Bolt Action – Lair of the Lagomorph

Cold Forests

In what is the final post of my holiday-driven burst of activity we have quite a few trees!

As I’ve mentioned a few times in the last few posts, I’m planning on running a game of Chain of Command for some friends in the coming weeks, and the setting is the Eastern Front, sometime in winter 1944. Having no winter terrain was going to make that a bit difficult, so I decided to paint up a few pieces to populate the table. The main thing I wanted was to have some nice pine forests, so I set about finding some suitable trees.

The trees you see above were cheap ones from Amazon which came in big batches with some variety in sizes which was quite nice. 60 of them cost me just below $60 (Australian dollars that is!) which seemed like a nice rate. They are a basic shaped and flocked bottlebrush style pine trees, nothing fancy but they do the trick. The flock was not glued on great but I knew I was going to spray them with varnish to get some snow on there too so was not too worried. The “trunks” of the trees were bare wire twists so I needed to make some holders for them, to make the trees more realistic and allow them to be removed for gaming and storage purposes.

I made a very rough trunk shape in tinkercad and 3D printed the 60 I needed. I then glued them down in a semi-random pattern to some MDF bases I cut out of the back of an old bookshelf (never throw anything away!), and was ready for basing.

I wanted a forest floor look but wanted to stay away from a leafy look as befits a pine forest. As a result while I went my usual route of blending up some leaf litter as I did for these citadel woods and for my endor table I stayed away from soft leaves (european style!) and went for dried eucalyptus leaves which are much harder and blend down to a powder. That mixed with small twigs gave a nice finish that I think does a decent job of impersonating dropped branches and bark at the scale.

To finish the look I added some green foam from woodland scenics to represent small vegetation on the forest floor. I tried adding some dark and some dry static grass to look like dropped needles, but I don’t think they’re very visible. To top it off I sprinkled some snow flock over the trees and bases (over wet hairspray), then sealed the lot with some spray varnish.

Keeping the trees removable is quite practical for gaming purposes, especially for those game systems that treat forests slightly abstractly as an area of terrain rather than individual trees.

The trees make up most of the terrain I needed ready for this game as you can see from the layout I set up above. You get a sneak preview of the remainder of the terrain which is the large house in the left corner and the two small bunkers to the right.

You also get to see my attempts at repurposing my old Citadel grass mat, which has sat unused for years since I’ve move on to printed neoprene battlemats. It seemed a waste to not use it, so I decided to see if I could convert it for this cold setting. I hit it with patches of brown and white and then “frosted” it with a light pass of white spray paint to get that frozen grass look.

I wanted the table to have a frosty morning with some light snow look rather than a full on snow storm, hence the light use of snow flock on the forests and the light dusting of white on the mat. I’m hoping to communicate the cold through the mat and the tree stands only, allowing me to place terrain pieces I painted for my other settings over it and having them not look out of place. For example I’m planning on using the cobblestone road I painted for my Normandy games in this game as you can see above.

I hope you like the look of these, and I’ll be likely back onto my slower pace of posts as I head back to work next week!

Winter Germans

Bolt Action, Chain of Command

I’ve had some leave this week and have put it to good use by painting lots of models! I’ve now finished painting my Volksgrenadier platoon for Chain of Command (you saw the first section last post), as well as some extra firepower in the form of a Panther tank.

The platoon is made up of a command section, two assault sections (armed with STG44 assault rifles), and an LMG section (split into two LMG teams).

*The command section, with an officer and four riflemen. I also painted up a medic model I had in cold weather gear, he’s not part of the command section but can be selected as a support in game.*

*The second assault section. You might have seen the first one last post.*

*The LMG section. In game this operates as two teams, one for each LMG.*

I described the painting method for the infantry last post so I won’t repeat it here. The process is very quick, and this was a good test for it. I batch painted all three new sections (and the medic) at once (21 models all up), painting each colour on each model in a row. I got them to the wash stage in a few hours on Sunday, and did all the highlights on Monday. Not a bad rate I think! They’re certainly not my finest work, but they look effective on the table which is always the primary purpose for army models.

