Flames of War Pershings

With my summer holiday over it's time to be more active in the hobby field again. A month away from work was definitely needed as I was really starting to feel fairly burnt out and frustrated about everything. Couple of weeks in Canada and a few weeks back home spending time with friends, going out, watching movies etc. really did a lot to help bring back some long lost motivation for work, and for painting as well. I've been back to work and a normal routine for about a week now and painting has actually been really enjoyable for the first time in a long while.

First up are some more additions to my Flames of War US forces in the form of a Pershing platoon. A late war entry these didn't really reach troops until the final months of the war and even then only in small numbers. Still it's an iconic tank that saw much use in Korea and formed the basis of further US armor development into the Patton series, so I had to have some. From gaming point of view these are pretty bad to be honest. They are very expensive points wise in Flames of War, but still pretty vulnerable to larger late war AT guns. Fielding more than 3 is nigh impossible and they aren't too survivable then.  Still fun to field every once in a while for a themed list.

These guys were nearly done before I left for Canada, but with the mud effects taking hours to dry they weren't quite finished in time for that. Still it was a good way to start getting back to painting by just slopping on some finishing touches and varnish to get these guys ready.

I followed my normal recipe for US vehicles with a suitable green basecoat with dark yellow modulation. Some chipping and enamel washes for weathering followed by liberal coats of mud. Still haven't really fully figured out the Ammo of Mig mud products that I've started to transition to. They feel a bit too liquid to me and don't really have much texture so building thick coats of mud seems tricky. They've nowadays come out with some thicker stuff as well, so might have to give it a try or then try to mix in some very fine sand to add more texture and grit to the ones I already have.

Aside from the Pershings I've finally received my Skaven Blood Bowl team from a Willy Miniatures Kickstarter and been putting them together. I'd opted for a Deluxe box which included a pitch and transportation foam. After some mishaps those who did so ended up receiving their stuff about three months after everyone else. If I'd known before hand I would have just taken the minis, but originally everything was supposed to ship at the same time.

Alongside Skaven I've been continuing on the next Chaos Space Marine squad. Most of the time consuming work is finished with all the details picked out and the tedious edge highlighting done. I've still got decals to apply and chipping to add before a final panel line wash to make those pop out better. I probably should have gone for a slightly faster scheme to paint, but I do enjoy the look so maybe it's worth the extra time. Hoping to finish them of within a week or so, though a friends wedding this weekend will reduce available hobby time quite a bit.

From a hobby point of view it's forming up to be quite a busy autumn. We have a Flames of War escalation league starting to get new players in and for us older players to start new armies. Also a Shadow Wars Armageddon campaign starting which I was planning to take part in. And finally we are planning to start our 1813 Napoleonics campaign that we'd originally already planned for 2016. So there should be plenty of gaming and painting ahead and hopefully I'll be a bit more active updating the blog as well.

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.

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...

Painting Challenge entries 6 & 7: Chainsaw Wizard and American halftracks

Last week I actually managed two entries, even if one of them was only a small one with one miniature!

First up is a limited edition Citadel Chainsaw Wizard sculpted by Aly Morrison in 1987. A suitably wacky sculpt that was fun to paint for a change! I've been buying up some of the old citadel limited editions whenever I see them going for sale on eBay or somewhere else for reasonable prices. Slightly embarrassingly most have been waiting for paint for very long times. With that in mind I figured I should prep a few of them for the painting challenge and paint them up between other projects every now and then. With the chainsaw wizard done I now really need to start looking for his long-range counterpart the submachine gun wizard!

The second entry of the week was 10 additional halftracks for Flames of War. 5 M3 tracks for the armored rifle platoon that was finished a few weeks prior, 2 M2 command halftracks and 3 M4 81mm mortar carriers. With these done I'm only missing 4 M10 tank destroyers and some odd weapons stands for when I choose to dismount the mortars or some of the MG's from the infantry half-tracks.

