Perry Plastic ACW Infantry

See pictures below, overall I really like the figs. My one complaint is the fact that there are three officers in every box of 36 figures, but that's a minor issue. I'm relatively happy with the outcome after painting and dipping them.

I haven't had much time for my hobby lately, real life sort of got in the way. I have been working on a scratchbuilt 40k scale warhound titan since about mid-april. I've also picked up a couple of boxes of the perry plastic ACW Infantry, I'll post some pics asap. In the mean time here are some pictures of my titan in it's current state. The main body is done, I just need to finish up the arms/guns. Pictuired below are the titan and the plasma blast gun.

Speed Painting Finale

This has taken me much longer to finish that I had intended, not because the process isn't very quick, but because real life has gotten in the way. After dipping I let the figures dry over night and then I paint on eyes and flock the bases. Here are some pics of the finished product.




....and now for some pictures of all the boxers I've finished up to now, 30 plus the 3 Jingal Guns. With the exception of the Jingal guns and crews I painted all the figures using the method described in the previous 2 posts

Psuedo Speed Painting Part 2

So here's Part 2, the figures were sprayed with a red krylon, then the flesh and other details such as hats, shields, belts, sandals, hair were block painted. When painting using this technique I do not shade, highlight or dry-brush at all I just paint solid colors. The next step is the dip, so I pull out my trusty and battered can of "Minwax Polyshades", a pair of pliers, a paper plate, and a bunch of paper towels.
After laying some paper towels out on the table to catch any excess Minwax and setting my paper plate to my left (this is were I'll set the figures to dry after they've been dipped) I pry the lid off my can of Polyshades. Next using my Wife's lovely pink pliers ('cause I'm too lazy to run downstairs and get my own) I carefully grip the base of the figure and dip it into the Minwax.

After pulling the figure from "the dip" I gently shake it to encourage some of the excess Minwax to find it's way back into the can. I then take 3-4 paper towels layered and folded in half and gently rub the excess from the figure.


Now I let the figures dry overnight on the paper plate. This is a pretty quick process, when I dipped these Boxers I also dipped another 40 some 20mm WW2 French infantry and the whole affair only took about twenty minutes. After they dry I will paint the eyes on the figures and then flock them and spray them with Testors DULL COTE . I hope to finish that up tomorrow night, then I'll post some pics of the finished product.

Pseudo Speed Painting part One

O.K., so here's a quick sort of pseudo speed painting walk through. I this case I'll be painting Chinese Boxers, but I've use the same technique for man other periods, in fact I painted all my 54mm WW2 Russians in a very similar manner. First I'll start with a selection of ten figures mounted on 1" fender washers and then sprayed with Krylon Red (I generally try to start with a flat or satin color, but in the case I'm using a gloss red) . Now using "Talaran Flesh" from the Citadel Foundations line of paints.


I will then begin to rather liberally apply paint to any exposed flesh areas of the miniatures. After all the flesh is neatly painted I'll begin painting any other details I want to stand out (including weapons, hair, belts, and foot wear) leaving the rest of the figure the color of the base coat. The finishing touch is to paint the bases a dark brown color and then the figures are ready to be dipped. I do not paint the eyes at this point, I wait until after the figures have been dipped to do this. I'll post pictures of the dipping process at a later date in part two of this article.

Russian Front Game photos

It's been awhile since me last update, so I thought I'd put up a quick post suggesting you head on over to the Gettysburg Area Gamers website and check out the photo gallery for some pictures of some of the great games we've played in the past. There are also some pics of the recent 54mm Russian front game I ran using Arc of fire. The game was actually the same scenario as recorded in my last post with some minor changes. It was played on a larger table, and both the Russians and the Germans rolled much better on the additional units chart, with the Ruskies getting a 47mm AT gun and the Germans rolling the Sdkfz.222 for this game. The group played out the scenario very differently than Rueben and Clay did. The Halftrack was destroyed on the first turn by AT gun fire. The game quickly turned into an infantry battle for the stone bridge. We had to call the game at the end of turn 8 due to time restraints. I called it as a Russian Victory as they were still holding all of their objectives, however I think if we had gone another 2 turns the Reds would have been done.

Arc of Fire Game

This past weekend I hosted a small Arc of Fire WW2 game at my house. The intent was to introduce some fairly new gamers (My brother in-law Reuben and my cousin Clay "Claybird") to the rule-set and to further acclimate myself to the rules as well. I'll be running a similar scenario at an upcoming Thursday night G.A.G. Game. It was a pretty simple scenario, with elements of a larger German force advancing towards a town, and a small group of Soviets attempting to slow/stop them. The German objectives were to capture the stone house, the small hill to the south and to exit at least one vehicle off the eastern table edge. The Russian objectives were to simply hold either the stone house, or the Hill. The Game was to end at turn 12. Both sides had the opportunity to roll for additional elements at the start of the game, while the Reds rolled an extra squad the Germans rolled a 3, being one of only two results on a D10 that would result in no additional forces.

