U.S. 3rd Armored Update.

I'm a little sick of working on tanks at the moment so I've been doing a lot of work on my Armoured rifle Platoon to support my 3rd Armored Division.

They've been based for a week or so and today I've done the gaiters and jackets on all stands and also their trousers. I'm planning in trying to oil wash all of these guys at once to see how it turns out with a view to using that technique in future for non-camouflaged uniforms. All that now remains for me to do is the webbing (VMC Green Grey), the helmets and larger pieces of equipment (VMC Brown Violet),  flesh areas and finally the weapons (likely to use (VMC Flat Earth).

I'm not going to highlight the uniforms at all and simply oil wash over them with thinned Mig 502 Abteilung Black Oil Paint. I've been using this technique to what I think is a good effect on my recent Elefants and Tiger (P), giving a "black-lined" effect which is manageable. The oil takes so long to dry you can use straight thinner/white spirit to remove excess wash or even adjust where its lying on the model to some degree, I'm hoping this picks out the webbing and things like face details in one fell swoop.

Below is a pic of the current progress on the ARP guys, I'm currently stalled on the Armour for the list as I wait for some better decals and also work out how best to mark the Stuarts in respect to their unit denominations? I've seen large letter/number combos painted on the side of some 1/72 models like C-3 in a very large yellow font on the side of the hull and while I really like this and want to use this sort of marking I want to research it properly first (and possibly find some decals for them too!).

Monday Afternoon Game.

So my mate Stoo, who originally got me into FoW years ago, has picked up V3 and has some renewed interest in FoW so we decided to have a rules game to try out the new rules and a list he'd drawn up from Red Bear. I was running my SS Kavallerieschwadron which is finished model wise but I'm still painting several platoons.

Below is a few pictures from the game and you can see Stoo being a bit vexed by his situation. Warning, there are a lot silver surfers on the table here but it's just a friendly, rules and list tweaking game in my "war-room"!

We played No Retreat with myself as the defender.

EDIT: Yes, the last pic is of 3 bogged Hetzers, "overloaded" is a bloody nightmare!

Jagdpanther and VK4501 updates.

Worked on this guy in between waiting for coats to dry on the VK4501 yesterday, not amazingly detailed but it's what I was going for:

Tidyed up some of the pin wash this morning and glossed over to seal:

King Tiger, almost finished.

After finishing work early today I decided to get some painting done and get my latest list complete. I've yet to finish 3 nebs, my Pioneer Platoon and this KT. The infantry and guns are all at a uniform base colour stage and all are based.

After selling my original "Ambush Pattern" King Tiger (see pic below) some months back I decided to finish the one I've had sat on the painting table for months half painted.

I've almost got her finished, I just need to finish off the stowage, decals and tank commander.

The emphasized wear is a little stylised but I think it gets the message across? Take a look at my latest KT below and let me know what you thin so far?

Hetzers!

4 Hetzers for my Feldhernalle force, list is done, thanks to a ncie trade with James for a stack half tracks I'm never going to use he got me these and some Pak43s (hoooo yes!). List is pretty much finished and I'm planning on using it to attempt my first tournament entry, Feldhernalle seems like a strange choice but I just get everything I like.

They're hopefully looking pretty Hungarian about now? These aren't Battlefront as you may expect but "Forged In Battle", overall I'm very, very impressed with the quality. Resin hull, with white metal guns (2 options, ones a 75mm gun and the other looks to me to be a flame thrower) and remote fired MG, all made very nicely with only one issue on one gun, which had a slight cast fault but after 30 seconds with a file it's marginally shorter than the other 3 but barely noticeable.

Below is a single WIP pic I've literally just taken along with my inspiration pics, let me know what you think.

LW Panzergrenadiers almost finished!

So I've literally started from scratch with these in two days, quite happy with them, camo is so-so, not as good as my FJ but I spent NOWHERE near the amount of time on it.

I've tried some easy over highlighting on parts of the fieldgrey uniforms and some of the webbing in and effort to make them stand out a little. Better than most of the other infantry I've ever done so for a day or so's work I'm happy with them.

Random old pics.

So I installed Picasa on my PC to help with this new "blogging" lark and it dragged up loads of old pics from my other hard drive I didn't know I still had of some bits and bobs and WIPs from the last 4-5 years or so. Some are absolute crap, some are ok but I'd like to think I've improved a bit since then, judge for yourself: