In a Battlefield of their own

Happy coincidences are always welcome, especially when they produce figures which fit into somewhere the manufacturer didn’t intend.  These modern figures from Hasslefree fit quite neatly into the world of the popular game “Battlefield 3”. For a player of that game, like me, it does make them irresistable.  The figures are very similar but have a choice of two main weapons and seperate heads.  Giving them different paintjobs makes them look less similar so that’s the course I took.

These come on slotta bases, and like a lot of the smaller producers it’s a restriction which the sculptors strive to escape from. Kevin White is no different in this aspect and the miniatures feet are barely in contact with the slotta bar. As I base on tuppences having such a small area of contact between figure and base can be a problem.

Not wanting to repeat problems I’ve had before when totally removing the slotta bar I decided on a new angle and this was to cut away the bulk of it leaving just a thin strip. This gives a lot more contact area but also allows the lightness sculpted in to the piece. Worth a try and a lot quicker than pinning.

In the computer game the troops have a very loose dress code, so rather than try to replicate a scheme I decided to just go for the gneral Battlefield Casual look which they all seem to have. I’m happy with the finish althoug, yet again, the photos have me sucking my teeth at the touches of dust, the odd wrong dab, etc, which only becomes apprent at this size. Good news is it distracts me from any blurry photos.

Hasslefree are about to release another pair in this series, and I suspect they’ll be as animated, well detailed and generally brilliantly sculpted as we’ve come to expect. A must-paint.

Command & Conquer

I wrapped up my British modern forces with this British Infantry Platoon Command from the Assault Group and it’s a fitting end.  This pack contains two officers waving their arm around, a field radio man and a soldier with a 2 inch mortar.

When I started painting the new British MTP camo I was quite hesitant but happy with the eventual results. As I’ve done more it’s become a speedy freehanded joy although it has evolved into getting larger in pattern and lighter in overall shade. Hopefully these will mix well and produce the variations you see across a number of troops in the field.

A small hole was drilled into the top of the radio pack for a small aerial to be added using a thin pin with the head snipped off. It might not be that accurate as I’ve seen some radios which have some folding type of antenna and others which seem to thicken towards the top, almost like a silencer on a gun barrel. It suits my needs of course, and for added realism it’s likely to stop working at the most inconvenient time.

It’s very likely for these pieces to become primary targets for snipers based on the old idea that anyone waving their arms around must be an officer and should be shot first.

The 2 inch mortar is an unusual piece of kit as it’s been used by the British Army in one form or another for almost one hundred years. It started life as the 2 inch Medium Mortar in 1915, only to be dropped two years later.  By 1937 the over-titled Ordnance SBML 2 inch mortar was developed and saw service for decades until the late 1980s, being replaced by the metric L9A1 51mm Light Mortar or 2.02 inch.  Which is what is used today and this chap has. Watch out Terry Taliban.

Euro Miltaire 2012

It was the yearly pilgrimage to Folkestone for the talent showcase which is Euro-Militaire on Saturday and the Boy Slug, Captain Stinky and myself dutifully made our way down there bathed in sunshine. Although the quality gap between modellers and gamers work is shrinking year on year there is one glaring difference between the two, namely the price of everything. Model kits and accessories are hair-whiteningly expensive in comparison but the modellers don’t seem to mind. Big thanks to the ladies on the door for their friendly welcome, although I do think many visitors don’t bring themselves to say “Good Morning” to them. Why I couldn’t say.

Bumped into Jason Salkey, who is well-known to Salute visitors, otherwise known as Rifleman Harris from the TV series Sharpe’s Rifles, also chums Daring Dan, Fascist Child Killer Tony and a few lads from the local gaming club. The most intriguing stall was the Airfix one showing their much anticipated 1/48th modern British models, which were very nice but they just had a display and not a single one for sale.

