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perjantai 30. joulukuuta 2016

Christmas gifts and first challenge entries

Christmas has been celebrated and it's time to start easing back to normal life. A busy festive season again as we were visiting different relatives and both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were spent with our parents. It was the first time in years that I'd been at a Christmas  celebration with smaller children in years and boy had I forgotten how hectic it can be when you have a bunch of preschool aged children going crazy while waiting for Santa :)

With a massive renovation of our new apartment looming in the horizon we had asked relatives and each other not to give any gifts expect for help in the construction work. There were still a couple of nice gaming and hobby related surprises. The missus bought me Shooting Up by Lukasz Kamiensky which is a history about substance use by militaries throughout the years, both as recreational and in trying to improve combat performance. The psychological aspect of warface has always fascinated me so a very welcome gift. Only gotten through the first third, but it's definitely turning out to be a great book giving a good overview on the subject.

My Secret Santa was also very generous with a Königstiger popping up in the mail! A very welcome addition to the Remagen force that I'm working on for Flames of War now. Thank you very much for an amazing gift!


With the christmas fuzz over I had a couple of days of uninterrupted painting time as the better half left with her family for a short vacation at a holiday village also taking the warhound with her as well. In addition to the Panzergrenadier platoon that I just managed to finish before setting of for Christmas I managed to squeeze in further reinforcements for my Dropfleet Commander PHR fleet as well as an AA platoon for the Jerries. 176 points out of my goal of 1000 achieved within a week, so I'm pretty pleased with my output. Still I'm going to have to get quite a bit done before February as we'll start renovations then and I'm probably not going to get any painting done until mid-March.

With this post done, it's back to painting. I'm still hoping to get one more entry out before the end of the year. I've got base colours more or less done for the new Blood Bowl Orc team so hopefully I'll have enough time to get them finished in time for 2016!

Entry #1 - Panzergrenadier Platoon





Entry #2 - Dropfleet Commander PHR

 


 

Entry #3 - 2cm Flak38 Platoon

 


lauantai 24. joulukuuta 2016

Happy holidays!

Merry Christmas to each and everyone of you! Thank you for all the nice comments on my sporadic posts throughout the year. Feedback from other bloggers and on forums really does give that extra motivational boost to paint!



With this I'm off to spend the Christmas with relatives. Few days pause from gaming, but after that back to the brushes with renewed energy!

Have a good one everyone!

lauantai 17. joulukuuta 2016

PHR Starter fleets for Dropfleet Commander

Change of subjects again, this time with a switch to a completely new game for me, Dropfleet Commander. I've always been a massive fan of different space movies and tv series with fond memories of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and some of the Star Trek series like Next Generation. Naturally space combat fascinated me and I've played multiple games including Battlefleet Gothic and lately X-Wing and Armada. So when Hawk came out with their Dropfleet Commander Kickstarter about a year ago I immediately jumped on board with a pledge. With the Horned Rat, Andy Chambers, behind the rules there was no way that I was going to miss this especially since the aesthetics of the ships are brilliant.


Little over a year has gone since the Kickstarter and I still haven't received any of my toys. Bit of a shame as some people got their stuff already in September and they've been in stores for a while, but I don't back Kickstarters thinking they are presales, rather to make sure that a cool looking product gets made and gets a good start on the market. I doubt Dropfleet could ever have become so big straight from the start without the Kickstarter. The only thing that I'm a bit pissed about in the whole project is the initial lack of communication from Hawk's side. Most backers were kept in the dark and when stuff started to show up on sale in online stores with only a few backers having received stuff, it's pretty understandable that people got angry. But luckily their communication has improved  greatly with updates coming in every few days, so I think Hawk have learned their lesson and if they ever do another one I think they'll do much better.


Even though I still don't have my pledge I caved in in November and went ahead and bought two boxes of ships. Seeing people's efforts around the internet I couldn't resist the urge for ships and as I only had a single box of PHR coming from the KS I figured some reinforcements on that sector would be most welcome. So a few clicks and some wait for the postman to bring my stuff, and I was a proud owner of two starter sets.

