Late War US and German Armies for FoW

Both of these armies were supposed to be finished apart from adding US infantry to the Americans. Then I added more tanks to both armies, a lot more tanks. The US vehicles are quite easy to finish.

As the Germans are virtually complete I’ve started to pay more attention to the US army. I’ve finally finished off all the Sherman’s that came with the Hit the Beach starter set. All I’ve got to do now is paint up the infantry which I plan to do in the next couple of weeks.

I’ve also added a couple more units to the army as well, which include a medium mortar unit from Battlefront, this will give the infantry some added support. I’ve also picked up a box of 5 Half-Tracks for the infantry. I will need to add a HQ unit and some possible anti-tank as well,

Well what have I been doing for the last few days since my last post. Well for starters I cracked open my German Flames of War army from the carry case, and decided to make a start on the infantry.

This is the first time I’ve painted figure miniatures of this scale, apart from about 5 years ago when I painted some 15 mm fantasy for a friend, and then it was a small selection of different characters/villains he was going to use  for a planned RPG campaign.

So at this point I’ve not painted a 15 mm army of humanoids, in fact I’ve not batch painted an army unit in a while, those I have done have been completed over a longer period of time. Last years Spring Clean Challenge is still unfinished, as I’m that bad when it comes to unit/army painting. I became bored of batch painting a few years back when I got rid of my 40K armies (7000 pts Dark Angels, 4000 pts Blood Angels and 3000 pt Empire army). I started playing skirmish level historical games, Bolt Action is the nearest I’ve come to playing large scale historical games, but even then I’ve not built any large armies for the game.

So sitting down and painting a reasonable amount of 15 mm infantry in a couple of days was not a task I was looking forward to. I decided to paint the uniform in a light grey (Administratum Grey from GW), as my plan was to wash this with my limited stock of Nuln Oil.  I initially painted up one base worth just to get an idea of the different steps I’d require to paint all of them. Once I was satisfied with this I pushed on with the rest of them. Thank god for my painting magnifying glasses as I would have been squinting throughout the process. I finally managed to get through it all and I’m happy with the result.

I’ve started to add some camouflage elements to the Panzers, still have more work to do yet.

Built the two Tigers and three more Sherman’s for the US Army.

I had no intention of buying any Tigers, but I succumbed over the weekend. They’ll be built later this week.

I’d fallen behind a bit with this project, but this weekend  I finally had some spare time to get the remaining US tanks built, and made a start on the infantry for both the US and German armies.  I also made a start on adding to the US force.  I recently purchased a mortar platoon which I built on the weekend and have an M10 tank hunter unit on its way.

All I need to do is start painting these recent builds.

I managed to get some free time this week to slap some paint on three more Sherman’s. I’m using the Vallejo paint range as this seems to be a much smoother finish.

I started the last of the three Panzers this weekend, though I painted it slightly diffently.  This time I undercoated it in Grey, then base coated in a sand colour, washed it with GW’s Agrax.

I started the last of the three Panzers this weekend, though I painted it slightly diffently.  This time I undercoated it in Grey, then base coated in a sand colour, washed it with GW’s Agrax.

Before Coco left for the Summer she painted two test tanks, decided which one she preffered and left me instructions to paint the others.  The first she painted with Tamiya green paint and washed with military wash from Army Painter.  The second was painted using Vallejo US green.

I decided to test paint two of the Panzers with contrast paints. I undercoated using the new white spray and then used the Skeleton contrast paint. It worked quite well on the 15mm scale tanks, though I doubt I could achieve a similar effect at a larger scale as the paints don’t really work on flat surfaces.

The plan is to paint a camoflauge scheme on the tanks at a later date.

After the Flames of War boot camp I decided to jump into WW2 15mm and purchased the Hit the Beach starter set. I had originally planned to build an Allied army, but when it arrived my niece , CoCo, who lives with us bagged them.  She’s a big boardgamer but has never played a wargame apart from Mantics Walking Dead, this then left me with the Germans.  I think the mass of tanks attracted her.

She has so far painted two tanks and I’ve been instructed to paint the rest for her whilst she’s back home in China for the school holidays.  I’ve also managed to slap some paint on two of the Panzers.

I also plan to build and paint some terrain as part of this project.