Interlude Part 7

I haven't had an Interlude post for a while and seeing as I'm at work, it's the simplest way to get something put up to help me keep track of what I've been getting up to with my hobby.

First of all, I've been getting in a higher than normal amount of games of Flames of War in of late. (ie, more than 1 a week.) I made up a Guards Armoured Recce list from the Market Garden book to become more comfortable running an armoured list. I think I lost only one game out of the 5 or 6 I got to play. Not bad at all. Cromwells are flippin' excellent tanks to move about the table, fast and an okay gun. Only time I was stymied though was when I was up against a Panther and Jagdpanzer heavy list with a slow going train track cutting through the center of the board that totally mucked up my maneuverability benefit. But there ya go. Maybe soon I'll actually get to painting these Cromwells because they really are a great sculpt.
If yer interested, this is the list I played:

HQ 1iC and 2iC Cromwells
2 Platoons of 2x Cromwells and 1 Challenger
1 Platoon of 3x Stuarts
1 Platoon of 4 M10's with 17pdrs
1 Platoon of Infantry
1 Platoon of Universal Carriers with extra MG's

I managed to get my hands on the below awesome Limited Release sculpt by Sodapop Miniatures. I jumped on their Relic Knights Kickstarter and absolutely love the Candy and Cola characters. Lucky for my, my very good mate was to attend GenCon and swiped one of these for me along with a very sexi Kingdom Death White Speaker fig that I am super excited to try to paint.

My hands have not been idle - I've been busy making my Shermans look prettier by finally adding decals so they now all have unit and squadron markings. I'd been hesitant up until now to add definite markings as it means I'll not be able to use them outside of the specific lists their markings would allow in tournament settings. But I sucked it up and knew my tanks deserved far more love than I'd already offered and now they are looking very fine indeed, along with my two Universal Carrier patrols. (Post to show these upcoming, just need to take pics.) I've also finished up painting my Land Mattress battery - just details and basing to do (A post for these is also upcoming).

A full squad of Eisenkern troops (The lovely Dreamforge sculpts) has also been put together and cleaned up, ready for priming. These minis really were a joy to get ready and I am really eager to slap some paint on them. Dreamforge Games just released pics of their amazing looking plastic Mortis Leviathan enormous robot model. I am rather keen to get my hands on one of these.

Lastly, I have for some stupid reason lost my marbles and taken on a couple of commissions..... The plastic Dark Angels Librarian from the 40K Dark Vengeance box and a 7-man Ratling squad of the most recent sculpts. Updates on these, as and when they happen.

Ada 1 (Part 2 - Finished)

Here she is and isn't she wonderful ladies and gentleman?

Ada is kitted out in the latest Eisenkern Tactical Combat Reactive Armour, with a home brewed D-52904 Urban Warfare Camouflage skin.

She also sports the experimental Kleig Industries Teilchen Emmiter Mk7, a long rifle suited to sniping duties. It's power output can punch a hole through the most stubborn Shadokesh armour and pin-point accuracy leave opposing forces leaderless with a single well placed shot.

Let's hear it for Ada 1!!!

I've never been very good at camouflage schemes, so this was my first try at something I felt was a little more realistic than the contemporary schemes for urban warfare. I started off with a medium grey, then brushed random stripes of a sand colour spiraling all up to the right. The sand colour got a thinner line of a light sand colour on it's upper edge, I then coated the whole mini in a black wash. Next I lightly sponged on white and then Dark blue-grey over the stripes to break it up and stuck another wash on top. A few highlights here and there and some definition to the recesses and this is how she turned out.

I ended up not going for an over the top glow effect on the gun. Seeing as she's a sniper and all, it didn't make sense that she'd be giving herself away with light effects, right? So a subtle green that I think looks rather cool.

Also, I wanted to add some grey weather powders to affect the concrete dust I imagined would be thrown up by her walking about a blasted urban environment, but then realised I forgot to purchase some when last I was at my LGS. D'oh! Something for later I guess. I'm currently putting together 3 fire teams of regular Eisenkern Stormtroopers to add to her platoon and am planning to put paint to a metal Kreigsmarine from Dreamforge Game's original Kickstarter that I think will act as this Ada's spotter.

In other news, the Mid-War Flames of War tournament was on Saturday. Three grueling rounds which left my poor carcass thoroughly knackered. But I had a fantastic time and had a real chance at placing had my dice not done their usual and betrayed me during my last game. (I was apparently tied for 3rd after the 2nd game...) I ended with  a win a draw and a loss - not bad, 10 points in total. Encouraging considering my rubbish performances in prior tournaments! :)

O and here's a little pic of me in my finished costume for the Father's Day Run which I somehow managed to complete in around 39 minutes. Not bad for a fat old drunk.

Ada 1 (Part 1 - WIP)

After all the 15mm brown uniformed, green tank'd mass of painting of late, I felt I needed to take a break (Thus changing my list for Saturday's tournament, no way I'll get all those artillery painted before then.) and paint something completely different and refresh my hobby batteries.

This is Ada, from the Dreamforge Games Kickstarter from Autumn last year. She was a Kickstarter exclusive. The original comes with an un-helmeted head:

(Dwartist's excellent rendition from his blog. If you're not familiar with his stellar work, I advise you to take out an hour or three to browse through - http://dwartist.blogspot.com/)

With this in mind, I felt it would be prudent to get two of the miniatures (Along with my box of 20 Stormtroopers.) so that I could have one with a lid and one without. I think the regular "male" helmet fits pretty well.

This is my WIP painting effort, the lighting for these pics is rather awful and I'll be sure to take my completed paint job pictures under better lighting conditions. Ada is supposed to be a sniper and so has what looks to be, some sort of long barreled heavy caliber or laser rifle for the job. One thing I felt was missing from this was a scope of some sort, but I just couldn't put one together that did the sculpt justice, or look streamlined enough for my mind. Hence why you'll see my helmet choice below - it has that eye piece that I imagined looked sci-fi enough to count as an in-helmet scope.

Anyway, on to the pics. I tried for a home made urban camouflage to affect her "sniper" status and felt that the yellow-orange lenses was a good contrast to this. The vents in the underside of the rifle are either going to get a red or light-blue effort and perhaps some lighting effect.