Dropfleet Commander PHR

Last batch of PHR ships for Dropfleet Commander, at least for a while. I've still got one starter fleet left, but I'm leaving that for until I've gotten more games in and a better feel for how I want my fleet to work. I've already got more than I'll ever use in a single game, so just need to figure out what kind of ships I want more.

Got these done a couple of weeks ago for a game at the club, but took my sweet time taking photos and putting them up here. Painted here is one of the two PHR battleships, Heracles, some corvettes and four support frigates in the form of two Calypsos and two Andromedas.

The battleships are some of the newer additions to the game and only came out a few months ago. I ordered mine straight away, but unfortunately it arrived with some parts missing which lead to a few more weeks of waiting until I got the items from Hawk. With them still being somewhat overwhelmed with Kickstarter issues it took some time to get replacements, but in the end I have the missing fins and a complete ship. The quality is a bit mixed with the body showing the layers from 3D printing that was used to make the master. Still nothing too bad and a light sanding followed by a heavier basecoat on the affected areas fixed everything.

The resin Corvettes on the other hand were excellent with a super smooth finish and no apparent flash or parting lines. Hopefully when the old moulds wear out on the battleships they'll redo them with a better finish on the master model.

Heracles

Calypso

Andromeda

 Echo

 
Finally I dug out all my current PHR ships. There's surprisingly many now that they are out of the storage box. Can't even fit them on my regular photo backdrop :) Next up for Dropfleet is an UCM fleet, I've put most together and I'm only really waiting for a few online only limited edition light cruisers to arrive and I'm all set for a large fleet. When I'm done with that I need to start running some demos at the club as there's only a few guys playing at the moment and new opponents certainly wouldn't hurt!

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

 

Painting challenge entry 2: Infinity Nomads

After a short break it's time for my second entry to Curt's painting challenge. A bit under 2 weeks on the painting table for 4 minis is an embarrassingly long time especially considering that they did get paint on them nearly every day.

The minis are 3 Alguaciles and a Mobile Brigada from the Nomad faction of Infinity. They came with the new Operation Icestorm starter pack that Corvus Belli released this Autumn. I'd been looking at some of the great looking minis for a few years now and as it's been getting very popular at my club the start box offered a great excuse to get in the game. I was also supposed to submit their counterparts from the PanOceania faction, but I messed up some edge highlights and in combination with frustration from trying to paint up all the details they went to the back of the queue until I gather more motivation.

I did have a couple of Infinity minis already before this, but never really got around to buying more before this. Even the older ones were of great quality, but these guys really are the best 28mm miniatures I've seen quality and detail wise. Designing the miniatures on a computer and then producing masters with 3D printing does yield amazing potential. But it does have a downside as these are already being borderline too detailed for gaming miniatures.

Of course there is no need to paint all the tiny details if you don't want to, but hell seeing the amazing work by Angel Giraldez awoke the inner perfectionist in me and I had to give it a try. After days of cursing after trying to create perfect blended highlights etc. I finally gave up and came to my senses when I had started individually highlighting all the tiny hexagons on the underarmor of the Mobile Brigada. It probably would have looked great and I might actually have managed it given enough time, but my sanity would probably have gone with it. In the end I went for something a lot easier and just decided to use drybrushing to pick out all the black details.

I did the preliminary painting with an airbrush applying a dark red basecoat followed by a few layers of lighter highlights to give smooth transitions especially on the armor. This was followed up by painting some stronger highlights by brush especially on the cloth areas on the Alguaciles and applying edge highlighting with ivory paint on the armor. As mentioned before I started trying to do smooth blended highlights on the black parts which inevitably lead to much cursing and finally resorting to an easy way out with a few successive drybrushed layers followed by a black wash to pick out detail.

The bases came from Micro Art Studio's Hangar and Warehouse lines. Should be quite suitable for the Nomads who are a faction that lives on three giant spaceships. Simple paint jobs on them followed by the application of some pigments to give a bit of variety before pinning the models on bases. Finally I decided to paint a 180 degree front sector on them to make it clear where the model is looking during gaming.

They were pretty tricky to photograph as there's quite a lot of blackish and dark areas on them and trying to bring out things lead to some areas maybe being a bit burnt out which hides some of the detail. Might have to figure out some other background for these miniatures. Or then learn to photoshop better :)

Next the German invasion of Soviet Union continues with the core of the Panzerschützen Company being about half done at the moment. I'm also planning to submit a plane for the next Fortnight Challenge. I now just need to source some suitable stand to use it as support for my Bolt Action forces.