Challege Submission #15 - Another Smattering of Special Challenge Targets

 

One of the special challenge targets was to paint a Superhero figure. I didn't have any miniatures that were easily identifiable as a specific superhero, although the figure with the helmet and gun has a bit of a 'Peacemaker' vibe to him. I don't even know where I got these figures from or who manufactured them. They all stand 30-32mm in height, so they are slightly taller than the usual 25-28mm figures. Perhaps the Hive Mind can provide some clues.

They were first primed with black, and then painted using Vallejo acrylics. I used some GW washes on the skin areas, and on the hair. The colours chosen for two of the figures were based on suggestions from my wife, who used to collect Marvel and DC comics before we got married. The colours for the 'Peacemaker' figure are based on images of that superhero found on the net. So I give you 'Blue Moon' (named for the frequency of his appearances), 'Omega Dude' (named because of his fancy wristwatch), and my version of 'Peacemaker' (who is wearing his holster on his right side, but shooting left-handed. 😕)

 

 

Diving into my box of unpainted Sci-Fi miniatures, I found three West End Games Star Wars Snowtroopers as they appeared in 'The Empire Strikes Back' during the attack on Echo Base. They were primed in grey, and then painted using Vallejo acrylics. After the bases had been painted white, some AK Diorama 'Snow Sprinkles' was applied  While not as fancy as some of the newer Star Wars: Legion figures out there, I think they still look pretty good. 

I didn't have any robot miniatures in my 'big box of shame', but I had some wooden figures from the local craft store that were designed to be painted up as nutcrackers. I also had the book 'Boilerplate - History's Mechanical Marvel', by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, and I thought I might be able to do a conversion to make an 'old robot'.

 

An image of Boilerplate from the book

 

My starting point

 

I rummaged through my boxes of collected bits and bobs that I use for building terrain features to find the right pieces to convert my nutcracker figure into an old robot. Doweling of various diameters, tubes from dry ink markers, old chopsticks, hollow plastic sucker sticks, thin copper wire, and some epoxy putty were all pressed into service. In the end, the only pieces from the original figure that were incorporated into the build were the arms and legs. The end product stands 80mm tall (pictured below standing on a hockey puck, the Canadian standard for both size and mass). If I were to do another, I would make his head a bit shorter  his helmet a bit wider, and his arms a bit longer, but I am satisfied with the final result.

 

 

Thanks for reading.

Siege Weapons of Middle Earth

Having cleared most of the backlog of WW2 Germans from my workbench, I decided to take a break from painting all that Feldgrau and work on another partially completed project that has been collecting dust, a collection of Siege Weapons for my Lord of the Rings armies. This included the Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet and the Mordor Siege Bow, both by Games Workshop, three mantlets and a ballista by Zvezda, a Mordor catapult converted from a Dollar Store find, and a troll loader converted from a chess piece from the Fellowship of the Ring chess set. I covered the details of the conversion of the catapult in a blog post back in 2011 (just to give you an idea of how long these have been kicking around)

http://wpggamegeeks.blogspot.com/2011/01/dollar-store-mordor-catapult.html

The Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet and the Mordor Siege Bow and their crews are straight from the box. The mantlets and ballista are from the Zvezda Siege Machines Kit No. 1. My brother-in-law had bought the kit and was only interested in the catapult that came with the set, so I got the rest of the items as a windfall. I had picked up two troll chess pieces very cheaply off eBay as an alternative to the very expensive (and now OOP) Games Workshop figure that accompanies the Mordor War Catapult. I still have the second one unaltered that I might convert into an Isengard Troll by adding armour and a weapon with epoxy putty. Another project for the future.

While all these weapons can stand on their own, I decided to make bases for most of them with different themes depending on which faction they are associated with. The bases won't always match the terrain they are on, but all my LotR figures' bases have slightly different colour schemes depending on faction.

 The array of Middle Earth Siege Weapons before the wall of Gondor.

 

Zvezda wheeled mantlets providing protection for some Uruk-hai crossbowmen.

 

Zvezda ballista used by a crew of Dwarves.

Mordor Catapult converted from a Dollar Store find. The base is an old CD with sand, flocking, and grass tufts added.

 

 

Troll loader converted from a Lord of the Rings chess piece. The large 'rock' spheres are the plastic projectiles that came with the Dollar Store catapult.

 

 

Mordor Siege Bow and crew by Games Workshop.

 Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet by Games Workshop. The base is another old CD with the stone work made from squares cut from used plastic gift cards.

 

A 'before' and 'after' of the Troll chess piece. I sawed it off the original base and mounted it on a large metal washer to give it some weight. I had to build up the center with some epoxy putty as the feet of the original figure curved down a bit on the base it was mounted on.

I still have a few more details to add to the base the ballista is on, basically a few potential projectiles that could be fired, but otherwise I am calling this one done.

Have a safe and happy holiday. I have more LotR projects waiting in the wings, so stay tuned for more to come.

