6MMRPC Update: 4.2" Mortars

My first week back at work this week, and I was full of enthusiasm for painting. Up till I got home on the first day... When I changed into my painting clothes then sat in a stupor looking at my painting desk. This happened every night for the rest of the week!

Saturday, spurred by the GZG sale and need to generate jokers (my name is Jamie and I have a Full Thrust ship addiction) - as well as the fact it looks like I will be unable to take any painting with me while working away during weekdays for the next 4 weeks - I managed to get a shift on with some Flames of War stuff.

In this case, my 4.2" Heavy Mortar platoon + transports.

With the infantry/crew already painted, I just needed to highlight them and give them a matt coat of varnish. The vehicles needed highlighting and decals, then weathering and a final matt coat.

I also had to paint the vehicle and gun bases before putting on the crew. I had hoped to get the gun bases finished today, but I was distracted by a swarm of honey bees in the street outside. There were thousand's of them! A bit of online research later and I found a local beekeeper who I got in contact with. She came out and managed to gather up a lot of the bees, although she didn't think she had the queen. By the time I found the beekeeper and such, most of the swarm had moved on - taking the queen with them, we suspect.

So, progress so far this week:-

4 gun bases with crew, needing the space around the crew figures filled in and then static grass and tufts/flowers. The FOO and Command bases only had resin put on them today as I forgot about them. They will have to wait till next weekend. Front and side pic's for each of the 4 teams.

I will comment on the figures once I have the whole unit done I think, to save repeating myself!

Next up the Loyds Carriers and Universal Carriers for the command and FOO - these have been highlighted and have had the gloss varnish applied prior to decals. I just noticed I am short on the small allied stars. I have an order outstanding with Dom's Decals but can't remember if I ordered these.

Some of these have come out a little dark - I'm not too happy with the highlights, but they look a lot better from gaming distances than close up. Aerials for the radios still need to be applied to the Universal Carriers - as per my standard the command carrier will have one and the FOO carrier will have two (hopefully!).

Along with the crew for the Mortars there were a few other currently unassigned infantry figures finished as well, but they will stay on the lolly sticks until I decide what I am doing with them. I think some of them will end up on individual bases as spares for my Battlegroup Overlord games.

So that's all for this week folks - have to say some other peoples output for the challenge has been putting me to shame. Well done to them all for making such great progress!

Forged In Battle Universal Carriers

In the last few weeks I've not been terribly busy hobby wise, but I have tried to keep chipping away. My new mantra seems to be that 'even slow progress is progress'!

Having featured the Universal Carriers I am working on previously, I have ended up going back and doing a bit more work on them. Mainly as a result of the new models coming out and mainly being dissatisfied with how mine were looking.

I've still got a bit to do - Dai gave me some PIAT gunner last year which I am trying to incorporate into the UC's while at the same time being a bit envious of the under stated way the new models represent them. I seem to be a stickler for orthodoxy when it comes to released models!

A recent EBay purchase (I burned a deck load of jokers in the last month, it's not even funny) provided some Bren mounts and extra crew figures... I will mention the other reason for that purchase in a later post. Lets just say I now own half a RA field artillery regiment, and leave my insanity at that.

Here are the four .50 cal armed Universal Carriers:

Crew are not yet glued in place and are just sitting in possible configurations just now. There will probably be more crew figures and stowage on these guys when they are done. I decided to go with two of the .50 cals in the format of the newer BF models, and 2 in the same style as the Vickers MMG carriers.

And then 4 that have the extra vehicle MG's:

Again, crew positions are representative and more stowage will possibly be added where it makes sense. The FiB models already have some stowage modelled on. I'm currently unsure whether I will break with tradition (for me) and paint the figures in the vehicles. I will probably remove them first however. Just when I thought I was done with infantry figures...

These models mean I have 4 units of 3 carriers each. Each unit will have 1 each of MG, .50 cal and Piat. I think 2 of these units will be marked up as Infantry carrier's and 2 will be marked up as Recce carriers - I'm not sure yet what to do with the Wasps, but they will probably be Infantry.

I have another 2 UC's that have been block painted as part of the 4.2" Mortar platoon transport I will feature shortly. 

1 other UC will be for an artillery spotter, and the other is currently spare - I think.

I may be getting 3 more from YD at some point. At this point I am very glad of the PSC spray!

Plastic Soldier Company WW2 Armour British Spray Review

With most of my fellow 6 Month Mountain Reduction Painting Challenge (6MMRPC) having hit their 6 months point last week and finished the challenge (well done everyone!), I am in my final stretch. I started almost a month later so I am aiming to finish at the end of March.

