Painting Update - Warhammer and Citadel Stuff

Howdy everyone,

I hope the summer is treating everyone well…we are definitely seeing a great variance in the weather between some nice cool temps and the warmer, humid side of summer we’re used to. To say the least, the last couple weeks has been rather fluid, various family commitments has kept me from getting any serious painting done…however I was able to finish up some pieces at the end of last month/beginning of August…so I guess that evens out some.

I had bought a few packs of warhammer tokens as well as some random figures at CanGames quite a while ago and am now just getting to them on the workbench. I thought that they would fit well with a crew build for Zona Alfa…maybe Traders or Mercs…hell maybe even Stargrave.

Anywho, I hope you enjoy the pics. Take care.

A handful of terrain tokens and pieces…landlines and UXO, unexploded ordnance…

Crew lead and a couple of sniper type characters…not sure how they place in the overall 40k verse, but I thought they looked cool and could somehow work in a setting or two…so wth, why not Zona Alfa…part of the trader side…we’ll see how that fits out.

Painted

15mm               30 

28mm+             43, +13

 

Bought              25

Progress          +48

Battle Report - Team Yankee Oil Wars

Howdy folks,

Recently I had the chance to give Team Yankee Oil Wars a chance; pretty much a straight shot along with the gameplay of Team Yankee, but just a small change in setting from the European battlefields to the Middle East. For this go, Mike was fielding an Iranian force…I think a heavy collection of British kit (challenger tanks, Scorpion vehicles) and BTR riding grunts. Duncan and I were fielding an Iraqi or Egyptian tank heavy force with some rocket trucks, helos, and air defense SAMs.

If I remember correctly, the scenario was a meeting engagement with everyone having been considered moving in turn 1. Anyhow, it was good to get back to a game table and always good to get in some Team Yankee.

As always, Mike beats me to the punch, here’s his side of the table.

The game…

The Setup…Duncan and I are on the left side of the pic…built up area to our front to manage and move through, not the best terrain for heavy armour. Duncan is leading the T72 formation, and I’ve got the T55’s.

The balloon goes up and we hit the gas…hard!!! T55’s away and we are looking to skirt past and through the built industrial section. Which is clearly sound tactical doctrine, because we leave the rear objective wide open…

A variety of fabulous looking paint schemes, away we’re going…warehousing to our left…and at one point I was going to divert left through the centre of the area, but Mike popped some Cobra’s so I thought I’d deke to the right and close in to engage them with Dshk 12.7mm MG fire.

Duncan is pushing on our left to hit the objectives on Mike’s side…he is taking hits from long range gunnery, and without stabilizers, we can’t really do move & shoot well…1 ROF per hull gets somewhat stale.

Slow push past the warehouse, splash1 cobra…

Duncan keeps pushing and trading fire with Mike’s Challengers…he’s having some luck, but not easy to get the kills on these guys. I keep plugging away with 12.7mm fire…its ROF3 per tank, so a great volume of dice…

I’m able to get the gang in behind the warehouse and then I think I can get a good shot at some side shots on these damned Challengers…so splash another Cobra, and then Mike pops some Scorpion APCs behind me and I have to divert attention to these runts…

Duncan is still having a rough go…taking a pile of hits in the centre. 

At this point, I’m splitting my formation…1 company to deal with the pesky Cobra’s, and another company to deal with the damned runts…who have an insanely powerful 76mm main gun that raises havoc when they’re at your 6!!

So at this point, I manage to chip away the runts down to one vehicle…and then Mike gets more reserves an brings on 5 BTRs which we try to counter with a pair of Mi-24 Hinds…with some success…2 vehicles are brewed up and some passengers are able to get clear.

Having taken a few hard hits, Mike dismounts the rest of his grunts and then brings on the last of his reserves, a platoon of TOW mounted jeeps. You can see, I’m still having a hell of a go with Mike’s forces in this pocket…

At the same time, Duncan is equally having a hell of a go…the loses in the centre are mounting and then some…my pocket of fun is getting even more fun, my tanks are being pared down considerably and Mike still has some combat power on the field.

At the end of it all, Mike played a good holding action, not giving any ground and had some great rolls on the saves as well as reserves. He did a much better job of scaling his reserves than we did…we went tank heavy from the go, but could have done with some supporting arms to give us some maneuver room to make it a little harder on Mike. Good game to him!

Painting Update - Studio Miniatures

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well in your corner. Definitely a bit of a rainy day over here, so a perfect opportunity to drop a quick painting update. This time, I wanted to share a few pics of some Studio Miniatures movie inspired tough-guys. I’ve posted their figures before and am pretty happy with the sculpts and the results. 

The latest figs are Snake from Escape from New York, Doc Brown from Back to the Future, and I’ve tackled him before, John Wick. I had misplaced a few figures at one point and ended up reordering the figs…and of course found them right after the package arrived. We’ll call this fella John Wick the first movie, and this latest John…Wick 2. 

Like I said, this is a quick post. Enjoy the pics…and if you’re ever looking for figures of some of your favourite movie characters, then I would definitely head over to Studio Miniatures…they even have Monty Python!!

The latest trio…Doc Brown, Baba Wick, and a classic, Snake Plisskin…

Classic good guy wears black…and I thought I would give him some leather holsters to break up the pattern. As well, ended up using some green stuff to fill in the gaps in the base and then kinda went with a minimalist approach to the base, just enough to offset the black scheme.

This time I went with a much lighter suit colour as well as a different facial tone to make some subtle changes from my first take on Mr. Wick…trying to capture an Indigenous look…the base as well is just a quick minimalist take and break up of shapes…nothing specific, but again just shooting for some differences in appearance from Wick #1.

