PSC StuG III mini-review

When I bought the Universal Carriers I couldn't resist getting a box of SturmGeschütz III (or StuG III for short), also from Plastic Soldier Company. Today, amidst all the christmas preparations I managed to assemble one of them without SWMBO noticing. Well, she noticed, and she didn't look too happy, but I survived. I didn't take as many pictures (because I was in a hurry) so this will be a fairly brief review.

Starting the assembly with my trusty knife, clippers and a cup of coffee.

PSC Universal Carrier review

I'm going to reminisce a bit first, if you are just here for the review you can skip right ahead to after the break where I will actually talk about the kit. Don't mind the train picture, there are no trains after the break!

I started my wargame hobby playing "carpet wars" with Matchbox and Airfix figures like many other wargamers of my age. We didn't have many vehicles since all that was available were the model kits from the same companies and you could get a box of 50 soldiers for the same price as the smaller kits. The choice was easy as you didn't have to build the figures. Some vehicles were eventually bought and assembled with great globs of glue and those that didn't get stepped on saw countless battles. The rules were very simple and homebrewn but slowly got more complicated. Esci began to release figures and models in 1/72 but to get them I had to visit a "real" model shop located in the outskirts of my hometown. As my model railroad layout also doubled as my wargames table, my allied forces travelling in Airfix carriers usually attacked a Scandinavic looking village and battled germans in Matchbox Panzer III's and Panthers transported by a German freight train.

My layout didn't look as good as this, but the train is the same one as I got. It usually transported Airfix Germans.

The Airfix carrier kit was one of my favourites since it was easy to put together and you got a 6-pounder gun  too. Those days it was all about getting stuff on to the table as fast as possible and getting more bang for your buck. Although the more complex Esci kits were better I still preferred some of the airfix kits (some were horrible though) and most of the Matchbox ones. I then started with Warhammer which fulfilled all my gaming needs. I still kept modelling but now the more complex esci kits and larger 1/35 Tamiya models were the focus of my interest.

As I rekindled my WW2 gaming about ten years ago I rediscovered the joy of building an easy kit for wargaming purposes. Now as much as before the main problem is getting the most bang for the buck while actually putting stuff on the table. Yet my standards have changed and I'm much more critical of the kits I build. The term rivet-counter is not that far away, I fear. When Plastic Soldier Company announced they were going to release their version of the venerable british Universal Carrier I was very happy as the Airfix kit really is quite bad, both under-scale and under-detailed. For far too long it was the only available carrier in plastic and a staple of many wargames despite its shortcomings.

So enough rambling, on to the review!

Desert desserts

There's some bits and pieces left from Operation Supercharge that I haven't shown you. First off there are some cute little softskins to show.

15cwt lorries, bren gun carriers and a dingo scout car.

The lorries are part of the infantry company and scout car represents the FAO attached to the regiment. In El Alamein the british drilled their artillery arms heavily with integrated observers in the forward units. Most significantly they developed "the stonk" where a single observer could call down a barrage from all available guns covering an area of 2400x1200 yards within minutes. Many axis counter attacks were broken up as soon they were spotted by such stonks. The carriers are from the AT platoon; when the 6-pounders deploy you can leave the carriers on the table to provide some light support or in case you need to move the guns to a better position.

Buckets of excrement!

Hi gang!

Todays small post concerns a very amusing thing I noted when I was clipping out and glueing all the stuff from GW's The Hobbit: Escape from Goblin Town set.

The game in question. (Picture courtesy of Games Workshop.)

Since it might constitute a mild spoiler for the Hobbit movie premiering in about a week (I got tickets, yay!) I will put the rest behind the break. Click to find out more, if you dare!

3rd King's Own Hussars, 9th Armoured Brigade, British Eight Army

I promised some more shots of the tanks I painted for Operation Supercharge, so here they are:

A troop of US-built Grant tanks. Note the camo.

Although I have found some info on the total strength of the brigade the numbers are conflicting. One source says about 90 tanks, one around 110 tanks. Both sources claim some tanks were lost or broke down during the assembly and march-up prior to the attack; it's possible the conflicting numbers is because of this and the lower number is simply the total that took part in the actual charge. None of my sources details the individual breakdown of the three regiments making up the 9th armoured brigade however, only that each regiment had mixed compliment of Crusader II's and III's along with the newer Grants and Shermans. The 3rd Hussars are listed as having 35 tanks at the start of the operation so I have simply gone for the easy way out and decided on ten tanks of each type as they are bought in packs of five. The difference of five tanks is to account for the tanks lost before the actual attack (see below).

