Total Battle Miniatures

Making good progress on my 7/2 Half-tracks. Almost finished now. I decided to put them all 3 on a seperate large base, dunno why, i saw it somewhere and it looked nice. Ordered some Panzer Lehr decals from Dom's Decals. Best decals ever...

Like i wrote in a previous post, i ordered some Total Battle Miniatures houses a while ago. 6-7 houses including the big Orthodox chruch. That thing is huge!

Massive Orthodox Church

That one is already painted up and flocked to go with my tables. The rest is waiting in a black basecoat. If you order some after seeing these pictures, make sure you wash that in warm soupy water or you'll be smearing paint all over the place and nothing sticks :-)

Church painted up. Don't mind the Wehrmacht stuff in the background... ;-)

In the picture above you'll notice the green board beneath the church, consider it a teaser for the upcoming posts. It's one part of my gaming board.

All i need on that Russian church is some AK Interactive Green Slime to mimic wood-rot (or how the hell do you write it).

They look darker now...

Getting ready to play a 2000pts battle tomorrow. there's alot of discussion on the official FoW-forums about the Russians not being powerful enough. We'll i'm about to find out. I'll be playing a Heavy Tankovy against, of course, a Panzer Division with everything going from Panther's to Stug's to a Tiger II.

Curious how that one is going to turn out :-/

A new year... a restart

Hi all, i took a while but i'm slowly getting up to speed again. I finished alot of stuff in the last months but I didn't had the time, patience, mood, (fill in), etc... to put in on the blog. I have to apologize for this to those who care(d).

Played alot of FoW, still not finished painting 28mm ACW but this year i should put the finishing touches on my two brigades, bought the Dropzone Commander rulebook, haven't looked at it tbh :-( Dystopian Wars came to a standstill, not good but don't really care :-) I received a 15mm Republican Roman Army which is on the painting que (read somewhere 2014). My SS-Panzergrenadiers are finished which is a good thing.

Currently reading Tigers in the Mud from Otto Carius and The Forgotten Soldier by Sajer. Both are very good reads, heard alot of bad things about the latter about not being 100% historically accurate but i don't care, it's a good book nevertheless.

I have a few projects to share with you, couple weeks ago i build myself a 180x120 modular gaming board which is quite nice to see. I have a couple more extensions in the pipeline for it. I bought alot of Total Battle Miniatures eastern front houses (including the uber-church), which are also very nice btw.

Painting is going at a steady pace atm, currently painting up my 1750pts Panzer Lehr for the new updated Normandy books due out in June 2013. Next will be an addition to my Mid-war Panzer Grey Germans so i can use them Early War too (read Panzer IIIs and Mortars).

I'm also in the process of buying a complete French Town from a Portuguese guy. Already bought 1 house for it. It looks very, very nice!

That's all...

Panzeraufklärungs-Lehr-Abteilung 130, Normandy '44

After a long break... a Konigstiger

I don't know what happened, i just got tired of painting. The house needed alot of work and the garden needed (and still does) alot of work, my son needs alot of work, i just didn't have the energy to start something, let alone finish something. Until this week...

I finished the second of 4 King Tigers. This one in a more Normandy 44 kinda-camo and you know what? I used Vallejo Middlestone for dunkelgelb on this one and it never looked better. Those 6 Panzer IV's will be sprayed in the same manner. Pictures below...

Second, I also finished my first Eight Army infantry platoon, still need to base them. Shouldn't be to hard to do, it's "just" sand :-)

And third, i finished my SS Heavy Platoon. So my SS-army is 99% complete. Pictures of those will be posted later. I'm getting good feedback from my gaming buddies, i sense a little jealousy there :-)

On with the pictures! Panzer March!

Argh! It's him again! and he brought his baby-brother!!

At last...

A Flames of War book about a battle in my homeland, one of the greatest battles of the Western Front during WW2. I always liked the way the Bulge started, the mighty German panzers roaring through the Ardennes, scaring the hell out of the Americans. I love it! ;-)

SS-Rocket Artillery Battery

Nebelwerfer 41 Rocket Artillery ist bereit!

Only the 2 kubelwagens for the observers i still need to finish. Tomorrow will be a big test for a 1750pts SS-Army list...

Anybody know if you can mix Turning Tide with Grey Wolf. I can only field Fearless Trained Nebels in Grey Wolf while the SS-kompanie from Turning Tide can field Veteran Nebelwerfers...

SS-Panzergrenadiers

Finally finished these little bastards! A quick post to show some badly taken pictures... not too happy with the basing but don't feel like doing them all over.

 Now time to finish my Nebelwerfers, all they need is some base-lovin' and then it's MG42 time...

Sometimes you just gotta paint a Konigstiger

"Sometimes you just gotta paint a Königstiger..."

Myself, April 2012

 

While searching for the correct Dunkelgelb i came across some WW2 Tank Sets from Lifecolor. Not too pricey so i ordered them directly from eBay. About 17€ each. I purchased them because they had a strange approach to the Dunkelgelb, it was very, very light. Considering everything I tried before was either to dark or to greenish I was very, very eager to try it out.

Königstiger (Henschel Turret), Poland 1944

Keeping in mind that it was a light-yellow colour i picked up one of my Königstigers, picked out a camo-pattern and started spraying like a madman! Thinned the Lifecolor with Vallejo Airbrush Cleaner (yes, you read that correctly) and like magic ... it worked!

