Background: There Are A Lot Of Secrets in District 10

You would have thought that picking up however million prawns from District 9 and then dumping them in purpose made camp would've solved most of South Africa's problems.

You'd think that wouldn't you?  I thought that.

All the illicit networks, the bits of alienware that fell off that mothership, the labrynthine maze of alleys amidst the shanty shacks- poof!  All gone.  Eight million prawns- give or take- removed from their hovels and dumped in a purpose built encampment.

Multi-National United spared no expense.  Videos monitored almost every square metre.  UAVs patrolled the skies.  They even had PMCs... sorry, Private Military Companies in case you didn't understand... driving the perimeter and doing sporadic random patrols inside.  And to top it all off, District 10 was in the middle of nowhere.  No humans- Nigerian hahahaha- or otherwise were able to drive the couple of hundred clicks from civilisation and through the PMC check points.

But you see, the problem was keeping the place policed.  I remember reading some RAND report that suggested that effective peace-keeping and stabilization missions required one soldier for every eighteen citizens.  Human citizens.

Now District 10 wasn't a warzone back then, but you get the picture.  Ten million prawns and then maybe ten thousand contractors.   That's a LOT of area of cover with very few men.  And it was expensive.  It cost MNU upwards of - wait for it- a BILLION dollars.  It boggles my mind.  I try and do some of the sums when waiting for sleep.  Each top tier shooter gets one hundred k per annum minimum- likely more.  The less fancy operators get at least sixty to eighty k per year.  There are ten thousand shooters.  Then add in the cost of admin and logistics, the signals component, transport, building the patrol bases... you get the picture.

The prawns were costing the proverbial tonne of cash and MNU was stuck holding the can.

Oh, the RSA?  Yeah, they helped- they'd paid MNU to police the place- so I guess the real suckers holding the can were the South African tax payers.  But they paid only a fraction of the billion, because MNU signed on the contract thinking they'd make a profit from alienware and didn't ask the RSA to bankroll all of it.    
  
I'm getting a bit carried away here.  Where was I?  Oh yeah- prawns and their problems.

So the PMCs couldn't patrol the place as tightly as they wanted and Corporate- well, District 10 was that far removed from Jo-burg, that they didn't really care.  So things happened inside D10 that nobody knew about.

Things like what?  It seems obvious now, but you have to remember that everyone was still learning.

Ok, like how alienware "metal" isn't actually dug out of the ground- it's grown.  Or how the hatching process for prawns actually develops critical castes- soldiers being one of them- once the population reaches a critical mass.  Or how alienware bio-fuel is- I kid you not- in the substance they shit out.  Yes- it's true- the first powered combat body armour was running on prawn shit.

The other thing the PMCs couldn't prevent were the eventual escape of prawn squirters.  Squirters, meaning the ones that squirted out of the camp and ran off into the wilderness.  Why did they do it?  They're sentient- so they would've known that running off into a hostile world where they'd get eaten by the wildlife AND the native dominant species was a risky proposition.  But I suppose, enough of the "thinkers" had been hatched by this stage, that different prawn groupings knew that life in D10 was pretty shit.

And it got more shit in 2021 when MNU realised it could harvest bio-fuel from ten million captive prawns.  The actual scientific breakthrough was a year or two earlier.  I'm no scientist, but I remember reading in a small segment in the news that an Australian scientist- Florey- determined that biofuel acted like- well, a fuel.  A fuel for utilizing alienware.

Humans before that couldn't use alienware.  Not in the conventional sense of picking up the alien laser gun and shooting it.  We could take it apart and try and tease out components- difficult because remember that much of the alienware is grown and moulded into a semi-alive thing.  Ok- alive as in the same way that maybe a coral reef is alive- but you get the idea.

So Florey comes up with this breakthrough on a prawn component- on a little engine from a drone actually- thinking that it'll signal the next golden age.  He said in a speech at Stockholm that he hopes it will lead to greater co-operation between the species as now we need each other.  His research was protected- but enough of it was stolen, bought or traded- that it triggers the big tech leap we see around the world today.

MNU share prices break records that same year.

Because now Prawns equals profit.   

MNU Agents, Open The Doors, Please.

Sign these notice of eviction please.

I'm so excited, even though they aren't finished yet.

Ok, ok- they aren't strictly speaking the colours of MNU with white body armour and black antelope.  But!!!  As a generic near future human force they look the type.

I can see them being- funnily enough- near future/ science fiction Russians.