Accomplishments and disappointments

...no, not a newly discovered novel by Jane Austen. It's about our Operation Supercharge game.

As I wrote previously; our little band of gaming nuts were going to arrange a WW2 game at Flemcon this november. The con was slated for 17th and I had cleared and rearranged my calendar to be able to attend. Then it was moved a week to the 24th with short notice. Some sort of trouble with the building being water damaged, or something. Anyway I was unable to attend at the 24th, too much reshuffling of other events and family arrangements was needed -- Disappointment! 

And the Liebster award goes to...

...me!

There's a blog award thingie doing the rounds right now, and Jocke at Miniatyrmannen nominated me! Thanks! Apparently the award is a nice way of saying "I like your blog" and perhaps tip some other readers off about it. Having been awarded "the Liebster", I have to do the following:

- Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it to you.

- Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.

- Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing that you have just made someone's day!

- There is no obligation to pass this on to anyone else but it is nice if you do.

So, which are my choices for the Liebster award? Find out after the break:

Wargamer's meme

There's a meme going around the various wargames blogs right now, called Are you a proper wargamer? Naturally I couldn't resist the test. So, am I a proper wargamer, or am I just some common shopaholic that just poses as a wargamer to disguise my real problem?

Proper terms are important.

Preparing for Operation Supercharge, part II

Well, we had a playtest a couple of weeks ago, and it was a blast. Literally. The desert was littered with burning little tanks with the survivors racing around trying to squash the enemy guns beneath their tracks.

One of the tank battles during El Alamein. Visibility is extremely long, but identifying friend or foe is very hard.

Now all I have to do is finalize the scenario details, write them down before they escape my mind, write briefings, and paint the rest of the models! No mean feat, indeed.

The noble art of fencing

...as in building fences of course, what did you expect?

The last time I ordered a shed-load of bases from Renedra I also decided to check out one of their wargame fences. I selected on at random that I thought looked good and ended up with their Wattle fences. These are delivered as a grey plastic sprue with six pieces on them, intended for 28mm scale but probably suitable for 20mm too, maybe smaller scales as well.

The six pieces of wattle fencing.

I'm not exactly sure how old wattle fences are, except that people in various parts of the world has used the wattle and daub technique to build houses for 6000 years. I bet there has been wattle fences for at least as long. They are making a come back in modern gardening apparently, and one landscaping firm even claimed that "there should be no nails! And - they should be made in England!" 

Some modern wattle fences.

Pimp my hills, part 3

Work on my hills continue. After finishing the thistle-covered hill it was time to go back to the desert hill. While it was in essence finished, Jonathan at the My Tiny Things blog pointed out that weathering the small rocks would blend them in more.

That's better!

So I popped out the white paint and the trusty old drybrush and went nuts with them. More pictures after the break:

Pimp my hills, part 2

In my previous post I started the desert hill, now I'm going to show you what I did with the other one. My aim this time was to provide a small scenic piece that both would bring some "flavour" to the gaming table while at the same time providing some sort of cover or at least breaking up line of sight. The desert hill was aimed at 6mm games while this hill would be used with 20mm figures.

Tools of the trade: model railroad flock, thistles and nettles.

Doing terrain for the larger scales is a great opportunity to go overboard with different techniques, detailing and whatnot. I often get inspired by Model Railroad layouts and there is no reason why a wargames table shouldn't try to reach the same level of realism. Sure, there is a practical limit on how much stuff you can put on the gaming table itself, but independent terrain pieces can be small dioramas in themselves. As I wanted to try out some new materials I had "accumulated" (the stuff just materialise in my hobby room, I have no idea how it gets there, or so I tell my wife) I decided to make a small grassy knoll overgrown with thistles and nettles.

Pimp my hills, part 1

Hi gang.

I'm a big fan of Amera Plastic Moulding's vacu-formed terrain. Made from plastic styrene sheets it's light-weight and cheap. Details are a bit vague, a limitation of the medium really, but it's not hard to improve the models. They have specialised in terrain in various scales and offer something for both fantasy, sci-fi and historical gamers.

A couple of cream pies? There are surface details on the hills but the white shiny plastic makes it hard to photograph.

