ANZACS and the return of ‘Them’, ( & Cthulu Kong, Goldylocks etc!))

This part of project started as many often do late at night whilst watching it rain somewhere in Korea, in order to get Brain to switch off for sleep.

In this case I remembered that somewhere I had a plastic kit for a 1/48th Challenger tank. I had a quick look but couldn’t find it but did find a 1/48th Apache Kit, which had been brought for an Earlier Modern Afghanistan project. This of course reminded me of the Airfix 1/48th lynx Helicopter,  which I brought as part of mulibox  with Landrover for same project.

Next day I was able to find the Challenger,  so these could all be added to building and painting schedule.

This started well the Challenger was one of those motorised ones, although I had no plans to run it has one, I had to put together the gearing for the front and rear drives. This was much easier than I thought and the whole model.went together easily.  Now it probably isn’t the most accurate kit, plus the box said Challenger 2 but pretty sure it’s a 1 , but it looks OK and the only person likely to notice is John

The vehicle is as fictional as the game setting with the Decals representing a mix of vehicle markings   pretty much what took my fancy..

Luckily that was a decision I would need for next 2 parts of project.

At the start of the project I mentioned for the Vietnam era I had brought pre painted corgi die cast Helicopters which were still just available at reasonable prices , mainly as they were built and painted, including interiors which I wanted to avoid , I should have listened!!

I had begun to succumb and look at modern Helicopters avail in 1/48th for possible inclusion, including a massive Chinnock,  and wisely decided to try with the models I had before considering more. It was a wise decision.

Chances are had I brought some, they would have just gone in pile to do gathering dust, which was part of the problem.

In reality it’s easier to use bottle tops , as they  dont stay on games

table that long generally,  are a pain to base but do look good.

Still I may have decided to leave well alone if not for the Lynx box which seemed to mock me everytime I walked past it.

Now it helped that I couldn’t find the build instructions which had got parted from box. But I found them online.  I could have made life easier by making the Hog Version and just built exterior  ,painted over the transparency’s and called it quits but, no I wanted Slick with Door gunners.

I Think these kits found my Achille heel on model.making, I’m crap at precision kits.

Now the Lynx was a very nice kit, no flash on moulding with very precise and fiddly parts. Each needed precisely fitting and careful removal of all mold lines and Sprue joints!!!!

2ndly it involves transparency for windows, which doesn’t work well with old glue fingers.

Anyway the Interior build went well and was sprayed with exterior a light grey, with odd bits of detail painte. But  somewhere that I couldn’t find I hadn’t removed some slight lug  and it was a pain to get it to sit together on main hull, relying on Elastic bands to hold whilst glue cured. Then there was a lot of fiddly and fine exterior detail parts, which broke  not helped by the separate tail peice falling out everytime you grasped it. Therefore a lot of these bits got left off model simply for the reason if they broke getting them off spue or in fitting, they weren’t going to survive handling in a everage game.

Next if you want to spray paint model  unless you want to.phaff with masking you need to spray before fixing windows etc. That is a skill beyond me, so windows were done post, and did I mention glue fingers!

Some 4 days of fairly intense hobbying later it was built, So I tried my painting skills to cover up errors, and think I weathered it to much…I’m used to Tanks

I won’t mention the method as its more a don’t than do, and you can make your own damn mistakes assuming you mad enough to try.

Only tip.I will give  Blue contrast paint on windows does hide most of my glue finger!.

Again it’s no specific helicopter, and decals were very much used to cover up painting and construction errors. It does look much better in photo than in the flesh!

It has one redeeming fact, I  that it’s done.

Next we have the Apache, this was Revell kit rather than Airfix  little less quite so.precise and a lot more flash on Parts.

I wanted the Longbow version and this  had instructions fo that variant .

Now right from start if you attempt to build one for gaming  don’t bother with interior or pilots. Build the cockpit glass before final assembly as the cockpit glass is designed to be built open . My problem wax I didnt realise this till I completed the main build and had done the Base spraying. As usual glue finger was all over yhe place particularly as cockpit didn’t want to go together for closed cockpit.

Well here it is decals applied awaiting setting and final Matt Varnish. Note I’m only showing from tight side to hide gaps in cockpit canopy on left side.

So he says, contemplating a LAV 25 for the 2nd Squad!

Finally for thus series of project updates I did some Canadians , pretty much the forgotten modern army. How come I plumped for Canucks?

A few years back I had a few Americans I remembered for my Afghanistan force. I vaguely remembered doing a small Marine Recon team in Boonies ( really nice Empress figures) . As it happened when I fou f the figures there were 4 of them and 8 helmets Rifle team.