The Game started pretty well with the Germans playing it cautious and advancing slowly down the paved road towards the stone bridge. The bridge was the only place they could cross the freezing river. While the Russian platoon HQ took up position in the house, one of the russian infantry squad to up a position behind the house. The Russian assault squad was hidden in tall grass to the east of the bridge. The Political section and second infantry squad held the hill.

Suppressing fire from the Russians on the hill slowed the advance of the German infantry up the road, however the halftrack pushed relentlessly forward to the din of small arms fire. The Red infantry squad positioned to the east of the house attempted to sneak around the north side of the house for where they stayed for the rest of the game thanks to effectively suppressing German MG fire.
Turn three started with the Russian still holding both the Hill and stone house and the entirety of the German forces still to the west of the bridge. On the first German Card the Halftrack roared of the Bridge and poured Machine Gun Fire into the house. The Second card for the halftrack followed immediately afterwards and the Halftrack moved down the dirt road towards the table edge were it stopped to unload into the nearby russian infantry. The third turn ended with the halftrack stopped only inches from the table edge. The Political sections Commissar was dead ,the infantry squads on the hill and advancing around the side of the house were both broken, and the assualt squad was charging towards the halftrack.

This was as far as the halftrack was to make it, the Russain assault squad was the first card up on the 4th turn and some well placed Grenades from the Ruskies put it and most of the infantry still within out of commission. We had to call the game early at the end of turn four, I called it a tie, but it would have been interesting to see how things turned out. There were still 2 relatively fresh Gerry squads coming over the bridge, the Ruskies were mostly broken and pretty shot up.

The nearly impervious Char B1

The Char B1 Heavy Tank, the most powerful tank of the early part of ww2, with a forward hull mounted 75mm gun, at turreted 45mm gun, a Coaxial MG and armor that in some places reached a thickness of 65mm. At the beginning of the war the German's didn't even have a anti-tank gun that could pierce the armor except when a direct hit to the main vent was achieved. Of course they could be taken out by repeated hits, they could be slowly pounded into non-functionality. I'd imagine that repeated direct hits would have quite a negative effect on the crew morale.

Enough history though, I've recently finished painting six of these monsters. I painted three in a camo scheme and three a basic green paint job. This is the first real camo job I've tried on an AFV and I'm relatively pleased with it.

A battle report of sorts.

Well, I played in a really fun Span-Am war naval game last night. I had intended to write a bit of a battle report about it, but have found my memory is some what lacking when it comes to details.
I was a spanish play along with three of my fellow gamers (Jack, Rob, and Woody), We had seven spanish ships, For capitol ships and three torpedo destroyers. Out objective was to escape off the opposite side of the board, while dealing as much destruction as we could. We found out later that sinking a single American ship would have one us the game.

On the First turn our four capital ship advanced towards the opposite table edge, at full bore. While Jack took the Torpedo Destroyers (they didn't count for Victory Points if they got off the edge) straight for the American Fleet, in attempt to slow down the Americans while we headed for our objective, taking potshots at the yanks as we went. This had moderate success in the first turn, while we inflicted some damage on the American ships, Billy Ray and has boxcars caused a catastrophic critical hit on Rob's ship the Vizcayo and sunk it befor the turn was out. The second turn proceeded about the same way. We inflicted some more damage on the Texas and the Brooklyn and advanced forward. The third turn rolled around at full steam and we inflicted even more damage on the Texas and the Brooklyn, but a withering hail of fire from Billy Ray's ship sent my ship the Cristobolo Colon straight to the bottom of the sea. In the fourth turn, we dealt yet more damage to the Texas and Jack successfully rammed the Texas with one of his torpedo destroyers while taking only minimal damage himself, the Texas was listing to port and her bilge pumps were going full bore. The game went on for a few turns after this with Mr. John's Texas pulling back and the Brooklyn taking quite a beating trying to cover the Texas' retreat. In the end all our ships were sunk and the Texas had one hull point left, the Brooklyn had 2. So it was a victory for the Yanks, but we sure gave them hell.

Early World War II French Armor

Ahhhh..... the Early War French army. The Early part of the War holds great interest for me, I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about 1940 France, 1939 Poland, and even the Winter War between the Finns and the Russians, I've been picking up miniatures for pretty much all the above as well. The French however are the closest to being done. I've uploaded some pictures of some recently completed French armor here.

They are all RAFM models, there are 4 Renault R35s, 2 Hotchkiss H35s and 2 Lorraine APCs.

I'm pretty pleased with how they came out. While the french had some great armor camo schemes it's my understanding (and in this case I'm going to stick by that understanding no matter how wrong it turns out to be) that a quite a few French tanks of the period didn't get the camo treatment, so for these models I decided not to go the way of camo. That is of course just a lame excuse, because I hate painting camo and I'm not very good at it either.

The beginning..... and abit about things to come

I've started this blog with the intention of recording the progress of all the current wargaming/modeling projects I'm currently working on. I suffer from project/period A.D.D. so I've always got several different projects going at once. I'm currently working on Early World War 2 French in "20mm", Boxer Rebellion, and updating some of my 40K armies. Well I guess that's about it for my first post.