I don't really have any clue about the rules yet so knowing what to build was a bit tricky. In the end I decided to build one box as the suggested starter composition. The other box was a bit harder, but after browsing some blogs I decided on building all the frigates as Pandoras. Burnthrough lasers seemed pretty cool and I'd think a hunting pack of four of these little ships can easily bring the pain to unwary opponents. The Cruisers were then built as two Ganymedes, which are large ships filled with ground troops ready for landing operations and finally a Bellerophon bringing two Burnthrough lasers and massive strike aircraft wings into play.

On thing that struck me was how massive the models were. To give an idea of the scale the larger Heavy Cruisers come in at around 13 centimeters long and even the smallest ships are bigger than 28mm figures. I'd seen these live at Salute and tons of pictures online, but still I managed to get surprised by the size of these things. As these are something like 1:15 000 scale models I just pictured them to be a lot smaller. But then again they are space ships so even the smallest ones would be massive.

Ikarus, Hector and Theseus

Bellerophon and two Ganymedes

Paintjob wise I tried out a few different schemes with varying colours and camouflage patterns done with the help of stencils. None of them really seemed to do the trick and in the end I just ended up with a simple gradient that keeps the large flat surfaces clean looking. Some smallish decals would probably be a nice addition, but I still haven't found any that I like. Though looking at 40k stuff Tau decals would probably look quite good on the sides of the PHR ships as there are some similarities in the design aesthetics as well. Rest of the ships were painted with a metal colour then washed black to bring out details, before finally painting the engine lights red and picking out things like ends of guns with the same colour. Finally I painted the bases to highlight the front and side sectors to make playing a bit faster.

4 Pandoras

 2 Medeas and 2 Europas

With these done I'm probably not going to paint anything until the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge starts again. I need to prep stuff for it to have at least something to start on when Curt blows the whistle. Christmas holidays should provide ample time to paint my first few entries.






tiistai 6. joulukuuta 2016

Alpha Legion Marines

Time to break another few weeks of silence!

These guys have taken a while to finish with some of the minis built around a year ago and the first painting steps taken during summer, but they are finally finished. As I said a few posts ago I had a mishap with varnish leading to all of the minis having paint stripped and redone. Suffice to say I've learned my lesson and won't lazy out by using a spray can if I have the airbrush available and using spray varnish outside after rainy weather is definitely not a good idea.

My comeback into 40k started about a year and a half ago when I dug out some old plastics that I had lying around from early 00's and found my old bits box. I like kitbashing stuff and slowly found myself with an assortment of miniatures that didn't really have any use for gaming for me so probably wouldn't get painted. I remember loving 40k as a youth playing tons with my IG and later on Death Guard armies. So I figured it might be a good idea to build a small army to kind of have a target to strive for. Sometime late last year and early this year I put some smallish guidelines for myself about what I wanted to do with the force and what to aim for when putting together models.


I don't know what it is about Chaos that always pulls me in, but once again I couldn't resist it's lure. What I originally put together was mostly renegade guard and some mutants with a few Chaos Space Marines thrown in for good measure. However I figured that I'm not going to be painting a few hundred renegade guardsmen to get into gaming so I decided to build a smaller CSM force first to get into gaming faster. Choosing my legion wasn't going to be easy though. I had a reasonably sized Death Guard force previously, but it's been sold long time again. I did have an urge to build a new one with the modelling opportunities, but decided otherwise as I've done multiple Nurgle armies over the years and  always seemed to lean towards the loving caress of Papa Nurgle. Khorne worshippers were out of the question as I find them a bit dull and I didn't fancy painting all that red armor. After days of research I finally decided Chaos Undivided is the way to go and what better Legion to go for than the infamous Alpha Legion.

The Command team with a Power Sword and combiplasma wielding Sergeant, two Plasma gunners a standard bearer and the squads very own Rambo going at it with dual-wielded pistols.





With Alpha Legion's mysterious past and and slight doubts about their allegiances even after the Heresy offered a nice backstory to pick from. The fact that they are operating as small cells outside of the Eye of Terror would open some possibilities to differ from the normal add spikes to chaosify approach that is predominant with the official Chaos miniatures line. After all the legionaries would have to somewhat blend in to achieve their tasks and aid in subterfuge.

