AHPC XIV: From MikeW - 20mm WW2 Infantry, Orcs, Tau and 28mm Wild West.

  I open this weeks post with a tilt at the Local History Bonus in the Competition Library! I present a group of 16 x 20mm WW2 British Infantry, namely men of the Royal Sussex Regiment who fought in North Africa, Italy and Greece during the later stages of the war. I have spent most of my life living in Sussex, England and thus my claim to this being local history...

16 x 20mm WW2 British Infantry, North Africa / Southern Europe Theatre

Close-up of these guys from the left, the bases were painted with Brown PVA gloop and fine sand added before a few strategic tufts.

The figures have been kicking around my loft, garage and workbench for a number for years. Believe they originally came from eBay but I can't actually remember, as such I can't identify the manufacturer either. So I undercoated these guys in white and then blocked in the main colours with a series of khakis (trousers, jackets and shirts), tans (webbing etc), greens (shirts, helmets and boxes) and the like. Guns were painted in with GW 'Leadbelcher' and wood was GW 'Gore Grunter Fur'.

And from the right. The officer on extreme right has a 'Tommy Gun', as do the NCOs. This reflects the close fighting in and around Monte Casino.

I've brought the rear rank forward here to give them a better view. Second left there is a guy carrying an Ammo case, fourth left is a Bren Gunner, carrying his weapon

Flesh was GW 'Darkoath Flesh' then highlighted with Army Painter Flesh colour. I applied a wash of GW 'Agrax Earthshade' to the whole figure and then gave the dried figures a light dry brushing of light Khaki before adding in red shoulder titles and chevrons in red and green respectively.

A view of the rear rank guys from the right

I based the figures to reflect arid conditions you might expect in North Africa, Italy or Greece, in my minds eye, I was focusing on the Monte Casino battle, where the Royal Sussex served, an action that has always caught my imagination. Maybe I'll now look to find some Germans to act as defenders....

And from the left, the figures are mounted on single 20mm MDF bases. Can yo spot the guy with a broken bayonet, darn thing snapped off as I was varnishing the figures!

Close up of a few of the little guys, daylight here in UK for such photos is terrible at present, we need some sunshine and I need a better camera and photography skills!

The next item is a bit of a filler, a 28mm Wild West figure that I found with the above WW2 infantry. So I painted him up at the same time! I'll pass him and a couple other figures I have to a club colleague - to join his huge Wild West collection.

I believe that this is an old Wargames Foundry figure,
a townsfolk character armed with a pistol 

A fairly straight forward paint job on this guy, white undercoat, black boots, jacket and bowler hat. Brown trousers and flesh & hair as appropriate. I dry brushed the figure with a light khaki to give some highlighting to the brown trousers and black jacket and hat. Then a flesh wash to hands and face to add details.

What can't quite be seen in the pictures is that he is holding a cigar in his left hand

On the Tau front, I have concentrated on a large Tau mech this week, plus a handful of Warriors, a Drone and what I think is a Communications Relay or Defensive Shield Device. Again apologies to my minion but I have classed this as a terrain piece and am just claiming 1 point for it - I'm not sure if there is any other example of this item in previous challenges!

This Tau tech is a big model,
a suitable commander for my growing Tau army.

This Coldstar Battlesuit was sourced from eBay and has
three major weapons systems plus a defensive shield

Another angle on the finished model

Not sure what happened to the colour on this photo!

And a final rear view of the Coldstar Battlesuit

The rest of this week's Tau batch.

On reflection I'm pretty sure the device on the right is a Defensive Force field generator - I am working on a second one for next week. 

The center piece this week is a Commander in a Coldstar Battlesuit, I have assigned this 10 Points but this guys is bigger than the Crisis Suit techs I did the other week at the same points. Again I'll leave this to my minion to adjudicate!

The range of model sizes in my growing Tau army!
From Left: The new Coldstar Battlesuit, next the Crisis Battlesuit,
second right the Stealth Suit and extreme left a regular Tau Warrior (28mm Model).

You will see on the Commander's base there are two terrain items that I painted up , I'm claiming 1 point each for these, hope this is OK.

Two GW alien plant forms,waiting to be
added on to the Commander base !

Now for more Orcs! This week I have completed a regiment of 18 x Orc Archers, including a musician and a standard bearer. I have shared the recipe for these guys in earlier posts in this year's challenge and these are no different.

A completed group of 18 x Arra Boyz!

From a Skulls Duel point of view these have 6 Skulls to add to the ongoing tally!

