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

With the Rednecks done, now for something completely different,  in the Form of some Old Bill, some armed police, with a definite British slant ( currently looking for in scale British Police Car).

I used the range of ballistic vest figures both male and female from Wargames Atlantic Agents  with heads from Civilians either baseball capped or hatless. The set gives a nice selection of HK SMG’s and pistols.

I had planned to use Levidian Blue from GW’s Contrast range , but all my tuns seem to have mysteriously disappeared. So I added a bit of Speedpaint Tallasar Blue  to Grim Black for the correct dark shade, and glad I did as it gave a nicer set of shading. Now I may have made a mistake with shirts as I went for thinned out Speedpaints Azure Blue, as I got my Fuzz mixed up, and that would have been more a U.S forces colour, rather than British White, though I have fou d of them wearing Blue so hey hum!

Dirty Larry

Whilst scouring various boxes I already mentioned Ifound long forgotten figures, still.in original bags. One of these was a  certain San Francisco Detective so he had to be added to Pulp collection. Here he is with an able partner from one of WA’s suited Angents, though perhaps he should be wearing a redshirt!

Larry’s jacket was done using two coats of GW’s Apothocary White contrast paint, with his trousers being Grey Seer, I,d like to Claim I had done shade on creases on trousers but it just dried like that.

His Partner was just done in Gunner Caamo Speedpaint which is one of my go to it does it all paints.

And now for an Anti Hero, and it’s Gerrys fault if he hadn’t pointed it out I wouldn’t have noticed. John Wick.

Perhaps the easiest painting exercise of all, His shirt what you can see of it is Basilicum Grey Contrast, with all the rest done in Grim Black. Likewise his plastic Head was so nicely moulded that doing his facial details was a breeze.

Rather than the M4 that Gerry armed his depiction I went for a Star gate P90. As I think it looks cool and have actually fired one.( the optical sight on a range was a pain, can see why they use laser sighting in series)

The release of the various Pulp boxes by Wargames Atlantic  finally allowed me to fill in a much neglected gap in my sets of Pulp movie stalwarts.

Those Good ( depending on your veiws) Good old boys who appear either Spontaneously or at behest of the Local Sheriff  in assorted pickups , usually hanging over the cab, named Jim Bob, Buba, Bo and John Boy, armed with an assortment of Sporting Rifles Shotguns and the odd military Firearm, in order to deal with the monstrous Critters, with varying levels of success. You’ve got it Rednecks.

Although he was the last to be painted we will start with my rendition of the local Sheriff Buford R.E.L Coleraine. The figure is one of tactical vest figures with a tie from the Agents box. Holstered pistol was a spare from my Rubicon Vietnam Anzacs, and a suitable stetson head.

Then it was just a series of builds from the Civilians box with the wons supplied to make up rest of Posse, or lynch mob .

So now I can finally recreate a movie scene( though not from ‘Them’)

The large Ants Models were a buy from a pound Shop in Bilston back in the early 2000’s.

They were part of a set of plastic insects, each set had about 6 of this size ant, one of a bigger ant ( soldiers) and various other insects. The later disappeared,  but these Brave lad are probably my most used figures also cheapest, I brought the whole shops stock for less than tenner.

They are also famous as they previously starred in an article I  the one off sci-fi special of Minature Wargames , when my ‘Them rules were printed.’

The release of Wargames Atlantics Pulp Figures ranges has already allowed me to expand my Insurgents forces, but the Agents and Civilians boxes have allowed me to finally fill in some gaps in my Pulp collection of figures without breaking the Bank.

Firstly in the Form of some usefull scenario additional  objectives in the form of screaming and running Civilians.

They are led by 3 OTT live volunteers ( nobody in particular as I had built the figures with random heads before I thought of idea… and of course the regular staffers would bravely stay and face the threat or, they couldn’t run fast enough !!!)

Nice thing about these figures is they were on the whole very easy to paint with either GW contrast or Army Painter Speedpai td oing all the shading donkey work. Likewise they had really nice expressive heads which made face painting much easier.

Next was the angry mob   ok a little mob, I need another box as I wanted what was left for the next part of project.

The ‘Heroes’s of the various bits of this project , are reasonably catered for  and apart from 15 Orks and a couple of big monsters the bad guys were looking a bit thin on the ground.

So I spent 2 weeks hobby rectifying the situation, painting up various Goblins and Orks, mainly from Oathmark range, but also some more feral Wargames Atlantic.

All were painted with a mixture of Contrast and Spoed paints.

Skin was done as before with Speedpaints Forest Sprite ( I’ve emptied 3 bottles so far) . I varied their clothing shades , as I did them in batchs of 5 figures varying the palette of paints slightly each time to vary a bit what I thought would be dull dyes used on clothing.

Those who have been following this project may have noticed that I have added to the large Monsters to the army, mainly as a counter to some if the modern armour. These were provided from  Dungeons and Dragons range which my local hobby shop Waylands Forge has a great selection.

First up is the tree thing..( no idea what it is so use the Ben naming convention.

The fogure was done as a base colour using GW Contrasts Wyldwood,  which I toned down with a white dry brush. The teeth I felt would be a newer wood look so I went for GW contrast Skelton Horde, with the toadstools being done in Speedpaints Peachy flesh.

The Fire Giant needed to be much brighter.

This figure was done quickly to get it ready for table use, so didn’t spend as much time on face and hands as would have wanted, though I think the fire effect on armour worked OK.

This was a base of one if the Speedpaints Yellow, with thr troughs done on Speedpaints Bright Red.I tried to give it a sparkling effect by dry brushing Gloos varnish after the initial Matt varnish.

I now have the beginning of an Orc/Goblin so wait for next rabbit hole as it means I need some fantasy opposition!

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.