Old Stuff Day: SNAFU

March the 2nd is "Old Stuff Day", where we dig up some old post that we like but didn't get the exposure it deserved for some reason. Started by the Warhammer 39.999 blog originally, there a couple of blogs I follow that do this too. And I did last year, so why not make it a tradition?

So here's a post from waaaay back in april 2011, it only recieved some 25 hits for some reason. It was when I wrote in Swedish, but especially for this day I have translated the text to glorious Swenglish and Gibberish:



According to the legend, SNAFU stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. Why I have chosen this title will be revealed further on. I promised some pictures of my americans and I have finally managed to get them to stand still long enough to take some pictures. (You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

The miniatures are from Wargames Foundry, sculpted by the Perry Twins. The first batch (above) where painted with Vallejo colours from the Flames of War US paint set over a white basecoat. They were then washed with a mix of Devlan Mud and Future. I was out of flat varnish they are a bit glossy.

I painted the second batch a bit different. I noticed that the colours on the picture on the back of the box didn't match the colours suggested; For instance the colour of the jacket is listed as 988 Khaki but looks much more grey and drab. So I tried Dheneb Stone from Games Workshop since it was the closest I had to the illustration. I'm not sure but I think the second batch looks better simply because there are more contrast between the jacket and the webbing and ammo pouches now. On the other hand some of the figures have short jackets while the other has longer jackets, maybe there is a difference in colour between the two different garments? I suspect the case is that one jacket is supposed to be Khaki and the other Drab, but as I'm no expert in US stuff I don't know which is which!

But why did I choose the title SNAFU then? Well, I figured that my dough-boys should have some snazzy wheels as well, so I bought a box of fast-build M3 half tracks from Italeri. It's a very simple model intended for wargamers consisting of only 14 parts, with the machine gun being one, and the wheels and tracks are four more! Still I managed, being an experienced modeller and all, to assemble the darn thing wrong! Turns out that if you assemble the parts in the wrong order they won't fit, and I didn't bother to read the instructions. Disaster! Oh well, the only thing to do was to convert it into a wreck.

All the smoke hides the mistake, which is that the armoured cover for the driver's compartment doesn't fit, leaving a big gap between it and the engine hood.  I bent the front wheel to make it look more crashed. I'm thinking of painting a dead soldier to put beside it, and then you have great terrain piece. Fortunately the box contained two vehicles, maybe I can assemble the next one correct...