With the Legion chosen I set about choosing some design guidelines to have somewhat of a plan regarding my building process.
  • No spikes!
  • Every miniature must contain parts from at least two different kits or have some clear conversion done to them
  • Equipment from different eras should be used when possible to achieve a look of a veteran unit that has kept whatever equipment worked best for them.
  • Every model must have something distinctively chaotic equipment
  • Regular Space Marine backpacks instead of the weird looking Chaos ones.
The first unit that I did were the cultist and there I did cheat a bit as the push fit minis were quite tricky to convert. Only some weapon swaps were done on them. Maybe sometime in the future they will be replaced by some suitable Planetary Defence Forces models. However with these guys I more or less stuck to what I'd planned and I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I'm not even sure from how many different kits they are built from, but the major parts come from the CSM box, Horus Heresy box and some Alpha Legion 30k resin parts thrown in. On top of that there's parts from a few different loyalist space marine boxes, some early 90s CSM stuff. I counted at least 8 different kits used, but with stuff scrounged from a bitz box that I've collected since the 90s and which also has bitz lots that I bought from other people it's quite hard to keep track what's from where!



Painting scheme wise I went for a look similar to the one in the mid 90s Codex with a blue base colour and light green highlights. The base shades were painted with an airbrush and light green edge highlights were done with a brush. With details being picked out I decided to try Tamiya Panel Line Accent to define the edges. Not sure if I'm totally sold on the product as results were a bit mixed. On areas of the newer kits which had sharp detail it worked great flowing into creases and corners to make them pop out, but on the older ones with soft detail like the Chaos Space Marine plastics it had a tendency to just run everywhere and had to be cleaned up using mineral spirits. A thicker satin varnish layer would also be required to help the wash flow and make cleaning up easier. Now I had practically no varnish in some harder to reach areas as I only did a thin coat to protect the minis in between.

The regular Joes of the squad.





I finished painting them a few weeks back, but only got around to basing them now as I had a few days of from work. Basic rubble themed basing with some tear plates and discarded imperial equipment thrown in to spice them up. Plenty of different coloured pigments were thrown in to add variety to the otherwise monotone finish.

With them out of the way I have the squads Rhino up next. Though with the speed I've been painting these guys it will be 2018-19 before I have a whole army together so don't hold your breath.

In other news it's the Finnish independence day today so a busy evening ahead filled with the traditional spectacle where we watch our president shake the hands of thousands of guests at the Presidential Independence day party. Plenty of judgment will be dealt out with most of the nation tuning in and admiring and berating the dress choices of guests. At least the afternoon papers will have plenty to write about for the next few days.

With Putin in charge of our neighbouring country our President has also had to step up his game with photoshoots. Being a classy guy he at least has his shirt on unlike Putin :)


torstai 24. marraskuuta 2016

Over the Hills playtest

I haven't been completely happy with how Black Powder plays out especially in larger battles with the frontlines defaulting to a static grind for turns on end and little national differences in units. With that in mind I've been eyeing new rulesets whenever they have come out. Over the Hills is a new set from Adrian McWalter and Quinton Dalton that seems to have created quite a stir around the blogosphere with plenty of praise from all sides. The fact that it had a larger emphasis on morale and quicker playing style with a mixed activation order instead of the traditional I go, you go style seemed like it could be exactly the thing I was looking for.


With the ruleset arriving in my mail box a few weeks back we scheduled a test game for last weekend. To keep things simple we went for a bit smaller engagement with few different unit types. Teugen-Hausen from the 1809 campaign between Austria and France seemed a suitable setting with roughly a Corps on both sides facing each other and only about an enlarged Division taking part in the fight on both sides. I created an OOB adding a bit of variety on the commanders especially on the Austrian side where they seemed to exhibit surprising amounts of courage leading their troops from the front in successive counter-attacks trying to drive the French back. So bonuses to inspiration values were definitely in place for a few select commanders.