Onto the tank! This is a Warlord Games/Italeri plastic kit, and as with all the ones of these I have put together over the years it is a relatively simple build, if a bit light on detail (for example the tools on the side are basically flat). These are meant to be gaming pieces over display models however, and they paint up nicely.

I decided to go for a winter scheme on the tank, and tried my hand at a white wash look. To achieve this I painted the normal late war German camo pattern (yellow base with dark red/brown and dark green patterns – you can see it under the somewhat transparent white), then followed that up with a coat of hairspray on which I lightly airbrushed some white.

If you’re not familiar with the old hairspray method you may be wondering what that’s all about. Effectively, the hairspray allows for some great chipping patterns by providing a water soluble layer under the coat of paint in need of chipping (the white paint in my case). This paint can then be rubbed away by using a wet brush (ideally with somewhat stiff bristles, a drybrush is great for this). The water disolves the hairspray under the paint, which causes the paint to drop off in nice patterns. The tank needs a good coat of varnish after that so that the unstable layer gets locked away an no more paint rubs off.

I then finished the model with the usual oil washes, with a mix of browns and dark grey colours. I also added spots of rust (also using oils) which I streaked downwards, mostly from the spare tracks. I then finished the tracks using pigments. This is a new thing for me, I usually douse tracks in mud but in this case I figured if the ground is frozen there would not be any mud around!

I now have all the models I need for a game of Chain of Command I’m planning on running for some friends soon. What’s missing now (and you may have noticed from the photos!) is some appropriate cold weather terrain. Next up on the painting table will be said terrain, I have most of what I need now, it’s just a matter of painting it.

A Busy Few Weeks!

Bolt Action, Chain of Command, Middle-Earth SBG, Midgard Heroic Battles, The Silver Bayonet

As the title suggested, I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks, with some painting and some gaming to discuss in this latest post.

The Gaming!

I have a regular games night with some friends which is usually spent playing role-playing games or board games. The last few of these we had to change the program as a couple of us couldn’t make it, and we decided to get some wargaming in.

For the first one of these I introduced the group to Silver Bayonet and we played through the fourth solo mission of the main rulebook with my British warband.

The scenario had the unit attempt to leave the wilderness after its encounters there in the past few missions, but finding their way home cut off by some bandits (role played by the French Imperial Guard unit I painted a few years back). I didn’t take very many photos as I was too busy running the game unfortunately, so no battle report for this mission. Playing the game was very last minute so I had to improvise some of the terrain as you can see in the photo above, with the river being represented by some shiny blue cloth, and the bridge is a section of a ruined church I used for WW2 games!

The game went very well, the two players were running the unit together while I was telling them the rules and taking the monster actions. They were much more aggressive than I usually play, but it paid off and they cleared the mission relatively easily. Both of them really enjoyed the game so that’s always a plus!

On the second week we decided to try out a new (to us!) ruleset for fantasy/historical battles: Midgard. Midgard is a game by James Morris (check out his blog, it’s very cool https://mogsymakes.net/blog/) which came out last year and covers quite a lot of ground. At its core, it’s a system for covering historical (and fantastical) battles where the heroic actions of army leaders can carry the day. This is suitable for covering periods all the way from antiquity to mid to late middle ages when commanders started running battles from a bit further back than the front lines. Midgard also caters for more mythological/fantastical battles, with rule for monsters and magic thrown in. I’ll be talking a lot more about Midgard in the future as it ticks a lot of boxes for me.

We decided to play the game with some Lord of the Rings armies, and I dusted off two of mine: my Cirith Ungol force, led by Shagrat and Gorbag to rival orc captains, and an amalgamation of Elves led by Legolas and Gildor Inglorion.

If you’re familiar with Games Workshop’s efforts in the Lord of the Rings space, you might recognise the trays they produced for the War of the Ring mass battle version of the game. As Midgard also uses trays they seemed like a great starting point. Midgard however requires all the unit base sizes to have the same frontage so I 3D designed and printed some adapters for the cavalry trays (which are narrower than the infantry trays) and for the monsters (who never had trays in the first place). As I did these adapters the day of the game I needed to go fast and decided to make them simple and to include a little joke – the elven script reads “One tray to adapt them all“.

