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.

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.

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.