WWII Miniatures - Reinforcements

Since working on WWII miniatures is one of the groups on my priority list I have been slowing going through and figuring out what else I might need for each of the nationalities on the list. Somewhere there is enough Germans infantry to create a platoon sized force with some support weapons, I still have not located that box although I did find one squad sized pack from Artizan Designs that should have been in that box. My British Infantry which is based around a 1000 point army box from Warlord is probably in pretty good shape, the same for my British Airborne force which is based around a similar box along with some extras from both Warlord and 1st Corps. My American Infantry box from Warlord has also gone missing (probably a result of the remodeling at the house) so I reordered a box of American Infantry and a box of Rangers along with a couple of support weapons, although I now realize I still need another .30 cal MG. 

I bought the Ranger box even though it has the same sprues as the regular infantry box because it has some additional pewter heads and equipment so I can create some variety. I also received a small package from Offensive Miniatures to fill out a couple of holes in my US Airborne troops. I really wish manufacturers would look at the actual weapon types that typical squad carries rather than go with the Hollywood version. I could field an entire squad of US Airborne troops with Thompson sub-machine guns and still have extras from Offensive Miniatures. I have started to update the lists on the blog with what I have added and what I'm working on now.

The new stuff on the shelf:

There must be a ton of old VHS boxes in the UK. All my orders from Offensive Miniatures have come in one.

Two .30 cal MGs and two snipers

Three more Garands, three Carbines and two more Thompsons!

I have this pack already so I guess I can make some kind of little vignette with it.

I ordered a .50 cal MG and a .30 cal MG but I need another .30 cal MG so they can masquerade as a Armored Infantry platoon.

Madbob's Miniatures - Getting on with the Camo

Its been a few days (well almost a week) since I have been able to work on the WWII German vehicles so I pulled out the airbrush and some paints and went to work on the camo pattern. I had done a little bit of research on these, but there aren't a lot of references for these vehicles out there. Some of the B&W photos I did find showed the vine like pattern which seemed to be pretty common in Normandy so I went with that. What I wasn't sure if it was a two tone or a three tone pattern. I opted to go with the three tone pattern just because its more fun. I'm going to call the pattern done at this point and get ready to bring out the paint brushes and add the decals. Weathering will follow after that but I'm going to keep it a little on the lighter side, you just don't see the mud here the way you do on Eastern front vehicles for the most part.

Here's a look at the progress so far.

The paints for the evenings work, I'm becoming a fan of these for airbrush work. Jury is out on how well they will work with a brush. The AK airbrush paints worked great in my airbrush too but were pretty useless when you tried to apply them with a brush.

Started with the green

Added the brown, my control was a bit lacking this evening, my skills are definitely rusty.

I came back in with the green, since I had lost so much of it with some of the wide swatches of brown that I had managed to lay down.

Of course then I had started to lose some of the dunkelgelb base so I went back in with that to clean things up a bit.

In the end I'm pretty happy with the results. I don't think my attempts a bit of modulation were to effective but I think there is definitely a learning curve with that. My dark areas went to light in the end and they should have been much darker to have the desired effect. I'm definitely ready to move forward with the brushwork now.

One of the things that has become more obvious as I have worked on these vehicles is that I should have done a second coat of my Milliput wash. The roughness of the surface is still pretty apparent in some areas.

Team Yankee - Bringing back the green

I started with a base of NATO green on all of the modern vehicles. As I added the Matte Black and the NATO brown, the green started to get a bit lost with the overspray. In this next session I went back in and went over the green again. I originally considered going in with a slightly lighter green but in the end went with it straight from the bottle. I also added Olive Drab (the modern version) to the tent at the back of the M577 and added some APC Interior green to some of the exposed interior side of open hatches as well as to the actual interior of the M106. I'm still really liking the AMMO paints at this point.

A look at the progress so far:

The paints for the evenings work.

Taped up so I could spray the APC interior green. I'm not quite sure how these should actually be painted now that I have done it. The NATO Green was probably more correct for the hatch interior. It did lighten up the interior though and you can actually see a little bit of the detail inside.

Like I said, this green is very bright. I'll have to check and see if this actually correct or not. It might get repainted.

Here is the M577 taped up so I could spray the back with "modern" olive drab

You can see the NATO green a lot better at this point too.

The Khurasan M113s. The green looks better and now there is that bright spot on the exposed hatch.

The five M1s are looking good. A little detail painting of the stowage and they will be ready for decals .