The game was great fun even for a learning game, and everyone was very impressed with the rules. They are easy to pick up and the system puts pressure on heroes to go out and perform heroic acts in a way that leads to some excellent moments. I look forward to playing much more of the game.

The Painting

My painting table has had some form of WW2 models on it for quite a while now, as the build up of forces to get ready to play games of Chain of Command continues.

First up some British Paratroopers, with a Bren gunner and a 2-inch mortar team to bring my 6th Airborne up to strength.

Secondly we have the first unit of a new army (don’t I already have too many WW2 projects on the go? Yes, probably).

The models are from Warlord Games’ German Infantry (Winter) set, that I’ve built up as Volksgrenadiers for use in late war games on the Eastern Front or the Ardennes. I have a full platoon of these to paint for a game I’m planning soon, so this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Painting-wise, these were quite straightforward as the greatcoats really simplify the models. I started with an all over airbrush of Fieldgrey, then got painting in the details. The process is my usual easy army painting one, with basecoat, wash, then highlight back up with the basecoat colour. The exception is the skin which uses a second highlight colour.

The colours are as follows:

Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with basecolour
- Coats/uniforms – VMC German Fieldgrey WWII
- Wood/leather – VMC Flat Brown
- Waterbottle/blankets – VMC German Camo Medium Brown
- Bags/Pouches – VMC German Camo Beige WWII
- Helmets/Gas Mask Boxes – VMC German Camo Dark Green
- Panzerfausts – Vallejo Surface Primer German Dark Yellow
- Cloth Helmet Cover – VGC Heavy Bluegrey
Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade – no highlights
- Guns – VGA Gunmetal
- Other metallic objects – S75 Black Metal
- Webbing – VMC Black
- Boots bottom – VMC Dark Rust
- Boots top – VMC German Camo Medium Brown
Skin
- Basecoat – Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh
- Wash – Citadel Reikland Fleshshade
- Highlight 1 – Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh
- Highlight 2 – 50/50 Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh/AK Beige Red
- Pick out the nose – Citadel Carroburg Crimson
Bases
- Texture paint – AK Muddy Ground
- Flock – some mix of foams and static grass I made ages ago
- Snow flock – Citadel Snow
- Rim – S75 Ardennes Green (Seemed appropriate!)

This scheme is very quick, I just lay down the basecoats (including the skin), then wash the whole model (Agrax for everything apart from the skin, Reikland Fleshade for the skin – doesn’t matter if they bleed a bit into each other), then highlight.

I’m happy with the way they look, the basing works well for me as I didn’t want to go full snow but rather light snow/frost. I’m also happy with the speed at which I can paint them, these were done in an afternoon/evening with some distractions.

Anyhow this was a rather long post, but I hope it was enjoyable!

Normandy Reinforcements

Bolt Action, Chain of Command

I’ve had a rather unplanned dip back into WW2 wargaming these last few weeks, and it’s resulted in quite a bit of model painting and building. This all started when I read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, one of those books I’d always meant to read, which sets half of its action in the WW2 years. This made me look into the new edition of Bolt Action which had been released since I last dipped my toes in the period, and also look into the other much talked about game for the era which is Chain of Command. Turns out Chain of Command had also just released its second edition, and having seen the game played on youtube in the past I was sufficiently interested to pick up a PDF of the rules from the publisher and start reading.

After reading the rules, I decided I really liked the look of Chain of Command (CoC) and I wanted to play it. Now CoC bases its armies on historical formations rather than the more Warhammer-like unit customisation Bolt Action offers. In Bolt Action, squads/sections have a minimum size, and extra models and special weapons are purchased to fill them out. The job of the list builder is to build a army that is functional and fits into the points limit. This often means under strength sections, as extra models get shaved off to upgrade another section to get an extra LMG etc. In CoC the platoon you select is as per historical records and there is little to no customisation available, so sections are full-strength, special weapons are as per historical kit out etc. This meant my Bolt Action armies were not quite playable in CoC and required a few more models to be painted to get there.