I tried something like the pattern in the picture above. Used some new weathering techniques and i think, to be honest, it's one of my best pieces of work yet. A medal for me! Huzzah! No really, i like it alot, i have 2 more to paint and then its on to paint set number 2. I'm gonna use that to try some Bulge work...

Enjoy the pictures and let me know what you think!

A lone Sharpshooter...

This is not a tale of a lone sharpshooter, this is just to show what happens when one gets tired of waiting for some new paints to arrive and when one gets bored of painting SS Oak Leaf uniforms...

I was really fed up with painting those little 15mm guys in those annoying-to-paint uniforms so i took a small break. Since we decided to postpone our first 28mm ACW battle again, i'm gonna try to squeeze in my skirmishers. 14 figures to paint, one done, which was more of a tester.

The most famous of Union Sharpshooters is of course the 2nd US Sharpshooter Regiment led by Colonel Hiram Berdan. They had all green uniforms payed for by Hiram Berdan and the rifles they used was the Sharps Rifle. Some men brought their personal rifle with them. They fought on almost every field of battle in the East and became famous while defending Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Enjoy my little "tester" :-)

Dunkelgelb!

What is the correct colour to use for German Dunkelgelb? 

Maybe the most asked question next to what is the meaning of life?

Nobody seems to know the answer... at least, thats my assumption. While we have gazillion amounts of information on the internet about world war II, millions of bits & bytes worth of discussion about this period... still, nobody knows the answer to this rather simple question. Is it really that hard?

To be honest, my search for the correct Dark Yellow or Dunkelgelb ended where it began...

It all started with the Flames of War forums, searching through endless and endless pictures in the gallery of painted Panthers & Tigers. I had Ernst Barkmann in his Panther and 5 Late War Tigers on the workbench and i really wanted them to shine so i looked at thousands of pictures. I quickly came to the conclusion that Vallejo Green Ochre was the right type for me. Mixed with some Windex and drying retarder i sprayed away. I was a happy man!

But then things turned bad...

German Tritonal Camo became my worst nightmare ever. Vallejo Model Air, which i have alot of, is literally Airbrush Hell. clogging, clogging and then some more clogging. Evening after evening i tried and tried but nothing helped, so i started searching for a simple solution. Some people pointed me towards a japanese word, one simple Japanese word: Tamiya.

Tamiya has a small range of Acrylics based on Isopropyl-Alcohol. Thinning of these paints is easy. Just buy some Isopropyl-alcohol and you're set. It's that simple. Mix 50-50% and spray away!

Grabbed me a Tiger and sprayed some XF-60 Dark Yellow, Red Brown and Olive Green. It turned out nice but not nice enough to be honest. The brown and green were good but the dark yellow was just too ... well, dark. I tried again. Mixing Dark Yellow with XF-57 Buff for a ratio of 70%-30%. Sprayed the same camo pattern. Nope, still not what i wanted... I then sprayed a new model with Vallejo Green Ochre and used the Red Brown and Olive Green from Tamiya, which gave an odd result. For some reason those 2 brands don't like each other colour-wise The pattern just didn't 'match'...

Next test : Vallejo Middlestone; What the hell was that. It's just not my colour :-) didn't bother continueing with the camo. Tried in the past, one of my first tanks was painted with Middlestone. I remember looking at it at my bench ad thinking to myself; "Meh".

Next up was DOA Dunkelgelb: Too yellow, really TOO yellow. Like a fellow-blogger describes on his blog: DOA are good paints to spray but are just too dark, way to dark if you ask me. 15mm models need light colours imho.

In the end i came to the conclusion that i was the most happy with Vallejo colours. My Stugs turned out okay and they were painted with Vallejo. If only i could solve the clogging problem. Reading all day about people with the same VMA problems, i decided to try a new product (yeah, i know). Liquitex Airbrush Medium. Most people call it a MUST for Vallejo paints to work well in the Airbrush. Gonna order it today and pray, pray, pray to the Gods of the Airbrush.

Dunkelgelb! After all, Dunkelgelb is your choice! Not some guy who thinks he has found the correct mixture of colours, thinners, mediums and flow improvers to paint the correct Dunkelgelb on his tank only to show some pictures on some forum taken with a million-dollar camera with the wrong indoor-lighting settings! i like 914 Green Ochre d*mmit. It's easy. it looks okay and it's damn cheap too :-) 914 is my number!

Have a nice week :-)

Re-Action 2012. Part 1

Yesterday was fun. We went to the Action 2012 Wargaming Convention @ Rheindalen, Germany and we returned with lots of goodies.

A 90-minute drive and a wrong exit (I hate GPS-devices; I prefer the "put the road-map on the hood and start looking" way like any decent commander would do) and we arrived at the checkpoint where I had to open the trunk and the hood for inspection. After some directions from the bloke at the checkpoint we headed for the registration-office to get our car-pass. After that, it was on to the convention!

Lots of tables, though not as nice as the previous year tbh. Some good traders and a very nice, relaxed atmosphere! We hope this convention continues in the next year but future is looking grim as the Military Base is almost certain to close in the following years.

Part of my Flames of War treasure hunt; A Jagdpanther Platoon, Ernst Barkmann and my next Flames of War project; A British Airborne Company!

I was also looking for some Hetzers but at 10€ a piece i quickly restrained myself from buying. Either Maelstrom Games is getting my money or I'll try the Forged in Battle ones. Only thing that's holding me back is the bases on those. Maybe try trimming them is an option...

Next post will be about some other purchases i did over there... can't wait to paint those up!