Today I decided to make something of a couple of hills I bought a while ago. They are part of the F213 scenry set of three hill shapes, one low, one medium and one rocky. They are all around 15-20cm in diameter; the lowest around 3 cm high, the highest around 7-8 cm high. The set is quite versatile so I bought two. I had a couple of different ideas for the lowest of the hills.

Total Battle Miniatures review, and stuff...

Bit of a slow rate for my updates now, because I'm actually playing games. I'm currently planning and playtesting the Operation Supercharge scenario as well as trying out Fantasy Flight's X-wing game that I have finally got hold of. However, the playtests are hardly blog material because of the unfinished minis and the generally slow action because we now and then stop to discuss some issues that have cropped up.

Likewise, my X-wing games have been with my sons and I wanted to focus on the game and help them maneuvering and so on instead of taking notes and photographing each turn. I did take a picture though to prove I did play a game :-)

Look at the size of that thing!

Instead I want to take the opportunity to catch up with some stuff I have been meaning to write for a while now.

Preparing for Operation Supercharge

The time is nearing for our annual demo game in some suitable local convention. The idea is to game something that happened in WW2, 70 years ago. So something from 1942 then. We originally envisioned a 20mm game with skirmish-y rules featuring the LRDG attacking an italian airfield in the desert. For various reasons that plan fell through, and we redirected our goal to something more realistic perhaps. Still bent on the desert the obvious plan was to game El Alamein.

No, not the whole battle, obviously, but some part of it. Operation Supercharge, the break-out operation during the second battle of El Alamein was deemed suitable. This is where Monty finally managed to smash through the DAK lines and started to roll up Rommel's lines.

Montgomery anxiously watching the advancing british tanks from his Grant command tank.

Itsy bitsy teeny-tiny gondorians

Warmaster is one of my favourite GW games and I love it. One of it's inspiring spin-offs is the Battle of Five Armies boxed game that GW released a couple of years ago, based on "the Hobbit" by Tolkien. It's main drawback is that GW never supported it, releasing more armies. So I was thinking that one could use historical figures for the various human factions, and Normands look pretty Gondorian to me, at least in 10mm scale.

I just had to try it and ordered a couple of packs from Pendraken Miniatures.

Size matters not.

Plastic Soldier Company SdKfz 251/1 D.

Another essential release from Plastic Soldier Company is the german half-track Sd.Kfz 251, or "Hanomag" as it was called after the main automobile company that produced it. It went through four different versions -- A through D -- and was in production for the whole of the war. Each version was further modified into different variants depending on the their battlefield role; the /1 is the basic troop carrier and the most common variants. Other variants include the /2 which is a mortar or rocket carrier (given the same designation as they are both mobile artillery), the /3 which is a radio carrier and the /10 which is a platoon commander. All in all there were over 20 variants produced.

The WW2 equivalent of an SUV?

I want it all

I have been diagnosed with RAD: Raging Aquisition Disorder or Gamer's Magpie Syndrome. It's sometimes unscientifically described as the "Oooh, shiny!"-weakness... Basically, what it means is that while I labour away, painstakingly painting three hundred and fourty-two greek spearmen in 10mm scale, I get seduced by something new... we all have it in a fashion, how else would you explain people who buy new phones every six months?

"Hallo? I would like to order a platoon of Tigers please. What do you mean I must build all the Panthers first?"

But I digress. What I was going to talk about is the various stuff that recently have caught my eye.

Lord of the Franchise

I doubt it has escaped anyone that there will be a bunch of new Lord of the Rings movies out soon; they are based on the Hobbit (and various appendices) and the first of three will be out this december.

Celebrating three more movies to annoy purists with!

Games Workshop has had a series of battle games out since the first movie came out ten years ago. Originally a skirmish game which has branched out into a proper large battle game as well if one is so inclined as to wanting to game large battles in Middle-Earth, and quite frankly, who isn't? The new movies promise to breath more life into the franchise and offers new possibilities for Games Workshop to further add to the vast figure collection. More money to lure away from unsuspecting youngsters and their parents, I hear you cry. More of badly designed figures released to an odd schedule, meaning that you never, ever, can field the exact army you want. More of always having to buy more figures to comply with ever-changing army lists, to counter the latest powerful figures released for the opposition, or to add to a unit that has had its minimum size suddenly increased.