As part of that final push I've been trying to get a couple of full units that are in progress to the point of at least getting to the 'yellow' stage on my painting chart. Varnishing is still not possible due to the weather here and despite having permission to varnish in the spare room, I've held off because having permission from the better half does not always mean it's a good idea...

Today we had a dry clear day - although the wind was a little gusty. Our back garden is a lot smaller than at the cottage, and a bit more sheltered. I took the chance to try out the PSC British Armour spray I picked up a long time ago.

I've held off using the spray as my other models are painted using Vallejo Model Color 70.924 Russian Uniform as the base green. I knew that using the spray would result in a slightly different tone, but today I decided to give it a shot.

I also discovered a macro setting on one of the camera apps on my phone, so thought I would test that out.

The jeep on the right was hand painted using Vallejo Russian Uniform. The left hand jeep is straight off the spraying board. I'm not sure that the pictures show it, but the PSC spray painted jeep has a slightly deeper tone. Definitely slightly darker that the hand painted one. All in all though I'm quite happy with it.

The tin itself seems to contain a good quantity of spray. It went on easily enough (despite the wind!), although I always struggle to stick to the spray range on the bottle. at 12" it didn't seem like any spray was making it to the models. Again, this could have been the weather.

The other thing to note is that the jeep was sprayed straight on to bare metal and resin. The Loyd carriers I sprayed had been primed black first. The spray is labelled as a primer, so I will go over the non primed models with a quick coat of Russian Uniform, to help the colour match and give a little more protection.

The macro setting on the camera seems to work, but does show off my too thick paint. Getting consistency right is something I still have not managed with the Vallejo paints. When I try to water down I end up with a consistency like that of a wash, but when I don't water it down the finish on the paint isn't as smooth as I would like.

Anyway, the PSC spray is a decent match. I'm happy with it and will use it again.

FoW Artillery basing

It seems like basing of Flames of War mini's is a recurring topic for me! I'm still pondering on how to deal with the Churchill Crocodiles and their trailer, but this week I have also been working on my 4.2" Heavy Mortars.

I've seen some really, really great setups for these guys in the past. Including Cameron's excellent work here and here. Seeing those models came at a time when I was struggling to get enthused about working on stuff and helped me get back into what I was doing at the time.

Aside from looking great, Cameron's models have something that are seen quite often on artillery models, and that is a base showing the artillery to be dug in. For my birthday last July I got a box of 25-pdr's from A. These will allow me to have a full 8 gun battery. One small issue for me are these:

'Scenic' bases that come with the guns. Now, they are really really nice - and look great. But my other 4 guns are on standard flat bases, so the 8 guns are going to look different. So, the next thing then is not to use these bases. However, as the turning plate for the guns is sculpted on the bases, they are not included in the box. Sooooo.... I have to use the sculpted bases of find some of the circular plate things from somewhere. (Anyone want to swap?)

The other reason I have an issue with these sculpted bases is that in my mind, these guns are dug in.

OK, so I know that they are not dug in as in 'in a gun pit' dug in. But there is an element of protection on the base - which is something represented totally differently in FoW. Don't get me wrong - I don't think enough is modelled dug in. Troops in Normandy learned that if you were not sleeping, advancing or being shot at, you were digging (and I'm pretty sure the first three were happening while digging was going in). I've seen some really really nice sets of 20mm WW2 models that basically had squads in foxholes - but for my FoW force I made the decision to have everything on fairly plain bases. This was as much to represent the troops on the advance around Totalise as anything else.

If and when I do a opposition force, they will be the opposite - as much dug in as possible.

I do try to make the bases look interesting where there is need for them to be. For example, my 4.2" Mortars are currently looking like this:

Unusually for me, I decided to paint these bits on the bases. Mainly because of the bother of trying to keep the Mortar parts together while painting them. When I did the 3" Mortars I had to assemble them several times - mainly due to my son deciding he liked them being in bits. He knows not to touch daddies models, but mortars are not toy soldiers... It's now been a year since I have seen him and 1 year and a half since he has been in my house :(

Anyway, that's where I'm at. Stuck between feeling that I should try and keep the artillery bases simple, because being 'dug in' is a particular thing in FoW and I don't feel right having dug in models that are not dug in for rules purposes... and having to use the scenic bases because I am missing the parts I need to base the guns the same as the others I have done! First world problems, eh?