Diorama - Painting the Minis IV

I made reasonable progress over the last week on the minis for the "Steady Lads" diorama for ReaperCon. The soldiers are just about finished, just the gaiters and touch ups at this point. I have changed my mind several times on the Aliens so they are only about half way done, but they aren't as complicated as the soldiers so I hope to wrap them up quickly and move on to getting the base finished.

The office. Still need to work on the pants, sword and helmet.

The Private. Pants, gaiters and touch ups

The Sergeant. Pants, gaiters and touch ups

Alien Leader. Needs lining and the whole jumpsuit needs to be gone over again.

Alien Gunner. About the same as the leader. The gun needs some more work as well

Bolt Action WWII American Infantry for Chain of Command

Although they have not appeared in this blog any where I have a good sized WWII US Airborne force. I was working my way up to a platoons worth some time ago. I have become quite interested in Chain of Command from Too Fat Lardies while most of my gaming group is playing Bolt Action, I find it leaves me a little cold. Although, to be fair, anything that requires me to buy additional books just so I can play the game leaves me cold. While I haven't had a chance to play CoC yet, I like how the mechanics of the rules work, I have watched all the video demonstration/explanations that Too Fat Lardies put out. So while I search for my airborne forces (I think I know where they are) I thought working on just a straight US rifle platoon would be fun. I was a Total Escape Games last Saturday for the CMPA's monthly 2nd Saturday workshop. It was nice to be in a store where I could actually buy something that I wanted/needed and be able to support such a nice brick and mortar shop.

They had a good selection of the plastic Bolt Action infantry from Warlord Games so I decided to pick it up. I will need a second box though as I want to build a complete platoon at full strength and maybe a couple of extras to go with it (like a sniper team). My current thought is to have it play double duty and start as the core of troops I would need to build an armored rifle company. Now I know this American Infantry box has been out for a while now and plenty of people have built it but I definitely learned a few things while building these plastic miniatures that might come in handy to others that haven't dived into these kits yet.

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking but this is a good solid core set of miniatures for any American infantry platoon besides an airborne one. The airborne uniforms up through D-Day were substantially different issue. Here we have the standard American uniform that was in place from the invasion  of Tunisia up through the invasion of Normandy. While there aren't any instructions per say there is a sheet detailing the layout of the pieces on the sprues and what they are used for. As long as you pick pairs of arms that are designed to be used together along with the appropriate weapon you won't have any problems during assembly. I love the fact that these are actually scale models 1/56th! I think my Artizan Design Airborne troops will match up quite nicely with them. I do feel that they suffer a bit from huge head. Most of the heads just seem to be a scosch (that's a technical term I learned from my mom) to big. The one that feels like the right size is the one in the woolen cap instead of a helmet (although there is an empty helmet that will fit over it).

A few assembly hints: 
1) I found it easiest to glue the weapon into the right hand (and they are all right handed, no lefties in this box!) before gluing it to the body.
2) Glue the right arm with its weapon in place first and in the position you want it.
3) Add the left arm by positioning on the left shoulder first and then "swinging" it up so the open hand meets the rifle. Depending on the glue you used you should have time to pull this off. This lets you adjust everything before the glue sets solidly. Don't dawdle though!

Other than that things went pretty smoothly. I haven't dressed this group up in all its gear yet, this is just the basic build of adding the head, arms and weapon to the torso (5 different torsos, 4 standing and 1 kneeling). Oh and I used my favorite glue, Plastruct Plastic Weld, for the assembly.

That's a lot of plastic. 5 sprues of infantry and 3 sprues of weapons

It has almost everything! Garands, Springfields, Thompsons, Grease Guns, basically everything your regular infantry platoon might need.

This is the first guy I completed. A little slow on the first one, but things went quicker once I got into the assembly rhythym.

A WWII American Infantry Squad consisted of a section of 8 Riflemen armed with the Garand or the Springfield (mostly Garands though). Here are the first 4

And the second group of 4

The Rifle or maneuver section was supported by the BAR team; one gunner, one assistant gunner and an ammo carrier. They don't give you enough BAR ammo pouches though.

