Clearing Off the Paint Table a Little

It has been about eight weeks since I last had a day of hobby time.  So I did a little cleaning in the basement, putting away some of the clutter that had accumulated, and managed to finish up a few odds and ends on the paint table.

First item done is one of ArmiesArmy's ASU 85s, making three thus far for my forces:

This is probably may all-time favorite 15mm modern casting.  They are just so clean and nicely detailed.  Can't wait to get some of their British stuff.

Next was to finish off the bases on some AT3 Sagger teams for my Mugabian forces.  Yes, ATGMs are coming to imagi-Africa:

These are QRF figs that came in a recent order from ScaleCreep which consistently offers some of the best service in the hobby.

Uwanda will get Milans:

These are QRF German Milan teams painted in Uwanda's colors.  Nice figs that have me wanting to build West Germans for the Cold War.  (By the way, QRF is expanding their range of Leopard 1s, if you haven't heard already)

While going through an old model kit box recently, I found a long lost old Imperial Guard figure, so decided to paint him up:

I love these old figs, and will replace one of my plastic IG figs with this one.  It was kind of cool to find him after being lost for about 26 years.

I recently stumbled into my second 1/100 Fouga Magister kit:

An old Starfix kit made in Israel.  It builds up into a nice little model.  Here is a pic of my other one in Uwanda Air Force markings.

Took about two years to find this one, and two more years to locate the second.

Last of my day's accomplishments was to add some detail to a pair of Jeeps with TOW atgm. The original models are metal castings from QRF.  While looking at photos, I realized that there were a bunch of different configurations of this vehicle, so I decided to spruce mine up and make them a little different.

And primed, but not yet painted:

These will be painted to use with my late 1970s/early 1980s US cold war forces.

May not seem like much, but I got 14 models off of my table (and a bunch of clutter), and two piles of pieces ready for paint.  I'm one step closer to space for work on my post-apoc vehicles, and the hospital for an upcoming Uwanda-Mugabia war  scenario.

On the Work Bench (7-15)

My plans for playing my African campaign game have been put off for a week (going to play a game at a friend's house tomorrow instead).  So I thought I'd babble briefly about things that I'm working on. 

This year, I've been bouncing between sci-fi/post-apoc and African imagi-nation projects, and right now my work table is mostly covered with sci-fi and post-apoc stuff. 

For Christmas, I got several Reaper figures, and despite being in the hobby for 30 plus years and having 15,000ish figs, these are my first Reaper figs.  Below are the first two that I've opened to paint.  At first, my thought was that the dude was too tall to work with my generally 28mm figs, but after posing them next to a couple older figs, while he is tall,  I think it was just that he is lean and so well sculpted that it created the illusion that he wouldn't fit. 

My wife isn't a gamer, so ordering figures is always a bit intimidating, but she said that Reaper was great to deal with, and that they shipped really fast at the peak of Xmas season, so I thought that I should share the good word, if a little late.
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Next up, I solved a minor problem for my old Imperial Guard vehicles.  I hate sculpting/modeling/creating tires.  Just kind of boring and tedious, so I have been putting off making the tires for my IG scout cars.  While cleaning up, I found two old Humvee kits that were in the box for the last couple of decades, and decided that the wheels would work for the scout cars.  They are just slightly smaller than what I was going to make, but I have the right number of them, and they will save be about four days of building, mold making, casting and cleaning, which translates into like two months of irishserb hobby time.  Here's a pic of the wheels positioned next to one of the cars.

 

I think that they will work out well.  I just need to build the suspensions now.
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Years ago, I painted up a couple of Kryomek Talos figs.  Originally, I saw them as an addition to my old IG figs, then painted them to be part of a sci-fi corporate army, and will probably end up just using them as alien critters of some sort.  I liked the figs, but wasn't crazy about the weapons, so I did some simple conversion work on the weapons. 

Anyway, a couple of years after painting the first two, I picked up a couple of more packs at a convention, but never did anything with them.  I recently came across them  after maybe 10 years on the shelf, and they have finally made it to my work table.  I'll probably modify the weapons similarly, and then try to figure out which gang/faction/army/race they belong to.  Ooh, have an idea, maybe they will fight for my old guard figs after all.
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This is a hover-bot that I made a gazillion years ago.  It made it with the idea of using it as a security bot and maybe a sort of probe drone, but stopped working on it after becoming disenchanted with the base coat of paint. 

 

I still like the concept, but it wasn't well executed at the time.  I think I'm going to strip this down, update it and give it another try.  If it turns out, maybe update the master parts a little, make new molds and give another it another go.

Rides Update: 28mm Sci-fi Recce Cars and Other Progress

The second vehicle type for my old imperial guard figs is the Recce car.  I went back and forth during the design between something more similar to the French VBL and something  closer to a WWII armored car.  I ended up opting for the  more WWIIish  design.

The vehicle has a three man crew with seating for 5-6 in a pinch.  The small turret carries a light auto cannon and  a drone for detecting the bad guys is carried on the rear deck.  Here are a couple of pics of the current progress:

 

I've also made some progress on the wheeled APC, particularly on the hull front and sides, and a little on the smaller turret:

 

And the last photo with all three of my sci-fi vehicle types, including the larger tracked APC from awhile back, to give a size comparison. 

