Painting Challenge entries 5 & 6: French Middle Guard and FoW objective marker

Back and rested after the tournament so it's time for blogging again. Last week I managed two entries to the challenge, though it was slightly aided by the fact that I forgot to post the Guard the previous week :)

First up 3 battalions of Middle Guard for Waterloo. The miniatures are from Victrix and the flags from GMB designs. I'm still a bit unsure whether I like the Victrix plastics or not. The detail is sometimes quite soft and the bayonets snap easily. The poses are also somewhat limited or at least could have included a bit more variety especially on the bodies and things like facial detail are over exaggerated. Still they are extremely cheap with 60 figures costing only 23 pounds and I've been buying them from sales at about 20 euros a box.

The paintjob was fairly simple with the minis basecoated blue with my airbrush and then all the details being block painted. I did add some variety by painting most of the backpacks differently and added some detail by highlighting the face as I find most people always focus first on facial features so a bit of extra effort there helps lift up the quality of the rest. After a basic paintjob I applied a dark brown wash to add shade. Final touch was painting mud by stippling two different shades of brown. It's another quick thing to do with a battalion taking maximum 15 minutes to muddy up and really lifts the impression of quality a lot higher.

My second entry was a Flames of War objective marker from Kerr & King. No figures on it though so no points for me from this. However I needed it for the tournament and it was a nice little appetizer before my next larger paint job so doesn't really matter. Not the best quality resin, but luckily small air bubbles etc. don't really matter in a subject like this so clean up was a breeze. Basecoated dark brown and then drybrushed with various different colours trying to leave the paintjob on things like the brick wall different shade in different areas. As a final touch I added some chipping with a sponge.

I'm back ahead of schedule with 658 points now all together. 342 to go until my target of 1000. As with all plans my original plans of painting have changed with my whims and things like the Chimera have been skipped. I won't be able to finish my Great Spined Dragon in time for the "Hot" challenge either, but I have a feeling we'll still be seeing him done during the challenge anyways.

101st Company Command and infantry stands

Finished off the first stands for my Airborned April challenge. These buggers have been waiting for paint a long time now and have graced gaming tables embarrassingly many times with only a black basecoat. These are the command teams with the three attached bazooka teams and three rifle/mg stands to take all my infantry platoons into full strength.

The resin bases are once again from Kerr & King. Wonderful products, even though they do have a lot of blowholes and the such. Luckily most of the surface is ground anyway so you don't need to fix that much and the worst parts can just be covered with static grass.

I once again painted the flags and 101st insignia on these guys. Last time I forgot the band above the eagle saying "Airborne". Pretty basic stuff with the US flag being basically two rectangles, few white dots and 2-3 lines and the insignia just a small black band with a black spot underneath. These then got a white line to represent the eagle and some thin yellow line to represent the text. Doesn't complicate the paint job too much and only takes a minute or so to apply to every mini, but it really does make the whole unit pop out better.

Painting Challenge entry 3: US Airborne Rifle Platoon

Next entry into the painting challenge is a US Airborne Rifle Platoon for FoW. All of the minis are Battlefront and the resin bases Kerr & King. A few normal bases with Peter Pig scenery in the group too.

After finding out that Kerr & King has some FoW bases with dead cows and other random battlefield debris I just had to get them. Saving Private Ryan is one of my favorite films so of course the cows had to make an appearance. The bases are quite nice, but there are quite a bit of holes from air bubbles. Nothing too hard to clean, but still a bit of extra effort required. Battlefront's minis are nice for 15mm's again with good varied poses. The only gripe I really have with them are the faces which are sometimes lacking in detail compared to their plastics and some of their other metals.

For the metal parts I decided to use normal paint instead of metallics to test if it looks any better than the shiny finish of metallics. Mixed a couple of greys and blues to get a good shade and I think it turned out quite nice. These are also the first paras where I decided to paint the 101st insignia and the American flag. Looks quite nice at least from a distance.

I still have a platoon of these guys left and a mortar and machine gun section, but I think I'll hold back on them for a while or paint them in smaller groups. Painting the same damn thing on 44 tiny guys at once did get on my nerves at times.

Painting Challenge Entry 1: Flames of War Objective Marker

Just finished my first entry for Curt's Painting Challenge. It's an objective marker for Flames of War. It's also my entry for the first fortnight challenge with the non-combatant theme. I was trying to capture the first place for a short time by getting the bonus points for the fortnight challenge, but hadn't noticed that all the bonus entries are grouped in the same post when the fortnight challenge ends. Well it was a nice mini and diorama to start the challenge with.

The resin base with the jeep is from Kerr & King and the dogs with their owner are from Peter Pig. I really like the Kerr & King bases and markers as they have nice character and are also nicely priced. Not too happy with the Peter Pig civilian as it's lacking in detail, but I had it in my bits box and it suited my idea for a mini dio.

It was quite quick to paint with my airbrush used for the ground, jeep and the wall. Army Painter inks used to shade the minis and then drybrushing and edge highlighting to bring out detail.

Next up Norse Gaels for Saga.