3mm Works in Progress (and some targets)

Well some of the pictures are crappy, but here are some painting projects that have been going on lately. Most are 3mm Vietnam, but a couple of bases are targets for 1/600 air gaming - 1/2400 truck convoys. One for the desert, one for Europe. The trucks still need to be painted obviously.

I had another 10 LVTP-5's to get into action, so after basing I painted the bases green for jungle on 3, giving me 8 on that terrain. The other 7 I'm putting on the beach, so after messing around with various colour permutations, I just settled on Americana's "Sand" as the colour. It looks better in real life than this picture shows:
All the rest are US forces. These are just a sample - FAC base (4 guys), half-squad (5 guys), medic station, and MG team. Uniforms, flesh, and guns are done on all. I remembered I wanted to add flak vests on a couple of guys way after the fact, so today I gave a couple of guys on FAC teams and one gunner's assistant their vests. The guy on the far right of the FAC has one. Most references showed the vests as beige, so I went with that. On the MG team you'll see a hint of gold, representing brass cartridges; later Dullcoate should tone down the shininess.

My big "decision" was to go with black (leather) boots on the guys who's boots you can see - just the MG teams and medics and their patients. The beige jungle boot would be more representative, but after trying it, I realized that at this scale it just made them look rather ridicuously barefooted. I think the black contrasts nicely with the rest. This particular medic station has a couple of patients with bleeding wounds, one in the lower leg, one in the gut. I wasn't planning on doing it this soon in the process, but I needed to cover up a mistake while doing the boots, and deep red did the job nicely. Most patients will have bandages with or without blood.







Although painting has been slow, it's been a productive month for me - lots has been cleaned and based, including some new terrain pieces from Irregular and Simply 6. I also have been scoping out SYW and ECW projects in 2mm, and should have the SYW (in India) started by next weekend.

Trenton and Trenton again (1776 version)

Last week the club I've been playing with in Toronto (current name is "The Napoleonic Brigade - Toronto") had its big annual weekend of games in 6mm. This year was the Battle of Trenton, played thrice on Saturday and twice on Sunday (some test games earlier made it 7 games total). The third game Saturday followed a quick end to the second game, after the Hessian commander's boldness didn't pay off).

I was only there Sunday, playing in both games. To make the game fair to the outnumbered and surrounded Hessians, there was a 3 hour time limit on each game. The first game got to a late start, which made my job easier as I was the Hessian commander (Rall). I traded space for time and we slowly got pushed further into the middle, doing more damage than we took, and when the clock struck we were ahead. As we had to wait for lunch to finish cooking, we played a few more turns and the Hessians also got cooked as their perimeter collapsed.

In game 2 I was one of the American commanders (Greene), looking after two forces coming in from the north west (to the right of the American battery on the hill). The Hessian strategy in this game was to try to escape to the east, using their free set up of a half battalion of skirmishers to harass one American unit from the rear, holding the door open while the rest tried to scamper out. The skirmishers did a good job the whole game, and one wing of Hessian infantry ultimately escaped (with guns).

However, once the Hessians in Trenton itself got turned around to mosey on out, my forces got across the river and threatened them from the rear, so they had to turn around yet again, and this allowed additional converging forces from the northeast and south to hit them from all directions, and everything in the centre was destroyed.

All in all, a good time was had by all. Playing the Hessians was challenging, but fun. I seem to have a talent for delaying actions...

Here's the table set-up before the gaming began. The Hessians occupy the centre area, under fire from American guns on the hill, and basically threatened on all four sides.



More pictures from another attendee (Andy) are available here:
Game 1 and here: Game 2

Funky Colour Schemes

This link was posted on The Miniatures Page today, it's a forum for plastic aircraft modellers I guess. This particular 46-page thread is about what-if paint schemes the members have come up with, either photos of models or illustrations, mainly for modern planes.

The link is to the last page, but it's worth the time to go through more or all of the site.

Some schemes are just modest variations of what's out there today, others are of special one-offs (final flight planes etc.), but some are right out there.

Which means they're great to "borrow" for some of my other plans - sci-fi sure, but mainly Victorian Sci-Fi, and Aeronef in particular. Maybe Iron Stars spaceships, but I picture them as pretty serious; maybe Land Ironclads too, but ground vehicles get pretty beat up in the course of a day.

