Work in Progress

Thought I would give a quick update on some things I am currently working on.

I am working on a LAV squadron (Not really sure what the correct term is). I have 4 LAV 25s, a command variant and an AT variant.  All of the kits are from Trumpeter.  These were fun and easy to put together.  There is still some assembly to be done as I am debating how much I want to pimp them out with accessories.

These are 2 Britannia Scimitars that will be done up for my Brits in Afghanistan.  These need some love an attention as there are some extensive air bubbles and cast errors.  There are a few metal pieces like the the barrel that will be added once I clean them up and magnetize the turret.

Donkey Cart from Britannia.   This is one of my favorite pieces.  I will probably add some junk in the back of his cart to make him even more fun.

Goat herder and his wife (not sure which one is his wife still) from Britannia .  Another fun addition to my range.  Great for Fog of War cards.

Hot spot markers from S&S models.  These are very flavorful and have the numbers on them which makes them super useful.

A Viking from Britannia.  I have 4 of these in total to transport my Royal Marines.  A very odd vehicle indeed.  Each kit has 2 gunners.  These will require a hefty amount of cleaning and fixing.

Taliban motorcyclists from Britannia. I have 3 of these in total.  Always a fun to have guys on motorcycles.  A few scenarios call for these and I really want to play with them.

IED markers from S&S.  Very useful for force on force.  Some are quite cool.  There are a few more in my box.

News reporter group from Britannia.  What is not to love here?

Some cleaned and built Landrover WMIKS from Britannia.  Really cute little vehicle/kit.  Still need to green stuff up some patches as they suffer from air bubbles.  Were not fun to clean at all.  I do not like the resin used by Grubby Tanks on the Britannia line.

An S&S MRAP along with a bag full of bar armor to go on it.  I have 3 more MRAPs and enough bar armor for them all.  I also have one mine roller.  These are the Mastiffs so they will go with my Brits.  These will need some pretty extensive cleaning... waiting for a nice day to go outside with a mask or respirator to grind away some resin chunks.

Part of my technical fleet.  I have some plastic trucks too.  I haven't decided what I want to do with them fully.  The dark one is from Britannia while the rest are from S&S.  I really like the idea of Technicals dueling my Landrover WMIKs.

So I have a lot of work to do.  These are all things I would like to use in my Convention games in September.  Well... back to being productive!

Painting USMC: A Tutorial

Alright folks, I have been busy this week to bring you something fun.  I have started on my USMC for Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  The miniatures are beautiful sculpts by Matt at Elhiem Figures.  For those of you that don't know, the USMC uses Desert Marpat camouflage in Afghanistan.

I have seen some people paint the USMC trying their hardest to replicate the Digital scheme, and some people just paint the models tan.  I am going for an in between.  If you notice the third guy down in the picture seems faded out.  This is the look I am replicating.  You can tell he has a camo pattern, but you can't quite see the distinct features of it.  Seeing as my models are 20mm, I feel this is very appropriate.

This tutorial will teach you how to paint a USMC squad (13 men).  After cleaning and mounting the figures on pennies, I have added some sand to their base.  I attach my sand with super glue, but you can use white glue if you wish.  After the sand has dried to the base, we take the models outside and prime them white (I use privateer press white primer as I like the finish and it goes on thin and smooth).  I use white primer to speed up the process and because the models are a decently light color overall.

After we prime them, I then give all the models a good wash of GW Badab Black.  The main purpose of this wash is to pop the detail on the models, therefore making my life easier as I paint them.  The Badab Black also helps give the models some pre-shading.

 The next step is to paint their bases.  For this I used Privateer Press Hammerfall Khaki.  I then go ahead and base coat the uniforms with Vallejo Iraqi Sand.  Make sure your paints are thinned or you will lose detail.

Now I go ahead and paint their faces using Reaper Master Series Tanned Skin.  I didn't bother painting their hands as I am going to paint them all wearing gloves.