Nasty little Hobbitsessss... changing my armylists... Gollum!!!

But it's not certain that this will happen. And even if it does, Games Workshop is hardly the worst of the bunch when it comes to squeezing the last penny out of its franchises.

Trukking!!!

Finished an ork Trukk for the speed build at the Wargamers' Guild. In a speed build everyone get a set time and a subject and everyone tries to finish whatever they think match the subject before the deadline.

So do you want to buy a used trukk?

This time we had two weeks to build and paint something on the subject of Trucks, so I figured this was an excellent opportunity to do the trukk I got in the Ork Battleforce I recently bought. I will let the pictures do most of the talking.

Ork Boyz Review

Any self-respecting Ork Warlord will tell you that you need lots of Boyz to take the fight to the enemy, so I ordered an Ork Battleforce box just in time before the GW price rize. The box contains two sets of Ork Boyz, an Ork Trukk and a set of three Ork bikers. The sets are identical to the ones sold in separate boxes, just bunched together, so there are no extra special or limited edition figures included, but you do save a couple of bucks by buying the Battleforce.

The contents of the boxed set. Photo from Games Workshop.

In this review I will concentrate on just the Ork Boyz however.

Foul Smelly Things...

My mate Thomas at the Learning By Doing blog got a bunch of Games Workshop Mordor Orcs in a figure swap which he then kindly donated to me for some strange reason. Not the person to turn down free figures I gladly accepted but without any real notion of what to do with them.

Taking the hobbits to Isengard? Well, not really since they serve the red eye.

(Please excuse the photos, they were taken outside with my mobile camera in glaring sunlight, and the green background played hell with the colours. In reality the colours are much duller.)

Ork Lootas and Burnas review

Well, all this talk about 6th edition 40k made my mind wander to my poor neglected Ork Horde a bit, and I decided to give them some reinforcements. In the last Ork Codex you could buy Burnas (orks with flamethrowers) as upgrades for your boys, and I had a couple of metal models already. Not particularly useful but cool models and the templates could come in handy against another horde army, like Tyranids or Imperial Guard. I used them to give some power weapons to my 'Ard Boyz mobs which had +1 strength, to open Space Marine armour with.

In the current codex however, burnas are fielded in mobs of their own, so I needed some more. They are still counted as power weapons in close combat but may not be 'Ard Boyz any more so they are Strength 3. Not as good, but I want to use my old cool models. Consequently I bought the Lootas and Burnas Box to add the figures I need.

Life is like a box of extreme orky shootiness. Loud and foul smelling.

At first I was expecting finecast versions of the old metal models, but this is a plastic boxed set containing five multipart models. This is good because it means that the conversion possibilites are better and the parts can easily be swapped with the normal ork boxed sets. However things did not turn out to be as good as they seemed.

Sunday update

A couple of quick heads-up about what I have been doing lately. No juicy pictures of fresh painted miniatures though, sorry!

First, a shout-out to Tamsin, who writes the Wargaming Girl blog. She has a prize give-away celebrating the first six months of her blog. Go there and sign up, not just because of the prizes, but because her blog is good.

Second, while we are on the subject on girls and wargaming, an interesting discussion about sexism in miniatures and miniature gaming has, well, erupted, at the Frontline Gamer blog. Some very thoughtful comments, and some disturbing tales of terror.

Third, I have been diddling with this and that, and while I haven't finished anything I have been quite productive:

• I have almost finished painting three dwarves, including one of the Scibor resin models I reviewed earlier. Basing and shields remain, and some small details on the Scibor dwarf. I will base Helga at the same time.

Pendraken Normands

• I have bought, prepped and started to prime some 10mm normands from Pendraken. They are for a painting competition at the Wargamer's guild. However I have hit a snag with the new GW Imperial Primer, so expect a report and a rant sometime soon.
• I have bought a box of Ork Burnas for 40k and started to assemble them. I took photos of the sprues, so a review is in the works.

Worth it's wheight in gold?

• Desperate for Devlan Mud I have realised that a lot of the old painting sets are still around. You know, the ones you get nine paints, a paintbrush and some miniatures. A bonus is that they are much cheaper than the new paint sets, and you can even find them discounted in some places. Now, I do not play marines or high elves so the 40k and Fantasy sets are pretty useless, unless I'm really desperate for the paints (which I might be in six months when the rest of my foundation paints run out). However the Lord of the Rings paint set looks quite useful with 12 Moria Goblins and a better colour selection than the other sets, at least for my needs. Which reminded me that I still have the goblins from the Mines of Moria game box on sprues. So I clipped them out, glued them and prepped them and spraýed them black. Progress! 