Despite the great organisation and obvious efforts by all involved a couple of gripes remain. One is the number of visitors who insist on wearing large rucksacks in a well attended and therefore crowded show. Typically they move as if they weren’t wearing them, sending the uninitiated flying. Regulars have in turn developed their own techniques for dealing with them from braced standing to returning shoves and it doesn’t help the atmosphere.  The second is the lighting in the display and competition rooms, which is only a problem if you’re taking photographs – and there’s a lot of folk snapping away. Gripes aside it’s a cracking show and as the European wide attendance shows it’s worth making the effort to pay it a visit.

Here’s just over a hundred photos from the weekend, mainly stuff which took my eye, had reasonable light and wasn’t too crowded to get near.

Should anyone know the story behind the photo of Ken’s Cup, featured above, I’d love to hear it.

Die Nacht der Toten

The boy Slug has a slowly evolving nazi zombie project inspired, in part, by the Call of Duty game which features the opportunity to shoot Nazi zombies. These figures are part of West Wind Productions Secrets of the Third Reich which we picked up a couple of Salutes ago. Rather uphappily I didn’t enjoy painting these at all. The detail seems a little limited, even confused. I have a sneaking suspicion this might be why these were the ones I was asked to paints.

The bases are the 30mm DS Ruined Flagstone set from Fenris Games, and those I enjoyed working on more than the figures. Slug set the figures on the bases and rather well I think, I really liked the one with a stream trickling through it, and the boy set the figure firmly standing in it.

All-in-all an odd experience. usually I strive to paint up to the sculpt but on these the piece which demanded justice was the base…

Even more Bazaar

Filling out the Jihadistan project gave me the chance to paint these rather brilliant Eureka miniatures‘ middle eastern civilians. There’s also a couple of stalls but I haven’t quiet figured out the best way to base those so they can wait.  It’s easy to assume how simple figures are simple to sculpt, and the burqa clad ladies might ecourage that train of thought.

However I already have a couple of burqa wearers and they’re simple figures simply done whereas these have been much better made. Each figure has a distinct attitude in it’s carving making them look more like a moment frozen in time.

They’re also rather timeless, with the exception of the woman with carrier bags, so could fit in an ancient scenario right up to the modern day. Although I wouldn’t buy anything from the traders I’ll be knocking on Eurekas door again.

Dressed to Kill

The boy Slug has an eager eye for a uniform, especially a decent colour reference for basing painted figures on. Recently he found a whole pile of them and thought he might share them with you as well as have them in one handy online place. Sadly the picture above is the only British one but in the gallery below is a wealth of German, Russian, Polish and United States WW2 uniforms for your use. Enjoy but please don’t hotlink to them.

 

Anarchy in the UK

Last week I set myself the task of painting as many figures as I could in a week and choose to hack a trail through my pile of figures for a Very British Civil War, as well as accidently buying some more. Here you can see how  far I got. Firstly my fabourite of the bunch is this trio from the Royal household; Edward VIII, Wallace Simpson and a lady waiting around – yes a lady-in-waiting. Delightful sculpts on and all, the ones of Eddie and that woman being freebies from the Newark Irregulars Partizan shows and quite difficult to get hold of if, like me, you can’t make it to the show.  A while back a pair of these were on Ebay for a whooping £8 a piece, but thankfully the wonderful Irregukar Tricks heard about a few folk seeking these figures and incredibly generously sent pairs out to those in need without even asking for postage. What a diamond gent. Three cheers for him!

The lady in waiting was very simple, leaving more intricate work for the Royals. Gave him a golden gun, very likely a gift from some foreign despot, while she has a Chanel looking two piece with matching shoes. Great fun to paint. I put only red, white and blue flowers on the King’s base, while Simpson got just scarlet.

The two Empress figures on the left are the cause of this painting fury inspired by another piece of gamer-on-gamer generosity. This time it was Ook with an offer of free figures over on VBCF. I’ve just finished reading Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” and aside from enjoying it a great deal it produced a desire to field some anarchists and those figures suited well I thought for Officers and NCOs, having slipped off economic restraint I bought both packs of Bolt Action’s partisans, which include the two on the right which fit perfectly. The Gods smile down eh?

Thankfully there’s a few armed women in the pack too. There’s really not enough fighting women miniatures around so I’m always happy to find more. It’s a myth to siggest they can’t fight, they fought furiously in the early days of the Spanish Civil War and many still do today even as terrorists.

