Flames of War 15mm Churchills & Dystopian Wars bits

So the month of March is rapidly closing to an end and I managed to get some odds and sods done for Dystopian wars,

So the three bits that I had kicking around I decided to splash some paint on, 

The Second swimming Metzger Robot, the sea looks a bit naff in the pics for some reason?

Fresh out of the ship building yards the Rhine class Fleet carrier, nice and simple to paint! 

and the monster which is the Seydlitz mobile airfield, and what Coops will be facing tomorrow night ;)

And finally the churchills  for my tank company are sorted, the three on the far left are a tad shiney but I didn't shake the can for long enough so I'll re-do those at some point, nice and easy and I'm looking forward to blasting jerry with them!

with less than a week till we hit April I doubt that I'll get much more done as I'm feeling the dreaded "man flu" coming on, so the Pledge for this month stands at....

Bought 24
Painted 47
Difference 23!

So the success continues and for my first quarter I'm in the green ready for the influx of salute!

First Look: Warpath

So I picked up the Marauder army box set up a while back when it was first released and myself and Lee have been threatening to play it for a while but never actually got round to it, getting distracted by Nick Cutlass campaign then KGN exploding onto the scene!

But I organised a trip over to the local club in Loughbrough and one of the chaps over there offered to show us the ropes with regards to the system,

so in true Anton style I decided to splash some paint on the guys and see what I could get done but more on this later...


So as I'm lacking Pic's from the game I'll jump straight into my thoughts..

Gameplay

Its fast! real quick to play simple rules but there still WIP and you can tell with some of the areas but as a free set of rules its great for the "younger" gamer but also has enough to be a pick up and play. Some say that its just a watered down 40K but if you go into this with a fresh mind you might like it! the Nerves system works very well in my eyes.

The forgefathers are the don's at shooting and on the opposite side of the fence the marauders are combat monsters! One thing that we did learn from the initial game is that you need quite a bit of scenery and most of the marauders got shot to pieces in a zulu style charge! 

Models

If you look on the Internet at the various forums there seems to be a mixed view, now we've been spoiled rotten by GW for a while now and the marauders are a little basic to look at and have some "ok" poses and like but as "wound" markers they are good enough for me, simple to stick together and more importantly cheap as chips!

The only "bad" thing personally is that since the initial release nothing has been released for the marauders and this makes my current army selection very very limited! ok so you can convert GW kits but personally I'd rather give my pennies to the underdog... 

Lastability

So the initial set was Marauders & Forgefathers with the corporation just about to go live and the concepts and pre-orders for the Veer-myn (say it quick...) clever eh ;) as the game is still in its infancy its still a fair while to go before the gaps in the army lists are filled and the actual core rules are sorted out with some of the grey areas and balancing that is required.

So will it stand the test of time and could it compete with the giants of the wargaming world in the form of GW, Privateer Press, Infinity & Battlefront who knows? 

Ok so the forces coming out are good for proxies for the 40K universe like the kings of war range nice for fantasy...

But as a standalone FREE system with a little effort and some fluff thrown in there for good measure yea its "ok"

anyway enough whaffling on to the plastic crack porn!!

so two basic grunt squads and a captain

a close up of the captain, good size model lovely pose but without some greenstuff trickery not multiposable but a bargain for £9!

close up of one of the grunts dead easy to paint, enough detail for them to look interesting but not too much that they become a ballache to paint.

Raptor fast attack buggies, made from a plasticy resin and the forks were a bit wonky but I decided just to bang them together and go for it (fits with the "ork" feel) now these are quite a good price you can three for £30 which I thinks pretty nifty!

cleaned the camera lens at this point! This is a converted raptor armed with machine guns, 

and the stock version with a rocket launcher.

So I managed to get that lot done in a couple of days, and I'm just finishing off another 20 odd guys so I'll do a "how to" for those people interested, but with the mojo still coursing though my veins I've this lot to get done for my flames of war British army, all I need to do is await some missing parts from battlefront (there customer service is tiptop!!) and I'll start cracking out the army in due course, will it be finished by the end of the month?? no bloody chance but I've a few bits to do and that'll just  round the pledge off nicely!!

Operation Save the Kurtle.... Mission Complete!

