Kraut Rock

This handsome bunch of burgers are the old BEF miniatures early WW2 Germans. Since the range was taken over by Warlord they’ve been changed slightly making these beauties out of production – as if they weren’t brilliant enough already.

Now before you start telling me just how marvelous I am for this tremendous paintjob I have to hold up my hand and stop you. These lovely little pjs are those of the boy Slug, I think they’re brilliant and I’m a hard hobby taskmaster. I wish I’d managed such a level of painting by the tender age of fifteen and one third.

Actually I’m not sure I could match these, lucky for me I don’t really do old Germans otherwise I’d have to find another excuse.

The epaulettes, rank markings and other emblems are all paint, not a transfer in sight.

Of course having seen what he’s managed with these I’m inclined towards buying the new lot.

Saxon Legs

The motor pool for our Jihadistan campaign has swollen with the addition of this brilliant Saxon APC from Sloppy Jalopy having been originally created by Uncle Crouchie. Although the Saxon is out of service, and not really ultra modern, it is one of my favourite British vehicles. Luckily Jihadistan is fictional so I can have any kit I want… hurrah! This kit is a resin hull with metal detailing, all bar the wheels easy to put together with most parts fitting well.

Working out exactly how the wheels fitted was the hardest part. The instructional drawing was a sketch which measured about one and a half inches square. I spent ages working out how to fit the suspension bars, the axles and the connecting driveshaft. I was happy with it until it came to fit the wheels as I’d wrongly sited the whole lot by about 2mm and the rear wheels wouldn’t fit. I ending up having to bosh it. Either way the wheels do feel delicate so I made have to come back and fit those more solidly.

The crewman is from Old Glory UK, one of their slowly growing modern British range. Andy did apologise for it’s slow evolution but it grows at an agreeable pace as far as I do things, so no raids on piggy banks for a small pewter Pyrenees which doesn’t get painted for a year. I found it and the ones I have in hand for a Warrior very easy to work with, especially after the problems I had with the ones I previously used.

I added a stowage bin to the back mainly because they tended to have them, even though all the X-marked boxes are stowage too, but also because I could fill it with some of the S&S stowage bits. I highly recommend the stowage sets, they’re all metal and feature everything you might need, some bits you hadn’t thought of and there’s loads of pieces.

Salute 2012

Like thousands of pious gamers I made the annual pilgrimage to Excel to attend Salute yesterday, and it was it’s usual brilliant shiny self. Big thanks to everyone involved. Here are the pictures, the usual rules apply; if the photo is of your game or work then feel free to help yourself to a copy for your own use, a credit would be nice.

He Who Dairies

As this post was published the doors have just opened for Salute2012 and if you’re reading this shortly afterwards then you’re probably not lucky enough to be there – unless you’re reading this on some smart device as you line up outside. This humble project is for the Frothy Racers game being run by UncEvl at table GB05, the idea behing the game being a mix of the film Ben Hur and the Wacky Races cartoon. I thought I’d do Benny Hill’s “Ernie” charactor thus bringing a hint of VBCW to it. Above are the basic pieces, a diecast milk cart, a pair of horses which I scrounged off a web chum, and the base lovingly handcrafted by UncEvl himself.

Ernie is an adapted Black Cat Bases Pianist sans stool and piano, to this I added spectacles (even though Benny Hill did the video for the song without them, I thought they where iconic and hence vital), a cap, an apron, and a cash bag.

These painted up rather nicely, and I’m happy to have secured cart horses with proper plough harnesses. Finding the horses was quite difficult as most miniature horses are for cavalry and have tack for riding and saddles.

I did the milk cart in a racing red as this is set to race some quite scary looking vehicles. Knowing how the scariest folk are usually the weakest this is a deliberate ploy to shatter their morale.

Fully painted and based including two crate of silver top and one of gold top.  The yoghurts for her at number 22 are inside, so out of view.

The signs were print outs on to coloured paper, which means no nasty white edges to deal with. They’re not perfect but narcissism must take second place occasionally.

This rear view is what the rest of the field will see most of… I hope.

Day of the Jackal

These vehicles from S and S models have been sitting on my to-do pile for far too long, so I bit the bullet and set about completing this pair of Jackals and a solo Snatch Landrover.

For Ultra-Modern these are a must really – especially if, like me, you don’t really go in for Yanks too much. They weren’t as easy a build for two reasons: the first being how I’d stored them, their components, plus a Sloppy Jalopy Saxon all together. The second being how these don’t fit together as easily as I’d have liked.

After a hint of Sherlock Holmes I’d worked out which piece was which, so the first problem was solved. Then on with the build, I decided against filling the bubbles leaving them to look like bullet holes instead.

Most difficult was seating the crew, well sticking them in was easy enough but matching up arms with steering wheels or weapons was not straitforward, some pieces need to be trimmed down if you want a pose other than arms up in a kind of surrender.

The Snatch was similar, the steering wheel as supplied would only fit if you didn’t want a driver.

Handily the stowage kits they supply are really handy especially when mixed with a few scratchbuilt pieces.

As you can see the underside has seen a fair amount of small arms fire.

On patrol they do look good though, and on bounding overwatch very likely to scare the bodily fluids from the enemy.

Don’t get the Hump

The Jihadistani war drive continues at a good rate, bulking out the forces I have so far to make more realistic sides. This isn’t too difficult given how I mainly have infantry, lots of infantry. One thing I did want was camels for carting supplies around in a campaign. I got the pair above from the chum known as Eastern Barbarian on GWP so no real idea who makes them. They’re the first camels I’ve painted in 28mm and I really enjoyed them, but they don’t look as good in the photo as they do in real life. Shame on you digital photography!

This is an Assault Group’s Taliban firing M60, which I’ve set on a different base to the one supplied. The supplied one is brilliant, featuring a dead Terry Taliban which the gunner sets his gun across.

I’m setting all the support teams on the same base just to keep it simple. I got Fenris Games to cut these ones for me and they can supply them at exactly the size you want.

There are three figures to this set as well as a couple of spare ammo boxes. As I’m trying to keep these bases small for maximum utility on the game table I decided to base him seperately.

There’s enough pieces to a set to make multiple bases quite different. A nice touch.

Next up is a British Mortar and Crew – a delightful set which I’m looking forward to using.

I’ve painted them in the new British MTP pattern camo, but from memory as I don’t own anything in this pattern yet.  I’ve added some SA-80s from Hasslefree as they seemed a little under-supplied when it came to small arms.

One thing I would have liked would have been a box or two of shells, but I didn’t have the time to scratchbuild a couple especially as I’m not sure what they look like.

Finally the British GPMG – a neat trio which I just about managed to squeeze onto the base.

I did have a little trouble getting both the gunner and loader in place with this one.

Blimey, thanks to this photo I’ve just noticed the sugaring on the observers legs. This has set me scurrying off to check the model only to be relieved in being able to dust it off…

…God Bless digital photography!

At a Slug’s Pace

Despite the name our humble Slug Industries keeps producing more gaming goodies at a reasonably fast pace producing as it does a model a month on average. The latest is the Art Deco House above, which I’m glad to have finally finished as it’s been a slight horror show from begining to end. Being designed to fit into our old vacuum chamber with just milimeters to spare was difficult enough, but the original idea was for the windows to be cast thin enough to be poked out, however with such a thin mould wall this proved difficult when combined with the actuality of casting resin a milimeter or less in thickness. After a bit of discussion of this over at GWP the general feeling was how this wasn’t really needed. So I thickened the walls, made new moulds and here’s the result. All that remains is to go and mention it on all the best forums, but I imagine on LAF I’ll suffer some random thread derail which will make it all worthwhile.

We just noticed how our humble Fred wasn’t ever listed on the Slug Industries site so we’ve sorted that out, a surprising oversight especially as we’ve sold quite a few of these.