Rocky Outcrops

Made these over the last couple of days. Gathered a selection of stones from the garden, found some old CD's lying around the house. Stuck the stones onto the CD's then covered blank areas with sand/gravel mix and undercoated and painted. Lastly stuck on the static grass. Not a new idea I know, but something I wanted to do. My kind of terrain making.

I intend to use these with 28mm figures, for Ambush Alley, Old West and Zulu War plus others. Here's a shot of one with an Apache for an idea of scale.

Will probably make a few more soon.

Return of the 24th.

I found these three lurking in a dark corner, based and undercoated, and looking a little bit lost. So I picked them up, brushed off the dust and started painting.

I've slightly changed the colours used on these three. Used GW's Mechrite Red as a base coat for the jacket and Dheneb Stone as the base coat for anything white. This certainly speeded up the painting process. Before I had been using GW's Scab Red as the base coat, which meant applying a couple of coats over black, before highlighting. Previously the webbing, helmet etc. had been base coated with Khemri Brown and then highlighted. I first used the Dheneb Stone on the clothing for the Apache and then washed with Graveyard Earth and then highlighted up. Also boots and anything else just going to be black I drybrushed with Codex Grey rather than highlighting the black. Overall I was able to finish these three much quicker than before.

And Yes I have broken my rule not to get sidetracked onto other projects!

'You're one ugly motherf****r!'

The Predator!

This lovely sculpt is from heresyminiatures. I've been dipping in and out of the Heresy site for a while, viewed their models at Salute but even though I saw quite a few models I liked (check out the demons) never made a purchase since it was a case of 'what am I going to use it for?'. Then about two weeks ago whilst browsing saw this sculpt called a 'Hurn'. The rest is history so to speak.

This is the first model I've bought for a while which I have assembled and painted straight away (which I think speaks volumes). The figure is a multi-part kit. The body is one, but the arms are in three pieces. The arms are sculpted to the elbow and then you have the choice of either having the arm mounted blades extended or retracted. The forearm weapon mounts are are a one piece casting. The hands are separate, and you have the option of either the clenched fist (as I have used) or the right hand holding the extended spear. One of the hand options is holding a small tube which I think allows you to cut down the 'retracted' spear and mount the ends onto the hand.

The plasma gun mounted on his back also comes in three parts. The upright, swivel mount and the gun itself. The swivel mount had to be pinned to the metal arm, which was fiddly but not to difficult. (I had to use a small piece of a staple, it was all I could find at the time). When ordering you have a choice of base size options and I went for the 40mm round lipped display base. I'm glad I did the model is bigger then what I thought it would be. Next was to paint it. I had decided that I would base any colour scheme on the movie alien, but what colours to use was the issue?

The colour scheme is based (loosely) on the Predator from the the second film, the one with Danny Glover. I searched on various sites which revealed that there is no generic colour scheme, each film has added its own twist/slant/variation to the original Predator.I must admit I had not actually noticed the difference in the various movies. I also read on a couple of sites that the original colour scheme was based on a banana skin! The yellowish colour and black spots. So I decided that as long as it looked menacing, I was free to paint it how ever I liked. I had considered purchasing a sculpted resin base, like the type made by Fenris and available from hasslefreeminiatures or Fenris's own e-bay shop. But I decided against this, maybe next time?

The last photo is a comparison to give an idea of the size of the model next to a 28mm scaled human. In this case a Delta Force operative from the grippingbeast range. Who are you going to put your money on?

Overall a great model and I'm pleased with the result. I will be purchasing more of the Heresy models. I just need to find a set of rules to use the thing in.

Hopefully another variant of the Hurn will be produced, a helmeted version would be good and some Xenomorphs to battle against?

Yet More Apache!

Two more Renegades to add to my small but growing Apache warband. These models are proving quite fun to paint, and I'm limiting the colour palette to spend up the painting. This is made easier due to the fact that I can give them white shirts and trousers, historically the Apache adopted these garments following contact with the Mexicans.

I actually finished these about a week ago but have been completing another little project since then. More on that later.

More Apache

Here we have a couple more Apache, completed over the past week.



This warrior is particularly well armed with a repeating rifle and a six gun! Wearing a traditional war cap on his head.

This warrior is holding in his left hand a flop head club, or traditional war club.

The reasoning behind starting the Apache was to use them in 'Legends_of_the_Old_West'. Quite a few of the usual club attendees, have Old West figures and the indomitable Capt. Nolan has a large collection of Cowboys, Mexicans and a very nice set of frontier buildings. The Apache fought against the Americans (Anglo-Americans) and the Mexicans, so it made sense to paint up a force of these Native Americans.

Project 7 Revealed

Here it is Project No.7.


Foundry-Apache.

Purchased these nearly a year ago, to be used in Legends of the Old West. Like so many other pieces of lead they have languished in a draw until now. But from now until the end of the year these and my FoW project will be the main focus.

More on this project in another post .

Project-Flames of War

Now in the last entry I mentioned that I have a plan of where my Flames of War gaming/collecting will lead. Initially when I decided to play and collect miniatures for FoW, I chose the US Airborne mainly because I had some US Airborne in 28mm, and thought it would be nice to carry on the same theme in the smaller scale.

Since I was painting the US Paras to represent the 101st and/or 82nd Divisions in Normandy, ie wearing the m1942 jumpsuit, it seemed logical to collect German forces which featured in that campaign.

Primarily the Airborne will represent the 101st Division 'Screaming Eagles'. Both Paratrooper Divisions were dropped behind Utah Beach on D-day, but were badly scattered, numerous small scale actions took place as a result against the defending Germans. Now this means that I should be able to eventually create scenarios to represent these initial encounters, against the troops of the static divisions defending the coast line. The supplements produced by Battlefront cover some of the units defending the Normandy coast, so it should be fairly straight forward to use these to recreate the Grenadier Divisions.

Yet my initial German forces I have decided will represent the following German units.

The 6th Fallshirmjager Regiment was engaged against the Americans pretty much as soon as they landed. Was involved in the defence of and the attempt to re-capture the city of Carentan.

The 17th SS PanzerGrenadier Division 'Gotz von Berlichingen', was involved in the counter attack to re-capture Carentan from the 101st Division.

Both of these units have 'Briefings' on the Battlefront website allowing for their recreation. So this will mean I can build forces around their orders of battle, rather than use the generic army lists. Though I do not intend to give any of the models specific unit markings, so that any model units can be used to represent other Divisions present in the Normandy campaign or just to be 'generic' units for for use in the game.

After these units have been built for the Germans I will look to add in models for the Heer Grenadier formations, and for the US forces probably an armoured formation. I will eventually move onto the British, and would like to start with the 7th Armoured, who had the misfortune to encounter Michael_Wittmann at Villiers-Bocage.

This will be an ongoing project, but I'm hopeful that by aiming to design my forces and 'real' units it will be one which will maintain my interest.