I won't cover the game itself in too much detail, but rather focus on the rules. Suffice to say the battle went rather like the historical battle with units arriving piecemeal on the battlefield and committing themselves when ready. The battle slowly escalated with a division on both sides in combat and the small Austrian hussar regiment proving to be a nuisance to the French threatening their flanks as in the real deal. The battle ground down to a halt with no clear winner and both sides suffering similar casualties. The French hadn't pushed through, but neither had the Austrians been able to push them back. Indecisive, but a small Austrian victory.

The rules themselves proved fast playing and easy to learn. I was the only one who had read the rules beforehand and acted as the Umpire with two clubmates assuming command of the opposing forces. With the mixed activation order things came a little at a time at first and also everyone was constantly occupied with things to do. The turn system also eliminated one of the things that annoys me about Black Powder, which is units moving at breakneck speed getting three turns and then unloading on the enemy at close distance which just seemed silly.


Morale and casualties are put into a single value of Fatigue that varies by unit depending on the morale and training levels. I was at first slightly hesitant with the system which seemed overly simplified, but during the game I grew to like it as it kept the game flowing fast and gave real choices to commanders about whether to burn Fatigue to move faster towards the battle or conserve it to have better staying power. The system does require a bit of book keeping with every single point of fatigue taken will be removed from the units total even if it's later rallied on the gaming table. Track needs to be kept of the overall amount of fatigue hits taken as well as the current fatigue of the unit on the table, which can be different if officers rally the unit. So effectively a regular unit will be destroyed after taking 7 fatigue hits even if it's rallied to remove some of them on the table. It gives a nice effect of officers sorting lines out and inspiring their men forward, but at some point the unit has taken too many casualties and will just retreat from the area despite the efforts of their commanders.



We played with both Brigade and Divisional morale in use requiring the whole formation to start retreating after suffering more than 50% Fatigue hits from it's total. The system really requires efficient uses of reserves as units can rarely stay in the fight for multiple consecutive turns. We did find that having divisions with brigades of different sizes could lead to basically the whole division breaking quite fast after a large brigades morale broke down. We had one occasion where a smaller brigade with nearly no damage taken was only a few fatigue hits from breaking off as well when a large brigade in the same division broke down after leading the attack. This is easily remedied though with a slightly different distribution of units. Another way would be to just track Brigade morale and not Divisional morale on top of that as well.

Another thing that I liked was that fighting was quick and fairly decisive. When one side moves into close combat a maximum of three rounds are immediately fought and if one unit is not victorious then both sides retreat. This really kept things rolling with the frontlines not bogging down and more often than not units quickly retreating from an assault. In Black powder you can easily have fights going on for turn after turn with no clear result in sight. What Over the Hills offers is much closer to first hand accounts I've read in wartime diaries etc. that usually saw a short exchange of fire with one side assaulting with bayonets and the other retreating without any combat having necessarily been fought. Units also tend to take quite a few Fatigue hits in every combat so you rarely see a unit fighting more than two combats before it is fully spent.


National variety comes from national characteristics, use of 'French' or 'Linear' combat systems and differences in unit's Fatigue and Skirmish values. I felt they gave a nice and simple way to differentiate the varying forces fighting around the period. In the end of the book there's a selection of unit characteristics for all the different periods of fighting during the Napoleonic wars, which proved very handy when putting together the scenario.

One thing that I did find a bit lacking was the movement speed of units. With the muskets maximum firing range of 12" being roughly 200 meters in real life terms, infantry normally moves 6" in line formation without gaining fatigue and 12" when taking a fatigue point. Likewise at maximum movement rate in marching column they would move 18" or 24" while taking a Fatigue hits. That yields to infantry moving between 100 and 400 meters in a turn which at times seems a little slow at times. As we are playing with 15mm miniatures we changed inches to centimeters which saw units moving at a snails pace over the battlefield. Of course the scope of the turn in Over the Hills is a much shorter period than in other systems so more turns would be needed overall, but movement still felt a bit sluggish. This is probably more of a matter of taste as we tend to play large battles on bigger tables and being used to the longer movements in Black Powder I think our table was maybe a bit too spread out for these rules.


