New Year update - Additions, Games and Painting Updates

Hello folks, hope you had a good new year. This is going to be a reasonably long article, I hope, and one which will be interesting.

I have made some substantial progress in several new wargaming areas, and a slightly older one.

The first of these is Dystopian Legions, I have finished two standard troopers and my musician (if you have any knowledge the one in question is the one in a flat cap with a more intact uniform). I have also started painting the two characters from the starter set, my Lieutenant and the special character; Captain Smethington II, who I will be using the rules as him, but am painting him as a character from my own Dystopian Legions background. The Lieutenant wears virtually the same uniform as the main troopers, with more armour on the legs, a stripe on the trousers, and goggles. I have also started painting the rather exotic Sky Hussars, posh-dressed soliders armed with flamethrower pistols and equipped with jet packs, and the models come with a rather well made resin jet plume to give the impression of flight. I have painted one plume, but have made little progress on the accompanying trooper bar the black undercoat.

The finished Troopers and Musician

Carrying on with Dystopian Legions I have also played two games of it with a fellow member of Dice and Decks Gaming Club, I may have mentioned the first game and the start of the painting on some of these models in my Pre-Christmas update post. The second game (which took place on 28th December) was a much more comfortable game than the starting game, with rules knowledge needing less help from the actual book, although my game cards were being slightly less friendly than before, but they still proved useful. The game also included the Musicians for my British, whilst the Prussians used their Medics, and we each had an additional rifle squad. The game included three objectives, one of which my Lieutenant ended up guarding by the end of the game, as my riflemen from squad 1 were forced to move up to a flat-topped hill in order to contest another objective, half-way up this hill, they fired a full volley and virtually annihilated an opposing Prussian rifleman squad, leaving two from the full sized squad, and forcing them back, only my opponent’s cunning saved him from leaving me with the objective; he had hidden his own Lieutenant at the bottom of the hill (a Games Workshop terrain piece called the Temple of Skulls). Another Prussian rifle squad was also suffering due to constant shooting attacks from my other riflemen throughout the game, although they also managed to cause a few casualties to my own troops. I believe that the game was in my favour due to my opponent making a tactical error and hiding his Teutonic Knights (Super-sized and heavily armoured troops armed with machine  guns) in a wood, and then, in my opinion, not using them to full effectiveness, using them to cause minor damage to the squad that took the hill. As a whole, I can so far state in fair confidence, that Dystopian Legions is a very good game that I highly recommend to fellow war-gamers.

My Dystopian Legions force for the second game, comprising everything I have collected for the game so far. You can see some of the finished model in the foreground, and the partially completed Lieutenant.

In other news, I have finally finished assembling my Huey for 28mm Vietnam War-gaming, using the Force on Force rules, with their Ambush Valley expansion. The only disappointment was that due to the quality of the plastic used in making the model, the model doesn’t fit properly under the chassis. Additionally, due to a cleaning error, I misplaced a component, leading to the Huey missing the rocket pods and machine guns from the mountings under the doors. However, the main purpose of the vehicle is as a transport, which is still possible. I am currently painting the model, and I am currently painting the model, and you can view my progress below.

In more 28mm Vietnam war-gaming news, I have now got both US and North Vietnamese Army models to use, and have finished some of them, although there are plenty more to paint before their finished. I have finished three US Army troopers; A Sergeant, shown in my previous post, the Commanding Officer, and a Soldier armed with the M14, which was phased out in favour of the M16, so I have a few M14s, but many more with M16s. I felt the M14s add a bit of variety to the otherwise rather same looking force. The North Vietnamese have Mat49 SMGs, RPGs and AK-47s, compared with the more various US weapons such as; M14s, M16s, M79 Blooper Grenade Launchers, and M60 support weapons. I have finished one NVA trooper so far, armed with an AK-47 and a grenade. The pictures of the finished models are displayed below as per usual.

The three completed US Army troopers and an NVA trooper

The UH-1 mid-way through painting, I have left the rotor blades seperate for ease of painting and for safe transporting around.

In Warmachine, I have now got my hands on a Choir of Menoth, which little progress has been made on due to the other new addition, a Judicator colossal. This model is turning out to be large group of medium paintjobs, as I have made most the parts into sub-assemblies for “easy” painting. So the head is one (finished, I would like to add) part, then the main torso, the rocket pods are two sub-assemblies, the engine pack, the shoulders, and arms, then the groin, and finally the two legs. This is partially due to me having to paint white, which as most war-gamers would attest, is a evil colour to try and paint in a smooth coat, and the Judicator is covered in large flat armour plates, all of which need to be white for my colours. Below are a few photos of progress on the model so far:

The finished Collossal's head

The left leg, with the grey on-top-of-black undercoat I use before I add the white colour, shown on the foot.