And here is the Squad leader armed with a Thompson SMG

And the group portrait. Didn't have a wide enough piece of matte board with me today! While I mounted everyone on the bases provided these are not the bases I'm going to be using. They will suffice until everyone is painted then I'll put them on the profile bases that I like.

Modeling Calamity - Back to the Model

Way back at the beginning of 2013 I introduced the concept of making a scale model of Calamity (a typical practice by model railroaders) before actually putting saw to lumber. This week, almost exactly 2 years later, I'm going to actually start purchasing the framing materials and begin work on the boards themselves. The buildings are just taking up space and gathering dust in my workroom right now and I think that working on the actual board will provide the incentive I need to get in there and finish them. 

To that end I pulled out my model of Calamity and stripped all the clay off (that was kind of messy) and with "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" playing in the background I started getting ready to re-model the town. I though I should go back and review what I had done before so I dug up my old posts and linked them in here.

Building Calamity - Tinkering with the board
Modeling Calamity
Modeling Calamity II
Modeling Calamity Finished
Modeling Calamity Things are Changing

With a fresh slate to work with I started messing around with the layout of the town again last night. I did make a couple of decisions while going through this process.

1) I'm not going to use my Knuckleduster or Gamecraft Miniature buildings. I don't like the proportions of the Knuckleduster buildings or the really thick trim on the Gamecraft buildings. Not to mention that since all the buildings will have interiors the Gamecraft buildings are just to much extra work. They are fine products, they just aren't suited to my vision. I'm not sure if I will sell them off or keep them for other nefarious purposes though.

2) I believe that I stated that I wanted the railroad to more a focal point in a previous post. I'm going to keep that in mind during this redesign.

3) I may have to lose the stream. I don't want to lose the stream as I think it adds a very visually exciting element, but it really takes up a lot of real estate.

4) I need to toss my models of the Gamecraft and Knuckleduster buildings and make new models for my 4Ground buildings.

That's the plan so far. I have a few pictures of what I did last night:

After stripping the clay off

A new layer of clay

Tracing out some roads and just messing around

A street view 

I kind of like this version

Street views

AWI Book Acquisitions

I managed to acquire a couple more AWI books over the weekend. Although there are a couple more uniform books that I would like to acquire I thought it was time to get deeper into the history. Mark Urban's Fusiliers covers the history of the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers and their campaigns during the Revolution. This should give me a British viewpoint of the conflict. I have a couple other books along this line that I would like to acquire. The other one is Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick that will give the beginning of the American viewpoint at the start of the conflict. That should keep me busy reading for a few days!

While this is a new book, it apparently spent quite a while on the shelf!

A well cared for 1st Edition with a very shiny cover!

Reaper's BONES II, The Return of Mr Bones - Kickstarter Rewards

Reaper finished up shipping on their 2nd Kickstarter last week. I was in wave 10 so close to the end of the shipping process. So this very large 15# box  was on the porch when I got home. So it seemed appropriate to do a some "unboxing" pictures. One more successfully delivered kickstarter that I can check off the list. I have really dropped off on my Kickstarter support over the last year, I'm doing a better job resisting the siren's call. I'll keep this short and just get straight to the pictures.

The big box

Apparently filled with fillers (thank goodness it wasn't foam peanuts I hate that!).

Admittedly I didn't get very much. A printed thank you in the box was a nice touch. I also found a slip used by the person that pulled my order. In this case Ladystorm. If you have been on the Reaper Forums then you know that Ladystorm is one of the forum moderators.

This is what took up most of the box. Three copies of Dragons Don't Share II. One for me and the other two are going out to friends.

The little stuff. Bags of 25mm and 50mm bases, Hill Giants, the Kraken, Narthrax (dragon) and Troll Slayer Sophies (two for me, the last one goes with one of the DDSII). Looks like I can add some more to the plastic pile! I actually haven't managed to paint any of my BONES minis yet.