CanGames Prep - Scatter Terrain and a Buttload of Trees

Howdy folks,

We are sitting at just under a month until this years CanGames (https://cangames.ca/) in Ottawa. I decided to throw my hat in the ring for running a table this year and while I took some time to settle on a ruleset and setting, I realized afterwards that I would have to get moving on prepping things up. I hadn't played Team Yankee in some time, and I had a few models kicking around that I could paint up (cough cough, horde!), so I thought I could give a shot at TY. At the same time, I didn't want to settle on a traditional TY or Flames of War fight and instead dove into the Tank Aces Campaign and rules from a bunch of years ago for a solution.

I liked the idea of running a standard table with a reduced number of forces, and I also like the Force on Force (FoF) ruleset, but at the same time I didn't want to get too bogged down in rules and minutia. I really just wanted to focus on having models on the table. So, Tank Aces will give me the chance to whittle the force structure down to more of a FoF friendly size, and using Tank Aces, I will be able to have folks move around as independent teams and all that comes with that nuance. Anywho, maybe more on that later or in another post.

So, I had the setting - Cold War (which was where my original FoF thoughts were going) - I did a deep dive google search into table layouts (found some eye-candy and great looking tables at Sparkers Wargaming page), and took them as inspiration. That meant that I had to finally beef-up and invest in some scatter terrain that I could be proud of.

Again, going to google, I tried looking for something similar to what Battlefront offers, but the price point was a little much for me at the moment...and, the biggest consideration, every site I looked at had the Pine Woods or similar tree terrain sold out. Well that kinda solved the concerns about the cost...

So, DIY/Scratchbuild time! I ended up buying an assortment of trees from Temu and Michaels…over 100 of them. I picked up some coasters to base the trees from Michaels along with some regular felt pieces (12x9 inch and 12x18 inch) and some textured felt, which would be great for some farmers fields.

I made up a mixture of sand, pva glue, drywall compound, hearty craft paint, and some water. It made a pretty solid mortar for the bases and it didn’t take much to tidy up the bases with a second application. 

Next step is the painting and dry brushing. Cheers.

Painting Update - Horde of Team Yankee Americans

Howdy everyone,

 

Whether you are in the midst of spring or the [alleged] last storm of winter, I hope that all is well on your respective sides. I have been rocking the best of both seasons, although I have not had any of the big snowfalls that other folks have been experiencing...which is both great and horrible all at the same time.

 

I have been taking it somewhat easy over the last few weeks, enjoying some time off from work...and while I have and have not accomplished anything, I have at the very least worked my way through a number of vehicles that were sitting on the painting table waiting their turn for the brush. Between picking up starter boxes that were well priced (the first release of the Complete Starter Set and Ryan's Leathernecks) or supporting local gaming stores on my travels, I had amassed a bit of a small-ish horde of vehicles for Team Yankee.

 

Over my time off, I was able to paint up the 6 Humvees from the Leathernecks box, the M1 Abrams and the Bradley's from the Compete Starter Set, and a box of Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles. This also gave me a chance at trying my hand at the M81 Woodland camo pattern for US uniforms. I am pretty happy with the results of the uniforms and have a Rifle Platoon to get to next...and the vehicles, I painted most of them in the MERDC pattern that I had used prior, and did 2 Bradley's and 2 Abrams in straight green no camo...having looked at a wide variety of images, I thought the mix would work. And certainly it helps in distinguishing small units on the table...and the green vehicles can work well for Red Dawn type, as in my mind green feels more continental-US.

 

Anywho, I'm very happy with how they all turned out. Enjoy the horde of photos to go along with this.

 

Cheers.

The horde…enough kit to field an understrength M1 Armoured Combat Team with multiple Bradley recon teams and Humvee recce support.

The Bradley’s…M2A2/M3A3’s with a pair of M2/M3’s…enough for 3 support teams for the M1’s or enough for their own Armoured Cavalry Troop (with M1 support).

Some Humvees on parade…enough for a couple of Scout sections.