The biggest issue with the rules is editing. With all rules being set inside explanatory text you really have to read carefully to pick things out. Something to bring out the main points like using bolded text or italics would really have helped. The book does have bit of a garage project vibe as well and does look a bit like it was done on Microsoft Word. However when you get the hang of the rules they are really straight forward and can be taught to others easily just by playing. Professional editing would really have benefited the rules. Still can't complain too much, they weren't too expensive and you can't expect too much from wargames rules with smallish print quantities.

Overall I really liked the rules. They fix everything that I didn't like about Black Powder while still keeping the game simple and actually making it flow even faster the BP. With my interest in warfare being quite heavily on the psychological side of fighting the fact that the rules put more emphasis on the morale side of fighting with the Fatigue score I really liked how things played out. My clubmates were also pretty thrilled with the rules and it would seem we will switch to these for our next Napoleonic campaign starting sometime early next year.

That's quite a wall of text, but I definitely recommend giving these rules a try. They are very fast paced, but still provide a good period feel and are easy to learn. Some book keeping is required but nothing too much for roughly a Corps sized game. It would be interesting to see how it works when you play some larger battle like Waterloo. Keeping track of things could prove harder then.

lauantai 12. marraskuuta 2016

Starting with Dropfleet Commander

The wait is finally starting to be over with Dropfleet! With a wildly successful Kickstarter roughly a year ago Hawk launched their new game in the Dropzone universe. With over 600 thousand pounds pledged and multiple new designs added as stretch goals I wasn't too surprised when they didn't make the original June/July goal. And with deliveries starting in October it was still quite well on time by Kickstarter standards. (I'm still waiting for nearly all of my Winter War Kickstarter minis from 2013...)

I actually haven't gotten my pledge yet, and none have been hitting Finland as far as I know. But I couldn't resist when I saw some starter fleets on sale in hobby stores in the UK. Coupled with free shipping offers it didn't take long for me to order two boxes to get started with PHR. When filling the pledge manager I had planned to do UCM and PHR fleets and start with UCM and only taking one PHR fleet. But with time passing and seeing plenty of painted PHR fleets around the web I decided that I want to make that my main fleet. With one starter box not being enough for a full game I ordered two more which should give me a good start and after the pledge arrives with the final third box and freebies I should have enough for larger 2000 point games as well.


The first thing that struck me when I got the boxes was how big the ships were. I'd seen them live at Salute, but in a display cabinet without anything to compare the sizes to I just hadn't realized that these things are huge. The heavier cruisers coming at around 13 centimeters long and even the small frigates being double the size of your regular Space Marine. They did take quite a while to put together, but after a few evenings and today morning I'm now a happy owner of a sizable fleet.

Alongside building them I've used a couple of ships as test beds for paint schemes. I'd originally planned to do them with a digital camo or hex camo scheme, but after some tests I'm not that sure anymore. The ships have large nice flat surfaces and I'm really starting to think that maybe just a flat shade with some slight modulation towards the ends of the ship is the way to go. I'm starting to settle on a blue shade, but still not completely sold on it. It's probably going to need one or more tests still to settle on something that I'm happy with, but I think I'm getting pretty close.

On another note Blood Bowl seems to be on preorder! It seems like Christmas is coming early with Dropfleet coming in and now Blood Bowl. It's bit of a shame that they are not selling the rulebook and orc teams separately as I'm not that interested in the human team as it's a bit dull in my opinion. I'm trying to resist the urge to buy the starter box and wait for a separate rulebook and then just buy the Skaven and Orc team separately when they come out, but I'm fearing that I might budge with promo images popping up around my Facebook and blogger feeds.

torstai 10. marraskuuta 2016

Dear Santa

Another year with another Christmas. And with Christmas it's time for the funny bearded man to come again courtesy of Ian of The Blog With No Name fame and his wife Catherine. Secret Santa is at it again with everyone having been given their target and instructions to come up with ideas for them to help with picking gifts.



With Dropfleet Commander coming out I've got tons of stuff coming from their Kickstarter, but more ships never hurt anyone and I'm definitely thankful for any UCM or PHR ships.

