DIY Tank Crew

I have been playing mini games for many a long year by now, and yet I can count on 1 hand the number of vehicles I have bought and played with. I think this is mainly due to my predisposition to 28mm, fantasy/historical gaming. Now, I have many big robots, mostly for Warmachine, as well as a couple for Void/Urban War (I still have a soft spot for my VASA mechs), but I have never been into tank battles as such (no Flames of War for me). In fact, I think the only previous tank I bought was a VASA TAV MkIII, with optional turrets, however, I never played a game with one, never mind painted it.

For Dystopian legions of course, I have already bought into the vehicles, albeit with the smaller one-man Bassett tankettes, but they don't really count in my mind as proper tanks. The Terrier Ironclad however, certainly does.

To my mind, paying out a chunk of money for a substantial amount of resin, means this model deserves to be a centrepiece model for my army, so I am currently looking for ways to convert and personalise it.

The easiest thing to do in this regard is to open the hatch doors and stick a crewman on top. The hatch doors are in fact built for just such a purpose (as is the case for the Bassetts).

After a long time searching for a suitable mini to act as a crewman, I decided just to make one to fit. He is constructed of the following pieces:Victoria miniatures pith helmet head; GW Imperial Guard body and left arm; the right arm I found in my bits box and I couldn't swear to its origin; the right hand is a green stuff copy of the Black Watch Sergeant's hand and pistol; cross-belt, cuff and epaulets are all greenstuff. He'll be held in place by a magnet, and will therefore be removable from the tank.

He will be painted to look like the image at the top of the post. I decided to not go for the gas mask, as even though I have the bits, the pack at the front of the mini, which I assume is part of the mask, was a bit clunky with his positioning in the hatch, and made him a bit front heavy.

WIP

Final stages

And then, in-situ.

I think I'll have to put a flag on the tank too. Maybe even two. One Britannian flag, as on all the Spartan logos, and the other for the Scot's Greys, who I have decided that this guy and maybe even the Bassets belong to.  My freehand drawing skills leave much to be desired, so I haven't decided how I'm going to proceed with the flags yet. More on that once I do.

Black Watch Infantry Piper Conversion

So, in my last post, I mentioned I was planning to convert one of my Infantrymen to a piper. With the help of the Victoria Miniatures Piper conversion kit. At first, I thought to use the running man as the base for the conversion, as his gun was a mis-cast anyway, but on closer inspection, he was not the prime candidate. The knife man seemed to have an overall better pose, with the reloading guy being next (at least his head is down, which might make it easier for him to reach the mouthpiece, but more on that later).

The only real thing I had to do for this was cut his left arm off, as his right arm already comes separately, so as far as conversions go, it's pretty simple. I blocked in the spaces between the body and the new arms with greenstuff, smoothed it out, and there you go.

The arms from Victoria Minis are not a perfect match however. They are for GW style 28mm heroic scale, and Spartan, although 32mm figs, they are pretty slim built and fine of feature. This means if you look closely, they piper has huge hands compared to his section mates.

The other issue with the arms was the cuffs. So I GSed in some new cuffs in an attempt to match with the rest of the section. They look pretty rough, but a coat of paint should help hide a multitude of sins in that department.

Lastly, the pipes come separate from the head in the conversion kit, therefore the mouthpiece doesn't reach the mouth. This means he's taking a pause from playing I guess, but it did mean I didn't have to re-sculpt the mouth to make him play. I have since looked up pictures of bagpipes, and it seems the actual mouthpiece is really long in real life, so maybe I'll redo this to get him mid-tune.

 

So on with the rest of the section. I foresee at least one other conversion with the minis I have, probably using the arms I cut off this gent to replace the mis-cast gun I received, along with a few bits and bobs on the rest of them, just to make the unit a little more unique.

Kingdom of Britannia: Sky Hussars

I have spent this evening cutting off flash, and basing my starter set. Not much to show yet, but here are some shots of the Sky Hussars. I'm rather pleased with the guy on the flying base, although the angle the mini sits on the pole means he does look like he's about to fly into the ground.

Sekrit Projekt II

Part two of my Sekrit Projekt. Now coming together. Here's a kind of how-to for the guns I have scratch built.

Sausages of milliput. Kindergarten education in effect.

The starting point for each cannon was a sausage of milliput, rolled to the desired thickness, and left overnight to dry. In fact, the thicker of the two required nearer 48hrs to be completely rigid. I tried to make a couple of grooves in the barrels (on the left hand side in the above picture) to add some interest to the otherwise plain surface.