Some M1’s…can combine with the previous couple I had painted up for a small core formation.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         36, +27 (crew and vehicles)    

28mm+       16

Terrain        0

  

Bought        0

Progress   +52

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painting Update - Russian BMP/BRM 1's

Hello everyone,

I hope the day is finding you all well...the freezing rain that was supposed to hit us seems to have stayed south and/or just avoided our area all together. 

 

This is another post showing off some more 3D printed items from my buddy Duncan. He gave me a few printed BMP's to try out and throw some paint on. Admittedly, I've had them a while, but working through the palette cleanser, they made it to the painting table. I had to do a little work with the turrets as they were a little tight...I ended up filing/cutting down the turret ring on the hull of the vehicles and bringing the turret themselves down a little. It didn't take too much work, and they are now fairly free.

 

The BMP's themselves are the reconnaissance variant, the BRM and in this case the BRM 1. I'm not too overly worried on complete accuracy for how I'm going to employ them on the field, but from an OCD perspective they have a variety of subtle differences between the BMP and BRM. In terms of where these models will go, I think they will more than likely fit in the Imagi-nation world and probably find a home in Afropia as one of a number of potential belligerents for the Petoriastan Defence Force (PDF).

 

Anywho, they painted up fairly quickly and the 3D resin took the paint really well. I ended up having to snag a couple of Soviet crewmembers from my Team Yankee pile and cut them down as 2 of the BMP/BRM's had the drivers hatch open...so in went a crewmember.

 

Overall, the prints weren't too bad. I ended up snapping part of the tracks off and then gluing and refusing them to the hull...it worked well and looks like they should have the strength to stand up to the 'war'.  

 

Enjoy the pics. 

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm           9, +5    

28mm+       16

Terrain        0

  

Bought        0

Progress   +25

 

 

Painting Update - Soviet Gaz 66 Utility Trucks

Hello Everyone,

I hope that all is going well on your respective side of the internet. We are in a fairly slow weather transition here between winter-spring-winter-almost spring-more winter; we have had some fairly warm temps and some fairly not so warm temps with about a 30-40 degree swing and maybe a bit more if you count windchill.

Regardless, the paint has been rolling on. I wanted to share this quick post with you to highlight some 3d printed models that I received from Duncan some time ago. I had actually painted one of them up really quickly to see how they would handle the paint - and then I promptly forgot about the other three. So, I totally rectified that last week and finished them up.

I like the mix of models that I received. Each truck is sporting a different load with only one of them having the full canvased back for troop hauling or other somesuch. The others are much more about the cargo, and one of them has nothing in the back so I can make up some random cargo loads...or technical gun mounts, should I choose. I did paint them up in a mix of civilian and military paint scheme and I think they will suit very well for Cold War and/or imagi-nations.

Enjoy the pics.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm           4, +4    

28mm+       16

Terrain        0

  

Bought        0

Progress   +20

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

Afropian Thoughts

Hello everyone,

As some may recall, I had the idea of starting up an imagi-nation a while back, and have since been rather stuck on finer details and OCD-isms. My main intent was to give some additional motivation to help me paint through my pile of miniature shame. While I had some great initial planning and outline, I nonetheless got stuck on setting details and some gaming processes.

At the same time, I have actually been slowly progressing through portions of the pile, so that is at least a partial win. I really like the background and setting creation, so I have had fun with that part, but again I got stuck on various facets and how to represent them in a campaign. While I have had the game on pause for the past year, I do have some initial movements and engagements plotted out, but nonetheless I needed  some further inspiration. Luckily I stumbled upon the Lead Adventurer Forum and a thread dedicated to post-WW2 imaginations. Now, I admit I am late to the thread and some of the blogs referenced are no longer current or accessible, but I did find some excellent imagination elements to help me move along.

I had been stuck on physical setting and actually struggling with how to place Afropia within the physical world…my initial take was to be loose with it and just let it happen, but along the way I started to fret that small detail. I saw some excellent inspiration from the movies, Moody’s Adventures imagi-nation is incorporating the Republic of  Zubrowka from the Hotel Grand Budapest). From his work, I actually found an excellent reference and partial solution to some of my hurdles.

Thanks to Moody, I discovered a great imagi-nation generating-system by Ivan Sorensen titled Not Just a Brush War. I gotta say, I think it will help with some of the campaign mechanics…and now I just need to make a damned map…and get more painting done…and not fret the physical and imagined worlds. Just an item or two.

