I was finishing off my Metzger Robots, and in my painting tray just happened to be a Flames of War tank turret. My middle daughter comes along and excitedly picks up the turret and immediately drops it. Bugger.
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Tags: 15mm, flames of war, World War II
I was reminded by a friend a few days ago that my blog desperately needed updating. And it did. I had been meaning to write something before Christmas, recounting how an easily avoidable mistake had seen me with way too much black paint on my pallet, and wanting to use it up, so undercoating my Prussian Empire Metzger Class Robot (Wading) models with the excess paint and a paint brush. These had been waiting for a decent undercoat but had been placed on hold due to my inability to find my can of Chaos Black. On investigating the local Games Workshop store, I discovered the price had jumped up yet again (to $31 for a 520ml can), so I had planned on looking at trying out slavetopainting‘s Army Painter branded Matt Black Undercoat Colour Primer, that retails for $14.90 per 400ml can, whilst at the same time trying out their Anti-Shine Matt Varnish, also $14.90 per 400ml can.
If I get my painting mojo back, and finish off these robots, I might just put an order through to slavetopainting and see what Army Painter is like.
Last night was certainly motivation enough to pick up some brushes (all I need to find now is time) with my first game of Dystopian Wars for 2011, where I shared command of the Federated States of America navy in a battle against those nasty, cold hearted, Covenant of Antarctica liars.
It was, as usual, fun game, and Aaron showed off his latest purchase, a couple of John Henry Class Robots (shown above on a collision course with a Covenant of Antarctica Ptolemy Class Bomber) which proved vital in the moral victory last night, if only as a distraction for Stu to focus on, leaving his Battleship vulnerable.
It looks like Dystopian Wars will be keeping our attention for a while yet, but Flames of War will be rearing it’s head again, as we attempt some weekend gaming this year. Time to get moving on those Late War tank armies I started a few years back.
Tags: Dystopian Wars, flames of war
My Sunday started a little earlier than anticipated. After watching a ho-hum rom-com with my wife last night I had to write a review and up-date my two other websites, FilmGuide and GameGuide. Just before shutting down the computer I glanced at the time, it was fast approaching midnight. I figured I had two options; I could crack open Dead Rising 2: Off the Record (which I have to review) or I could go to bed. In a moment of genius – or sheer madness – I grabbed a halogen desk lamp and chose the third option: work on putting my Cromwells together. Whilst this did work surprisingly well – I’m not normally tired at night – I did manage to super glue two of mt fingers together!
With most of the work done on my Cromwell Tanks and my wife having a lazy Sunday in bed with a book, I was able to go full steam ahead with my Dystopian Wars Prussian Empire Arminius Class Frigates. I’ve managed to finish painting them and will likely ink wash them later today. It’s a quick and nasty paint job but should do the business on the table.
The colour scheme I used (using Flames of War Vallejo paints) is as follows:
Undercoat: Black
Hull: German Grey
Planking: Flat Earth
Detailing: Brass
Hatches and detailing: Gun Metal
Superstructure: German Field Grey
Tags: 15mm, Dystopian Wars, flames of war, Steampunk, World War II
As per usual, my day was used up on a variety of non-hobby activities, but once these were over I did managed a little time with my new Dystopian Wars toy boats, as well as managing to break open my second Flames of War Cromwell Tank Platoon.
After finishing off undercoating my boats and cleaning up and attaching the treads to my Cromwell bodies, I decided to start on the actual painting of my Prussian Empire Arminius Class Frigates. I decided to use German Grey as my base colour, but realised after pouring some paint into my painting tray, that I had lost too much light with the day getting on, and painting dark grey onto a black base was going to be a mission to decipher how well I was going. But the paint was poured so I decided to go for it. Tomorrow will tell if this was a good idea or not.
Tomorrow I’m hoping to be able to attach the mudgaurds to my Cromwells and (fingers crossed) finish my Frigates.
Tags: 15mm, Dystopian Wars, flames of war, Steampunk
About 18 months back I purchased some Cromwell Armoured Platoon box sets (BBX12) from my local hobby store. One of them was the new design, and one was the old design. I’ve already put together and painted the first platoon, and now that I’ve got my modeling mojo back, I’ve cracked open the new box set. This set is possibly one of the first batches from when Battlefront moved production, and as such I know that their quality control has probably been improved, but I couldn’t help but notice some stark differences between the quality of the old set and the new set.
As you can see from the top photo the metal is very dirty – and by that I mean the metal itself, like maybe they were scraping to bottom of the barrel so to speak – even after scrubbing them with hot soapy water and a toothbrush they were still dirty. And the cast itself looks sub-par – and this is after a clean up of all the excess flash and such – of which there was quite a bit.
Whilst I’m sure the metal will be fine, and no one will notice once it’s been painted, it dos take the shine off opening a new box of models.
Along with a lot of excess flash and poor quality casting, there are blobs of metal between the tracks and the tank body – as you can see in the top two tracks in the above photo. These are a little to hard for me to be bothered cleaning out, but it’s non-the-less quite annoying.
Of course once I’ve got round to finishing them and play my first game, you probably won’t notice anything wrong with them on the table. But it is annoying, when you open a new box of models to be hit with disappointment. Generally, knowing how good Battlefront are at customer service, I’d just send them an email and they would happily send out replacement parts, but because I’m in the mood for getting on with the job – and it’s a long weekend so I have some time – I’m just going to work with what I’ve got.
Tags: 15mm, flames of war, World War II