I started working on getting two of my armies up to scratch: my 2ème DB (i.e. my Free French Armoured Division), which needed (and still needs I’m not quite done!) quite a few more models to bring it up to a full strength Armoured Infantry Platoon, and my late war Germans who only needed a handful of models to make them into a Panzergrenadier platoon. I’m planning on making my North Africa forces CoC compliant but that requires a fair bit more work as they’re much smaller for now.

First up, my Free French needed a lot more officers (very important in CoC), so I picked up the Warlord Games US Army Platoon Commanders set which has the four models you see above, cast in their “Warlord Resin”. The models were all one piece and quite easy to clean up. The detail on them was quite nice and they were easy to paint (in my usual slightly speedy manner employed for historical models).

I also added a Browning .30cal team, also from Warlord (this one a metal set), and I also painted the remaining crew member of the Perry Miniatures mortar team I painted as part of my first batch of models for the army all the way back in 2022! Bolt Action tends to default to 3 crew for a lot of weapons (presumably for game balance), while CoC sticks to historical numbers, so the mortar should have 5 crew all up – which means I still need to make another crew at some stage!

I still need a few more models to get the army game ready, namely some regular infantry as well as a second Browning team. I’ll work on them soon so I can play a game!

As mentioned above I also painted a few more Germans to make that army ready to play, which meant painting two more MG42 gunners. I also painted up a medic model I had, this one not required by the game but is an available support option and I liked the model!

Finally, CoC is a pretty token intensive game, and I’ve been in a token-making mood recently (I made a whole batch of custom tokens for Netrunner recently and that kicked off something in me!) so I started making tokens for the game. Most of those aren’t ready to show so I’ll leave them for another post, but what I do have ready is what are called Patrol Markers and Jump-off Points in the game. These are used for a pre-game mini-game that determines the starting positions of both armies.

The patrol markers tend to be bigger (I went for 60mm diameter) and the jump-off points smaller (I went for 30mm). The patrol markers need to be able to be marked as locked so I made them double-sided with a locked side and an unlocked side. The translations are all mine so hopefully they’re right (I’m confident about the French one at least!).

These are made by 3D printing simple discs and (2D!) printing the designs on some self-adhesive photo paper. I made the designs in Affinity Designer (an Adobe Illustrator alternative that I heartily recommend). The only parts I didn’t make are the map of France (SVG from https://simplemaps.com/svg/country/fr) and the Airborne (From Wikimedia commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Airborne_Units.svg). I made a set for all of my armies as I was enjoying myself quite a bit making these. Left to to right, top to bottom: Soviets (I don’t have any of these but my regular opponent does!), 8th Army, Afrika Korps, Germany, 2ème DB, British Airborne.

I look forward to giving the game a go, it looks like a really nice way to play the period. I’ve organised to have my interested in WW2 friends to come over for a game in the next month or so, so I’ll be doing some preparations for that until then. I’ll most likely be playing a practice game by myself beforehand to get across the rules properly so might turn that into a battle report for the blog.

Desert Ruins

Bolt Action, Terrain, The Silver Bayonet, Warhammer: The Old World

My 3D printer has been very busy these last two weeks, producing enough scatter terrain to cover a densely packed 3’x3′ area, or a more loosely covered 6’x4′ board. The theme: desert ruins, more specifically Egypt-like ruins.

The primary motivation for this effort has been the Silver Bayonet, I picked up the Egypt supplement a few weeks back and one of the North Star units for the game, and needed a nice set of terrain to play some of the missions. The good news is that I have a fair few other games that require desert terrain, such as Bolt Action for my North African forces, and Warhammer of course for my Tomb Kings.

The models I printed were from two sets: the ruined walls are by The Lost Adventures Co., and the Egyptian statues/columns etc are by Txarli Factory. I printed the walls at 65% scale to make them a nice size for my historical miniatures, allowing them to peek over the lower sections of wall.

I undercoated all the pieces with an old can of Citadel Roughcoat which is a spraycan-based texture paint (and long out of production, I’d love to find a good replacement). This had the dual effect of hiding the print lines on the models, and adding some nice grit for that sandstone look.

