Cats on the prowl

I'm back from Germany and back at the paint desk again! Not too much free time due to work there, but at least I got to see Die Mannschaft crushing Brazil with huge crowds of Germans in the streets of Stuttgart. If we Finns get crazy when we win in ice hockey, it's still nothing compared to the stuff that goes on in Germany. I already got to see a glimpse of it during the last Euro Championships when I was living in Germany, but the world cup seems to have gotten them up to another level of crazyness!

Anyway off to the painting then! I've finally received the missing 105 artillery pieces for my Flames of War airborne. These took ages to arrive as I had ordered them on February. I received two back then and only got the last four last week. The bases still need some sandbags etc. but other than that they are ready for paint. I'm still missing the staff teams, but I'll just proxy those with something else in the meantime.

Caliver Books was running a Flames of War offer in May with boxes of Hellcats going quite cheap so I jumped on it and ordered two to allow me to run them instead of British armored support. Even after being nerfed in the FAQs they are still quite powerful and I'd been planning to add them at some point anyway. The Hellcat being one of my favorite tanks of WW2 also helps. :) I put them all together today and applied the basecoat of Brown Violet. Next up highlights and painting all the details on the tank. I'm trying to get most of them done by next week so I can try them out on the battlefield.

First Oldhammer minis done

I managed to finish up the first few Oldhammer minis. Nice 'desserts' between other projects. After this I'll have another break in painting as I'm off to Germany for a week on business and can't really take any minis and paints with me.

I painted the two leftmost guys with a few metallic drybrushes followed by violet and red washes with a final edge highlight with a silver paint. Works quite nice and is really fast to do, but I guess I'll still paint the rest with solid colours and highlights. The beastman mini turned out quite nicely and it was a real pleasure to paint as it's a really characterful sculpt. The red could maybe have had a bit more contrast, but still it works quite nicely.

Tetrarch rolling in

I finally managed to fix up and finish the Tetrarch so now my Red Devils will be supported by some (extremely light) armor. This tank is tiny as you can see from the first image and in my opinion is closer to the early tankettes than a "real" tank. Still in reality it did provide some mobile fire support for the Paras as it was able to be airlifted and landed with gliders straight into the thick of battle. It remains to be seen how this will fare in Bolt Action. I'm a bit anxious as my regular opponent fields a 3,7cm Flak cannon that can really tear this guy into tiny pieces in a heart beat.

Historically the 6th Airborne Division landed 20 of these into Normandy with less than spectacular success. Many were lost in the landings and when they were setting of most of the tanks were stuck when parachute cords got stuck in their tracks. In battle they performed reconnaissance duties and limited support against German armor. In reality they didn't stand much of a chance against far superior German armor and were quickly relegated to infantry support and true armor support for the Paras was gathered from other formations.

I painted the chassis in two different green tones using colour modulation to add a bit of variety to the monotone green. As I already said in an earlier post I had some issues with the paint coming off the tracks during weathering. After a quick paint fix I got back to weathering. Again I added some paint chips with a sponge followed by a Ammo of Mig wash all over. After the wash was dry I wiped most of and painted on some streaks using more products from the same range. Finally I added mud using Easy Mud in two different shades.

Last Red Devils squad

Back to more efficient painting once again with another bunch of Red Devils. 12 more figures with one full squad and a few extra officers that I might use as Spotters. These are the last regular paras that I will be painting as I now have 3 full squads that allows me to play them in Chain of Command. I still have one squad somewhere in the mail that was ordered already nearly 5 months ago and was now finally sent. I guess I'll paint that one up sometime too to allow for a slightly reinforced platoon.

These guys bring my total in Bolt Action to roughly 1300 points that allows for quite a lot of variety in lists. I still need to finish of the Tetrarch and I have a 6 pounder and a 75mm pack howitzer to paint up, but after that I have pretty much all the options covered that the Market Garden list allows me to take and some extras too.

When I was finishing these guys up I had a small feeling that I was forgetting something and now that I'm uploading these pictures it really hit me. I forgot to paint stubble on and clean up the bases. I'm not going to take new pictures anymore so you have to endure this atrocious mistake from my side. Maybe painting after being tired from watching football during the nights and waking up early to work isn't always that good of an idea.