Brass rod through the barrels
and details sculpted

Brass rods were placed through the barrels at the right distance to balance the guns when placed in their carriages. A little more milliput was used to sculpt the mouths of the barrels, and a little more around the brass rods to thicken them up. A little knob of milliput was added to the rear of each barrel, and a touch-hole added to each. I tried to cut a couple of grooves onto the barrels, just to add a little decoration. This turned out to be harder to do when the milliput was dry, as it had a tendency to crumble.

What a mighty pair

The cannons were then mounted on the carriages made from the moulds I had previously made from the Sea Dogs Deck Guns. The pins through the barrels being used to support the guns. The carriages really take a couple of uninspiring guns and make them into believable artillery pieces.

Liquid green stuff to cover some chips and holes

Complete and ready for painting. I had tried to make a mould of the Khadoran anvil from the shield of a M.O.W. Kovnik (to represent a captures Khadoran Gun), but the curvature on the underside was not enough to go round one of the barrels. I can try to sand more of the underside to make it fit, or curve the mould more once I have taken an impression of the symbol, but neither is sure to work.

Otherwise, I have spoken to a friend who has suggested he may be able to find some Fleur-de-lys from the shoulders of some GW battle maidens that I can use to make a mould. That would be ideal.

Sekrit Projekt

Can you tell what it is yet?

With prospective crew.

The mortars are place holders/test models. I wanted to see if the moulds I made with this stuff worked. The next step is to either find or make with the moulds two more cannon barrels to go with the Sea Dogs deck gun on which I am basing these guns. I foresee issues making these with the putty and moulds, as the mould lines will likely be horrendous and I had issues lining up the top and bottom of the moulds I made for the frames. So last night I rolled out some milliput sausages in a vaguely cannon shape. I'll wait for these to dry before sanding them down and decorating them.

Colore ton Monde, July: Saga Vikings I

Chop chop chop went the cutting tools, and on we go with this month's challenge: to paint a mini I have yet to play. In this case, I'm going with a game I have yet to play, Saga. As previously mentioned,  I have bought a couple of viking minis, and plan to turn them into a command base.



The mini in its original form



I started off with the standard bearer. As he is going to be on the base with the leader.I felt his winged helmet was too much. I felt it would draw the eye away from the leader and onto himself. I want the focus on this model to be the standard, not the man. I think it makes him a little more historically accurate too. Also, I feel the knife he was holding was a bit of a rubbish weapon for a viking, so off it came too, to be replaced eventually with a shield. As this left him essentially armless, I added the belt knife that came with the miniature I intend to use for the leader (Freydis). Again, I don't want her to be too busy a miniature with all the little odds and sods that work on a single mini being too much for the vignette.

The plasticard for his base was a kind donation from Guillaume. A little polyfilla and sand will be added once I decide on the placing for Freydis. I did think to use some green stuff to cover the rest of his legs in fur, as I'm not a fan of the peddle-pushers look he's got going on.

I also got some shields from the bits box of my FLGS. The dwarf shields I picked up, although blank, were too small for these guys. There was one larger orc shield, and a chaos shield that seemed the right size. the insert in the orc shield is, I think, from the LoTR Rohan minis. I have seen a few of these minis turn up in Saga blog posts, as they are more historical/dark age in their look than a lot of GWs other stuff. The boss is just a done of green stuff to fill the hole. The other shield, on the left, is a chaos shield. I liked the torn cloth look, although the spike is a bit too much, and if i go with this one, I'll round that off.

What do you guys think? Which one to use?

I think, in the end, the Freydis will not be going through as much of a conversion, and may keep her current shield, unless I find a good way of separating her arm from the shield it is now attached to.

L'été, l'été, l'été c'est fait pour jouer!

The results of Club Chaos's June's challenge can be found here. There are some really great paint jobs on show there, and once again, I'm glad this is a draw, and not a painting skills contest. In the same post, July's gauntlet has been thrown, and is as follows:


Colore ton monde, Juillet 2012.

L'été, l'été, l'été c'est fait pour jouer

Pour juillet, ce mois idéal pour jouez dehors, nous vous invitons à peindre un modèle que vous n'avez pas encore jouer dans une partie.

Summer, summer, summer is made ​​to play

For July, the perfect month to play outside, we invite you to paint a model that you have not yet played in a game.

For this, I should be fine, as my recent gaming time is so low, that I have shelves full of minis that I have not yet played. In fact, I could go back and finish off Saxon Orrik from May's challenge if I felt so inclined (although that may be cheating, as I've already started him). However, I think I can go further and say I'll be painting minis for a game I have never played!