Flames of War is always high on my list and there's always room for one more tank or another platoon of infantry. Bigger German Cats can always find a good home at my house. My King Tigers and Jagdtigers can always have more friends to keep them company.

I can always use more fantasy monsters. The only things I'm really more or less fully stocked with for games are skeletons, zombies and small crawly critters. Trolls, ogres, goblins and what not can always find their way onto the table.

And even though my Saxon project has slightly been on hold now I'm starting to kick it off again with the start of our campaign looming ahead early next year. I've been using AB Saxons and I'm still missing a lot of Grenadiers and Light Infantry. Line Infantry is more or less all either painted or already bought as is cavalry.

Finally I've been meaning to get in some games of Konflikt '47 so any Weird War British or German troops or some suitable occult paraphernalia will definitely come in handy

lauantai 5. marraskuuta 2016

Detroit's Finest are ready

Back home from a short retraining. It was nice to have a break from the normal everyday routine by training in new tasks even if it was quite exhausting with multiple sleepless nights and all the action. It's also been quite a few years since I last wore an uniform so it was fun to be back attempting to be soldierly for a moment again.

10 years, quite a few kilos and another rose on my chest hasn't exactly changed my look into a more soldierly one. Funny enough these pictures are actually taken nearly exactly ten years apart and within 10 meters of each other.

With me back home it was time to finalize the tank company that I'd been working on. A quick coat of gloss varnish followed by matte varnish to reduce the glare was all that was needed to get these bad boys ready for gaming. 12 tanks altogether with two platoons of 4 tanks and a further 4 to provide different HQ options. Being a cheesy competitive gamer in Flames of War I've put together platoons of 2 E8's, a Jumbo and a basic M4A1. Depending on points my HQ will be an E8 and a Jumbo, with a M4A3 in the 75 and 76mm variants and a 105mm M4 available as well. The plastic M4A1's are from Plastic Soldier Company while everything else is from Battlefront. In the future I might paint up some Battlefront A1's as well, because the PSC ones are quite a bit smaller and definitely stand out from the rest. But alas that's what I had available so I went with them. To distinguish the platoons from each other one is laden with equipment with the other one running with empty decks. I prefer vehicles looking worn and filled with equipment, but to make gaming easier you have to make sacrifices.



I've painted quite a few US vehicles in the last few years and the process really does go forward quite routinely now. A base coat of Brown Violet has colour modulation added with dark yellow to enhance the edges. Decals and chipping with a sponge is followed by Ammo of Mig washes to create streaking and shade the vehicles, before a liberal application of mud effects. I've been thinking about going with a more pronounced colour modulation effect on them as after the washes most of it disappears. But as I have tens of vehicles in this scheme already I think a different painting style would stand out too much from the crowd.



As I said in the previous post I tried some new mud effects from Mig. I'm still not completely sold on them as they are more of a wash consistency and don't really have much of a "body" to them. I've read that they could be used with some fine sand or chalk mixed into them to give an illusion of clumps of mud, but with nothing suitable at hand I'll have to try that as a later time. I tried blowing small droplets from a brush by blasting it with air from the airbrush and applying it by hand with a brush and a sponge. Using an airbrush as assistance is the recommended way, but I found it too tricky for such a small scale. The instructional videos are for 1:35 scale AFV models so it probably works there much better. Sponge and brush seemed the way to go on these, but I did apply them too thick on a few tanks with almost a solid paint like look on them. Still from a distance they look good so I'm not going to attempt to remedy that.



With these out of the way it's 40k time while I wait for my Dropfleet Commander Kickstarter pledge to arrive. I'm really starting to find my painting mojo again as these tanks were actually really fun to paint. US tanks are quite simple to paint so things advanced swiftly with only the decaling stage being a bit dreary with over 100 decals applied altogether.



And finally a couple of pics from the barracks. Welcoming you inside there's a duo of T-34's that Finland used quite extensively in WW2 against their former owners. And quite a nice looking little AA vehicle from Sweden (Lufvärnskanonvagn L-62) with the older insignia that has nowadays been abandoned for quite obvious reasons due to it being very similar to the swastika.






sunnuntai 30. lokakuuta 2016

Progress on Detroit's Finest

It's been quite a hectic week at work, but I've still managed to squeeze in a good few hours of painting time getting my tank line rolling and almost out of the factory doors.

