Test tank done

Well, I decided to get one tank done to the level I'd like them all to be at, and here it is:


I've gotten the German cross painted on two sides (the door on the other side isn't quite right and has a big latch in the middle - I figured I wouldn't bother), the symbol of the 2nd Panzer Division on the back, and the commander detailed including highlighted face, insignia, and pink Waffenfarbe. All in all, I'm pretty happy. I'll get more weathering onto them if I have more time.

Experimenting with Camouflage

I decided to try to get some work on the tanks done since it really will be the easiest to get looking good. Last night I drybrushed the grey up to a final highlight of white, and this morning tried some camouflage on the Panzer Is. Here are the results:



I based the paint scheme on this article from the Flames of War website. After highlighting the camo, I washed the models with Devlan Mud, which definitely toned down the brightness. I may actually go over them once more with the highlight color very lightly to bring out the edges a little more. Detail work will be next.

Halfway to D-Day

We're halfway there - and here is my army. From blisters to ready to paint in about a week, plus one platoon basically painted. Now it's time to get serious.

I tried out Devlan Mud and Badaab Black, and the result was pretty much identical. The brown went a little better on the khaki, so I figure I'll go with that. I'll post pics when I've gotten the platoon done.

Them are some BIG guns

The Buflas (Bunkerflaks) are built, and DAMN are they big. I'm not sure why, but I just didn't really understand how big these beasts are. Apparently they were built on a 12-ton(!?!) halftrack chassis. Keep in mind that tonnage ratings for transport vehicles are based upon what they can carry - the actual loaded weight according to the FoW website was 22 tons. That's a monster any way you slice it.



I've included a Panzer I and two Panzer 38(t)s for a sense of scale.



I'm nervous about the crew - I'd prefer to pin them with only the two tiny little feet as contact points, but the thin resin just can't handle any stress. And it would be a pain in the ass to put a pin into their legs. So one of the Buflas has the crew also glued to their guns. We'll see how secure they are.

I'm going to get the last of my models primed and sprayed tonight, then get cracking on finishing the paint jobs.

Panzers built, no dip

First off I decided against the dip. One critical part of dipping is a white primer to give you really bright colors, which are then dulled by the dip. Over a black primed model it would just get too bright. I instead went with an experiment between two of GW's washes, which I've used in the past to good effect. More on that later.

I now have built my panzers, the Panzer 38(t)s (which were grabbed from the Czechs after the Germans invaded them back in 1938 to no significant opposition due to the British and French giving the Sudetenland to the Germans, which had all of the Czech defenses in it) and the Panzer Is. They went together with minimal problems, though since I was watching Burn Notice at the time things went slowly.



One interesting thing was that the Panzer Is were pre-molded for magnetization! How thoughtful! They were even perfectly sized for my large stash of "surplus" disc rare-earth magnets. I just popped them in and ready to go! The only problem was that these are pretty big rare-earth magnets. So it turns out that there was so much force holding them together that I could barely turn the turret or remove it. So I decided to put some spacers made out of the blister packaging in so they are more manageable. Still tough to separate them, though.



The 38(t)s were not pre-molded, so I had to whip out the Dremel and carve out the holes. However, this time I went the same way I went with my American tanks, with the surplus magnet on the hull and a smaller magnet on the turret. This doesn't have nearly the same excessive force as the Panzer Is, but they hold quite nicely. Took me a lot longer, and I had to be careful about the resin dust, but those are much more useable.



Next up: Bunkerflaks! I'm really looking forward to getting home from work.

First Schutzen platoon done to basic standard

Well, the first platoon is done to the basic standard - block painted with all main areas covered, but no detail work or highlighting. Here are the results:







Paints used, in the order I painted them:

Tunics - Vallejo German Uniform 920
Pants - Citadel Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey
Metal - Vallejo Game Color Gunmetal Metal 054 (yes, it is a redundant name)
Wood and bases - Citadel Foundation Calthan Brown
Skin - Citadel Foundation Tallarn Flesh
Canteen and bread bag - Vallejo FoW Khaki 988

First off the popsicle sticks made a HUGE difference. I had to kind of figure out how to use them, but once I did they were awesome. The first stick I did the tunics on I painted each model on all sides and it helped, but not a lot. Then I tried doing one entire side, then shifting my grip on the stick and doing the other side. That was the trick. I cut the time I spent painting the tunics in half.

I also quickly decided to not worry about painting over the webbing suspenders. The detail is close to the model, so it was really hard to avoid getting paint on it and it was taking a lot of time. It won't take me nearly as much time to cover the straps with a bit of black paint later. On the other hand, I didn't paint over the pouches and the like. As I love to explain to my students, it is all about opportunity costs. I've got a limited amount of time to paint, so I can use that time painting base coats or detail. In the end, any time I spend on one I can't spend on the other. So if it takes me 30 seconds less to paint a model if I just paint over the straps, but it only takes me 10 seconds to re-paint the straps, then I'm gaining 20 seconds a model. With 150 models, that one change is saving me almost an hour. I can spend that hour painting Waffenfarbe (branch color on their shoulder straps) or rank insignia.

A little about my brushes. I have three "go-to" brushes for almost everything I do with 15mm infantry. I have a Citadel Standard Brush and two Vallejo kolinsky sable brushes, a 1 and a 2/0. The kolinsky brushes are amazing - they are incredibly precise, and seem to almost be able to read my mind, getting paint where it needs to be without even trying. On the other hand, this precision can be a bit of a pain when I want coverage. That's when I pull out the Citadel brush. That's made of cheaper squirrel hair, which doesn't have as much spring in it, so it flows around other detail more easily, and tends to get into deeper places that are hard to hit with the more precise kolinsky brushes. So most of this work was done with the Citadel brush, though the skin was with the kolinsky brushes, and I'll pretty much be using them for everything on the infantry but drybrushing from here on out.

Oh, and I won't use them for the next step - I'm going to try "the dip" for these guys. For those who don't know, that's using a polyurethane wood stain on them, which gets down into the crevices of the detail in a very even way, creating great faded shading. I'll try it on one stand of these guys, and report on the results. In the mean time, I've got all the infantry built and primed, so I think I'll start building my tanks!

And the difference is...

Not a hell of a lot.



The model on the left is one I just painted using the German Uniform color I bought earlier today, along with the pants being the same Adeptus Battlegrey I had used as the basecoat for the other model. There is no highlighting on the left model. And it's kind of hard to tell the difference.

So I'll definitely go with the left model's paint scheme. I'll think about some kind of wash or "dip" after I've gotten everything looking decent, but that's getting into the "nice if I can get there" area. But with how easy it was to get this level done, I foresee getting a lot of these guys done to this basic level within a few days.