As usual I have split the batch into smaller 'bite' sizes!

Five more Orcs...

I set batch painting process of most of my models, leaving character or commander figures to be done separately, usually with a little more detail.

A case in point, I spent a little more time on the standard bearer,
with this hand painted Orc Rag....

Other than that these are all pretty standard fare.

Finally a cheeky Late 17th Century dismounted Dragoon. Truth be told  I started painting this guy for my Local History topic, the Royal Sussex being known as the "Old Oranges' due to their facing colours.

Close-up of the Dragoon figure

Trouble was, that I didn't realise that this was a Dragoon figure until I began getting painting process and was preparing to paint his trousers, socks and shoes. Imagine my surprise when I realised he was wearing riding boots! My eyes aren't what they used to be...

In my defence, I wasn't wearing my glasses when I digged out this figure to paint. In the past I have converted spare Dragoon figures into regular infantry men, however, this is not appropriate with half painted figures.... 

Anyway, a white undercoat, base colours applied and use of washes and highlights gave this somewhat pleasing result that will join some other Donnybrook compatible figures!

Next week I'm doing the last of my outstanding Orcs but after that there is only a few more Swamp Goblin Herders and more of their Frogs! Of course there are more Orcs on order from eBay! Also a small batch of Bretonnian Archers and some Lizardmen to come.

POINTS

AHPC XIII: Mike W - 28mm Dutch 17th Century Cavalry and whatever I can get done in the next three days!

How time flies, the end of the challenge looms and I have so much to do that I did not get around to even starting! So this is likely the last post that I can make this challenge and this is really a series of items that I have been scrambling to complete over the next few days as the deadline looms.

This weekend I am on Grand parent duty and this unlikely to get time to do anything else. I'd like to take this chance to thank Teemu for his tireless efforts dealing with my posts and also to Curt & all the minions for again making this an enjoyable experience.

So here are my odds and ends and I bid all farewell until next year's challenge?

First of a group of 5 x 28mm Late 17th Century Dutch Cavalry representing Filips Emminghuysen van Eppe's Regiment of Horse, first raised in 1672 and served at the Battle of Seneffe in 1674. Apart from having an extraordinarily long name, they worn grey jackets and trousers, sky Blue cuffs and Horse furniture. I have still to get the officer completed but this is unlikely to be done by the end of the challenge!

Front on view of five troopers,
officer is still being painted at the time the challenge comes to an end!

Side view, I don't usually do casualty figures but the occasional one adds flavour to a unit

And the other side

Next I have managed to complete one of the two remaining 40K Ork Kill Koptas, again it has a scratch built rota blade set but the build and construct are much the same as last week's submission.

Second Kill Kopta completed, with one more to go...

The other side! Extra guns added on the Kopta's front bonnet.

Another view again!

Here are a couple of 15mm project that have been floundering over the last few months, first up is some long overdue American Civil War Coastal Batteries and secondly we have some Russian supplied equipment for the Spanish Civil War Republicans, in the form of tanks and artillery.

On the ACW front we have 7 x Coastal / Siege Batteries, these are in the traditional grey finish with blackened barrels (to protect them form the sea salt). Each is on a fairly elaborate chassis and typically these would be found in long term forts / emplacements. I'm also throwing in 4 x Smoothbore Field guns that I have just completed.

The completed 15mm ACW Coastal Guns

I've had these models for ages, stored in the garage waiting for me to get around to painting and basing them. A potential future game set in the Petersburg Siege lines has prompted me to actually dig them out and get them ready for use.

And four completed ACW Field Guns

These little Field Guns were found along wit the big guns above, so I decided to get them completed at the same time as well. I gave these plain wooden frames, assuming that they would be used as Confederate batteries, I believe these are 6lb Smoothbores. I now need to source crews for each gun.

Close-up on a 8" Columbiad Gun. I have tried to weather the carriage to
represent harsh sea salt air in coastal areas

Another view

This is a close-up of the 10" Columbiad Gun

Again another view

A comparison shot showing just how big these Coastal / Siege
guns were compared to regular Field Artillery

Next we have 3 x T26 tanks and 4 x Artillery pieces all supplied during the Spanish conflict to the Republican army. The equipment is all in traditional Russian Green drab but on the tanks I have added the Republican Tricolour of Nationalist Spanish Flag as these vehicles were prized by both sides.

