6mm Goodness…..

In between coughing and spluttering for the past month or so (and indeed for a few weeks before) I have been pootling away at some 6mm stuff. The majority of it has been for the good comrade Noakes, it took me ages to do a Soviet force for him as I was trying to ‘get’ drybrushing and wanted to make sure that I didn’t ruin them. I’ve been quite pleased with the results and here are some pics (models are all GHQ).

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

dav

Unfortunately having painted these up my own collection now looks a bit shite so the next month or so will be spent re-doing them. This will just mean a wash and drybrush for most models but some are being stripped down to start again – I bought some 99% Rubbing Alcohol to do this with, trying it out now and will report how it goes – but all of them will be re-based as I want to start using the Baccus basing grit/sand to add some texture.

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

Barrage markers for CoC

We haven’t got any markers to mark the edges of mortar stonks for our Chain of Command games and recently have been using dice to mark the edges which really just wasn’t doing it for me. As the ‘Operation Martlet’ campaign has just kicked off and I see a lot of barrages happening over the course of it, I decided to try and come up with something to make it look better in the write ups.

So, I grabbed some foam culled from old pan/dish scrubbers (I always keep some handy) and got to work ripping them up into suitable shapes. When you do this for larger ‘scale’ efforts I’ve found that you usually have a flat side so I ended up sticking 2 bits together (with super glue) and then ‘modelling’ them a bit more until you get a suitable shape – I even ended up folding bits and then gluing again or adding small bits that I’d ripped off earlier to add to the shape. The results are then glued onto pennies and once that has dried have at them with some paint. One of things that I like is that where the paint doesn’t take in the foam you get the original yellow colour showing through which adds to the effect somewhat I feel. I’m still mulling over whether to add some bits of ‘dirt’ to the edges using my basing material to show clods of earth flying about and might give one or two another go with some paint but I’m quite happy with them at the moment.

cof

cof

cof

sdr

Here’s the results of about an hours work all told – and yes, I stupidly painted the last one a different colour (ran out of glue before making the last one, so did that today and had some German Grey that I needed to use up and didn’t realise just how much darker it was!), but it will do as the ‘ranging shot marker’.

 

Swag!!

Just a quickie to show what I picked up at the Joy of 6 the other week (I would have done this sooner but had a terrible time of it health wise last week but feeling better now).

First up from H&R, enough kit to do the ‘teeth’ of a Soviet Tank regiment for FFT3. T-64’s and BMP-2’s. Both are nice models in my opinion, the T-64’s are primed and I should have both tanks and IFV’s done by the end of the week.

 

I was also picking up some planes and helicopters from Jonathan that he had going spare, I definitely needed the Soviet kit as I was lacking air support for my growing forces. Need to maybe do some repainting and slight repair work on them and add ‘my’ flight stand fixtures but not a bad haul for £15, cheers Jonathan!

Frogfoots – I really dig these!

Got to have a few Hinds

Get Hip to these daddio!

PAH-1’s for soon to be purchased Germans

 

20mm WW2 Norman Buildings

As the club doesn’t have any buildings specific for Normandy ’44 games and as quite a few of the TFL ‘Pint Sized Campaigns’ are set there I thought I might try and invest in some appropriate abodes to help with my OCD twitches when using slightly ‘off’ kit. So I started to scan the interweb for cheap as possible options and was actually quite surprised by the dearth of buildings for 20mm figures for this campaign – tons of 15 and 25mm which I must admit I thought was a tad strange.

Anyway my three-quarter arsed search resulted in me narrowing down the likely places where my shekels would go to 3 outfits:

https://www.starfortminiatures.com/20mm-models

http://www.empiresatwar.co.uk/20mm-NORMANDY-KITS.html

And a German outfit called najewitz-modellbau.de but the link I had for them just brings up an error page and it seems as if they aren’t making their kit anymore which is a right shame as I really liked it, that’ll teach me! However I pulled the trigger on the Star Fort and Empires outfits ordering the 5 building Norman Village set from the latter and a Cottage and Granary from the former. All are MDF kits (I freely admit to liking the smell of burnt MDF, something quite pleasant about it I reckon, although the Mem isn’t too keen!) and with the village set being pre-painted I decided to tackle that first.