Well, there you have it. As it is summer and I'm off work for holiday my painting and blog writing will be a bit erratic I think, but I will try to keep you posted. Happy gaming and have a good summer!

Have boat, will pillage.

My thanks to Lennart, who tipped me off about this.

What self-respecting Viking sets out on a raid without his trusty long-ship? Or dragon-ship as the characteristic flatbottomed boats also were called, at least according to popular belief. Well, since most of the raiding was far away and the fastest way to go was by boat, the answer is no one! So I just had to get me one of these babies for my Viking Warband for Saga.

It's a plastic model. Scientists think Real Vikings probably used wooden boats instead.

Angel Barracks pulls through!

I want to talk a bit about Angel Barracks. It's a site, or company if you will, that sells 6mm terrain and stuff. Since the start Angel Barracks has branched out into 2 and 3mm scales as well! They have also released a couple of rulesets but I can't comment on them since I have never played them. Michael who runs Angel Barracks has an interesting blog where he shows off some minis and terrain and the occasional battle report if you want to check them out.


As well as stocking other companies terrain and figures Angel Barracks have started to release their own small (pun intended!) range of sci-fi scenery and figures. While I do enjoy a game of Epic40k now and then they aren't really my cup of tea. However, Angel Barracks recently added some sandbag emplacements and improvised barricades that wouldn't look out of place on a WW2 battlefield. 

The emplacements are approx. 40x25mm.

Three dwarfs walk into a bar...

Well, my small band of merry dwarves are growing!

No, I have not completed any more figures, although I am in the process of painting several dwarves. But I have long been curious about Scibor miniatures and during the last sale by Maelstrom I ordered three to check them out.

Dwarf Slaughterer.

Scibor miniatures are beautifully sculpted fantasy miniatures in the 28-30mm "heroic scale". They come molded in grey resin and you need to glue one or two bits on. The fit is good and while there are a little flash it only takes a couple of minutes to clean them up. The dwarves came with scenic resin bases as well, depicting broken stone floor tiles.

Dust Tank Busters

First a bit of nomenclature; I was going to write something about Tank Bustas and do some little stint on Busta Rhymes or something. Then I realised a Tank Busta is an ork from Warhammer 40k, while these are Allied Tank Busters from Dust Warfare. I still haven't even played Dust Warfare but I was curious about painting some allied figures for a change.

"Heavy Ranger Tank Hunter Squad" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Chocks away!!!

Just a quick heads-up that Squadron Forward is now available from Too Fat Lardies. Like Platoon Forward, Squadron Forward is a solo campaign system that bolts onto your favourite WW2 fighter game. Too Fat Lardies' own Bag the Hun would be particularly suitable, but as it's non-system specific you can use whatever you fancy. I will be picking this up and maybe it can motivate me to restart my long dormant Battle of Britain project, who knows? Anyway, at a mere £8 for a PDF download, it's a steal.

You can find more details on the Lard Island Blog. Tally Ho!!!

Panther by Toni Canfora

As well as a wargamer I'm a bit of a modeller. I don't claim to equal the professional model builders out there like Steven Zaloga or Doug Chaltry, but I still try my best and can enjoy building a model just for the building part. Other times I like a fastbuild without much details, it really depends on wether it's for display or gaming, and if I'm building only one or a whole platoon!

The cover looks tasty!

Because of that I enjoy to read books about modelling and I couldn't resist Panther from Toni Canfora.

This book is a little bit different than other modelling books in that it showcases ten different takes on the same subject, namely the famous Panzerkampfwagen V, nicknamed Panther by both the Germans and the Allies.

There are pictures of the historical subjects as well as the WIP shots of the models.

Each builder has chosen a historical subject from a photograph or written account. Some of the subjects are straightforward, such as a Panther abandoned during retreat and documented by the Soviets; the builder choosing to depict the crew realizing they are going to be overrun. Other are more elusive, such as one based on a photograph believed to be a vehicle belonging to the Hermann Göring division at the eastern front, only for another photograph turning up, clearly taken during the battle of the bulge!

The finished models are of course displayed in all their glory.