Although I’ve given these a hint of their anarcho-syndacalist cause I have tried to keep them pretty generic, so they could form any militia for VBCW, SCW or even as partisans as intended.

Apologies for the blur on this one… they’re running.

The one on the left looks, yo me, like a Paul Hicks sculpt.

Talking of the maestro here are a pair of his on the left. The ever wonderful Mutton Chop miniatures are some of the most complicated I’ve ever seen, they could make you knees tremble with their details but a steady nerve and a steadier paintbrush really delivers a great finished figure. The pair on the right are meant for BUF militia but again I’ve kept them generically suitable for other games.

The Lewis gun is almost a holy relic or heathen fetish in the world of VBCW. We all really like them and want lots of them… so here’s some for the BUF using Gripping Beast figures. These come with loose heads so you can set them as you see fit and that’s handy if you want more than a pair of them.

The pair on the right are from Volksturm pack we picked up from where we don’t recall, they’re a trifle small and under detailed, especially compared to the brutes beside them.

Finally the most generic piece, a Vickers HMG. Akthough there’s some joy to be had in having HMG teams in every flavour you might ever play I thought it might make some small sense to just base one  all alone, and then a pair of figures can be set sadie it to show whose it is. Not exciting but practical. So in total I managed thirty-three figures and one HMG, which I’m chuffed with. This week I will be mainly talking to those strangers in my house called family.

What me Warrior?

This perfectly scaled beauty is the Imprint Models “Warrior” which I hastened to finish after my dad-in-law got this tank done very quickly. This model comes with the extra armour which is standard now, but if you wanted an older version you just leave it off. There’s also a pair of draped camo nets supplied which I choose not to fit.

Again the quality is top notch making the entire experience enjoyable. Even thing fits together well with only a little bit of extra effort to fit the armour up kit.  Unlike the T72-M1 all the hatches are seperate, so you can fit crew if thats preferred over the buttoned-up version.

I’ve used Brookes Miniatures WMIK crews from Old Glory UK – they’re well priced and can be hacked to suit. I’ve painted the driver as Johnson Beharry prior to his Victoria Cross.

Effectively it’s the last vehicle for the regiment and it fits in well as a father figure to the smaller vehicles.

 

 

Rocket Man

With Salute 2012 now a happy memory and a dent to the wallet it’s time to crack on with what we spent our cash on. The boy Slug beat me in the race with his Dwarves from Akula, while I’ve been slower off the mark. One thing I did manage in my consumerism was to get the rest of the Taliban, or Afghan Guerillas as they call them, from Eureka. So now I have every piece they make and I’m euphoric about them, so much so as to have painted some already.

It was good to see the Eureka gang at Salute but my being prearmed with sarcasm about the Ashes, Ricky Pontin, and many other antipodean delights proved to be a waste of time. I didn’t know that Nic from Eureka was from Yorkshire, and I’d left my Geoff Boycott gags at home. Alongside him were two seppos, and one solitary Aussie who lived in London. A genuine surprise but so cosmopolitan as to be delicious. Unfortunately Kosta Heristanidis wasn’t there so compliments galore for his great sculpting had to be tolerated by everyone else.

There really is something about Kosta’s work which I find delightful, good sculpting is only part of it -both in detail and charactor, there’s also something aboput painting them with every fold and line fitting my brush as if to tempt the paint into place. With some figures painting can be a chore, with these it’s an encouraged caress.

This piece, as I imagine you’ve gathered, is the rocket launcher. There’s a pair of loaders, the launcher plus all the bits and bobs to turn this base into a mini diorama. The launchers is eleven pieces of metal which all fit together first time, and there’s only the tiniest of mould lines on the figures. I can’t recommend these enough. However if the idea of ordering all the way from Victoria worries you try the Isle of Wight instead.

Again I’ve based this on a laser zapped custom sized base from Fenris Games, they’re a great idea well priced and give you as much room as you want. I like mine small as possible and really busy – Job Done!

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.