The next step is probably the most time consuming part of this Tutorial.  We are going to paint all of their webbing, body armor, knee pads, bags, goggle straps and the like using Vallejo English Uniform.

Then I went ahead and painted their guns using Reaper Master Series Grey Liner.  This color is almost black.  You could use black if you want, or a really really dark grey.  I tend to not like blacks very much and find that Grey Liner is perfect for a black.  I also paint their night vision connector piece (I have no idea what the actual term is) on their helmets, along with their sunglasses, microphone/headpiece, and actual goggle lenses.

Now I paint their gloves, helmet straps, and SAW magazine boxes using Reaper Master Series Muddy Olive. The helmet straps can prove rather tricky, I recommend a fine detail brush using the edge of the bristles to control your motion so you don't paint their faces green on accident.

The next couple steps are some general highlighting and detailing that can all be grouped into one step.  

First, paint their goggle frames and covers using Vallejo Dark Sand.

Very carefully I add small highlights to the raised areas of their face with Reaper Master Series Tanned Highlight.

Then highlight their guns, goggle lenses, sunglasses and microphone pieces using Reaper Master Series Stormy Grey.

Now highlight their gun magazines with Reaper Master Series Cloud Grey

Let's not forget their boots, I couldn't really decide how to paint them, so I mixed Vallejo Flat Earth and Vallejo US Field Drab until I got a color I was satisfied.  I would say this was almost a 50/50 mix.

Final part of this step is to highlight everything that we painted English Uniform, with Vallejo US Field Drab.  This is a pretty heavy highlight.  

Now go back and touch up any parts that you either missed or messed up on.  We are now ready to start doing camo work.  As I said earlier, we are going for a faded out look on the Desert Marpat to represent soldiers who are a good couple yards away.  The first thing to do is to add depth to the uniform.  I do this by taking Vallejo Deck Tan, and applying highlights and streaks to the Iraqi Sand uniform.  I then mix Vallejo Deck Tan and German Cam. Pale Brown together at roughly a 40/60 ratio respectively.  The brown should look pretty pale.  I then find a brush with a nice tip that will hold paint well, and apply stipples and streaks to the uniform.  You don't want to overpower the Deck tan or Iraqi Sand, but you are definitely looking for more than 50% coverage.  If the model looks to brown, just go back with Iraqi Sand and/or Deck Tan and lighten the model up a little.

We are nearly there!  Now for the secret ingredient, Army Painter Quickshade: Strong Tone, also known as "Dip".  I don't actually dip my models, instead I find a really cheap and crappy paint brush, and brush the dip on the model as if I were applying a very heavy coat of wash or ink.  One thing that you need to do when dipping models though, is have a little jar of paint thinner or turpentine available.  Once you dip your models, you will notice that the dip will tend to pool in certain areas, most likely in between their legs, arms, and any major cracks.  Take your paintbrush that you used to dip the models, and soak it in the paint thinner, then let the paint thinner run off the brush as you don't want it to be drippy or soaking wet.  Take the brush with the thinner and gently remove any excess build up of the dip.  You will probably have to do this for a good 5-10 minutes.  The dip will add shading and bring the model together.

Let your models dry for at least 6 hours.  The models should not feel tacky.  If they are tacky, let them continue drying.  The models will look pretty glossy at this point.  Once dry, give the models a good dusting of Army Painter Matte Varnish (or your preferred sealant).  Whatever you use, it needs to be a Matte or dull coat, otherwise you will have a very shiny Marine, and that is definitely not realistic.

I will probably dry brush the bases and then add some tufts to make them look even more appropriate for my Afghanistan terrain.  All in all, this took 1 week total to paint these 13 US Marines using this method of painting.  Definitely one of the quicker paint jobs I have accomplished.

Hope you enjoyed this, and hopefully it was helpful!

