Bought these quite a while ago but have been sitting in my cupboard since. Anyway every game since when I’ve fielded by FJ (which admittedly isn’t all that much) I’ve reflected on the howitzers and pak40’s that are sitting in the cupboard and wishing I’d painted them to use. And now, the howitzers at least, are painted. Was a bit of a rush job, for me a least as a lot of my pieces have been in recent times, roughly a week.
Boots on the ground….
A nice name for the operation currently on my painting bench.
152 figures to paint, seven Sherman tanks and 8 x 75mm pack howitzers
To date I have made some nice progress.
Stripping all the figures was a mixed bag.
Most stripped like dream.
Half the guns and some of the figures had a very thick dark green enamel oil based paint and that took not just simple green but the brass wire brush to get that off.
The guns had alot of super glue and blue tack on them and that was covering up good detail but holding it together remarkably well.
I cleaned this all off and I drilled the gun bearing and pinned the barrel to the carriage… which looks great. I used a small amount of green stuff to stick the gun barrel angle covered with a minute amount of super glue. So those are now finished and ready for priming.
Meanwhile the figures were all glued to card and primed with KearKote(TM) black metal primer and they look good.
Some parts were missing and I easily managed to get some replacement parts from Battlefront who are just totally awesome to deal with when you need some parts replaced. I really do love dealing with them for my miniatures.
I then went to base coat the airborne in their distinctive colour. I mixed Tamiya German Grey a little bit into Kahki and got a good colour. This was airbrushed on to the figures and they look great.
After setting I have then started painting colour by applying brown. This is painted onto the boots, guns, shovel handles and the helmet strap. The helmet strap is important as when you paint later in Olive drab (OD) you just brush each side of the strap and it leaves a crisp strap in brown.. which shows up alot when viewed from above.
some pics for you.
These guys are recently painted (three – four months ago, lol ok not that recent). Bought them second hand and have been sitting, primed in my cupboard for five years or so. When I read the new wood elf book I figured these were probably something I’d want painted up. When ever I’ve taken hawks in the past they’ve always been high achievers, but it always seemed to be good luck rather than my ability to use them or their inherent characteristics. In the new book though they are monstrous cavalry, meaning the naked toughness 3 elf is not a 3 wound toughness four model. On top of that the hawk and the elf are strength 4 on the charge with armour piercing (hawk has killing blow), elf has an asrai longbow and they’re skirmishing fast cav. All for a slight cost increase effectively a better great eagle for 5pts less (although a great eagle is a single model so still has it’s place).
Regarding the paint/modelling, really hated doing these guys, not sure why to be honest, thought they’d be fun struggled to enjoy painting them. Still not totally convinced with some of the choices I made even though like usual I modelled them on games workshops ones. Part of it may have been the hawks are so heavy that the spindly stand really struggles to support it. So many times I broke the stands. I was quite over it by the time I finished. The photos probably won’t show it but some of the stands have a pin in them now with heavy gauge wire (which I use for pins usually) wrapped around the plastic stem to help support the very thin plastic at the end that holds the pin. Works well but just serves to remind me of how fragile they are and what I inevitably have to look forward to when they break again in the future.
