Weekend Painting

I managed to both prime and actually start painting both some wargaming pieces and parts of my competition entries for ReaperCon. Not a lot of progress at this point but enough to make me happy.

A pair of PzKfw IV Hs that have been sitting around for a while. These will be strictly gaming pieces at this point. That's the Warlord Games version on the left and the Rubicon version on the right. This particularly Rubicon kit is no longer available, its currently being redone to meet their new standards.

The Rubicon version, note the separation of the plastic joint on the turret angle. Accidentally left these in the car. The poor glue joint came apart from the heat and I lost both halves to the commanders hatch.

The Warlord Games Version

Rubincon on the left, Warlord on the right

Warlord with the extra filter mechanism, that could be left off of most of the H's

The Rubicon kit. I really need to pull out the wire and replace the antennas on kits with wire from the shop. Of course that wire has disappeared right now. I'll find it in a month when I have forgotten why I needed it. 

Competition work

Hogan, and the initial primer and skin color. Yes its green, I'm trying an experiment with skin using green paint as the undercoat. Will see how it goes. This diorama idea is coming together, we will see if I can pull it off. I received the POW miniatures from Ebob but they are just to small to match up with these from Stoessi's Heros.

Hogan, Klink and Schultz, all in green face

Sven, from Knuckleduster in 1/48. I might well enter this one as well, so I'm going to paint him for competition.

The Heroine from the "It Came From Outer Space" Diorama. I'm working on two of these and the best will be entered as a single miniature entry and the other will go into the diorama.

C&N Railroad Project - O Scale Miniatures - Knuckleduster Western Rail

The O Scale miniatures that I ordered from Knuckleduster arrived quite promptly yesterday. I already have some of these miniatures from Knuckleduster's Gunfighters' Ball Range and I was definitely curious to see how they would look scaled up. These are the same digital sculpts used in the Gunfighters' Ball range just printed and cast in 1/48th scale. They hold up quite nicely to their smaller brethren, quality miniatures from Knuckleduster. Huge improvements in sculpting quality now that they have do digital sculpting. 

I was eager to so how close in size they would be to the minis from Aspen Modeling as well. Again I was not disappointed, the two lines match up very well and I don't think there will be any problems mixing them together after they have been painted. I think Aspen Modeling miniatures are a bit beefier but you can decide for yourself from the pictures below.

The loot. The biggest difference between the two companies is definitely price. I  picked up: Mary (KWR-48111), Town Doctor (KWR-48114), Carpetbagger (KWR-48112), Swede (KWR-48110), Bartender (KWR-48106) and the Conductor (KWR-48118)

KWR-48110 - Swede in 1/48 scale. He is simply labeled as Pedestrian on the website though.

Large Swede and small Swede. You can really see the difference in scales here.

The Photographer from Aspen Modeling on the left, Swede in the center and right. I'll be able to use both ranges without an issue. The smaller scale Swede might well fit in as a youngster though, definitely something to think about. 

C&N Railroad Project - O Scale Miniatures - The Aspen Modeling Company

You can just see how small the AWI troops look even with the mini still in the package!

I can say enough about how quickly Alan packed and shipped this order to me. I really appreciate it especially when I have $250 worth of games still in "packing" status with another company. He also dropped me a note asking for a bit more information on the pictures of potential miniatures I had sent him. He was a least receptive to the ideas, unlike Knuckleduster which while polite said that they weren't really going to do much with that part of the business. Its to bad because it could really be a good market for them.

I ordered three O-Scale miniatures to try out: #O-03 Brakeman, #O-42 Man with Dog, and #O-66 Photographer.

Brakeman

Man with Dog

Photographer

While there appears to be a fair amount of resin flash, it is easily cleaned up. There are a couple of rough areas the needed some green stuff work on the Brakeman and the photographer.

A little squadron green stuff to fill a gap in the resin

About what I expect from resin miniatures and nothing terrible difficult to deal with. Mold lines were pretty light and easily dealt with as well.

For those that still think 1/48 scale is a reasonable substitute for 28mm miniatures here is a comparison shot with the Prospector from Reaper Miniatures.

Reaper Miniatures Prospector on the left, Aspen Modeling Company Brakeman on the right. Reaper miniatures are on the large side already and even he looks small.

While they are not exactly on equal footing, the prospector only comes up to about the brakeman's shoulder, so they are quite a bit larger and won't really work well together unless you are populating your wild west games with 7' tall individuals.

For the C&N they should be perfect, the brakeman fits right in, the other two have clothing that's a bit more modern looking than my period, but I don't think that will be an issue after they have been painted. I have managed to get two of them ready for priming yesterday, but I still need to finish working on the man with dog. I am going to mount them on bases for now as its probably going to be a while before Sunset will be ready for them.

The photographer and camera. The camera needed a little work, but looks pretty good

Brakeman and Photographer ready for a little paint.