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.