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.

World War II Project - 101st Airborne Characters - Stoessi's Heroes

It seems quite appropriate that I show off this latest acquisition on the anniversary of D-Day.
I received an email from Stoessi's Heros about a new release that had T/4 George Luz and Lt Welsh packaged together based on a scene from the Band of Brothers miniseries in Caretan France. Since I have a bunch of US Airborne queued up to be painted as the 101st I figured a few characters were in order. So I grabbed this pack and discovered that there are bunch more from Band of Brothers that I missed. I ended up picking up five more characters from the series and another copy of Col Hogan (because I forgot that I had already purchased him). I'm thinking that I might work on one or two of these for a ReaperCon single entry.

So here is what came in the package from Germany (fantastic service by the way, one of the very best companies I have purchased from):

In the first pack are Luz and Frost, in the second is "Buck" Compton

"Wild Bill" Guarnere on the left and "Bull" Randelman

Lt Speirs (and a much better figure than Warlord's) and 1st Sgt Lipton

World War II Project - Characters - Stoessi's Heroes

I have been looking at the miniatures from Stoessi's Heroes for a while now but was just not interested enough to pull the trigger on an order, partially because there just wasn't enough that interested me to make an overseas order. That is until I saw these two packs of minis:

I have had my mind on a small diorama featuring the characters from Hogan's Heroes for a long time. These are the first miniatures I have found based on the TV show. I think I can manage to find one or two more minis that I can convert to do a couple of the other characters and I will be all set to go now.

Since I was going to make an order I decided to get some American and British paratroopers to bulk up the character of those forces as well.

I think these are pretty high quality miniatures, detail is crisp and mold lines appear to be pretty light. They are not cast with integral bases or even tabs, not a problem for me since I would be cutting them off to go on my own bases anyway. I'm looking forward to getting these into the painting queue!