Team Yankee: Scimitars and Scorpions

The first sections of my Recce company are finally done. These guys have been sitting in front of me for what feels like months now primed and begging for some paint. This past weekend I finally broke out my airbrush and huddled on my front porch hiding from a deluge, I got some paint on them.

I tried for a zenithal highlight look but honestly I need a lot more practice with the airbrush. I'm planning to make up a bunch more terrain soon so my plan is practice my airbrushing skills on them since they might be a bit more forgiving.

I cleaned these guys up with some drybrushing and pin washes after my mediocre airbrush start. I also painted up the camo nets and then glued on some "live" foliage. I had planned to use some teased out scouring pad like I did for the hedges I made long ago but they didn't turn out very well. So I turned to some model trees I've had for ages now. I'm not sure how durable they'll be and might need a bit of drybrushing to blend them in but will do for now.

This is my newish green mat with my old 15mm terrain on it. 

The tree along side is from the same source that donated the foliage on the tank.

So that's 4 points of Brits to face off against the endless Red Menace. Next up for my Brits is a couple of boxes of Chieftain MBTs so I can get a respectable point total together. Plus they'll be more practice for my airbrushing skills.

WIP: Scorpions in the Grass

Actually that's a Scimitar CVR.

Two separate projects that are both halfway done. I've completed the assembly of a pair each of Scorpion and Scimitar tanks for my Recce troop. I've also been prepping some tall grasses to add to my rough terrain bases. So I decided to combine the two posts.

First up the tanks. These are the Flames of War box set for Team Yankee and they're very nice kits. Since these are reconnaissance vehicles I wanted to model the camo tarps and foliage that they always seem to be covered in as in the picture below.

I put them together as standard and used some 1mm x 5mm rare earth magnets to magnetize the turrets. The kits are designed especially for this so it was really easy. I really wasn't sure where all the stowage should go on them. I couldn't find any reference pictures showing much of any stowage at all on the vehicles. So in the end I kept it fairly minimal.

The magntized turrets. I haven't glued the tracks on to make them easier to paint.

After reading some tutorials both on the Team Yankee website and scale armor modelling pages I formulated my plan. First step was to use some gauze soaked in glue for the base of the tarp. Once dry I glued a mix of marjoram and used tea leaves onto it. The marjoram was a little out of scale and probably would have worked better on a 28mm vehicle. I touched up parts with just tea leaves again (Earl Grey if you want to be specific.) Next up for these will be painting. I'm hoping to break out my airbrush for this so I'm going to have to wait for a day I can take them outside to work on them.

I've tried several different ways to make tall grasses before. While I've used deer hair and other fibers ( usually only on dioramas or miniatures bases) I generally use sisal twine. Previously I've made it with clumps of twine and while it's quite durable and looks OK I wanted to try to up the realism.
I already had some pieces of sisal that had been glued into clumps for a long abandoned previous project.

Some tall grass growing near my work. 

Actually the taller grass is probably some feral decorative grass. The shorterish grass is what I ended up seeing all over in overgrown fields. 

I cut up the clumps into much smaller ones usually just a handful of strands. This helped to solve the problem of the twine clumps tending to be twisted together. Next they all got a wash of thin brown ink.

A progression of the steps I took left to right

Next they were roughly dry-brushed with a bleached yellow color. It might seem like extra work to repaint the grasses back to pretty much the natural color of sisal fibers but I've always fond that using natural materials right next to painted ones makes them stand out. The final step was painting glue on the top parts of each grass clump and dipping them in some yellow turf to give the look of the seeds at the end of the grasses.

I just wedged some of my clumps in amongst the rocks to see how they look.

I made several different heights of grasses and stored them away to add to the rough terrain pieces. I'm planning on gluing them together in mixed clumps once I have everything else I need ready.

Lower Fickleham In the Sun

Finally managed to squeeze in taking some pictures of the boards with the village and other terrain laid out on them. It ended up a lot sparser than I thought. I'm going to need more hedges and trees (can never have too many hedges or trees in the collection really) and also some more fields to fill it out.  

I just made a couple of additions to the boards since I last "finished" them. I wasn't real happy with the way the roads blended into the rest of the boards so I added some sand and paste as dirt in the gutters and along the edges. I also used some used and dried green tea leaves as leaves in spots of the gutters and added some patchy static grass on the edges.The cliff board also got some sandy texture and static grass around the rock faces.

Closer look at the improved roads.

I considered adding more grass but I think I want to keep the boards relatively simple and then make several flexible caulk pieces to go over them. These will be fields, rocky terrain, woods and such. I'm hoping it will give me more options overall. I'm still not real happy with the poor fit of the boards together and the unsightly join line. Hopefully the use of overlay pieces will disguise these as well. If I ever make more board sections I'll have to be more careful to get more exact edges but for now I at least have something to play a game on. 