All detail is now painted up, tons of decals have been applied and weathering done. I tried some new mud effects from Ammo of Mig on these guys. Still not sure if I prefer these over the Marutechnics ones I've used previously or not. As they are enamel based the drying time can take hours and I'm waiting to see if they change shade or consistency at all. I've liked ones with more granularity before and these seemed to be more of a thick wash consistency. I have a feeling they might benefit from the addition of fine sand or plaster to build up thicker mud layers.






Unfortunately I won't be getting them finished with a varnish layer soon as the mud effects have now been drying for a good few hours and are still wet to the touch. I have an early start tomorrow morning to report for a week of retraining in the military so no hobby time until I return from there. The weather is looking suitable for field exercises with rainfall and +2 degrees being promised by the weatherman. Would be fun to be able to go during summertime for once, but  somehow I always seem to get ordered back during November...

lauantai 22. lokakuuta 2016

Nebelwerfers, they werf Nebel

Oh boy it's been almost six weeks from the last update. My utter lack of painting mojo has continued with little being done lately. Haven't even had a good game in during the period as work has intervened in my regular gaming days. I had a short streak of painting inspiration in September, which was cut short by a massive varnish problem ruining a half a squad of Chaos Marines.

Still in the last couple of weeks I've been getting back to painting again. It's been quite slow as I've only had time to paint during the weekdays as all my weekends have been spent either in the forest or out to the sea hunting. To have something nice and fast to paint to get my appetite going I dug through my stash looking for something simple and found a small battery of Nebelwerfers that I'd based and put together at some point in the past. Oddly enough my Flames of War Germans have always lacked this iconic weapon that seems to feature in every Late War German list ever made in Flames of War.


Jokes aside, quick paintjobs with my regular 15mm way of painting of basecoat and one highlight layer followed up by a brown wash. It was actually really nice to paint something that only took two evenings from start to finish. Finally some sense of accomplishment. I have a tendency to try to paint too many figures at the same time for effiencys sake, but it really does sap motivation at times with units taking too long to finish.



Basing took a bit longer as they've now been sitting painted for a nearly a couple of weeks and I only got around to finishing them today. Some of the clump foliage is still wet after being doused with thinned out PVA to make them stronger. But being impatient I went ahead and took pictures anyways :)





Immediately after taking the pictures I managed to throw one of them onto the ground braking it in a few pieces... Luckily the paint mostly broke off at the seams in areas where it's hard to see so fixing it wasn't too hard. Still I've gotta admit I was a bit pissed...


After these guys I've been slowly working on a few projects at the same time. I've always played my Americans either infantry or mechanised with Tank Destroyer support so I figured it was high time to add some Shermans so I could field an armored force as well. A simple colour modulation with the airbrush was done and now I've been picking out details. Decals and weathering coming soon.






I'm also working on a Chaos Space Marine squad. And it's actually the second time that I'm painting half of them... I'd painted their armor and picked out all details and needed to apply varnish before decals and some weathering and figured I'd do it quickly with a spray can instead of digging out the airbrush. I'd never used the Army Painter Satin Varnish before, which should already have told me to test it on something first before applying it on all the models. With it being autumn it was quite moist outside and in combination with that the varnish had some freak reaction and it turned milky white on top of the minis. I went through tips found online from applying a thin layer of varnish after the first one had tried to gently removing it with paint removal. Nothing worked and in the end I had to go and strip the paint of the first five that were very near being finished.  That really killed all my painting motivation for a few weeks and I've only lately been getting back. After the first disastrous run I decided to paint the whole squad at the same time for efficiencys sake. Airbrushing is now done (again) and I've started doing lining. Picking out details is next followed by paint chips and decals. Hopefully getting them done in the next few weeks.


Anyway that's the end of my rambling for now. Hopefully the next update won't take as long! I'm anxiously waiting for my dropfleet commander pledge to arrive and the blog will probably be filled with that once it get's here!