The completed forearm guard plate

The mid-complete forearm and hand

Hopefully I can complete or at least assemble the new Warmachine, so that I can get back into the action as part of the Warmachine Journeyman  League at Dice and Decks.

And that concludes my latest blog update; hopefully some more progress will have been made by the next update. Till then, have fun folks....

Pre-Christmas Updates

Hello Folks,

May I wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year before anything else, and now onto the updates.

I have recently given out my Dice and Decks Gaming Club Secret Santa miniature - which I can now freely reveal as a Widowmaker Marksman for the Warmachine faction; Khador. This was a gift to fellow member, Rob, who was very happy to have the mini in his collection. I started it about a month and a half ago, but was unable to post any updates due to the possibilty of it's now owner realising what it was and who I was buying it for. 
The details I had to go on in terms of paint scheme offered me an interesting challenge, Rob's notes on the form from the challenge detailed a white Khador army as his colour scheme, but I wanted to obey this scheme and introduce the traditional Khador colour of bright red into the miniature. So where could I put the red without it taking interest away from the white that was too serve as the main colour on the model, so before I go any further, here's a couple of pictures that shows the partially finished model, and then the finished product as it was given over:

Three weeks ago.....

Last week...

In the end I decided since Khador is a northern and thus winter-covered area of the background world in Warmachine, I felt a marksman would require a white coat, which was also the biggest area of the model, as camouflage, so I painted this first, and then did the inside of the coat as Games Workshop snakebite leather. The red came into the painting when I decided to paint the armour that covers the Marksman's knees, shoulders, arms and torso. Whilst I left the legs as black motorcycle-style chaps with bleached bone coloured putees. The gun I was very happy with, starting with the boltgun metal that served as the basecoat on the barrel and the over-sized scope on the weapon, I then used devlan mud to darken the metal and shadow the particular components that made the weapon, such as the circular links that kept the barrel attached to the stock. The scope was done with a ultramarines blue basecoat, then I painted the half that was furtest away from the marksman in Ice Blue, before using skull white as a final highlight to make the scope look as though it was glass. All in all, I was very chuffed with the model, and would happily describe it as one of my a) favourites to paint jobs and b) one of my best paint jobs.

Next update, I've been busy, I have now got hold of three sets from the Kingdom of Britannia faction of Dystopian Legions.

I have assembled one rifle section, and the Sky Hussars, and the characters, both musicians are assembled, and one is completely finished, although there are no pictures of the fully finished version, but there are some work-in-progress pics. I have also finished two basic riflemen.

The now finished Musician from before today's progress

Rifleman 1 - without beard

Rifleman 2 - with beard

On Friday (21st Dec) I managed to play my first game, and won on surviving model's points, although the game was slow due to rules and so was not completed. I enjoyed the game, the rules work, and the game cards add a completely new to me tactic into the game.

And I have finished a Vietnam-era US sergeant, who was quite easy to paint, just got the rest of the platoon to do before a game can happen, oh, and find an opposing force...

The Sergeant has got hand-painted chevrons on his arms, but a picture was useless due to the effects of my varnish on the lighting.


I shall update with progress next weekend, as I am free to paint for the latter half of next week. Until then folks.....

Vietnam in 28mm - Force on Force

I decided to give my plans for some 28mm Vietnam a kick-start, so I ordered the "Ambush Alley" campaign supplement for Vietnam 1965-75, and I'm still waiting on the book to arrive in the post, but on Friday I managed to find some aircraft in 1:48 scale, which according to other blogs, is the scale for aircraft to match with 28mm. 
So I bought two aircraft: one A-7D Corsair II Subsonic Bomber as an air asset choice for the USA, and a UH-1 Huey Hog helicopter for transport. 

Aircraft and vehicles are something I haven't tried in Force on Force except for an extraction Chinook in my 2001 onwards Afghanistan forces, but it hasn't been used in any major role yet.
I decided to start building the UH-1 Huey Hog first, and so far I've started on the cockpit and the navigating crew-man, the navigator has been built and also painted, and I'm very pleased with the result, shown below:

I admit that the picture isn't the best focus (as is the standard at the moment due to the lack of a high quality camera), but hopefully you can understand what I was aiming for.
The cockpit and transport space are virtually one and the same, it's nearly assembled, but so far, I'm making good progress:

Although having been following the instructions I do wonder about the logic in sticking all the small thin plastic elements, such as the control sticks and such, before the crew, makes no sense to me.