Terrain Boards Finished

Finally the saga of the terrain boards comes to completion. I've been taking the opportunity to work bit by bit on them over the past couple of months. I started these quite sometime ago and then tried to get them complete in a four day rush last November. If you want to take a moment to look back you can follow this link to see the previous posts. Modular Boards

After the last coat of thinned down wood filler as a seal coat I also added some patches of other texture. This was done with a combination of scrubbing on some straight wood filler and using pumice gel I had lying around. ( I bought the pumice originally for basing miniatures but it didn't quite work the way I would have liked so it's getting used up here.)

Rock face after painting

I tried to put in a rough path winding up the hill as well.

Next up was painting. I actually pulled out some of my previous completed terrain pieces that would go with them to make sure things would match up.This is probably more important with the flocking later on though. The wood sides just got a straight coat of black gesso. As much as I would of liked to stain them I had to grind through several layers of the plywood to make the sides straighter and I expect the finish would have been awful.

Roads were kept dirtied up but with some cobbles showing for contrast. 

Last part was putting on the flocking. I used a first pass of mixed colors of flocking. I learned as I went along so the flocking on the first board with the crossroads is a bit rougher than the last. I decided to keep the flocking sparse in areas so that the painted parts show through underneath. If it turns out I don't like the effect once I start using them I figure I can always put another coat on.

All of the pictures were taken quickly with my cell phone. Unfortunately the boards don't fit in my lightbox so the pictures aren't the best. I'm hoping that I can take some better pictures soon with better natural light and with some of my terrain and figures on them.

Passing inspection

All four together. 

Possessed Civillian

This is one of the figures I didn't quite get done in time for the painting challenge now two months gone. I wanted to make a figure to show someone who got a bit too close to extra-dimensional powers and hasn't come out the better for it. He was sculpted up from a basic armature and then I just added a whole bunch of tentacles to him.

In progress shot, tentacles are just starting to grow. 

The nice thing about making your own figures is that you don't have to worry about casting limitations. In this case I was just able to add tentacles going all over with a lot of void space to give the impression of the figure being completely supported by the tentacular mass that he has for a head now.  

Side view

Sculpting is all done and he's prepped for painting.



Out and about menacing the neighbors. 

He painted up really fast as I went with a simple scheme. I tried to make the tentacles a similar color to the Shoggoths that I painted some time ago. Perhaps he's half transformed into one? The frock coat and pants are just a basic brown to contrast with the purply grey. For the skin tone for the hands I went with a pale sickly fleshtone.

  My plan is to fit him in with the Cabal, my evil faction. Maybe an experiment gone wrong or right?

 I might try to make a couple of my troopers as minders for him. I'd like to give them some sort of cattle prods or the like to direct him in the right direction.

"Who me,  Officer?" 

So it's been two months since my last post. The usual assortment of excuses I'm afraid mostly centered around several life changes. Hopefully I'll be able to get back in to regular posting schedule again as things have settled down somewhat. Finishing up my modular gaming boards are the next big project and I still have a couple of other figures that are leftover from the Painting Challenge as well.  

Martian Tripod

My first full sized Tripod is done for All Quiet on the Martian Front. I think the colors actually work better on the bigger version than they did with the drone.

The kit went together very easily once I managed to track down some instructions for assembly. And painting was pretty quick for such a large model. I really like the size of the model compared to the 15mm infantry. He really towers over the human figures and gives a nice sense of implacable evil.



The Brits I painted earlier look like they are in a difficult situation standing alone against the tripod.

After posting him up for the Challenge earlier this week Curt raised an interesting criticism. He was of the opinion that the face has a sort of goofy look to them, even likening the noble Martian war machine to a clown's face with the eye as a big red nose. I have to say he has a point, and it comes across especially in pictures. Since I have two more to build I might try to recess the eye into the face plate instead.



Malevolent eye or clown nose? You decide!

It got me to think about other Martian designs I've seen before and I have to admit I like other more sinister versions much better than this one. One of my favorites is actually from the JLA cartoon and had a much more organic and asymmetrical look to the tripod. They even gave Superman a hard time for a while up until the end of the episode when they were destroyed by the handful.

The other picture was pulled off of Wikipedia and I think this is more in the theme I wish they had gone for in All Quiet. Its much more menacing looking with a more organic styling to the machinery. Its not that I don't like the tripod as is, I do think it has a nice retro-futuristic style to it, but now all I can see is that damn clown nose.

 

 

Armored British Infantry

I managed to finish up my squad of BEF infantry from All Quiet on the Martian Front. I had started three of them back in the fall but sidelined them to work on Painting Challenge entries. Now they and the other seven got their time on the painting table.

I had a debate with myself on how to paint them but finally went with basically the same as my regular infantry with the addition of grey/white for the helmets and breastplate. That way they will fit in in with the rest of my British ( all 6 of them HaHa) but still stand out on the battlefield from them.

My favorite out of this group is the Coil Gunner. I wish all of them had the same look. There is just something about the heavy armor, and the massive gun and backpack that just really speaks to me. I might try to make more of my own version of these troops based on his design.

For my purposes they are guys are going to be the specialist troops for the British Empire tasked to fight the various weird occurrences happening both at home and around the globe.

The squad getting down to work!