Ok so the deadline has been and gone but I managed to get the three warbeasts painted for Kurt and to say he was a happy man was a bit of an understatement!

so the two earthborne flanking Mulg, I basically painted Mulg the same as the two earthbourne but when I'd finished him, I felt that there was "something" missing and even though he's got the alps as his hat it didn't feel complete (if that makes sense?)

And then it hit me like a speeding bullet....

I'd also noticed that a huge chunk of stone was missing so I figured I might as well disguise the missing bit with some tufts of grass.

Overall painting these was a nice change compared to the stuff I've been doing recently and the reaction that these have had from the local lads has been nice so a man points boost there!

So the "recipe"

Skin:
Spray Leather BrownHeavy dry brush Kemri Brown (GW Foundation)
Heavy dry brush terra earth (Vallejo)
Ink with Devlin mud
Light dry brush terra earth but building up the layers,

White Stones:
Denab Stone (GW Foundation)
Ink with Gryphone Septia (stupid bloody names!)
light drybrush/stipple Denab stone


Cloth:
Russian Green (Vallejo)
bleached bone & Russian green mixed for highlight, I did about 2/3 layers


As always the end of the month is fast approaching so the pledge gets stepped up a gear with all the 15mm flames of war stuff that I've bought this month I need to start blasting some models out and get some in the bank for the yearly trip to salute next month,

I've already spotted a couple of systems that I've got my eye on, one is....

I've liked the look of this for ages and the models are really nice, I missed the chaps at last years salute so I'll be have a look to see where I can find them and hopefully get a game in

the other thing that's got me going oohh.... is

produced by westwind, the same guys who did secrets of the third reich, this is a brand new release for salute and something tells me if its anything like SOTR then its gonna be a good game!

Operation Save the Kurtle.... Part two....

So in between entertaining the GC....

I've managed to get the earthbourne pretty much finished off, all I need is the green light from Kurt and I'll put the brush down, 

I finished off the stones with a gryphone septia wash and going back over it with denab stone, some green for the wraps and do the rock on the base along with some weathering on the hands and feet. 

over all once I got into the swing of doing these it wasn't too bad, however it wasn't to stop there, 

The hardcore rules state that you must have a painted army so Mulg needed doing so I picked him up earlier today and started to crack on with him,

so quite pleased so far what I've managed since Sunday, and its nicely got me mojo back for painting so I'll be cranking out the 15mm Brits along with some finial touches for the 20mm Germans.

Operation Save the Kurtle.... Part one....

Whilst finishing off some stug's and panthers I was asked by one of the guys at the local shop if I'd mind help paint some trollbloods for him,

he only wanted two models done which were the earthborn dire trolls, In my head I thought no worries on that piece of piss... then Kurt said he needed them by the end of the week for the hardcore tourney! well if thats not a challenge I don't know what is!

So Kurt had stuck the fella's together and given them a leather brown spray, so that was the most time consuming part done and dusted for me!!

So I started with some Khemri brown then graveyard earth over that, 

Washed it with devlin mud and then a dry brush of graveyard earth and the skin was sorted,

Then onto the stones, started with denab stone

and this is how far I got within a couple of hours,

look out for part 2!

Flames of War 15mm Churchills test paint

So I picked up a box of battlefront Churchill's last month so I could have a play about sussing how to paint them prior to ordering my late war British Tank Squadron,


I picked up some late war British armour green and that's how they stayed for a couple of weeks it was only when Coops the mountain of metal suggested I look at the battlefront channel on you tube as there was a painting guide I figured I might as well have a look,

after watching this chap do his thing, I had to watch it again, as there is NO highlighting or shading! just the base colour and the weathering that he does.

So after finding myself a spare couple of hours after work I decided to crack on and paint the Churchill's pretty much to how they are done in the video and this is what came out the other end.....

overall I'm quite pleased with them, the green looks a bit weird in the pictures for some reason but the weathering and the grey sponge effect with pencil on is spot on, just need to blast it with some anti-shine and get some decals and they'll be good to go,

So the list that I'll be running with is...

Company HQ
2x Mk VII's
ARV
1x Crusader AA

Platoon #1
3x Mk VI

Platoon #2
3x Mk VI

Rifle Platoon
3 squads

Corps Field Battery
8 gun battery with transport & tractors

AOP



That come to 1265 so a few more bits and bobs and I'll be touching 2K no worries, all I need to do is get a game in, and theres plenty of new players at the local shop that I could test this out on!!