Scratch Built early-WW2 German Artillery

 The scenario for the assault on the Polish Post Office in Danzig called for a number of specialized units in the German order of battle, such as the Steyr ADGZ armoured cars. It also called for quite a number of artillery units that would be placed on the table top, something that rarely happens in our games. The Germans deployed a total of two 75mm Infantry Guns (7.5 cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18) as well as a 105mm howitzer (10.5 cm leichte Feldhaubitze 18M). I had one of the former that I bought years ago when planning out a Dieppe scenario, which I have since painted, but I couldn't justify the cost of the additional guns which are likely to only see action in the streets of Danzig.

Here are some stills of the two types of artillery taken from film footage of the actual attack.

 Note that the version of the 75mm Infantry Gun still had spoked wheels as they were mainly horse drawn in many early war German infantry divisions. 

It was time to do some scratch building. Materials for the 75mm Infantry Gun were balsa, cardboard, paper, and bits of cork. The wheels were salvaged from some old Airfix HO Scale French Napoleonic Foot Artillery

The 105mm Howitzer was a bit more complicated, as well as being a bit trickier as I didn't have scaled dimensions. For the 75mm Infantry Gun, I had my unassembled Bolt Action model as a template, but I was winging it from photos for the 105. Here's the detailed parts list for all the bits and bobs that went into the model.

The recuperator cylinder is part of a wooden skewer from a restaurant burger. The barrel is part of a hollow plastic sucker stick. The breech block is a piece of cork. The cradle is a piece of a square wooden stick that came with a potted plant. The trail was cut from 2mm plastic card. The wheel tires are garden hose washers.  The wheels are seals from a milk carton plastic spout. The wheel hubs are paper circles cut with a hole punch. The gun shield and spades at the end of the trail were cut from old War Amps key tag. It is all held together with crazy glue, model glue, or epoxy depending on material.

 

Some of the dimension in the final assembly of the howitzer are a bit off, but it will do for the purposes of the scenario. If I had to do it again, the recuperator-barrel-carriage assembly should be mounted further forward, the trail should be 30% longer, and the gun shield a bit wider. Still, I am pretty happy with the final results.

 

I decided to mount the two guns on bases with a cobblestone pattern on them to resemble the streets of Danzig. Here is the 75mm Infantry Gun. The crew are from my Black Tree Design 75mm Pak 40.

And here is the 105mm Howitzer. I decided to make a mini-diorama on the base, inspired by the photograph of the actual gun in action. The spent shell casings are short sections of plastic insulation from some thin copper wire. I sealed one end with a dab of glue, and then painted them brass. The ammo boxes were made from some scraps of foamcore with a strip of paper glued around the edges to hide the stryofoam.

 

 

That pretty much completes the last of the necessary support weapons needed for the scenario. The workbench now is occupied by larger caliber anti-tank guns and kubelwagens. Stay safe out there, and I hope to see you all around the gaming table at some point in the future.

Terrain Project and GW Roughcoat

In these strange days of multi-hundred dollar plastic building kits, I always find it refreshing (and economical) to make something out of found objects. In this case, some very nice packing material from the LED TV set I bought my wife for Christmas this year.

One of the daunting things about these large terrain projects is how to paint them. Every hobbyist learns early in their career that regular spray pain dissolves foam, but brush painting these huge pieces is time consuming and takes a ton of paint.

In the past I've used "stone-effect" water-based spray paint to reasonable effect, but when I was in the GW store a couple weeks ago I spotted a can of something called "Roughcoat" in the paint lockup. When I asked Redshirt Mark about it he explained that it was textured spray paint and was supposedly safe for foam. After some Internet investigation ("trust... but verify") I decided to use it for this project.

It worked reasonably well. While the texturing effect was pretty minimal (I'd hoped for a rougher concrete effect) the spray didn't melt the foam, and was easy to use. I count that as a win, but at $20 a can, next time I'll hit Canadian Tire and pick up some stone effect stuff.

I drybrushed the piece with lighter grey using a large brush, and detailed the rather flat walls with some florist's wire sprayed black, painted GW Leadbelcher (dull silver) and treated with Rust Effects, which was also used on the walls. The roll-up door was made from corrugated plasticard with a spare handle from a Forgeworld kit. The large numeral "4" was freehanded and the small one is a decal from the decal folder.

More plasticard was used as floor sections in the upper levels.

Ladders conveniently came from Conscript Byron's shipping container kits.

Here's the other side of the piece, with a 28mm Citadel Spacefarer for scale.

Rhino shows the scale of the piece.

But wait, there's more! The other end of the TV had its own foam piece too. Identical to the first one, but with shallower indents on top. Again, perfect for 28mm figures.

More plasticard flooring and GW comms array. It's not glued down but is there merely for effect.

Both pieces pushed together cover about 4 feet - impressive eh? And just the thing for a massive game on an 8x5 table.

Imperial Bastion to show the scale.

...or an Imperial Knight?