ordered this tight little hardcover.

So what models will I use? Well, I have dozens of BattleTech models painted, but I don't want the models I use for this game on hex bases. 

I thought about the awesome CAV line from Talon Games, and I may get some, but something else was winking at me. The Heavy Gear line from DP9. In 2021 they put out their second round of plastics, including Peace River and NUCOAL. I love the look of both factions, so I settled on some NUCOAL hard plastic models and ordered them from DP9's site (tariffs be damned!). 

So while I wait, I am looking at the free rules PDF, and making some terrain and objectives. I wanted to do some destroyed robot counters, and I had some army-man style robots laying around. These are the kind you get in a tube on Amazon. 

I cut them up and based them to make some cool artifact counters for the game: 

Cut and arranged on on 50mm MDF bases. 

Arrayed on one of my 12"x12" terrain squares, also in progress. 

I will need to spray prime these counters, as the robots are a slick plastic that will stymie my normal acrylic primer method. I will get to that tomorrow. 

The nice thing about Flames of Orion is that it will dovetail nicely from the other small scale mecha games I have been playing--namely various simplified versions of BattleTech. 

I am super-excited to get those Heavy Gear hard plastics in my hands, build them, and paint them, and I will be basing them on low-profile plastic rounds bases from Renedra. As infantry are also a thing in this game, I am also going to score some cheap MechWarrior Dark Age plastics from Noble Knight Games, including normal troops and power armor. This will ground my games in the 10mm scale, which works just fine for me. 

More to come as I get it done. Thanks for reading! 

--Scott