IED Contact

Tonight I hosted a game of Force on Force for two of my friends at a local hobby shop.  I sort of designed a scenario in my head, and pretty much put the terrain out on the fly.  I decided to play on a 4x4 table.  The scenario would be based somewhere in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan.  The idea behind it was that a small British Patrol (1 Squad and a Medic) had been hit by an IED attack.  Their lead fireteam would start the game as all lightly wounded.  Local Taliban forces were attempting to swarm the stranded British patrol.  A second patrol group (1 squad, a GPMG team + the platoon sergeant and RTO had been rerouted to help out the wounded soldiers.

British Objectives: Rescue stranded patrol and get back to base

Taliban Objectives: Kill or capture the Infidels!

The British basically had to go from one corner to the other, with 5 Taliban Cells each with a leader, 4 dudes with aks, a rpg, and either a pkm or rpd with them.  There were also 5 hotspots with an insurgency level of 3.  The fields in the pictures represent poppy fields, so they block line of sight and have a 4 inch shadow on the other side of them from elevated positions.

The Taliban player (Kurt) tried to throw as many models as he could at the Brits that were holed up in a building.  Kurt pretty much had bad dice rolling the whole night, whereas the Brits (played by Matt) were hot all night long.  Kurt didn't get any reinforcements until turn 4, and had lost a large chunk of his local Taliban militia.

Kurt's innate ability to roll an inordinate amount of 1s helped him out in one regard... Fog of War cards.  He managed to score himself an IED trigger man, which he used to place an IED in the building that the stranded patrol was holed up in.  While the IED trigger man was lit up with 5.56, the threat of an IED forced the Brits to evacuate. 

At this time Matt pretty much had to head out, and the battle was basically over.  The British had suffered no casualties (the one guy that did go down ended up being fine), and the Taliban were a very much broken force.  Was a very fun game even though this one ended up a little bit one sided.  We are going to play again next week, and I think I will make the Taliban actually Al-Qaeda and make them regulars.  Maybe even make them veteran Al-Qaeda warriors with d8 TQ.  We have not done a symmetric battle yet.

Oh... I also picked up my 4 AAVPs that I ordered last week :)

Semper Fidelis and something from the Future

I have been currently working on my USMC for Force on Force, which consists of 52 models so far.  I own 2 LAV25s and a LAVAT, and I want to buy a few more LAV25s and some of the other versions.  I also have on order 4 AAVPs, this way I can play with regular Marines, or make them a recon force.  I should mention that I also have some HMMWVs, but it is proving rather difficult to find more generic ones.  They will be painted for Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

I also cleaned and and primed 12 special forces (They are in the back of the first picture).  They are modeled as DEVGRU, but I am pretty sure I could use them as just about any top tier special forces unit.  I am going to try to paint them in Multicam, which will be quite the test as that is a very intense Camo Pattern.  Currently Multicam is used by special forces (although they use just about anything they want), and is issued to all Army personal who are being deployed in Afghanistan (One set of ACU and one set of Multicam).  The British Army has also fully adopted their version of Multicam regardless of being in Afghanistan or not.  

I will be painting the USMC one squad at a time (13 guys), and then probably work on all the special weapons and command guys at the same time.  I have been taking pictures of my first squad after each step has been completed.  Once I finish the first squad I will write up a tutorial on how I painted them.  I will probably do the same thing with the special forces guys, however they will probably be painted by fireteams, and the first fireteam will probably have to be stripped as I learn how to paint Multicam haha.

I also was looking at a squad of Dark Eldar wyches from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k.  I have been painting this squad off and on for about a year now.  They are beautiful models to a game that I have sort of become disinterested in.  I plan to paint these to a competition level.  I still have some fine detail work to do on them including their black leather outfits, their daggers and pistols, and redo the black trimming around their base.  The leader also has a trophy rack which is not quite done.

I think I took much better pictures of the Dark Eldar than I have been taking.  I think I figured out how to get much more detail to show in my pictures.  I am only using a little Digital Camera without a light box in my room.  My friend sent me a link of a light box I liked the look of, at a reasonable price.  I might invest in one.  I think that will do it for tonight.  Hope to get 1st squad of the USMC done soon.