Definitely one of my favourite movies from the 80’s, Back to the Future, and Doc Brown’s character were a lot of fun. Pretty quick to paint up, I’m looking forward to finishing up Marty and they can tackle time travel together.

Painted

15mm               30 

28mm+             30, +3

 

Bought              25

Progress          +35

Painting Update - Basing Colours

Howdy Folks,

Happy end July to everyone...the month has surprisingly gone by very quickly, and definitely seen some interesting weather come through the province. The last week has been especially interesting given how much changing air pressure messes with my injuries...and last nights weather really was quite something to watch. Luckily all safe here, most of the really 'interesting' stuff developed south and east of us, and I hope all is safe where you are interneting.

For this post, I thought I would give a psuedo painting update and quick tutorial or guide on how I paint up my bases. The idea came for this came from a Reddit post I saw where someone was looking for some advice on getting more texture and colour out of their base painting. I've done this before in the past with some Cold War Infantry from Battlefront, as you will see at the link and below, I definitely have a system and standard-ish scheme that I like to use.

Hope this is of us...have a good one.

 

All figures are from Empress Miniatures and unless stated I'm using Vallejo, from left to right I have 3 different colours. Base colour is Burnt Umber, then dryish brush of Flat Earth, and then a dryer brush of Beige Brown.

 

I then had the idea of just putting the paint bottle behind the figure so you could see the name of the paint and the progress of the layers. So as above, left to right, with the inclusion of a standing sniper at the bottom of the pic. In this case, the base layer is still Burnt Umber and then dryish of Desert Yellow.

 

So you can see the next layer for each model, again left to right with Flat Earth for prone sniper, Beige Brown for green jacket, and Tan Earth for green toque.

 

Progressing the figs...I'm now adding Iraqi Sand for green toque, a fairly dry brush of that, I don't want it to overpower, just to lighten a little.

 

For my standing sniper, I thought I'd catch up...Desert Yellow was layer two, and then a dry brush of Iraqi Sand to make stuff pop...my next step will be to flock and overcoat...you'll see the finished figure on a follow-up post.

Just catching the other figures up...you can see Tan Earth for the prone dude, and Iraqi Sand now for green jacket.

 

For prone dude, I added some Army Painter Strong Tone to the base and I'm just hitting creases and areas that I want shadowed tone. Helps to break up the terrain from the figure and give some depths, especially to the improvised wall he has built up in front of him.

 

 

Overhead shot...just trying to capture the various tones and shades...

And in case anyone is curious on what I used for these bases, I do often use Citadel technical paints...I really do like the, they're pretty handy and makes some of the basework easier...especially when I am feeling lazy and don't want to break out my filler or sand.

Again, hope this is of help...Cheers!

Painting Update - Spectre Miniatures

Howdy folks,

I hope your summer is going well...we're getting a taste of the warm weather this past week and looking into the next, but up until now I can't really complain about the weather. As mentioned a few posts or so ago, I dipped my toe into Spectre Miniatures with a small purchase of a few models and most recently I also subscribed to their Patreon.

Prior to the Patreon decision, I was quite prepared to dislike their figures. On their website, the figures look great, the scenery is pretty nice, and they really compliment each other and makes it look quite attractive. So being cautiously curious, I bought a couple of metal figures and when I got them and took them out of the box (a literal small box for the figure) I was somewhat disappointed. The figures I bought were the GRU Spetsnaz LMG and an Insurgent MG - Bravo. I wasn't too happy with the thinness of the metal for the weapons and the fact the barrel of the LMG was wrapped around pointing back to the figure made me a little grumpy. It also looked like the figure was missing a portion of its bipod.

 

So with that as my first impression I packed them back in their box and left them aside for a few months.

In between that time, I however kept seeing battle reports and various posts of Spectre figures and when they announced their Patreon page, I became interested again. The main thing I was curious about with their Patreon was the offer of STL files. Thanks to my buddy Duncan, he has been kind enough to assist me with printing...and by assist, I mean I don't have a printer, he does...super appreciate his 'assist'.

Well, Duncan printed up a couple of figures for me and I took them home and painted them up...and to be super honest, they were a lot of fun to paint. They were resin printed, took the paint well, and there was a really good dynamic to their pose that I really liked. SO, I then took the metal figs that I had bought out of the penalty box, straightened the barrel and saw that all the detail was there (hooray for stowed bipod).

 

I painted them up last week and DAMN!! I have to retract my initial impression...not only did they paint up well, they look great painted and I'm super happy with how they turned out. I obviously was bitchy the day I took them out of the box, but have to say I am really happy with the figures...

 

So, I hope you enjoy the pics. Cheers.

 

The figs...Insurgent MG, STL CIA dude, GRU Spetsnaz LMG, STL CIA dude. I really like how these figures turned out. 

The Insurgent armed with an MG, pretty straight forward pose, tried out some different paint schemes for the headscarf...I actually don't think I've tried one before...

 

 

The GRU Spetsnaz with RPK LMG...I am really really happy with how this paintjob came up...I wasn't trying to model a specific pattern or anything, rather I just wanted to get some general similarity in colour with a few random patterns. Oh, and a nod to 1980s Soviet spec ops and airborne troops in Afghanistan, i chose to paint him up with blue tennie's.

 

 

The pair of metal figs...

And now the psuedo-looking ZZ Top operative...this STL was listed as a CIA operator, so I found a paintscheme in a Force on Force book for the Offensive Actions Detachment (I think?) and chose the black on grey scheme for Agent Lynch (thank you A-Team) on the right. The Dude on the left I tried painting up with just colours that seemed appropriate.

Painted

15mm               30

28mm+             27, +4

 

Bought              25, +2 (Spectre prints)

Progress          +32