With the plastic infantry I was complaining about the appalling quality of the sculpts and moulding, but compared to them the plastic halftracks are actually a very pleasent surprise. I find them far better than the resin vehicles that Battlefront makes. Detail is very crisp, they go together very easily and all in all were quite a joy to paint. And I think the same can be said for most of their other newer plastic kits as well. Apparently even the plastic soviet infantry is quite nice. Practice goes a long way in helping improve the kits, and they seem to have gotten the hang of it by now. Hopefully they'll go around updating some of the first plastic kits in the future as well.

Painting wise I went with my trusted method of Brown Violet with dark yellow modulation. After details were picked and chipping applied, a liberal brown enamel wash was applied which was then wiped of when it had dried. Getting the modulation right really does seem tricky as before the wash I'm constantly thinking that I went too far and the effect is too stark. But now after the wash I'm almost wishing I had gone for even more contrast.

That's all for Flames of War US forces for a while now. I have nearly everything for my Mid War list as well and the only really missing pieces, the M10's, can easily be proxied with other TD's. I'll finish them up closer to the European Team Championships when I've gathered more motivation to paint olive green again.

Painting Challenge entry 4: Armored Rifles

After a short hiatus in entries I was back on the boards again with some more Flames of War infantry. And boy were they a pain in the ass to paint. Everything except the light anti-tank guns are the newish Battlefront plastic US infantry.

The US infantry sprues were some of the first plastics that Battlefront did and it does show quite a bit. Many of the poses are a bit odd and there are a lot of distorted areas that couldn't be done properly with injection moulding. In addition to the lost detail the sprue actually contains multiple duplicate poses, which seems a bit lazy design wise. Now there is a lot more repetition in bases that could have been avoided had Battlefront decided to just do a few more sculpts so that each sculpt in the sprue was unique. Same goes to the design of the miniatures as slightly different poses could have allowed for better moulding and less lost detail. Probably with more design experience they will start producing better plastics, but for the moment these are far below the level of their metals, and even those are at best just average in quality when comparing to other 15mm manufacturers.

It took quite a while to get them done as frankly the painting felt more like a chore than anything else. Still I resolved not to paint anything else in between as that would probably have pushed them to the back of the queue and it would probably have taken me months to gather up the motivation to touch them again. Finally after about two weeks of painting them on a rather loose pace they are ready for gaming. Luckily not much in the form of infantry left in my US project anymore so I'm finally getting done with all that Olive Drab.

With these done my excel sheet is starting to look rather green already! At the moment I have all the remaining half-tracks on the painting table and they should be done within a week. After that a short pause with the yanks again before painting the last missing vehicles. I also still need to buy the dismounted mortars and some 50 cal and 30 cal teams if I ever want to dismount them during game. But for now I can just proxy them with equivalent Para teams that I already have. This project actually took quite a bit longer than I expected, but then again I haven't really been painting near as much as I used to before. Painting mojo is still somewhat missing, but at least it seems to be coming back slowly but surely.

Flames of War US Mid War vehicles

With today being the 98th Finnish independence day it's time for some vehicles from the only major Allied nation that didn't declare war on Finland during WW2, namely the US. They have been sitting for way too long waiting for finishing touches, but I finally got around to adding mud and varnishing them this morning.

So once again more Olive Drab, this time of earlier variety with vehicles that were mostly used during the African campaign. 5 M3 tanks with the long barreled gun and two M3A1 scout cars to have some fast recce elements to support the tanks and armored rifle platoons. I'm sticking with my tried and tested method of base color with modulation done by airbrush and weathering by chipping and enamel washes.

With these finished my autumn US project is finally drawing closer to the end. Only 3 platoons left and some extras like Jeeps, command stands etc.The only real larger thing missing is one Armored Rifle Platoon. Hopefully I can get the rest finished before the end of the year as I should have a little more time for painting as for the first time in months I'm actually home on the weekends instead of hunting trips etc.

And finally something suitable for todays occasion.