So far I have made 3 of the 5 buildings and I must say they have gone together reasonably easily, I am extremely cack-handed when model making so I am allowing for that, but I have had a couple of problems that maybe aren’t down to that. On the plus side they are ridiculously easy to knock up, I take my time and each one took about an hour to do. Once built they look really nice, the chimneys aren’t exactly wonderful but I can live with that as they are great value for money, and once I painted the doors they really came to life and I look forward to getting them on a table. On the minus side the instructions aren’t the best, a series of blurry photo’s don’t really help with the one or two ‘trickier’ bits but having said that once you’ve built one you can do the rest of the buildings without referring to them at all. The biggest gripe I have though is the dormer’s – I can’t for the life of me get the sodding roofs of these to fit properly so I am leaving it for a day or two and then will be trying again, or I might just try and get some etched card and make some of my own to fit – it could be my modelling skills as well so I’ll try another one and report back if it is a consistent problem (EDIT: Immediately after posting this I had another go and managed to get them on, it was deffo my cack-handidness ballsing this up!). I also decided not to remove the cut outs on the roof for the chimney’s as it just didn’t look right on the first one (I re-did it after doing the 2nd building differently and seeing the difference). All in all though I am happy with these and for only £35 for the 5 they are a bargain I reckon. I’d also like to say that the service was very good too, delivery was within a week so a plus there, I’ll be definitely getting more from them when they release more in this range.

I won’t be tackling the Starfort buildings for a bit as I need to get some enamels to paint them and also they didn’t come with any instructions! Now as they are a bit more involved that the Empires ones I think that it wouldn’t have harmed them to help us out by giving us a hint at what to do, I’ll be pinging them an email to see if any are available as I couldn’t see any on their site for these particular models.

Anyway here’s some pics of the 3 made so far, I’ll bung the other 2 up later once I have them finished, I reckon once they are all done and a shop or two plus a church are added they could make a nice little village.

 

 

 

WiP: PSC Pz IV’s

Just working on these two for my Chain of Command Germans. Basic paintjob nearly finished then need to paint the tools, do a wash and dry-brush then some detailing. Not exactly exciting but it is the first things I’ve done after a horrible hiatus so just glad to be doing something again. Looking forward to getting them finished in the next few days.

Aaaargh, modelling!

I remembered yesterday why I really embraced 6mm wargaming when I discovered it back in the 80’s – you didn’t have to make the bleeding models, they come ready to go.

I thought I’d spend the afternoon putting together a couple of kits for my Chain of Command Germans as I need a choice of PAK guns for a game I’ve got against Philip and his Soviet hordes on Monday (and thought I might have a bash at the lovely PSC Panther I have as well just in case!). Even with the easy build models of today I still managed to get most of the glue on my fingers and could I get the bloody gunshield of the PAK38 to sit right , could I buggery. That’s when I remembered why I stopped making them all those years ago, my dad was right, I am the most cack-handed sod in the world. To make matters worse I then completely cocked up the paintjob on the PAK 40 so will have to make another one today! Complete and utter incompetent arse!!

At least I stopped before tackling the Panther but I’ll have a go a that today, it must just be the small fiddly ones I have problems with as the PSC Panzer IV and Sdkfz 250 I made came out ok. Thank god you don’t need much for CoC.

 

Brewing Up / Workbench no.2

So here’s what I’m working on now.

I made these KO markers yesterday for our FFT3 games, I was inspired by Philip’s ones in the game on Monday night and think they look a whole lot better than our usual ‘chuck a bit of cotton wool on the barrel’ approach. They were a piece of the proverbial, took about 15 minutes to do tops – rip up old bit of sponge from pan scourer to requisite shape, super glue to 10mm MDF square, whack some paint on, yer mum’s brother is called Robert. Really happy in how they’ve turned out.

Based up some APC’s and infantry for my Modern project which I’m about to undercoat whilst finishing off last bits for the Austrians.

Just to show that I do do other stuff – here’s some Napoleonic types which have been lurking around for a while now and which I really need to get finished. More on these in a week or two.

Oh and my new paint rack from Warbases, how did I manage before I got this? My missus loves it too, she likes the way the colours are arranged (she is an artist so is a wee bit strange!).