I've actually finished something...

...and it's more painted mini's. Enough to actually have a small, legal Axis Dust Warfare force even! :)

I still struggle with taking photos of minis, but here's what I've finished:

KOMMANDOTRUPP

I wanted to do something different since I had done both Battle Grenadier units in splinter camo. After looking through a few magazines/Osprey books, I found a painting guide for marsh pattern splinter camo. I quite liked the look of it and thought it would be something a bit different to try.

Overall I'm happy with the unit and the look, but I think I have been a bit too heavy handed with the splinter pattern camo markings. Something to be more careful with when I paint the zeltbahn on my Bolt Action minis.

ZOMBIES

Who doesn't like zombies!? Pretty happy with how the zombie skin has turned out. It took me awhile to decide how to paint it. I suspect the skin could do with another light coat of a very light skin tone or even stone grey to give a more pallid look, but I think they'll do as they are for now. The main reason for painting them was to figure out a zombie skin look ready for when I paint Seamus and his girls.

SNIPER & BEOBACHTER TEAMS

Again, I wanted to do something here so they stood out. I've always liked the look of spring oak leaf camo. It was an easy choice for it to go on these guys. Pretty happy with the result.

"HANS"

My first walker. As per the rest of the army, I have stuck with traditional late war German colours. I had the AK interactive yellow primer and late war German colour set. Decided to use them on this to try them out..... bad idea. Wasn't happy at all with the result. The colours just clogged up my airbrush (no matter what I did) and the lighter green colour just looking really odd. Looking online, others have had a similar problem and it may be a separation issue. Hopefully it was just a bad batch, but have contacted the place where I bought it to see if it can be replaced. Better luck next time maybe?

EDIT: So I emailed the place where I got the AK items from. They replied on Monday and immediately sent out replacements which arrived today! Mighty Ape are awesome! Check them out if you don't already use them :)

Anyway, was much happier with the look after going over the green with the Tamiya colour I normally use and then a little bit of dry brushing to highlight using my normal Vallejo colours.

I also had a play with some of the AK weathering sets too (rust, engine grime and heavy mud). I think they will be interesting to use in the future. Anyway, for what was effectively a test vehicle to try things on before starting on the walkers I normally field (and my Bolt Action stuff).... I reckon it turned out pretty well.

So that means that I now have painted for my Dust Warfare Axis force:

Kommandotrupp

Battle Grenadiers (x2)

Laser Grenadiers

Beobachter Team

Sniper Team

"Hans" Light Panzer Walker

Axis Zombies

The zombies are the only unit I can't legally field (need a different command unit), but a decent sized force otherwise. 

See here and here for the Battle Grenadiers and Laser Grenadiers.

Apparently this is the next project I have to start and finish....

I guess I better go and get started then! I'll be trying out the German uniform guide in the Painting War magazine for these guys.

Shock Horror!

I've finished painting some more mini's :)

Recently completed another two units of Dust Axis models.

The first is another group of Battle Grenadiers. I've painted them the same as the first group, but I think I did a better job on the splinter camo with the first unit. Still, I'm happy with the result.

I've also completed my Laser Grenadiers. I wanted to do them black so they would look dark and menacing, when painting them... just differing shades of black looked a bit odd. Decided to break up the models a bit by keeping the colours for the boots/gloves the same as the other units.

I'm not entirely sold on how they look at the moment, but I think they will be fine. Not sure I really pulled off the black menacing look. Probably shouldn't have put flowers on the base if I wanted them to have that dark look though.... :)

I still have some work to do to learn how to photograph minatures. I think a little light box might help.

Anyway, now to start on the HQ unit. I think I might try marsh pattern splinter camo or plane tree as something a bit different. Also need to get started on the Axis Zombies and figure out how to paint zombie skin.

A Summer’s Dust and then some…

It’s Sunday again which means gaming day :) And a pretty good day it was too with the sun out.

The guys had rocked out a game of Infinity before I arrived and since there was a couple of us there, we were able to get a couple of games going. Garth & Phil played a game of Infinity while Rob and I had another crack at Dust Warfare.

Based on a suggestion from OldHat on the Battlefront forums, we tried 1’s & 6’s as successes rather than 5+. Statistically no different, but more aligned with the Dust Tactics dice. It’s always nice having a roll of 1 being a success :)

I decided to go a little different and fielded this list (seems I could export the list to a txt format after updating my notebook to Win8.1….):

Sturmgrenadiere Platoon
Kommandotrupp
Battle Grenadiers
Heavy Recon Grenadiers
Beobachter Team
(All with grenades)
Laser-Jagdgrenadiere
Laser Grenadiers
(Both with High Visibility Lasers)
Lothar
Heinrich
Improved Command

Have no idea what Rob took, other than he had his big AA tank :)

We played a scenario again. End result was:
Objective = Break The Line
Deployment = Close Engagement
Conditions = Off Target Shelling

We didn’t have a lot of terrain for this game since the tablecloth was desert coloured… we set-up a ruined SSU lab in the middle of the desert. Here’s the set-up:

Rob advances his walker straight down the middle towards my laser grenadiers. I look forward to going toe to toe with against his walker with them… until I re-read their stats that is…. Only the medium laser could hurt the walker sine it was type 4! Time to hide I think….