Painting-wise these were pretty straightforward. I sprayed Vallejo Primer German Dark Yellow all over, followed by a top down spray of Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sand through the airbrush. I then drybrushed Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sand, followed by another drybrush of Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite. At this stage I popped the pieces onto my desert mat and realised they looked out of place as the mat has quite a bit of red to it. To remedy this, I added patches of Vallejo Skin Wash Ink using the airbrush, followed by another drybrush of Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite. I would probably have skipped the first Bonewhite drybrush if I’d known I’d be doing another, but sometimes you find things out and need to go again!

I’m really pleased with how these came out, the roughcoat really did a nice job of making the 3D prints more stonelike. The reddish tones also really tie the pieces to the game mat. Here’s a few more closeups showing off the different pieces:

A nice quick update after the longer last few posts. I do enjoy panting terrain as a nice break from more involved models. I’m currently painting up my Egypt campaign unit for Silver Bayonet (guess what nation!), and looking forward to playing some game with this new terrain. The Egypt 3D model set also comes with a sphinx and a pyramid so if I feel like filling out a bigger table I have what I need!

Dusty Panzers

Bolt Action

With the wrist on the mend and itching to get back into some painting I decided to tackle something with limited amounts of brushwork: tanks!

I’ve had a Panzer 3 half built for my North Africa Germans sitting in a box for a while and this seemed like a good occasion to finish it up. I then decided that the two P3s I painted for my late war Germans would make much more sense as reinforcements for North Africa, so decided to repaint them as well.

The two already painted had the longer later barrels, so step one was a bit of surgery to shorten them down to match the new one. I think it turned out pretty well, can you tell which are the cut down ones*?

Painting-wise these were pretty straightforward, just an all-over coat of Vallejo Model Air Sand Yellow, followed by painting the tools attached to the outside of the tanks, and a lot of chipping and the rubber wheels with Vallejo German Grey. The fun came from the oils and the pigments, I wanted these to be very dusty so I went much heavier than I have on tanks in the past. These are covered in a variety of sandy/cream oils, and covered all over with pigments in the same kind of colours.

I did not enjoy putting on the turret decals last time, and was dreading it again this time! Things went much the same: a lot of repositioning and dousing on decal setter and crossing my fingers in hope! Overall though, I can’t complain with the outcome, I think they turned out pretty good.

Good to be back at the painting table, and I hope to be able to keep going!

* 201 is the new tank, and 202 and 203 are the repaints.

Queen of the Desert

Bolt Action

Back with a Western Desert post this week, with some more progress on the Allied side after dabbling in some Axis infantry last time around. This time with some armoured support for the commonwealth infantry I’ve painted so far, the famed Queen of the Desert: the Matilda Infantry Tank or rather three of them!

These are the Warlord Games plastic Matilda kits, more specifically their “Tank Troop” set for the Matilda which has three included for some tank heavy games. Usually a good way to get a bit of savings over buying three of the individual kit which is no bad thing. I painted these in the colours of the 42nd Royal Tank Regiment, probably the most famous desert Matildas, with model kits usually coming with the decals for “Phantom”. This kit came with enough decals for three named Matildas, Phantom included. I’m not sure if the other two are made up or historical names, I couldn’t find much (any!) info on them.

The 42nd RTR colours speak to me for a multitude of reasons, not least of which being that it’s just a nice scheme! There is some nostalgia there for me too, as the three bands (white/red/white) present on the 42nd’s tanks seem to be the inspiration (I’m guessing here, could be very wrong!) for a lot of the similarly banded markings that were made for Imperial Guard tanks in early editions of Warhammer 40,000 which I gazed at for many hours in the pages of White Dwarf magazine.

Some of you may be familiar with the rather eccentric camouflage scheme visible on tanks early (circa 1941) in the desert war, the infamous Caunter scheme! I say infamous because it clearly has started a vigorous debate on the colours used in its application, the most famous of which is the sky blue middle section visible in so many books/museums/model kit box arts. Reading up on the scheme was a rollercoaster ride to say the least! It seems that the ever-present blue paint is in fact not accurate and rather the result of a museum painting their Matilda incorrectly followed by a great number of copies of said mistake! More recent research seems to point towards the Caunter scheme making use of much more subtle colours indeed, and model paint companies have created sets that match the latest information. I elected to buy Vallejo’s attempt at this more “correct” Caunter colours, but I believe AK Interactive also make a set that’s supposed to be accurate.

