Second German rifle squad

Hobby wise I've been really busy this week in order to get the next German rifle squad done before the 5th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge starts.

First German rifle squad

Having been in some kind of an "Early War" painting francy lately I managed to painted my first squad in about six days. If I could only always get my stuff done that fast :-)

Early War German Specialists

Some might remember the Panzer II I painted a few weeks back. Over the past few days I finally came round to start painting some accompanying Infantry.

 

First Indochina in Greyscale and the 5th Analogue Hobbies Annual Painting Challenge

Recently I mentioned a secret project I'm working on and now is time to show it off. Inspired by Curts amazing "Great War in Greyscale" project as well as his take on the "First Indochina War" I decided to combine both projects into one. But what was still missing was the impetus to get going.

A new Dux Brittaniarum Campaign...

On sunday Chris and I had another go at the TFL's Dux Britaniarum. As the last campaign was almost done (with the british beeing almost constantly beaten) and me having lost the character sheets of my Nobles during the summers renovation we decided to start a new one. To prevent me from loosing my stuff again I decided to keep track of my characters' developement and the general events of the campaign on a dedicated site on this blog.

The first game was to be a raid on a small british farmstead. We set up the table and I thought I was lucky when rolling for my entry point and coming out next to the farm. But as Chris rolled for how much head start he would have before my forces would arrive my luck ran out. He had three full movements with his Saxons before I was able to deploy my British.

The battlefield

The Saxon force

Fall of the western Empire 19: More Comitatenses

Well, it's been a while since I did some figures for my late Romans. But as Chris lately finished a base of lovely cataphracts I remembered I also had some half finished Foundry Late Romans in my painting queue. Then our arrangement for a game yesterday (more on that in a later post) gave me the final impulse to finally finish up those poor buggers.

Step by step: Cheap & easy sabot bases #2

Following on an earlier tutorial on how to make cheap sabot bases here's how I do round ones for my WW2 gaming.

I just recently started to use this kind of bases for fire teams. I find them to be visually more appealing than the usual single based models. Especially with firing machine gun teams it looks more convincing to me and allows you to put the figures in scene. Another plus in my eyes is it's easier to handle while still allowing for easy casualty removal.

To make your own sabot bases you'll need:

• Footfall sound insulation (In German it's called polystyrol)
• Round lasercut or plastic bases the size you want the final sabot base to be
• Hobbyknife
• Marker
• Proxxon (or similar) Hot Wire Cutter
• 21mm Hollow punch
• 20mm Washers
• self adhering magnetic bases
• Fast curing PVA
• Old brush

First of all the shape of the bases is marked on the polystyrol. I usually use 2mm thick MDF bases from the different lasercut companies out there as bottom layers. Of course you can go funky and cut out your own irregular shaped bases from Plasticcard and still use the steps provided below.

 

US Army Medium Machine Gun Team

Today a rather productive week came to a sudden halt as I'm suffering from a mighty hangover. Sometimes you really can feel one ain't a young grasshopper anymore. Maybe I simply should stop all this drinking nonsense and better do some proper "Gentleman" stuff like maybe refurbish old cars or the like.

But on to the real reasons for this post. Next to some other as yet strictly confidential other stuff I painted a .30 cal Browning M1919 medium machine gun team.

US Army Rifle Squad

Again it has been a while but I haven't been totally lazy as I managed to paint another rifle squad for my US force. Again I used the great Artizan range by Mike Owen.

M1 57mm Anti-Tank Gun, Medic and Sniper

Some more reinforcements for my newly acquired WW2 US Army.
Figures are a mix of Artizan Designs and Warlord Games.