More Great War heavy metal...British Mark IV's...and weathering...

Evening folks,

For your viewing pleasure I have a couple of Battlefront Mark IV tanks from their new Great War line...you can get these on their own or they come along with the British army box.  Overall, the model went together really well...no issue with the sponsons, tracks, or the hulls.  There is some construction required with the top rails, but these went on fairly easy with minimal finger gluing...always a good sign.

As for the painting...I used the colour guide found on the Great War landing page on the Flames of War website.  The colours seemed a good match and I actually enjoyed painting these hulks up a lot.

I went a little further with the weathering than I did with my German tanks...with the standard green paintjob, the weathering was guaranteed to show much better on these ones.  I tried a couple of different techniques with subtle changes...the main layers stayed the same: Vallejo Flat Earth, Vallejo Beige Brown, and then Vallejo US Tan Earth.  The first time I went from darkest to lightest...the second go...which I think went better, I went from tan earth to flat earth.

I have plenty of pics to look at, so enjoy and see which worked best for yourselves.  I'm not sure which I liked the most...but the first technique forced me to weather higher up the sides than the second method...food for thought

Weathering steps:

Technique #2...tan earth first...tank on the left for comparison

Second layer, beige brown...applied closer to the bottom of the tank track, does not extend up the side as far as the tan earth layer...leave some tan earth to look at...

Third layer is the flat earth...the tank on the left I went a little higher up the side...it pops out much clearer, the tank on the right, I tried to stay near the track, leaving the tan earth, but also leaving the beige brown exposed.

I finished the weathering off with a Strong Tone wash applied to only the flat earth layer...and to random streaks along the hull side...some finished pics:

Final layer of strong tone wash to highlight the 'heavier' mud painted on with the flat earth...

Boots on the Ground - Air Cav Aerorifle ride...progress shot

Howdy all,

For those that might not remember a couple of my previous posts about my Air Cav unit (Scouts and Hogs) I thought I'd post a couple of progress pictures of my Aerorifle Blue Team hueys.  I've had the majority of the helos for a few years waiting for their turn on the paint bench, and after last years sale by Battlefront I picked up the last helos I needed to fill out an entire aerorifle platoon with an additional bird to act as a Command and Control bird or Medevac flight.

I'm about 95% complete as of last night with the ink and decal work complete...all that's left is to paint up the door gunners.

Anyway, just a quick post...up next I'll finish off some Brit Mark IVs and then I'll either move towards some Cobra gunships or maybe some German Pz IVs...we have a WW2 tank ace campaign coming up...we'll see which way the bench takes me.

Take care all...

 the flight all in a row...I finished the left most helo about 2-3 years ago...the remainder I purchased within a year later and then filled out with BF's Vietnam range sale last January.

Great War heavy metal...german A7V

Howdy folks,

I've begun working on my Great War German force in 15mm...enter the Great War heavy and loud and slow and painful metal of the day.  I bought the Battlefront box set when it came out and set about prepping the minis almost immediately.  Since that time, at least a few months now, I've been slowly researching, finishing other project areas, etc and have now put my toe in the water.

I elected to start with the German Army...no reason...and enjoyed putting the A7V models together.  They didn't pose any big hassles and went together quite nicely.  As for painting them, I looked up the online resources from Battlefront, standard google search of images, and brought out my Osprey 'Duel' book between the Mark IV and the A7V to see what the colour plates in the book had.

In the end I think I went with a mix of a couple of select images and the Battlefront resources.  I also tried taking pictures with two different cameras and lighting conditions.  The first set were very very yellow but show the models well...I think...the last 3 pics I think do a good job of picking out the details of the model.

Anywho...Enjoy the pics.

This set was taken fresh from the pallet in the post decals phase...of all the decals I've tried to put on...I'm really quite horrible at it, these Great War decals are really bang-on...I didn't have any of my usual f@#k ups and they didn't have to soak too long to get them off the paper...AND...the solvoset did not thin them out too much that they couldn't handle my ungainly fingers...

 

One day later...different camera...different lighting...

 

 

 

Neo Sovs rollcall for Tomorrow's War

Hey folks,

Some of you may remember back in July when I posted about my Neo-Soviet inspired Tomorrow's War force comprised of Khurasan Miniatures vehicles.  At the time I did not have any pictures of the grunts who were going to be riding in those vehicles.