With the problem of the colours to use solved (or solved enough for my standards! I’m sure there are some strong opinions on which of AK or Vallejo (or neither!) are accurate), now came the issue of application. As you can see from the photo above, the scheme makes use of some rather strange geometric shapes, with long straight lines right across some rather intense details. My first thought was to try to mask these and apply the colours with the airbrush.

I got as far as masking all of the dark green sections on the bodies of all three tanks before throwing in the towel, there were so many gaps under the tape, there would have been overspray all over the place! I’m sure masking is a solid option at larger scales, but for 1/56 (28mm) I’m not sure the effort is worth it. Clearly then, I was going to have to hand paint the scheme…

I did this by carefully sketching out the shapes using dilute paint, before filling them in and repeating the process 3-4times to ensure good coverage. The Vallejo Caunter set is made up of airbrush paints so quite dilute already, which made the process longer but did mean even with 3-4 coats I had a nice smooth finish at the end. Understanding where the patterns go was a battle in itself, and I used a mix of references: photos from the era, the Warlord Games painted Matildas on the box cover, and other modeller’s attempts at Caunter on Matildas.

You can see the dark green done on all three tanks in the photo above.

I followed the same process for the silver grey sections.

This was followed by a pass of chipping, first by sponging on the base coat colour of Portland Stone back over the dark green and silver grey sections, followed by painted on chips with Vallejo German Grey. This gave me two levels of chipping for a bit more realism.

I then basecoated in the rest of the kit around the tank, tracks etc.

This was followed by an all over gloss varnish, then decal application, then chipping of said decals to blend them in. The models were then re-glossed all over and hit with some simple oil washes for some shading and some dusty streaks and rust spots for added interest. I then added dry pigments to the tracks and bottom and sides of the tanks, followed by a pass of matt varnish and they were ready for photos! This is all pretty standard historical modelling, but I don’t think I’ve shown process shots for it on the blog before, so hopefully it’s interesting to look at!

I really enjoyed painting these models, and glad I’ve gotten them painted after putting them off for a long time as I was dreading painting the Caunter scheme. Sometimes you just have to jump in and go for it! As is currently planned I only have two more vehicles to paint in the scheme: two universal carriers, but who knows, models are constantly adding themselves to this project! Regardless, I now know how I paint Caunter, which means no more worrying about how I might go about it.

The Afrika Korps Disembarks!

Bolt Action

Having painted enough infantry for my first platoon of 8th Army, it was time to paint some of their antagonists: the Afrika Korps! Just like for the 8th Army models I’ve painted so far, these are Warlord Games models and being some of their relatively new plastics are quite nice to build and paint.

It took me a couple of attempts to get the colour I wanted for their fatigues, having at first started with a much yellower green that ended up not looking very good. I’m not sure how accurate this green has ended up being, and I should probably have highlighted them further to simulate the sun-faded look that would have been prevalent, but these look nice to me and were a nice balance of looks to effort! Additionally they stand well apart from the 8th Army models in their almost cream uniforms this way.

Plenty of fun details to paint on these models, with the face coverings offering the opportunity to add a bit of colour to this sea of olives and khakis! The goggles were a fun detail too, I wasn’t to sure how to paint them, but the references I found seemed to be tinted so I painted them in the silver and filled the lenses with GW Contrast Wildwood which turned out ok I think.

The kit comes with heads sporting the pith helmet the AK wore early in the campaign, and considering the time I’m roughly painting these for (1941) they maybe should be wearing them, but I do like the look of the steel helmet and apparently they were available also early on so this lets me build these in a more generic manner (i.e. if I want to play scenarios in 42-43 as well).

As always when painting the first unit for a new army I made myself a painting guide, very useful for me as I like to jump between projects all the time and need a refresher when I get back to something. Let me know if you find it useful yourself!

Anyway that was a fun project and will keep progressing this over the long term, to hopefully get two sizeable forces that can do battle with each other!