What had got me to think about these figures was me looking through Empress miniatures Modern Vehicle range and finding the sci fi esque Stryker.

Who used it ?

Due to a Google cockup on my part, it showed a Canadian one, and hinted it was a Canadian vehicle, so I thought convert the above Americans to Canucks as kit and cammo are similar just need to paint a Canadian patch on fatigues..  Pf course I now know that it is predominantly American but the die was cast.

This decision was supported by the fact I had found two documentaries on the Canadians in Afghanistan.

So I purchased above  and looked for a pack of figures to boost the Rifles to a full 10 man squad..

By sheer chance I had dug out my Mars Attacks box for some incidental terrain and found 5 little bags of  completely metal figures. Which on opening was 4 Rifleman , One specialist wpns team, plus 2x .50 and a Recoiless Rifles with Afghan crews for the back of Technicals..

So heeeeyyy@

Now strangely I started my Canadian firce build with the Styker  but it ended up being the last to be Finished when other things got in the way.

Painted pretty much as I did the Aussie Vehicles , with a fictional ( it looked nice) decals added from mainly leftover Centurion and M113 decal sheets.

The Canadian Infantry were going g to be a challenge to match the rather nice cammo I had managed on found figures.

They were done before the Projects system   before Contrastcand Speedpaints so I had no idea how I had done them, Now I know a lot of people keep little notebooks on past painting projects, but that doesn’t work fo me as I suffer from tenosynovitis which preve ts me writing more tha a few readable words. .

Now I thought the biggest problem would be matching the base shade for cammo, but this turned out easier than thought.

I started with putting some GW Apothocary White contrast on a wet pallette , the adding small amounts of a contrast light green till I got a good match. The palette allowed easy matching on future batchs of figures as I had a guide. Also thus blend did do sone nice base shading on the white undercoat.

Then it was thin lines of GW wraithbone followed by Speedpaint Absolution Green lines,  all washed in a 50/50 water thinned Agrax Earthshade.

Bases were easy to match as the sand texture came from the same tub of left over scatter from my Hexon texturing.

I wanted some well equipped additions either as mercs or just hired help so went for Spectre minatures Heavy Criminal element, well equipped figures with heavy body armour.

With their face masks these were a nice relaxing paint that filled in time whilst I did another Batch of Britih Infantry ( I’d found the Spec Minatures new range).

This was pretty much block painting using some of my Favourite Speed and contrast paints.

Overalls we’re done in Speedpaints Gunner Cammo, as I need a bit of German Field Grey for contrast with all the cammo.

Armour and kit was done I  my new find Speedpaints Absolution Green. Boots were done in 2 coats of Contrast Skeleton Horde, and the masks were done in Peachy flesh.

These paints give really nice shading and for once I didn’t need to put on the Agrax Earthshade wash   though a nuln oil wash was put just in the wpns and odd bits of metallic .

For basing I went for a the wasteland look again, starting with a charcoal rubble scatter  then putting a summer grass in missed patchs.

The above were quickly done , generally I  the bits whilst waiting for stages on the following Spec Minatures British Squad to dry. Which I again in did in two batchs of 4.

With a fair selection of Insurgents/Terrorists completed I needed to paint up some Special Forces so painted up 3 of Spectre Minatures teams . The starter set gives you the CQB element   to which I added the Fire Support and Assault Elements. They are ment to be Generic Special Forces , and at time I ordered them hadn’t spotted the SAS teams on their site ( thanks Ben) , they will be eventually rounded our with SAS additions.

I had considered making life easy and went for all black night gear, but went for Multi Cammo in end.

Main difference this time was I limited myself to 4 figures at a time, so I could be  a bit more careful with each layer or the cammo, as I noticed as I progressed with the British Infantry specially the hvy fire teams that it was getting bit blobby.

In addition I changed the final dark shade from Speedpaints Forest Sprite to Absolution Green for a darker shade to it which seemed to work.

I have quite a bit of updates for both this and Terrain project, which will be added over next couple of days . Now I had been thinking about my 1st set of scenarios for Spec Ops and Forgotten Ruins, but don’t want to do much resetting of my Table that I played out fir Actung Panzer ( Specially as we intend to do a 2nd game).

So I have to play around with the Ardennes (Normandy buildings) which have a lot of French sighs) layout . So how do I get Orcs etc, plus insurgents and  Modern British Army on my table layout.

Luckily I remembered the Anime series ‘The Gate’ so I moved it’s initial layout from Japan to …….

Guernsey,  a place that often has French Signs, could have Terrorists and would be a limited setting for a magical incursion.  So:

The Black Suns World would have had its dial address locked out of the Strargate program after initial contact if not for an incident on a Island off the Coast of Great Britain which led to British Forces returning .

