A call to Generals

Yes we have but 5 days to prepare for our defenses and our offenses in the Operation Market Garden Campaign.

Besides all the other details I thought I should press the point that you need your army lists sorted before you arrive.

Sure there may well be some time during your bye round to sort something out but please have 3 Allied and 3 Axis list in your pocket for the morning muster.

Anyway I have attached a copy of my army lists.
600pt LW

If you want my template just give a PM.

You will notice I have made a list from Mr Lights Cromwells and SHerman force including Mr Lights Firefly tank.

Skaven Warlord

At Martin’s request here is my step by step painting of the Skaven Warlord from the Island of Blood box set.  Apologies for the quality of the pictures.   I couldn’t be bothered getting the tripod and the light box etc out so just snapped them on my table as I painted it.  A poor decision.  As was the decision to leave the flash on.  I’ve chucked most of the photos but for the sake of struggling on with this I’ve left two pictures in and taken a third in the light box with the tripod.  You should use your imagination to fill in the blanks :-/

I’ll forgo the picture of a grey or even a primered figure. But rather obviously I assembled and undercoated the fellow with dulux spraykote matte enamel black.  (or something like that, is cheaper than citadel primer and is just as good, if not better).  Didn’t require any puttying really (I hate puttying the cracks) but these new figs use overlapping pieces a lot so for the most part there is no puttying to do.  In fact the Island of Blood figures as a whole have had quite some thought put into the assembly of them, I have been hugely impressed.  For the most part they snap together and you can barely tell where the individual sections meet.  Where the joins aren’t hidden behind an overlapping piece many of them zig-zag which like camouflage is a lot harder to pick up than a straight line.

Step 1.  Painted the Flesh and Fur areas Bestial Brown (as is fitting).  Painted the Robes Scab Red.  Wasn’t too worried about getting a perfect even coverage.  I use a wet palette (see some earlier post on making a wet palette) so the paint can be a little thin allowing the black undercoat to show through a bit on the raised areas, but these get covered in later stages so it’s no big deal.

Step 2.  Wash the Flesh and the Fur areas with Devlan Mud.  Washed the Red Robes with Devlan Mud (have I mentioned Devlan Mud is the most awesome wash).   Generally I paint the wash in where it’s supposed to so the raised sections don’t get any.  This kinda helps later with blending however I was real lazy with the brown and just went over everthing.

Step 3.  Wash the Fur areas with black wash, just to darken up the fur areas in contrast to the flesh.  With a slightly thinned Bestial brown repainted the flesh areas, trying to stay away from the recesses, so they remained darker in contrast.  Repainted Scab red onto the raised areas of the robes.

Step 4.  Highlighted the individual tufts of fur with Bestial brown.  Mixed Bestial brown (66%) with Bronzed flesh (33%) and highlighted the flesh areas.  Mixed Ruby red (50%) and Scab red (50%) to highlight the robes.

Step 5.  Mixed Bestial brown (33%) and Bronzed flesh (66%) and highlighted the flesh areas.

So far that is it.  Not really a great deal I realise but I thought I’d chuck up what I had whilst it was still vaguely fresh in my mind what I’d done.  Below is a better photo, not sure what is up with the knee, it really isn’t smudged? like that but at anyrate gives you a slightly better indication of colour.

 

New Stuart V’s

Two more tanks off the ranks.  Bought from toyworld where they were selling them about half price (clearing out their stock, again).  Since I needed a fourth anyway as some lists require four rather than three which was what I had.   Got the extra one because…. well you can’t really have enough light tanks, they always have served me well.  Anyway now I have five, painted in three batches so all a bit different but not to worried.  These were painted I think using Russian Green (surprising I can’t recall was only a week ago), I then gave them a bit of a wash with black, green and brown, (just trying to work out what looked best, for what it’s worth green wash is too bright, brown is good and dirty looking, what doesn’t devlan mud work with? and black looks grimey though can be a bit harsh, if I was doing it again I’d probably do two brown washes or a mix of brown and black).  After that I mixed painting on and drybrushing more russian green (or whatever green I was using) just to smooth out the areas where the wash shouldn’t be.  Drybrushed a little black in areas and khaki to simulate dust and grime.  Tracks were german grey, with black wash and then german grey again with a little bit of khaki drybrushed on later.  Anyway they’re ok.  Did photograph all five together but I mis-focussed and picked up the rear tank which mean the majority of the photo was out of focus.  I’ll redo it later.

Oh one other thing, I used a pencil to go over a lot of the metal bits (which I accidentally painted over some of).  Like the guy did on his terrain building site.  Worked really well, a lot more subtle than metallic paint.