Small Distractions - Stan’s Wargaming Blog: Wargames Atlantic

Showing posts with label Wargames Atlantic. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 March 2026

Painting Update - 02 Hundred Hours

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well in your slice of the world. I am sitting her listening to the sound of the wind and sadly seeing all of my snow disappear. Just a quick post today, but wanted to share some progress that I have been making with the Grey For Now games 02 Hundred Hours starter box.

I had posted a while back my absolute joy in having completed the SAS commandos from the starter box, and can happily say that I think I am half way through the German side. Admittedly the progress has been a little slow, with more time taken that I would have liked to square away the painting scheme that I wanted to follow for the German sentries. Yes, I did go down an OCD rabbit hole, but at the same time I found a few excellent blogs and tutorials that I have adapted. As you will see in the pics, I have a mix of early war to late-ish war patterns for my troops. I had never tried early war before, so that was a great exercise and opportunity to use other colours for my Germans beside Vallejo 830.

As much as my OCD was struggling with the paint scheme decision, hands down the activity that took a large amount of time...and literal skin...was the assembly process. The figures are excellent, there is so much detail opportunities in each one. Very very frustrating was the finnicky nature of some of the components, i.e. gun slings breaking, dog leashes being nearly impossible to salvage let alone take off the sprue without any breakage.

I hope you enjoy the pics...more to follow in the future. One thing I will say, these figs as frustrating as they were to assemble are just excellent and were a really great palette cleanser from my Marvel Crisis Protocol push.

Cheers.

Group shot so far…

Two troops kitted up as Military Police…

Not part of the starter box, available separately…German sentry rising late for watch.

Trying out a few different uniform schemes.

German NCO in late-war uniform…and a couple of dogs (there are 6 available in the starter set)

German officers…with and without greatcoat. The figure on the right, I elected to paint-up emulating Henry Cavill’s character from “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”. The game allows for a commando being dressed undercover with various conditions and movement options. I painted this one up using the coat gets from the raid to liberate Apple.

A few more shots of Herr Cavill. I took one of the arms from the SAS sprues that was sporting a sten smg and I ended up adding a suppressor to go along with the characterization from the movie.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm 0

28mm+ 16, +12

Terrain 0

Bought 0

Progress +16

Tuesday, 22 July 2025

Painting Update - 02 Hundred Hours

Hey folks,

I hope all is well on your end. While I was exercising a high degree of control for most of the year, I admittedly had a misstep and fell off the buying wagon at Cangames in May. There was a good variety of vendors at the Con, but one caught my eye as they had brought a really great selection of inventory with them. Not only that, but I had great chance to talk with the owner over the weekend, and Kamal was really great all-around. If you’re looking for an online gaming shop, then I would definitely check out Centuries Historical Miniatures & Tabletop Gaming.

I had seen a fair amount of reviews and articles on the 02 Hundred Hours game from Grey for now, but I hadn’t had a chance to check it out beyond the internet. Kamal had a great selection, so I ended up with the Starter Set and a pack of SAS/LRDG commandos (I thought I could make them fit and I’ll probably pick up the Desert Raiders later this year). Duncan also picked up a few boxes and we had been talking about giving the game a run through over the summer.

So, for your viewing pleasure, I have just painted up the 12 SAS commandos in preparation for our first game. I have to admit, I took longer than expected but I also wanted to do the figures justice. I had found some excellent reference pictures from the British Paras museum for the Denison smocks (which I found a little intimidating) and also found an excellent tutorial for painting British Paras. I adapted the tutorial along with a guide I had from Battlefront for 15mm Paras. Ultimately I wanted something that was simple enough for my brain to replicate, something that looked good, and I really liked the idea of keeping the smocks lighter so that they didn’t get lost on the table (thanks for that Moiterei!)

The figures are from Wargames Atlantic and my main criticism of the figures so far…a lot of options (which can be good) but boy some tough decisions. But really, it comes down to how frail some of the pieces are…when I was trying to cut a Lee Enfield from the sprue, the sling broke in 2 with the centerpiece of the sling breaking off. I ended up taking another broken sling, cutting down the section I needed and splicing that in with the original piece. The dog handlers that come with the box had some similar issues with their leashes meant for the dogs…these just broke off and I will need to do some crafty MacGyvering to make them work.

Here’s the team…

Classic group shots…

Overhead shot…I took some extra care with the bases and painted up some rocks to break up the flock.

Front and centre, the 'main' group…Thompson SMG, Sten SMGs, Enfields, and a silenced pistol.

Close up shot with a few of the troops…

The artwork on the cards looked really great and I made sure to build my officer as he looked on the card. He has a really great ‘Clark Gable’ movie look to him and I really went with that.

The classic Bren gun…and another silenced pistol…I did piece together a Sten gun for the left hand of the pistoleer…and I have to say, with the power stache he is sporting, all I can picture is a WW2 version of old school Thomas Magnum