It had caused the UK’s Met office some consternation when a set of unusual weather had completely disrupted their weather predictions for the Island of Guernsey,  particularly the Snow and Wintery weather for Guernsey in July. This was compounded by the complete communication blackout that followed its arrival.

The last few Flights from the island before the blackout spoke of some sort of riot/emergency at the Sout West of the Island,around Pienmount  with local news saying that the Island constabulary had been dispatched to investigate. 

Unable to break through the Blackout, recin aircraft were dispatched to investigate. Contact with the aircraft was lost as they approached the Island with the worst being feared until they re-appeared on their return. 

They reported burning buildings all over the South West of the Island, , particularly around Guernsey Airport.and signs of bands of people roving all round the island and what looked like mass crowding at the harbour of St Peters Port with large numbers of boats moving out of the harbour.

This was followed by reports from the thex1st Refugees escaping the Island to Jersey , who  described  people being attacked and killed by monsters akin to Lord of the Rings.

The MOD at the Home Office request began to prepare Britain Rapid Reaction Force, and sent a recon force of Special Forces to access the situation. 

As I have mentioned in my Terrainfest project :

Bob’s Black Suns Terrainfest

I had fallen down yet another Rabbit hole. Earlier I’d displayed the Ops Survivor figures I’d painted for Forgotten Ruins, this had introduced me to the Specte Minatures range, and having dipped my finger I had to plunge in, buying both the Spec Ops starter box and Cosmic Horror.

As its print order I had to wait a couple of weeks for them to turn up so in meantime decided to carry on with my Wargames Atlantic builds to build various terrorists and Insurgents.

I Initially decided to a batch of more trained insurgents using figures mainly from Operators box using the balaclava type face mask heads, armed with a mix of western SMGs and old Soviet heavy wpns.

So 7 figures later:

These were a nice easy virtually 2 colour scheme as I has decided no cammo, as I had enough painting multi cammo on British!

So I gave them a more generic boiler suit base colour using GW’  Striking Scorpion Green for no other reason than I hadn’t tried it yet and wondered how it would work.

The rest of kits was done in Speedpaints Absolution Green giving a much darker contrast.

Bases were textured using a summer grass and a charcoal rubble scatter as felt this fitted in with the using old warehouses , vacant lots as hideouts.

When the Spec Minatures arrived I beefed up the wpns mix with half of the figures in Starter box insurgents.

Now I had also added from both Civilians and Agents box mixed with wpns from Operators to produce a set of more Civilian attired Insurgents..

Painted with a more varied color pallette, mainly blacks, greys and blue.

Unfortunately a couple of the arms slipped without me noticing  till undercoating hence the occasional gaps at shoulders.

As with the rained Insurgents the 2nd half of the Spec Ops starter set insurgents were added.

All figures kept with the hoods, particularly as it meant very little face painting.

With above to get you in mood, as with SG1 I played around with Wargames Atlantics , Agents and Civilians,  beginning with 3 Agents ‘borrowed’ from a famous TV show and bring you Agents Dog Scolder and  Ima Bully with their boss  Waldo Scalper.

Fairly simple paint jobs using Various greys from both Speedpaints and Contrast ranges, Scolder was Speedpaints Grim Black and Scalpers was Gunner Cammo. Did need a bit of a grey then white Drybrush with Scalder to get him right.

With Ima decided to Give her a more varied look, using a lighter grey for jacket and adding a bit of colour with a light Blue Blouse.

All figures were put on old Star Wars premier Sci fi bases, for the I  the secret base look.

Having done the Agents , thought lets add some Conspiracy nuts/Hackers in the Form of the Solo Gunslingers , Starting with

Don Seller, who is perhaps the closest figure to the character in the show, He also gave me a 3Rd Man in Black for an alternative.

The MIB idea got me to Arm him with P90 rather than the Double Barrel Shotgun I thought of originally.

Dick Longley was the closest I could  get to the cast member with Avail heads  , I forgot he had glasses as I did with his partner, I could have used the sets of glasses on the Sprue, but had already painted heads when I remembered them, and wasn’t going to cover up the eyes I spent time painting.

Meam Dohickie the final member of team is the figure that least resemble cast member, as 1 he is too tall and I forgot glasses again.

Both were armed with weapons more in keeping with their civilian status ( well any were  but America) with hunting Rifle and revolver. I could have gone for bats and clubs but decided to stay with Firearms.

This gives me a start to my Civilians figure painting,  which will eventually include hostages and unarmed Civilians for a range of  games particularly in view of next part of project.