With that update, have a great weekend folk. Happy Spring.

Painting Update - Cabal & Hydra Reinforcements

Howdy folks,

I hope your winter is going well. I think we may be on the backside of the cold weather here...we did have some fairly cold temperatures in the last month but we did have some above freezing temps in the last few days.

Carrying on with my Marvel Crisis Protocol progress, I just finished up the Arnim Zola and Baron Von Strucker pack. The size of Zola is pretty impressive and the torso of the model presents its own challenge, given it is a clear piece so you can see the face of the robotic beast. I did have a Sorastro painting guide to help me out, but this time I also didn't overly stress on OCD-isms that have plagued me in the past...maybe I'm getting more confident with results, who knows.

The models themselves were really great to paint. Strucker is pretty straight forward and there seems to be a variety of characters in the Marvel world that rock the green jumpsuits with style...so I had plenty of appropriate shades to choose from. The main challenge with Strucker was painting the hydra chest symbol on his jumpsuit - for that I had to pull out the magnifying goggles.

Probably the biggest difference that I did this time came to the bases. Each character has some degree of debris that they are standing on and just having them straight up on the base didn't look right. There really wasn't much transition and the debris looked out of place. This time I took out some of my Citadel texture paints (choosing Astrogranite Debris) and build up some transition around the debris feature. I did this for each model. Painting up Zola also gave me the chance to use Citadel contrast paint on his legs to show some NMM technique - I'm really happy with the results.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

The big man and the Hydra man...

The Arnim Zola fashion shoot - a few angles to see how the big man turned out. He painted up really quickly and the debris was a fairly quick wash and dry brush using VJ Dark Sea Blue and then SC75 Caribbean Blue.

The main Hydra man...I took some similar inspiration for the debris, using the blues on the few bricks that were part of Struckers base. I also added a few chunks of rock and smaller stone to build up along with the Astrogranite Debris.

Inspired by my Asgardian group shot, I thought I would get Red Skull and the Baron for a Cabal affiliated group - of course only realizing now that Crossbones was there in spirit only.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         0    

28mm+       4, +2

Terrain        0

  

Bought        0

Progress   +4

Painting Update - More Asgardians

Howdy everyone,

First painting post of the new year and brings me to the last Asgardian figures that I had waiting to be painted from Marvel Crisis Protocol. I recently finished Skurge and Heimdall in December and I have just finished up Thor and Valkyrie. I was lucky enough to have another excellent Sorastro video to refer to for painting Thor. For Valkyrie, I referred to some google search images and the box art that Atomic Mass Games had drawn up for this expansion.

The most consistent thing that I can say about these Asgardian's is that they have certainly pushed my comfort zone with non metal metallic techniques. Thanos was very challenging for me, but almost each Asgardian is sporting some sort of armour or weapon that screams NMM, and these two were no different. Thor also added an additional opportunity and challenge with object source lighting depending on how one wanted to go with the hammer. 

Sorastro's Painting - Thor

I elected to follow Sorastro's video fairly closely to push myself to try these elements out...and I'm happy with the outcome (although my pics seemed to have blurred or muted the overall effect - another thing to learn more about I guess), and Valkyrie was a lot of fun as well as I went fairly free with the model, not stressing over any specific paint scheme or pattern. In the end, like I said, I followed the box art as I liked that look the most.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

Thor and Valkyrie

...as I said, my camera seems to have muted the object source lighting affects of the hammer, I promise, they do look much better in person. I had actually done them with the intention of them popping on the right arm. They are fairly bright in some places.

I had some sort of reaction with my dullcote spray and it left this white film over sections of Thor's cape. I have since gone back and repainted these portions of the cape to cover up the film.

Trying to get the right NMM on her swords proved to be rather challenging and admittedly I think I may have 'whited out' the reflection along the main edge. The swords were rather difficult as there were multiple edges for highlights...took a few tries, in the end I stuck with the version I liked the most. But definitely more to learn for me.

The whole Asgardian crew...looking forward to getting all of them on the table at once.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         0    

28mm+       2

Terrain        0

  

Bought        0

Progress   +2