I'm happier with the paint scheme now.  It consists of:

CBA:
1. Citadel Castellan Green base
2. Citadel Death World Forest layer leaving a bit of base at the recesses
3. Citadel Straken Green highlight just on the edges that catch the light.  Doing too much produces a Future Music Festival manlet in fluoro.

Soft armour:
1. Chaos black base
2. Citadel Eshin Grey layer
3. Very thin highlight of Administratum Grey just on edges.

Weapons:
1. Vallejo English Uniform
2. Thing highlight edging with Citadel Zandri Dust
3. Barrels- in chaos black + Citadel The Fang

Eyes:
1. Citadel Evil Sunz Scarlet
2. A streak of Citadel Sunburst Yellow

Boot laces:
1. A very lazy set of strokes with a Vallejo English Uniform.

The Future Music Festival Manlet.

U aware, bro?

MNU- test colour scheme failure.

Armour plating is Citadel Castellan Green.  Highlight is with Citadel Straken Green- which was a poor choice.  Way, way too bright.

He looks like he's wearing fluorescent armour under natural light.  He looks like a Future Music Festival manlet complete with glow stick armour.

I spent hours today pouring over paint schemes of Flames of War Germans- trying to tease out the exact combination for making that deep green and grey of their uniforms- and it's been a real pain in the butt.

One, because the local GW was closed for a stocktake (I dashed out in my lunch break to try and get some colours).  Two, the online stores where I normally get my things were sold out of the exact colours I wanted.  Three, I was just generally unhappy that I couldn't complete my first squad of MNU by the end of the weekend because of this!

I'll go back to my Prawns whilst I await the deliveries....

Always Bring A Friend

I need double the usual ration of cat food

I'll have to wait until a free day when it's sunny to take a good set of photos.

They look mean as.  I'm rather pleased with them.  I'll have to get some 'normal' tanks to sit them side by side and see how they measure up.

Crusty Tank- Paint Scheme

1. Black undercoat

BODY:
2.  VGC Dark Green
3. Wash: Athonian Camoshade
4. Highlight: VMC Uniform Green

ERA:
5. VGC Charred Brown
6. Wash: Brown ink wash
7. Highlight: VMC Chocolate Brown

LEGS:
8. Leadbelcher
9. Wash: Badab black ink

Highlights:
10. BLOCKS- The Fang, then Enchanted Blue, then White dot highlight in the corner
11. TRIBARREL/ HMG- highlight with The Fang
12. FIELD GENERATOR- Administratum Grey, drybrush Ulthuan Grey

Maybe do an MDF base.

In light of how easily the thing falls apart- I think I'll make one.

Walker MBT- "Miskruier"

Cat food- NOW!

Crusty MBT.

Thematically it doesn't quite fit perfectly with the prawns I have to admit.  It's very human tech- the vision blocks and hatches for example.  But hey, it'll do.

I went with a solid colour scheme- trying to keep a similar look to the rest of the army.  It came out a bit bland.  But for table top- it'll serve.

 

So- awesome obvious features of the tank:

1.  The main gun- some sort of massive energy weapon I suppose.  Could be a rail gun except the size of the shells (looking at the bore of the barrel) would be enormous.

2. The tribarrel (yes, that term is stolen from Hammers Slammers).  I think it's a CROWS (crew remote operated weapons system) which can maybe double as an active defense system against anti armour missiles.

3. Machine gun mounted just outside the commander's hatch.

4.  The White Dome.  Some sort of passive detonation field or radar.

Apart from putting the darn thing together, it wasn't too bad to paint.  The lack of changing colours made it reasonably easy to paint to table top standard.

Crusty Tank

See this cannon?  Where is the cat food?

It's a real pain to put together!!!

You can see the milliput marks where the joins have fallen off.  The legs were super annoying.

I'm a little put off by how painful to put the model together.

We'll see how the thing shapes up.

Another Four Power Armoured Crusties Done.

Cat food somewhere ahead!

Finished another fire team of PAP (Power Armoured Prawns).

I kept the base grasses to a minimum on these guys.  The prior ones were a bit too much.

Weapons in detail

So here's a bit of a close up of the weapons.  The anti-armour/ area affect weapon on the left.  The standard LSW in the centre.  The heavy machine gun on the right.

Having a quick read through some of the Tomorrow's War scenarios and I've noted that PA troops tend to be deployed in 3s.  I suspect that larger teams leads to some balance issues in fire-teams getting too good.

Oh well!

Next I'll do a tank and then I'll be able to start some of my MNU and terrain!