I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. The camo on the Denison smocks came out much nicer than I thought it would, though it's difficult to see in these pictures.
Now I just need to do two more sections, plus specialists, plus commanders, and I'll have the Allies side of the Red Devils campaign complete! Then I'll have to do some German vehicles. And a ton of terrain. Sigh.
At least I have enough Paras to field a force in Operation Squad now.
Just a quickie: I recieved an order from Company B with a few non-AFV vehicles I need for the Skirmish Campaign I'm gearing up for. The vehicles are mostly fairly nice, from what I've seen in the quick poke through the box so far (especially the Flak 30 2cm gun!) but there are a couple things that stood out to me: First, each baggie-ed model comes with a small leaflet showing a photo of the vehicle, and giving a brief historical writeup about it. It's a small thing, but very nice to have. Second, the Horch Staff Car is probably the cleanest resin model I've ever opened:
That's straight out of the package, no filing or sanding or anything. Nice!
It will be a while before I can start work on these models, but I'm happy with the product so far.
Before Christmas, I finished all the minis I had on hand that I was interested in working on, and started casting about for a new project to inspire me. One idea was to start building a Wild West board and put together some posses to fight over it - and I haven't really put that idea away yet, I still think it would be a lot of fun. But around that time I picked up a copy of Skirmish Campaigns: Red Devils Of The Orne, and I started getting excited about putting together a force of British / Canadian paras. At some point I got it into my head that the right thing to do would be to buy and paint everything I need to run the first two campaigns in the book, and so a new project was born.
I have a (reduced) platoon of paras to form the core of my force, and several of the scenarios call for para jeeps that are used essentially as mobile MG platforms. I ordered a couple jeeps with the rest of my paras, and they are the first part of the force to get painted. Lots more to come!
This is a figure my wife picked up at the last Trumpeter Salute convention, almost a year ago. I got some other minis from the same manufacturer and picked up a copy of his rules after trying a demo of his game, Strange Aeons. The figures he had looked great so I picked up a few packs. After getting them home, though, my feelings were a bit more mixed. The figures are cast in super tough lightweight resin and the monsters are mostly pretty good, though the detail is pretty rough. The humans (agents and cultists) I got were fairly shabby, unfortunately. The detail is rough, and the quality of the sculpting is fairly low. The cultists, for example, look like they were carved out of wood; the folds of their clothes, which should be soft and rounded, are hard-edged and angular.
Anyway, my wife bought this figure but never got around to painting it. She still thinks the mini is cool, but she's much more interested in spinning and knitting than she is in painting figures, so she asked me to paint it for her so she could use it as a "hood ornament" for her spinning wheel. It only took me two evenings, and despite my complaints about the sculpting I think it looks pretty rad when it's all painted up. I used clear gloss varnish on it to give it a bit of a slimy, snotty appearance.
I recently finished a Canadian and a German command team. The figures are Bolt Action and they were well-cast, with very little flash or mold lines at all. There were some issues with crud in the tight spots, for example around the end of the German signaller's rifle and the ground. Cleaning up even the small quantities of flash and miscasts on the models reaffirmed my preference for plastics... even when there are problems, they are so much easier to fix on plastic figures.
The Canadian command squad:
And the German command squad:
So the figures are really nice and they paint up well, but I honestly don't know when they will ever see action. These guys are definitely not squad or platoon leaders. They look like company or maybe regiment commanders, and I'll never* game at that level in this scale. I may be able to find a scenario or two that has an attack on an HQ or something...?
*Yeah, I said "never." I suppose I'll probably have to eat those words at some point.
I had a game of Warmaster Ancients with a friend last night, and decided at the last moment to set up my camera and shoot a timelapse movie while we played. The action goes by pretty quickly at one frame every ten seconds, but you can sort of get a feeling for what happened.
A higher-res version is available if you view it on Youtube.
You can watch as the Warband advances with a skirmish line out front. The skirmish line advances to just short of the Roman legions, and mucks up their line with some surprisingly effective shooting.
The Romans redress their line and advance, but one unit of Legionaries is left out front, and the warbands capitalize and destroy it.
The Romans finally manage to come to grips with part of the main force of Celt infantry, but a rogue unit of Celt skirmishers manages to get between the Romans and the rest of the Celts and block them.
Meanwhile, on the peripheries, the Celt chariots and cavalry wipe out enough of the Roman sidelines to pass the Roman break point, and the Celts win the day.
