Kategorie: Painting

Gépkocsisó Lövész Platoon

Currently everybody in my Gaming Club, the Spieltrieb Frankfurt is preparing for our upcoming Ostfront campaign. I am painting an Hungarian Force. As with my other two armies, British 8th army and Fallschirmjäger, I am painting both a tank and an infantry company. I started with an motorised infantry platoon as this is the support choice for a hungarian tank force and infantry is with me at almost every game I play.

The hungarians in FoW have the excellent special rule that they may reroll their attempts to dig in. Excellent for me! I do fail this roll very often.

The hungarian motorised infantry was equipped with the hungarian Botond truck. The excellent Battlefront models can be glued together with or without canvas. I decided to populate one truck with shown infantry. I found several historical pictures for different painting schemes on Botonds. I picked one with a typical 3 colour camo scheme, which came out very nice. The hungarian arms is show at the door. I made my own decals for this.

Having quite a lot of seated infantry models was very important for me. Usually you see just a couple of models in transport trucks painted for FoW but I decided to make it look more realistic. For sure a truck contained more than 8 soldiers during war, but this abstraction was fine for me.

In our club we decided to design the scenery as a fall countryside seeing the first snow of the year. Literally this is perfect for showing a hungarian force just before the whole army was destroyed.

From the painter´s view I must say that the hungarian force is very nice to paint, since you may use some characteristic color.

4. Juni 2010
Rohan outriders for War of the Ring

I never mentioned the war (of the Ring) on unfinished armies, although I am a passionate fan of LotR. Currently I am revisiting Rohan and Isengard. In 2003 I started with both armies and built up an 500 Points LotR Skirmish army. Rohan got in the game weaker and weaker and I was not able to play them well, although a polish Rohan army did win the Grand Tournament in Nottingham 2009. However I wasn´t that successful with rohan. However I always loved that army and War of the Ring was an excellent excuse to reboot the armycreation of Rohan. What I did not like about WotR was the height of the company bases. Therefore I built a flat version only using magnet bases, metal sheet and a multibase that I designed using polyacryl profiles and sand. With this master I made resin bases and glued them to the metal sheet. The result works excellent although the height seems a little bit higher on the picture than in reality. More Eorlingas to come…

2. Juni 2010
Nimrod anti air tank

When collecting a force I especially like the models which are very typical and special for the force I paint. The hungarian army fielded some very individual models, one of them is the Nimrod, although it is an original swedish design built in licence in Hungary. However there the unique hungarian mixture is very interesting, therefore I startet with the Flak tank.

Having airbrushed the hungarian Stukas gave me the skills to airbrush these tiny tank models. They came out really excellent. I produced my own decals using decal printing paper and a color printer.

The camo scheme is typical hungarian with three colors. I used exactly those mentioned in the Flames of War publications considering the Eastern Front: Reflective Green,

26. Januar 2010
WW1: 6. Bayerisches Sturmregiment

My gaming club is currently preparing for a participation game at the annual german wargaming convention Tactica in Hamburg next year. We are going to present a Great War gaming table depicting the so called Kaiserschlacht in 1918. We preparing a 28mm gaming table showing a trench which is manned by the Ulster Division and attacked by the 6th bavarian Sturmregiment.

I decided to paint miniatures and vignettes for this project. Therefore I am working on color schemes and dirt, blood and mud on the models which is not an easy thing to paint.

However I think I can still add more dirt, as you can see. 6 of the models are cleen, because they were the first models to paint. The next 6 models look far more dirty. I must admit that I forgot to paint dirt on the helmets….

9. November 2009
Hungarian Stukas

Emezek vannak az új magyar Stukamak. These are my new hungarian Stukas. The Ju 87 D Models again come from armaments in miniature. This was my second attempt to paint aircraft so I made a lot of mistakes and now I know much more about how to airbrush 1:100 models.

First of all I will paint the parts separately in the future. Moreover I need to think about a way to add a handle for painting the model. I tried to mask the light blue bottom of the Stukas with liquid mask. This worked well, but to get ridd off the mask was a pain in the arse. Therefore I will use liquid mask only less complicated surfaces than the bottom of a Stuka with bombs attached.

The chosen color scheme is a kind of free style since I have no evidence of a aircraft which was spraygunned like the hungarian tanks were. It seems that a german style with edges was used for camoflage with hungarian markings.

However I wanted to have a similar look for the hungarian tanks I will paint in the near future. To be honest I am not that accurate when it comes to aircraft since in Flames of war they are mere counters. The Aircraft rules are not very attractive to me so I found a way to use them as objectives instead. Since the carrier is not retractable they can stand on the table just as they are.

I am quite happy with the bases for the aircraft since the are built from the scratch. A little hole in each Stuka and a piece of steel wire in the top of the acryl rod is a quite simple construction. I have chosen different heights and angles and I like the way the models are positioned.