I had the camera out earlier today for another post and thought I'd take some pics of these troops after I packed my Rebel Miniatures earthforce section away.  The grunts for this force come from Rebel Miniatures Titan Marine packs...I bought a bunch of minis a while back and to fill this roster out I had a command pack, 1 or 2 infantry pack, and I believe a support weapons pack...it's been long enough that I can't remember.  Oh, as 'back-up' I painted up a small team of Spetsnaz troops taken from Rebel Minis SAS pack.

However, the figures painted up fairly quickly and were very enjoyable to paint.  As with the vehicles for this force, I was inspired by the Soviet Cold War era airborne combat uniform pattern.

Enjoy the pics.  Thanks for the views.

Cheers.

Group shot of the force...

The bulk of the force...the grunts...

Part of the command pack...yellow chevron on right shoulder guards signify leaders...

More leaders.

The leader pack...

Rebel minis SAS pack...near-future/sci-fi Spetsnaz troops...

As the force is part of a Combat Engineering unit, can't leave starbase without your flamethrowers...

Heavy hitter, anti-vehicle missile and anti-material gunners.  Red chevrons on the shoulder guard signify support elements...I was short an ATGM troop so I subbed in a grunt and gave him a homebuilt rocket launcher...

Section support weapons, grenadier type plasma guns...weren't really an option in the pack so I took some troop figs and pimped up the rifles...

 

Tomorrow's War - Peacekeepers

Howdy folks,

In line with my to-do list for the years projects, I elected to tackle some of the wip pile on my workbench...a while back I bought a variety of figs from Rebel Miniatures, amongst them a command pack of Earthforce soldiers.

That was then and NOW, I took the opportunity to put some paint to them.  I had only bought the command pack but thought I'd somehow find a purpose for them...so, these 7 figs have been press ganged into Tomorrow's War to serve as peacekeepers.  I don't forsee doing a complete force at the moment, however any scenario would benefit from a few extras.  Looking at their helmets, I suppose they could even work in some CoD inspired near-future game...

I thought I'd try a serpentine/lizard type camouflage pattern for these troops and to be honest I wasn't certain how they were going to look...then I hit them with a heavy dark tone wash and some buff and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Enjoy the pics...comments and advice is always appreciated.

Cheers.

 

Force on Force - Yom Kippur '73 After Action Report

Howdy folks,

At the beginning of the month I was lucky enough to get some gaming in at the club.  We had our general meeting and a table opened up last minute so I ran a Force on Force scenario from the main rule book with some help from the boys.

My buddy Mike already posted about this as well so it will be very interesting to compare the different perspectives.

The scenario was from the 1973 Yom Kippur war with Syrian armour pushing hard to hit the Isreali's and push past the Golan Heights.  The scenario is ideally suited for 2 players, but FoF tends to get a good crowd at the club so for the first game we expanded the forces and ended up with 9 x T55s (all battlefront models) and initially 3 Centurion Sh'ot tanks (mix of battlefront and QRF I believe).  For the first game the IDF had one rank novice to FoF the other had played in the past a couple of times and the Syrians had 2 experienced FoF gamers.

The area terrain comes courtesy of my buddies Duncan and Ed...I believe this piece is earmarked for some Afghan scenarios in the future.  For the first game we treated the terrain as being steep slope with the crest spanning the entire top of the feature (ignoring the large trench/valley).  The Syrians had some great rolls in this game and the IDF really could have gotten much more love from the dice gods...by games end, the IDF had 6 Sh'ots deployed and could not contain the Syrian horde...some very good shooting.

We ended fairly abruptly as it was General Meeting time, but picked up afterwards with round 2 of the same scenario with the belligerents swapping sides.  This time we deployed 4 Sh'ots and waited for the rounds to fly.  The result was fairly similar with the IDF loosing the fight and the Syrians able to bring fire to bear...just like the first game, any hits on the IDF typically resulted in kills or main gun inops, while the Syrians took the full range of mobility, firepower, suppression, etc damage.

All in all, much fun was had by all and for me it was a great opportunity to share GM'ship with some experienced folk to back up the questions.

Now the pics...



Game 1, looking out at the Syrian horde...

 

Charging forward, hits exchanged...

Syrian left front...

 

Making a break to the right side...



 

Second game...Syrian view, 4 Sh'ots on the hills...

 

 

IDF taking some punishment

The end is near...