In the same vein the book differs from other modelling books because most of the text is about the various vehicles and researching them, rather than techniques used. The book does mention the methods involved in building the models but it doesn't explain them, so you need to have another book (or Google) to look them up if they are not familiar.

Various battlefield debris still found today give clues on how to paint the models.

The book features a small bonus of a couple of pages with photos of battlefield findings and a short text advising on how to research a subject from a photograph. There are of course a lot of photos of the beautiful models during the building stages as well as finished.

A Schurzen is examined to reveal it's original painting.

I think this book can be a huge inspiration for modellers also interested in the historical aspect. What I was most surprised of however was the different techniques and colours used; one modeller did his own photo etched accessories even, while another used Citadel paints and recommended the Forgeworld Imperial Armour books!

To summarize I give the book five out of five if you like looking at pictures of beautiful models and reading about WW2.
As an instructional text it only receives three out of five.

Dust WIP

So yesterday was the 68th anniversary of D-Day, and at the same time the Swedish National celebrations. There is no historical precedence for exact this day, but Sweden has been celebrating on the 6th of june since the late 19th century.

Given an extra day off I decided to drag out my compressor and try out some airbrushed camo on the Dust Walker I bought earlier. I also managed to find my box of Vallejo Model Air panzer colours set that I hadn't used for at least two years. To my delight the colours were just in need of a good hard shake to spring to life again.

Liquid gold.

Spare a coin for some poor dwarfs, guv?

Just a quick note about this funding campaign from Avatars of War. As you might know Avatars of War is a miniatures company making some beautiful and evocative 28mm fantasy figures. The ranges are compatible with the Warhammer imagery but in my opinion often superior to the official Games Workshop figures. This is probably very deliberate as Avatars of War was started by former GW sculptor Felix Paniagua. 

The backstory is that he sculpted a couple of very nice character models but GW wanted him to sculpt lots of rank and file models without the level of detail he wanted to put on them. I'm sure there were other issues such as time/workload ratio and not being allowed to work on the subjects he wanted. In the end he left GW and set up his own company, much like some other very talented individuals that have left the GW stable over the years.

Anyway, Avatars of War have been releasing mostly character models, but have made a couple of plastic box sets, such as plastic slayer models and a couple of plastic "not-Chaos Warriors" boxed sets. Now Avatars of War is looking to launching their own army level game called "Warthrone of Saga" or something like that. First up is the dwarf army and they are looking for funding to be able to start up the whole range. The whole thing is done through Indiegogo.com, which holds onto the money until the project either is funded or the time runs out. If the funding fails you get all your money back, so no risk there.

So go to http://www.indiegogo.com/aow-dwarfs and have a look at the concept sketches and see if they tickle your imagination. Or go to http://www.avatars-of-war.com/ to check out all the awesome models already available. Oh, and sign up to fund the project so I can get some sweet and hairy stunties for my army.

May your beard grow long and your axe-arm strong.

Helga, Queen of the Dwarves

Well, I do confess I have a thing for short hairy bearded axe-wielding maniacs, but I'm equally a sucker for a short, hairy, beard-less axe-wielding maniac. So when GW at the end of the nineties released their first female dwarf figure since before the slotta-base was invented, I had to buy her.

"My, what big... braids you have."

And now for something completely different

I've been having a couple of games of Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition which have rekindled my interest in Warhammer. At the same time as I'm revamping my dwarf army (which includes figures from 2nd edition right up to the current) I'm also enjoying a guilty side pleasure painting something very different.

'Ello Darling. Fancy a cuppa tea and biscuits?

My goal is to someday field a small Chaos Warrior army dedicated to Nurgle, the Lord of Decay.

Doing new stuff the old way...

Well, last week I put up a short guide on how to quickly paint the Dust figures. Thomas, the cheeky sod, answered: "Good, now do one to the best of your ability." Bastard. Well, I painted not one, but two figures to the best of my ability. At least I tried to paint them as best as I could, but there are some things I'm not happy with that I could improve, I think.

Notice the error in the English title, "sturm" has been omitted. Maybe because "Battle Assault Grenadiers" sounds daft.

I bought a box of Kampf Sturmgrenadieren Squad (sic!), as I wanted to try out some figures without gasmasks, to see how good the faces were.

