Current projects
Been a very long time since I updated this. What with one thing and another my hobby time has been somewhat limited over the last few months and i've been dedicating it to actually painting and gaming!
So, what have I been up to recently? My Flames of War German army is coming along very nicely with the addition of some extra units to bolster what is already a formidable force. I reckon with the new additions that the points cost to take everything would be well over 3,000 now.
Recently got into some new games as well, including Alkemy from Kraken Editions in France. This is another skirmish game based in their own world with some very nice 28mm figures available. One excellent feature is that, when you buy a starter set it includes everything you need to play the game including a tape measure! This is a nice touch and means that it's very accessible and easy to get into.
My paintjob on epic Butcher also won me the coveted Single Mini award in the painting competition at my local games club, 4TK. I am very pleased with this result and have the trophy proudly displayed in my painting room.
I've also been wanting to get more into terrain building after my successes with the ruined tower from Hirst Arts and a few other smaller bits, I feel that it is time to tackle something bigger. I've been wanting a fully scenic Flames of War board for a while and now that I managed to rope the missus into helping me to clear out the garage, I now have a work space that I can leave things set up in for months at a time. Let's face it, this is me we're talking about. This latest project isn't going to be done much before this time next year!
Some things I have in the pipeline are doing a few tips and tutorial posts for painting and terrain making for this site. Nothing earth-shattering, but just some bits and pieces that i've picked up, tried and learned from over the last few months. I think the first one will be on duplicating rust effects in different ways to get different effects.
A bit of Flames of War painting
Haven't been doing a lot of painting recently since finding Steam and Left 4 Dead on the PC. However, my hard drive decided to pack up this morning so i'll be doing a lot more painting whilst i'm waiting for a new one to show up.
On the table this weekend was some more of my German Flames of War army. This time it was the turn of the mortar team in their 251/2's. All the crew and the observer teams are painted up and awaiting mounting. The half-tracks themselves have been primed and are ready for basecoating, camouflage and weathering. For the colours, I use the FoW Vallejo paint sets to get some nice authentic colours. The half-tracks (along with the rest of my vehicles) are based in Middlestone with German Camo Dark Green and Chocolate Brown for the camouflage pattern. I get some excellent use out of my airbrush, which makes it so much easier to get a nice, smooth coat on and makes painting the camo pattern take seconds rather than hours.
I'll hopefully be finishing them off tonight and after that, I can go back to the Kayazy Assassins, Behemoth and Kodiak for my Khador army that i've had sitting around half-painted for a while now.
Flames of War – Germans
This is the current state of my Flames of War German Panzergrenadier force.
Currently we have a command HQ in the middle, two Panzergrenadier platoons to each side and at the back is a 7.5cm PaK40 anti-tank gun platoon, although they are currently missing the Kfz 251/1D transports required by the force list i've picked.
On the painting table I have five Panzer IV H's which are nearly complete and waiting in the wings are a heavy machine gun platoon and a mortar platoon. Below are some close-up shots of individual units and pieces