28. Oktober 2009
Fallschirmjäger Pionier Zug

Now I am very close to have a finished army, although this blog has a different name. The Fallschirmjägerpioniere will only be followed by one complete platoon and maybe another 6 flamethrower teams. For sure there is one single option more which could be added after I model a light mortar team which is the mountain gun platoon. The values were changed in North Africa so the Fallschirmjäger artillery is now an option worth painting.

However I am very pleased with the performance of the heavy mortars. Adding another light mortar team, bearing in mind that the HQ has an option for light mortar teams too, this should be enough.

Currently I was interested in having flamethrowers in the game since my club colleges often field tanks. The anti tank rating of pioneers sound very attractive, too. If I put an opel blitz truck from the various trucks I have on the table, I have a pioneer support truck, too.

In order to differenciate between my infantry platoons I decided to paint olive jump smocks. All other platoons have Luftwaffe splinter camo painted on. It came out very nice. Koch came with this blister too. In our club heroes are not very popular since the rules are somewhat exaggerated. van der Heydte for example, the lord of the living dead, is really ridiculous. Therefore I manned his team as a command team with 3 miniatures. He has the Luftwaffe Schiffchen hat and a splinter camo jump smock. Some of the models have rank insignia of Leutnant and Oberjäger, Koch himself the Oberstleutnant rank.

I have chosen an Glider assault platoon blister for my pioneers and painted some additional teams manned out of my Bitz box. Since Glider assault teams have MG42 teams, too I added one. If I don´t need them they can be treated as mere infantry teams. Usually we agree in the club to allow such minor proxy gaming.

Doing the photos it came into my mind that the drop canister is not needed for a glider assault team. However the platoon could now be fielded as an airborne pioneer platoon, too.

8. Oktober 2009
Fallschirmjäger Pionier Zug

Now I am very close to have a finished army, although this blog has a different name. The Fallschirmjägerpioniere will only be followed by one complete platoon and maybe another 6 flamethrower teams. For sure there is one single option more which could be added after I model a light mortar team which is the mountain gun platoon. The values were changed in North Africa so the Fallschirmjäger artillery is now an option worth painting.

However I am very pleased with the performance of the heavy mortars. Adding another light mortar team, bearing in mind that the HQ has an option for light mortar teams too, this should be enough.

Currently I was interested in having flamethrowers in the game since my club colleges often field tanks. The anti tank rating of pioneers sound very attractive, too. If I put an opel blitz truck from the various trucks I have on the table, I have a pioneer support truck, too.

In order to differenciate between my infantry platoons I decided to paint olive jump smocks. All other platoons have Luftwaffe splinter camo painted on. It came out very nice. Koch came with this blister too. In our club heroes are not very popular since the rules are somewhat exaggerated. van der Heydte for example, the lord of the living dead, is really ridiculous. Therefore I manned his team as a command team with 3 miniatures. He has the Luftwaffe Schiffchen hat and a splinter camo jump smock. Some of the models have rank insignia of Leutnant and Oberjäger, Koch himself the Oberstleutnant rank.

I have chosen an Glider assault platoon blister for my pioneers and painted some additional teams manned out of my Bitz box. Since Glider assault teams have MG42 teams, too I added one. If I don´t need them they can be treated as mere infantry teams. Usually we agree in the club to allow such minor proxy gaming.

Doing the photos it came into my mind that the drop canister is not needed for a glider assault team. However the platoon could now be fielded as an airborne pioneer platoon, too.

8. Oktober 2009
The Beginning of a Fallschirmjäger Company

Playing the United Kingdom for years now I finally started to build a new axis Flames of War army. To have an ideal opponent for my british forces painted for the italian theatre I have chosen a Fallschirmjägerkompanie.

I start to show you my efforts with a heavy Fallschirmjäger MG Platoon although the first platoon to be painted was a Fallschirmjäger Platoon. Usually playing a british Motor company I just could not imagine that the germans have more than 6 teams in a platoon. So I forgot to glue and paint three teams of my first Jäger Platoon, I will show it soon.

I decided to paint all teams with a splinter camo smock and tropical trousers. Many pictures from italy show that kind of combination for italy 1943 and I think it really looks good.

I wanted to paint this army somewhat quicker than my british army. Therefore I changed the grade of detail. Moreover I wanted to paint without Blacklining. I like Blacklining on 15mm models but on the other hand I want to test how realistic an army can look if you paint in a different way.

In order to differenciate between platoons I painted little platoon markings on the bases as well as Luftwaffe rank insignia on the command teams. The markings are the same the platoon´s weapon container is painted with. Although the italian theatre saw not many jump actions I painted them since I would love to play the Death from above mission. The marking itself is taken from my imagination since I only found pictures showing parts of the weapon containers. If somebody can provide some information I would appreciate.

Finally I made some battle markers to replace the plastic markers with text on them. The „Frankfurter Schule“ i.e. the spirit of wargaming in my home town once told me that there should be no disturbing elements on the gaming table. I liked that idea from Decebalus and Tellus and finally made Models for „Gone to ground“, „Dug in“, „Moved at the double“ and „Pinned“.

Currently I work on the second Jäger Platoon and on an Marder II Platoon.

12. Juli 2007