But a tiger-skin painted zeppelin? Or hot green with hot blue with more serious blues and greens? Definitely worth trying out! I'd already come up with some national schemes while doodling around, now I'll see about integrating with some of my favourites from this site.

Mimi Redux

More shots of the Screamin' Mimi, showing her business end.

Canopies Complete, World Continues Spinning

I finally got the last touching up done on my first large batch of helicopters for Vietnam. These have been kicking around in previous posts for a while, but I'm now down to a coat of Future, decals, sealing, and rotors.

Other stuff has been going on in the meanwhile, some of it's below, but a ton has just been prepping mini's for the usual billion other projects going on. Some mounting got started last week, including 28mm sci-fi, more 25mm fantasy, and some 2mm Star Wars.

So with only that brief intro, here's some pics (as always, click on the pic for a bigger version):

The big shot of everything.

Huey Hogs, Frogs, and Snakes, with some OH-13's on the side. Two 13's are for Vietnam, the two medevac ones are for any Korean gaming I do. I still have 4 more of the things primed, I'm holding them back for AK-47 or some other odd side-project.

The other half - more Hogs and Frogs (back), OH-6 and 58 (back at either end), Slicks and CH-46's (middle two rows), more Snakes, including a pair in the Widowmaker paint scheme.

An even slower moving painting project finally got done too. These HH-60's have been sitting around for 18 months, part of a test painting project before I realized I was actually ok at painting these small things. Two are done for the navy, the rest for special forces.

And those of you with good eyesight might have picked out something odd at the back of those helicopter pictures above. As mentioned/promised previously, here's my secret painting project for Vietnam - 80's TV favourites.

The trio.

You have to figure the A-Team got their van's paint scheme from somewhere, so here's a OH-58 done up for clandestine missions. Obviously Murdoch is flying this, so I guess I need another secret project for the rest of the team...

And of course TJ was a pilot in Vietnam before making it to Hawaii, so here's the first Island Hopper...

Last, and most obscurely, Screamin' Mimi from the less remembered Riptide. I haven't watched the show since its original run, but I liked it, and always remembered the Mimi. The red scribble is actually "Screamin' Mimi" in script, but yes, I cheated, it's just a scribble.

My US infantry bases have also been progressing, flesh and uniforms are done, details and weapons are next. Here are a few work-in-progress pics:





I've also been testing my painting skill at the larger scales, using some old (literally - some of these have been kicking around for 25-28 years) figures from D&D days. I have more of these in line, including some that I and my brothers tried painting, and gave up painting, back in the day, and others that have a bit of sentimental value to me, as they represented my favourite RPG characters - Rolstun Goldaxe and the Swerlin/Verlin/Twerlin lineage of disposable magic-users.

Anyway, here are some pics of my first tests, the mummy I winged, the foot knight in red was done using the army painting guide from the D&D Battlesystem book, the elf archer from the advanced techniques guide in the same book, and the foot knight in green was done using a TooFatLardies mass painting technique from one of their specials.

I Steam, You Steam, We All Steam For Elephants

So over on his Steelonsand Blog, Steelonsand has been working on a project to create the airship of Jules Verne's Robur. It's a pretty cool project and has gotten me looking for the books (Robur the Conqueror, Master of the World). Until I did some research I'd forgotten I'd seen the movie with Vincent Price, which was a mishmash of the two books.

I've also been on a Edgar Rice Burroughs kick, specifically around the Mars/Barsoom and Venus books, a result of a month or so of puttering around on VSF stuff.

So last weekend I decided to hit a used bookstore near me that I knew had a Burroughs' crate in the back, mainly hoping to find the first book in each of the Mars and Venus series, I have a bunch of the rest but haven't started either series since I couldn't start at the beginning..

So I did score Princes of Mars, and some Tarzans (the lost city type ones), but I hit a nice motherlode of Verne as well. Michael Strogoff, Up the Niger Bend, and Master of the World (so I'm still stuck looking for the beginning of a series!). Also there were two books, Demon of Cawnpore and Tigers & Traitors, which more in-depth reading of the back blurbs revealed to be the two parts of one novel, The Steam House.