Sikhs!

Bolt Action

Back in North African Theatre for this update, with an addition to my 8th Army forces; this section of Sikh infantrymen.

Ever since I cracked open the 8th Army set from Warlord Games I’ve been eyeing off the different head options that are included, and I decided that while this platoon is supposed to be from a British regiment clearly in the heat of battle this section from an Indian regiment must have been joined them! I really like these models, Warlord did a great job here. More than just the models, I’m keen to showcase the variety of troops that fought in the desert, and while I won’t be building a section for each head option in the set (there are a lot if you consider the options also included in the Commonwealth Infantry set!), I wanted to not just stick to Brodie helmets.

These models also mark the end of the first platoon with regards to infantry, leaving me with 3 sections of infantry done and a royal engineers section. Progress is slow, but it is progress! I have a fair amount of infantry left to paint for the 8th army side of this project as I have my second platoon’s worth to paint (nominally as Australian, we’ll see who else sneaks in there!), and also the entirety of the other side (DAK) as well!

From a painting point of view, these are doe exactly the same as my other 8th Army troops except the skin of course. For the skin I used Vallejo Flat Brown, followed by a light wash of Agrax Earthshade, a highlight of Vallejo Flat Brown (effectively leaving the Agrax Earthshade in the very recesses), followed by a highlight of Vallejo Flat Brown mixed with Vallejo Heavy Skintone, and a final highlight of the previous mixture plus a dash of Vallejo Iraqi Sand.

The mixes I listed above were done to match colour swatches I’d made from sampling the colours present in a photo I found online. It’s the first time I try to do something like that and I think the results worked rather well, so I’ll definitely try that again in the future.

The background I used in the photo is a printed out photo I took when visiting the Flinders Ranges in the middle of Australia. Not quite North Africa, but it is a desert so close enough for my purposes! I spent a couple of weeks out there back in 2014 in the middle of winter and it was freezing cold and so dry that my lips were cracking no matter how much balm I put on! The scenery was fantastic however and the night skies unbelievable for someone that grew up in light polluted Europe.

Finally, here’s something I stumbled across in a second hand store yesterday! A really nice book from the late 70s on the Desert Rats. Plenty of great photographs that I’ll be pouring over for ideas!

Sailing on the High Seas, Sweltering in the Desert

Board Games, Bolt Action, Terrain

This week saw me paint a few odd things, starting with a sudden urge to paint models from Dreadfleet, a 10 and a bit year old standalone naval game from Games Workshop, set in the old Warhammer universe. I bought my set upon release, built all the models and then never painted any. Never too late to get to that though, just had to wait for inspiration to strike! There are quite a few ships and its of terrain in the game, so plenty more to paint before I can call it done, hopefully I won’t wait 10 years to paint the next batch!

First up we have Grimnir’s Thunder, the dwarven ship. Some ships in the game have small pieces they can send out, and in this case this is a dirigeable. You can barely see another ready to launch peeking out of the deck.

The second one I tackled was Seadrake, the high elf ship. This one has dragons!

These are very cool models, if a bit challenging to paint as they have a lot of overlapping pieces and are a smaller scale than I’m used to painting. They have however been quite enjoyable to paint! The mat that comes with the game also provides a really nice backdrop for photos!

This week also marked my first foray into painting terrain for my North Africa WW2 project, with these two houses. I printed these on my 3d printer (you can find the files I used here) and based them on pieces of MDF. The palm tree is a cheap plastic model I found on eBay. I have a whole batch of these so expect to see them on other terrain pieces in the future!

I painted them with craft paints using a series of progressively brighter dry brushes, nothing fancy but it looks ok.

I used a lot of cream grout to make the sand on the base. This ended up being far too bright for my desert mat so I airbrushed some warmer tones to get it closer to where it needed to be. It’s quite a bit brighter but looks reasonable to me now.

As a parting note I played in a Star Wars Legion tournament over the weekend with my Galactic Empire army. This was my first attempt at playing the game (nothing quite like diving in head first!), and I really enjoyed myself. I didn’t do particularly well (won one of my three games so not all bad!), but I did manage to leave with the best painted army award so am happy with that!