Random ramblings and musings

Well, not much to tell right now, but I want to let you know that I still live, at least. I keep flitting to and fro on a bunch of projects so I have nothing completed to show. Strangely a lot of the work has been done on various terrain pieces for very different subjects.

First, I painted five soviet houses from Pegasus, in three evenings or so. It was a rush job for the WW2 convention game I mentioned earlier. You know, the one which I painted these Panzer IV's for. The scenario depicted the vanguard of a german Panzer division racing towards Stalingrad, trying to take and hold a bridge in a russian village, while the soviets have lots of infantry but few AT weapon except for a smattering of PTRD rifles. The germans were supposed to have only panzer II's and III's but I painted the IV's up in case we didn't have enough light tanks. In the end the Panzer IV's sat on a table the whole day, but they did recieve a lot of attention and positive comments. I haven't had the time to photograph them, but the photo below is courtesy of Jocke who has some snaps and a very good AAR on his blog.

The wooden houses and the ruined brick building were part of my speed-painting frenzy the week before the game.

Dust painting

So ok, I have shown you the Dust figures, and I have even started to paint them. That must be a first, painting figures withing weeks of buying them! What's next, actually playing a game? Anyway I thought I'd show you a little bit on how you can paint them, and that the fact they are pre-primed saves a heck of a lot of time.

The figures come primed in grey. This one has had it's weapon painted with Vallejo Gunmetal.

Before I started painting I experimented a bit with the pose; twisting the torso and raising the arms a bit, as well as turning the head to look in the same direction as the gun. I then dribbled a little glue into the neck and arm joints. This figure had a slightly worse fit than the other figures where I only had to glue the waist, so I  filled the waist with a little liquid green stuff.

From Dust to Dust...

Well, I have been oogling all the nice Dust: Tactics figures that Fantasy Flight Games have been releasing the last year. I mean, what can go wrong: World War II with giant walkers and laser guns? Apparently a UFO was found just before the outbreak of World War II, and technology gleaned from it enabled the germans to win the battle of Stalingrad. By 1947 the war is still not settled, with the soviet and allied forces falling out with eachother the conflict has escalated in a three-pronged affair with all sides having access to alien technology.

Dust Tactics is sort of a board game with miniatures, that is based on the comic by Paolo Parente. I have not read the comic, but judging by the pictures on the official site, the mix is further enhanced by adding bad-ass busty babes controlling the walkers.

Oh my, what a pair of great... guns.

Sadly -- or perhaps fortunately -- the game focuses on the combat between the walkers and their supporting infantry.

Panzerkampfwagen IV Ausf. F2, finished!

I have been busy painting my Panzer IV's from Plastic Soldier Company this week. After painting the first I wanted to finish the other two while I was on a roll -- and while I was remembering what paints and what techniques I used -- and get them all based and ready for varnishing.

You see, I have lots of Vikings vying for my attention and I'm yearning to get a test game of Saga in. At the same time I needed to get the Panzers finished for a convention game in two weeks and didn't want to get sidetracked and leaving the project half finished. I'm pleased to report that I did indeed finish them on saturday and managed to base and photograph them today!

Panzer Vorwärts!

Holy Flying Failcast, Batman!

I took advantage of Maelstrom's stock clearance sale and ordered a box of Chaos Marine Raptors for Warhammer 40k. This is part of slow long-term project of fielding lots and lots of nurgly DeathGuard. I don't really play 40k anymore but I have too much time and love invested in my different armies to let them go. Besides, soon my sons will start playing, so I will need the armies then.

The box, with the dreaded words "Finecast"

When I ordered I had no idea if this was old stock, meaning that the models were metal, or the new Finecast versions. As it turned out it was Finecast.  As I intend to convert the figures extensively Finecast should be easier to work with than metal. I have heard some very negative opinions on Finecast though, so it was with a little bit of dread I opened the box.

Paint it grey

I have been ill during easter, but at least I managed to slap some paint on my Panzer IV's. I had a cold, complete with head-ache and a fever, but not enough to knock me out. So while the rest of the family went out for easter lunch I watched some movies and base-coated all three tanks.

Blue? I thought you said grey???

Real Steel

I have finished building the PSC Panzer IV tanks and they are now ready for painting.

Three widdle tanks were going to the market...

As you might recall I wanted to build them as the F2 variant and ordered some snazzy aluminium barrels for them. I have also added some metal stowage from SHQ for that gypsy-caravan lived in look.