This plays right into my scheme to make and paint the mini diorama for Saga, although it may also mean I paint Misaki, as at least there will be no modelling involved there. or even the free TAG mini who is all prepped and ready to be painted. I think I'll get a head start on the diarama, whilst painting at least one of the other two, that way if I don't get my conversion done in time, I still have an entry.

Montrez votre fierté! I

June's challenge is almost over. I figured this month, instead of spamming you all with an update after every painting session, I'd make use of Bloggers draft function to write up as I went,thereby foregoing on all the WIP shots, and hopefully making the post more meaty, and of more interest.

This month's challenge is to "Show your Pride!" by painting up a standard bearer (or figures in blue, go here to see the explanation). I chose to go with this guy, with this flag for my Highborn Covenant army. It seemed the right thing to do.

Long tutorial and many pics after the cut.

Ménage du printemps: V Bog Trogs

 I suffer from shinybloodyitis. It's a common condition for us miniature gamers. There are more nice models out there than we have time to devote to them, so, we start one project, and are distracted by another before we finish the first. This means that instead of finishing the Deadlands miniature I had started, when I sat down at the table yesterday I pulled out some Bog Trogs I had, who weren't even put together. The reason is two fold. Firstly, I have been planning to use these guys for some speed painting I want to try out, they should work really well if I get it right, with a light undercoat, some very watered down paints and ink layers. With them being scaly, it should turn out well. The second reason is that I bought some Vallejo Still Water, and am itching to try it out, of course, to do so on some swamp bases means I have to first paint the minis, so last night I prepped these guys. I had planned to undercoat them too, but I had to wait till the white glue on the bases has dried.

Ménage du Printemps

Club Chaos, a local online gaming club, or loose collection of local gamers, not particulalry affiliated with any one gaming location, has this month launched a new painting challenge. I think I'm right in saying this is the first month they have decided to run this, and this month's challenge is named Spring Clean. Seems easy enough, get out some minis that were either bought during the past winter, or before, that are in need of painting, i.e. anything from my collection. I've put aside 4 minis to start with (pics to follow). There are some Warmachine/Hordes minis, a couple of Reaper and a Heresy 'not Doctor Who' mini. All of whom are based, and some of which are undercoated, but I think that still counts. If I get them all done, I'll follow up with my Kayazy Eliminators.

Battlefield detritus

My laptop finally gave up the ghost, so I have a) a little more time to paint (less distractions), and b) no way to post what I have painted. I have snuck onto my good lady's PC this afternoon and so am posting these few pictures of the painted cannon wreck markers/scenery/space filler/objective tokens, or whatever you think they're good for.

From what I have seen, green was a good colour to paint the cannon wrecks to make them French. I will likely use the rest to make a few more bases and paint them blue to represent British artillery wreckage.

Modelling

This evening has been rather bitty in terms of what I got done. My previous post shows I was inspired to get on with some Napoleonic French. However, I found out to my dismay that the French Line Infantry i have are for the period 1812-1815, so don't cover the Peninsular War, which was where the Légion Hanoverienne and Légion du Midi served (both were disbanded before the 1812 campaign). A mild setback, as I'm sure no-one would notice the difference if I painted them up as I wanted anyway. Still, it got me round to putting a few more of these minis together, and on different bases from my usual pennies. maybe I can just add a quarter underneath (25cents). A possible, if not more expensive, option.

Also, I picked up some movement trays from GW, for their Lord of the Rings game War of the Ring (in the picture above). These allow me to fit my minis based for skirmish into formation for larger games without needing to rebase them, although I will have to figure something out for the 95th, as they're all stuck to pennies. Maybe I'll just stick them on top of other bases as they are. I also wanted to make use of terrain, placed on the same bases as the miniatures. I have seen this method around, and it works really well for 2 things. It allows you to make mini dioramas within the units, adding to the character of the figs, and also, it fills out the unit whilst saving on minis. To this end, I wandered into my FLGS, and bought some bits, mostly GW cannons and the like, for a couple of dollars. I brought them home and chopped them up, and this is the result.

I'm sure they could also be used as objective markers, or even casualty markers at a push. I want to get on and give them a coat of PVA, and get them painted, but I'd best wait at least 24 hours to let the Polyfilla dry.

Lastly, I put a little more paint on my Napoleon Diorama. The drum may be finished, but Raza has a ways to go.