In my turn, the Laser-Jagdgrenadiere fire off their supercharged shot only to have it fizzle out. I could be in trouble here with little other heavy duty AT around to deal with the Walker…. let alone the SSU tank! Especially since the Laser-Jagdgrenadiere couldn’t hit anything all game.
 

Rounding the corner of the building, the SSU walker found a more interesting target and makes short work of poor little Heinrich instead of the laser grenadiers. The following couple of turns sees the SSU walker frying most of the laser grenadiers….

 

As for the SSU tank… I basically decided to ignore it… even though it has a target rich environment. Each turn it tries to deal with my infantry units and certainly puts some hurt on them with most units taking casualties. I don’t have many pic’s showing it, but Lothar and the heavy recon grenadiers return the pain each turn decimating the SSU infantry units…

 
As the game draws to a close… the remaining laser grenadier has the last laugh and destroys the SSU walker….



The final result is 2 points to me with 2 units in Rob’s deployment zone. The game was brutally short, but neither of us had really put much thought into army lists or spending off scenario points. I had been a bit worried about a lack of AT to deal with the SSU armour, but focused on dealing with the SSU infantry and the objectives instead. Seemed to work. Some decent shooting from that SSU tank could have made that hard though…

After a short break… we decided to rock out a game of X-Wing since we hadn’t played it for a while and there were some new toys…. I was keen to try out my Tie Bomber and Lamda Shuttle :)

The downside was soooo much choice! On everything…. ships, pilots and upgrades!! I took the Lamda Shuttle (Captain Yorr), Tie Bomber (Captain Jonus) and 2 Tie Interceptors (Pilot level 1 & 3). I gave the Tie Bomber a proton bomb, but didn’t have the points to really make use of all it’s hard points. The Lamda shuttle had a Rebel Captive, Anti-Pursuit Lasers and Sensor Jammers (hadn’t put much thought into the selection, but shuttle load-out was pretty good in review at the end of the game). Rob took 2 X-Wings and tried out his YT-1300.

Our deployment over a fantastic looking Ice Planet gaming mat….

 

The Imperial force heads straight for the YT-1300…. hoping they won’t notice (maybe someone has the right codes?)

Not much happens in the first few turns with most of the Imperial ships taking some damage along with the YT-1300. I think I dropped the Proton bomb too early…. didn’t do much, but at least it negated an X-Wings shields to put damage directly on the hull.

As the game continued… the Interceptors were soon dealt with and I thought the writing was on the wall until this:

The X-Wing just skirts the edge of the universe….but the YT-1300 flies too close to the edge removing it from the game! :) Then…..

…..an X-Wing flies too close to the Shuttle crashing into it a few times. The anti-pursuit lasers make short work of the X-Wing over the few turns it collides (it already had some damage from previous shooting). But, alas, the shuttle is soon destroyed though leaving the Tie Bomber facing off against the remaining X-Wing…… but the Tie Bomber gets onto his tail…..

…..and still can’t finish of the X-Wing….. After a few turns of chicken… the Tie Bomber’s hull points prove the deciding factor as it finally knocks off the X-Wing (with 1 hull point left on the Bomber). A pretty close game!

 

That ended gaming for the day. Photos have turned out well. I had found the menu selection to turn down the flash power, so used quite a low power of flash for all these pic’s. As for the force build, I’d stick with the Shuttle load-out – all 3 worked well and were quite annoying for Rob, especially the rebel captive (attacking rebel ship takes a stress token) and sensor jammers (shuttle can effectively negate a hit – handy with basically no agility).

SInce it was such a nice day. I decided to detour past Ardmore Airport on the way home. The Harvards and the MX-2 stunt plane had been out earlier in the day (our gaming venue is close to the airport), so I was curious to see if anything else interesting was flying. I also wanted to try tracking some moving subjects again as I think I take my finger of the button when I stop taking photos. After some advice from Rob previously… it may be better to keep the button half pressed. So, this is what I tried out :). Wasn’t really much of interest flying (I was too slow to get the camera out as the Tiger Moth took off and flew directly overhead!), but I grabbed a few shots anyway…

 

Not sure on the tracking…. time will tell. Will let you know how I get on after the next air show that I attend :) . Ciao.