I think the second recce car may get a different turret.  The first one is mostly done and came out okay, but I liked the look of it better on the drawing.  The other version that I sketched out looks a bit more like the turret of the BTR-80A.  I figure the cars can be a Mk I and a Mk II.  We'll see.

Dawgies's Men - Part 2

Eighteen days into 2015, and I have equaled my total painting output for 2014.  "Dawgie's Men", my 28mm old GW Imperial Guard (mostly) army (not for 40K) is painted.  Well, the troops are painted.  They still need rides, but that will come later.  Right now they are table top ready, though I have one step before they are truly finished. 

In addition to the troops shown in my last blog entry, I added the company headquarters (six more figs that I had left off of my painting tray originally), and a recce section (another six figs), which are also painted.  The complete company now numbers 120 figs, though I am missing two figs from one platoon HQ, which I will have to find and add later in the year.

Anyway, here are Dawgie's men:

The entire company; CHQ in front, recce on the extreme left,

1st, 2nd, and 3rd platoon left to right with PHQs in front of

 the respective platoons.

 

Close up of the CHQ

 

2nd Platoon HQ

 

Troops from 1st Platoon

The majority are old GW Imperial Guard figures, with about half having some sort of conversion work done on them.  There are also a few newer GW guard figs, and an assortment of non-GW figs sprinkled throughout.

One thing I still need to do, is to add their names back onto the bases.  I've experimented with painting them on, but my brush "writing" is inconsistent, so now I'm considering doing it with a paint pen.  Hopefully, I'll have that done in the next week.  Then they can join battle in the wastes of the post apocalypse or defending colonies on new worlds.

Dawgie's Men: Preparing Old Imperial Guard Figs for a Return to Action

My Imperial Guard first saw action in the late 1980s, just one game before a long stasis in a box on the shelf.  Every few years, they were to be reborn for a game, usually picking up a few new new troopers, only to return  to stasis. Most recently, they saw action against my daughter's orks during her "Space Ork" phase.  Now, the space orks are collecting dust, as she is in her "I like working on '60s and '70s muscle cars" phase.

Anyway, several years ago I bought a large number of old IG from an internet acquaintance who some of you probably knew as Baddawg6, Baddawg, or just plain Dawgie.   Got about a hundred of Dawgie's old figs, mostly GW old IG with a few others worked in as well.

I bought them at a great price, without seeing them, figuring that as long as they weren't painted in winter or chocolaty brown camo, I could work them in.  And worst case, I could always repaint them.  I received the figs, decently painted, with lots of minor conversion that added nicely to the figs.  Too bad that they were in a slightly reddish chocolate brown camo pattern. It just didn't work with my old figs, nor my terrain.  I was in no rush, so repainting wasn't a big issue.

As always, too many projects, not enough time.  Years passed.  One day, Dawgie posted on the Post Apoc Wargames forum that he was going in for some medical stuff, and we might not hear from him for a little while.  Dawgie was special, and I miss him greatly. 

When I finally sat down to repaint them, I found myself in a bit of a conundrum.  Dawgie had named his troops, I mean like named the individual troopers. I already felt bad about repainting the figs, but the idea of erasing the names of his troops really bothered me even more.  Silly, I know.  So, his troops sat on the shelf a bit longer.

Recently, I finally decided to repaint them, and organized the figs, mixing my old figs with Dawgie's to building a company of 114 figures.  The figs were sorted on a painting tray. I filled out a chart, noting names and details of the figs, so that their identities won't be lost while receiving their new uniforms.  

As it turns out, 74 of Dawgies old figs are in my new unit, which really sort of makes it his unit.  As such, the "Old Dawg" will be the First Sergeant of this company, thus they will always be Dawgie's men".

Over the span of several weeks, I managed to strip the figs of paint, using a combination of Easy Off oven cleaner and Simple Green.  Free time has been scarce in recent months, so I found myself getting up at 5:00am, excited to be working on my hobby, scraping paint off of little men before going to work. Sad really.

The Easy Off works pretty quickly, loosening a lot of the paint, but not getting into deeper crevices very well.  It is also really unpleasant to work with.  I only used it, when I first got started, to allow me to work on a small number of figs during the first couple of days.  After the topical cleaning, the dozen of so "Easy Off figs" went into the vat of Simple Green with the others. 

Figs were soaked for anything from about six hours to six days, requiring varying degrees of attention with paper towels, a couple different dental picks, and/or a toothbrush.  Some required two or three rounds in the Simple Green. By the way, Simple Green breaks down the super glue joints and softens the green stuff putty.

While preparing to paint, I discovered that I was long out of the original Polly S green that I used for the uniforms. So, the basic paint scheme will involve cloth portions of the uniforms getting a coat of Vallejo Russian Uniform (very close to the original) with armor and gear generally being Model Master Dark Green.  Some will get a yellow/tan irregular "ring" (almost leopard spots) camouflage on the green cloth.  My old figs will get some additional gear and updated uniforms with more shading to better match the "new" figs.  Below is a photo showing a couple of my old figs in the original uniform (circa 1987), pretty basic.

I'm guessing that it will take until some time in January to complete the painting and will post a follow up then.  

In time I plan to add a recon section and a support section from battalion, maybe another 15-20 figs total.  They will all need rides as well, but those will come later, a good 2015 project.