Preparing for Modern May

My painting output has been a bit low lately, mainly because I tried to paint too many things at the same time and started losing interest. 14 28mm with a few cars and two platoons for Flames of War at the table at the same time just seemed to look like nothing is progressing at all. So to get a break from painting the same camo pattern over and over again I decided to prep some minis for next month, which will be Modern May.

These are some of the USMC minis from Empress Miniatures Kickstarter from last summer. I bought into the deal with 3 platoons and some extras like the Oshkosh and some special forces. Splendid minis with amazing detail all around. Today I put together the Boonie toting USMC platoon to paint them up as a recon element for use in pacific themed games as well as an Oshkosh M-ATV to be used in Afganistan scenarios.

I've also got a platoon of them with helmets which I'm going to paint up for Iraq/Afganistan. They will be supported by two Oshktosh M-ATV's. This bad boy is a pretty impressive resin kits from Empress, but boy are they pain in the ass to build. Mine needed quite a bit of sanding to get parts to fit. And even when they fit together trying to glue everything together really caused some issues. I don't know what it is with super glue, but it never seems to stick when parts are correctly aligned, but when something goes on a bit wrong it sticks in a millisecond and makes it impossible to correct mistakes. So now I have a front bumper that is slightly lopsided and one part of the back carriage that just doesn't stick whatever I do with it.

Anyway I was a bit optimistic with my painting output for Airborne April so I'm scaling my goals down a bit for May. I'm starting with the marines meant for the pacific theater and if I seem to have too much time on my hands I'll try to get some desert uniformed marines done too.

• 20 USMC in boonies and woodland camo
• 4 Devgru
• 5 USMC divers
• 2 Oshkosh M-ATV
• 20 USMC in helmets and desert camo