This is a long-winded way of getting to the point: I now have a book about a steam elephant! Not just a steam elephant though, I was planning on doing some of those as Contraptions for Land Ironclads anyways, in fact someone on the Wessex Games VSF mailing list has already statted some up.

This is a steam elephant pulling a caravan of "steam houses".

This is steam-nerd heaven to the nth degree. And I never knew. Now I need a proper land ironclad version, or two in miniature.

So while I just got into a few pages last night, the internet has proved useful, and I now have some initial musings to post.


This is the edition I have:
Kind of small, I'll try to get a scan or photo of my book, but it shows an elephant-like elephant pulling an Indian-esque palace on wheels. The howdah is circular and has a couple of old school bombards sticking out the side. I'm liking this direction.

But not this one:
This looks like Mecha Godzilla or Robo-Kong, a 1930's or 1950's Art Deco steam elephant. No sense of Victorian style. So I ain't doing this version.

I'm back on track with this, from Wikipedia:
Gives a bit more detail, still a round howdah, but no signs of cannon. The trunk with steam coming out is awesome, and I found a perfect 6mm model with Irregular's MP22 Successor Elephant (top picture in the link). The rein thingy will either get cut or turned into a steering cable.

I'm going with 6mm since I want it to look behemoth-like (in the book apparently the beast is called Behemoth), and bigger than the steam elephant contraptions I'll do with Irregular's 2mm elephants. A 6mm elephant should be about 11-12mm tall, or about 3-4 stories in 2mm scale.

This also helps, although I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the caravan...
Or why it's surrounded by elephants! Maybe they're in rut and got confused.

As a backup elephant I might get a couple of Irregular's African elephants with howdahs, and I'm thinking 6mm Hussite wagons may be a starting point for the rest of the caravan, with findings etc. as decoration. I have some coupons for next week to see what I can find. I may just end up scratch-building the caravans.

I don't think I'll mess around trying to make the howdah circular though, unless I find something that's an easy fit. I'll probably just file down the figures sticking out from the top, put on a minaret-style roof, file off one shield hanging from the side and turn the other one into a gun mantlet.

Lardcam

Well since painting and prepping are continuing on without anything sexy to photograph, I thought I'd post a link to some fun stuff that's come out from the Too Fat Lardies gang - their own Youtube channel.

In three parts they describe the basics of Sharp Practice (Napoleonic skirmish) and play a few turns showing off the system. Beware the sound sometimes goes in and out when they switch camera viewpoints, so keep the volume dial handy during episode one, but they're working on this for their next videos.

While I have Sharp Practice, a lack of mini's for that period are keeping me from trying it. However, I was able to pick up the game's basics pretty quickly from one viewing. It may have helped already being familiar with TFL games, but I think this video will help anyone interested in the rules.

In other news, the painting table is again dominated by helicopters and their bleedin' canopies. I finished the US flesh and uniforms, so per my plan then switched to the copters.

The green-tinged top windows turned out nicely, only a few touch ups needed, but I really buggered up on the gray. I'm using gray for windows on open doors and blue for everything else, and for some reason I concluded I wanted dolphin gray, as I'd used that before on my UH-60's. What I wasn't paying attention to was that I'd used dolphin grey for THE FUSELAGE of a couple of UH-60's, and a darker gray for the windscreens. Idiot, idiot, idiot. Eventually I realized the windscreens looked kinda white and repainted what I'd done, but still.

This is when you have to remind yourself "punch pillows, not walls."

On the prepping front, I've started on the Microworld fantasy mini's - really nice stuff, I'd recommend them (and for all you non-continentals, worldwide shipping is only $4 US!).

I've also been on a real VSF funk and have prepped some aeronef and land ironclads, as well as gotten to work on the setting again (it helps avoid painting canopies!). My VSF is set after Victoria (1938) but still has a real Victorian feel, with all the steampunk changes not much has changed other than the Queen's in the ground. I actually don't remember why I went that route initially but I'm good with it.

I also spent my August money on Brigade Models' summer sale, picking up more stuff for three of the four VSF angles - aeronef, land ironclads, and aether ships. Only the navies got neglected.

Anyway, hopefully some helicopter pics soon!