Three completed T26 tanks, centre & left are Republican vehicles,
right is a captured tank pressed into Nationalist service

I have quite a large SCW Republican Army and a smattering of Nationalists to oppose them, as a club we were heavily into the SCW some time ago and these models were sourced then to 'beef-up' my mostly infantry based forces, they are metal models and I'm afraid I don't remember which company made them.

Another angle on the tanks

I decided to paint one in Nationalist colours, as I saw a nice picture of a Nationalist T26 online recently, I have a fourth T26 model that I'll add to the Republican ranks in due course but at present the model has a missing gun barrel and I have to source one from somewhere.

Four completed Artillery pieces all of Russian origin

Along with the 'lost' tanks, was found some generic Republican Artillery pieces, I believe these are all Russian supplied guns. again I can't remember the manufacturer's name.

Again another view

Following on from the SCW I now switch (almost seamlessly) back to Warhammer 40K and a test Space Marine figure. Last post Iain picked up on a throw away remark that I made about wanting to raise a new 'blue' Space Marine Force but that I was reluctant to commit to Ultra Marines. I just happened to have a marine figure ready build, so I undercoated it in white and decided to use Speed paints to see what type of quick paint job I could do!

So here it is, a Crimson Fist Space Marine with a Heavy Plasma gun, I used Army Painter 'Magic Blue' for the armour with 'Slaughter Red' for the fists. I painted the gun and it's umbilical cord silver and then used 'Graveyard Grey' over the silver to give a rich metallic shading.

The chest eagle was painted with 'Sand Golem' and the various cables were painted in black, or red as I felt appropriate.

The plasma rings on the gun were painted by covering with white paint then putting down a yellow coat alont the spine of the rings before applying a watered down coat of light green paint.

Now 40K purists will note that the figure does not have the correct iconography for a Crimson Fist, but as this is a test figure, I'm not too bothered. That said I'll no doubt be damned as a heretic and sent to some Penal Colony for the rest of my years,...

Next, I managed to finish the Commanding Officer that I had partially painted (and then got distracted from) for the Dutch Regiment Slangenburg - that I posted for this challenge back on the 9th Feb. Fredrik Johan van Baer, Heer van Slangenburg wears a heavily decorated scarlet coat, a cuirass and is mounted upon a sturdy brown horse as he waves his feathered hat!

Fredrik Johan van Baer, Heer van Slangenburg

Another view

The figure is a Front Rank one from their Late 17th Century range and it paints-up really very nicely, in my opinion.

My only regret is not having time to complete a 40k Ork Gargantuan! Well, a McFarlane model substitute for a Gargantuan!

Imagine the size of the finished Ork given the epic scale of his gun next to a regular Ork!

AHPC XIII: MIke W - 28mm 17th Century Dutch, 15mm 8th Army, 40k Orks and more

 This week's output has been hit by work and real life pressures eating away at my hobby time - so I can't present quite the same number of finished models, but I have tried to keep the variety going by doing another Studio visit and a test set of 15mm 8th Army Infantry.

Lady Sarah's Limo Fare - Female Survivor with a shotgun

First up again is a Female Survivor being used as a fare to use Lady Sarah's Limo to transport me to the Casting Coach. This figure carries a double barrelled shotgun and also sports a utility belt and wears a nice brown leather jacket and jeans.

Slightly different view

Sky Blue jeans with a blue ink wash applied for shading,
grey/white t-shirt and brown leather jacket and Stetson.

At the Casting Couch we stumble upon an errant dwarf who has been casting for '50 Shades of Grey' or some other film of a similar dubious nature. The producer has left him somewhat tied-up, awaiting his cinematic debut!

A very naughty Dwarf! Bubonic Brown ropes, barbarian flesh and
orange hair are the main colours used here!

I washed the rope with inks to give definition, then gave the hair a red ink
wash before dry-brushing yellow. Skin area got a Flesh wash.

Moving on to this week's main submission we have Regiment Slangenburg which was an Infantry Regiment of the Dutch line in 1675. The colonel we one Fredrik Johan van Baer, Heer van Slangenburg, the unit appears in a number of sources where it is variously described as having white or grey tunics, with crimson linings. One source describes them wearing red tunics, although this was a common practice or officers and NCOs at the time and another source describes the drummer in a crimson tunic with orange pants and socks.

A completed battalion of the Regiment Slangenburg, there are 28 figures, with Musketeers on 4 x 4 figure bases and the pike & command on 6 x  figure bases. The flags are temporary, sourced from Warflag.com

I have interpreted these sources as shown below - light grey tunics with red cuffs and linings, officers and drummer in crimson and all with orange trimmings. I have given the musketeers a few black hats to break-up the informality and they also have a variety of grey shades for socks.

The unit's right flank, most figures are North Star's 1672 range,
with a couple of others thrown in to make-up numbers and add variety.

I'm planning to use Flags of War's glorious 28mm flags on this unit but an admin 'cock-up' o my part means that the order has been delayed, so I am presenting them here now with temporary flags downloaded from the excellent WarFlag.com site.

The unit's left flank

It's been a while since I dis a unit of Late 17th Century figures for my collection and I'd forgotten how many buttons these little guys have on them, Musketeers averaged 20 buttons each and the Pike & command figures averaged 16 buttons each - in all, by my calculation, 536 buttons on this one unit!

A nice view of the command block and the 'make do' flags from Warflag.com

I have the pike and command figures based on 2 figure bases 20 x 40mm, so that I can create a ring of pikes around the command figures. The command figures are on 2 man bases so that I can swap out command figures and use the unit in a number of scenarios on different sides of the various conflicts of that time.

Another view of the pike block

These last two pictures are of the musketeers, what's nice about this period is that there are literally very few sources for uniform details, so you can quite rightly interpret what little info there is to fit your table-top version of reality!

Musketeer's business end! Note all the buttons....

Dutch troops tended to have larger, floppier hats than other nations, but this was not a hard and fast rule, they were also influenced by French military fashions. In the ranks of these musketeers you can see a mix of the hat and uniform types

The other Musketeer wing.

I have also been doing a mounted officer to go with this unit but time has beaten me this week, hopefully I'll stay focused and finish this guy next week.

Next up are this week's batch of 13 x Orks & 11 x Grechin, all painted in the same basic manner as all the others as I work towards completion of this army.

This week's batch

First up is a boss figure, armed with power Axe and a Hand Blasta, this is a plastic figure sourced as most of the others from eBay.

Warboss

This batch of figures contained some old metal figures, including repurposed Gorka Morka Ork figure armed with a Big Burna, I particularly liked the head with goggles on this figure. With him is a more modern Plastic Guy with a Big Burna and backpack full of tools.

Old metal figure on left, newer plastic figure to right

Quick view of their respective back packs!

As ever, there are a number of basic Boys with Choppas and Hand Blastas, I've added smoke to a few of the Boyz power weapons for extra effect.

Four Boyz

In this batch we have four Boyz with Heavy Blastas

And four more...

The last two Ork figures are both plastic and represent a guy with a Rocket launcher and another with a Heavy Blasta support weapon, for even more Dakka.

Final two Orks

Rear views showing their backpacks with additional Ammo supplies

Then we come on to the Grechin, who run the show in this army. There are three old metal figures plus eight plastic, more modern figures. I have done these without armbands, just to ring the changes, but the cool metal Boss figure has a Red Star back banner and some of the grenades have red stars painted on them.

Thirteen Grechin figures, including three old metal figures and three converted figures,
remainder are all standard plastics.

Three older metal figures. Central is the Grechin Boss withAK47 derivative and a pistol, as a leader the has the red hair of rank. Either site is a standard, metal Gretchin figure.

So I also did a bit of kit-bashing to make up three unique Gretchin figures. First I used an old Grot plastic figure and converted him to carry a looted Imperial Guard Burna. Next I took a plastic Snotling and removed his wooden club and replaced it with a looted Imperial Guard LasRifle, finally I took a classic GW fantasy goblin from the 1980s, replaced his head with a spare modern head, removed his spear and replaced it with a hand blaster, added a grenade and bullets to his belt.

Most of the looted equipment for this Ork army is sourced from my Imperial Guard spares box, giving a consistent look and feel - implying previous battles against the Imperial Guard.

These are all converted figures, looted Burna left,
looted LasRifle centre and a converted vintage goblin on right

Finally this week, we have a small test group of 15mm 8th Army figures, I obviously plan to do a few more of these in the coming weeks, as I eliminate a backlog of several (will maybe 4) Flames of War packs I found in the loft. 

5 test 8th Army infantrymen

Four Riflemen and a guy with an Anti-Tank Rifle. Basically I was experimenting with approaches on how to paint these and in hindsight I should have photographed each option. I undercoated the figures in White, Buff or light yellow before washing with either Agrax Earthshade or Skeleton Horde Contrast Paint.

And another view

Close-up of the guy with the Anti-Tank Rifle

Flesh was then added and details painted in for rifles and webbing etc before washing with a ligh tbrown shade to bring it all together.

Current Position, planning on heading to Fantasy Lot next week