Explosions everywhere!

Put together some destroyed markers, here together with a Sherman M4A3.

Almost done with some Panzer IIIs and a SdKfz222, I need to order decals for them before I can put the final touches.

Been quite busy around the house and at work, but hopefully things will calm down a little bit so I can continue with all the little miniature projects I have started. Panzer IVs for my panzer company have been primed and base painted, camouflage and details left. Will post some pictures later on.

Assaulters, priests and Totenkopf

Some assault marines and two priests are almost done, they will be needing some blood splatter and the bases then they are ready and I can get on with the next bunch. I have some Death Company in a similar state with not much left to do.

When the Death Company marines are done, I will probably paint some tanks. Could not resist the urge for a german Panzer Company so I will start a MW 3rd SS Totenkopf company for an upcoming escalation campaign taking place around Kursk. It will use the rules for Tank Aces from Blood, Guts and Glory with some modifications. A first draft of the setting/rules can be found here: Google Drive

Mortars and objectives

Painted up a blister of 81mm US mortars, perfect to lay down smoke screens and pin the enemy before my grunts rush in and assault.
Now all my FoW minis are done but the next project is already planned: A MW/LW German SS Panzer force.

I have also made two objectives. Just a plain piece of hard board, some sand, paint and grass. I printed a stencil for the allied star, then put some PVA glue in the cut outs from the stencil and used my Grassinator to make the grass stand up nicely. The grass was not contrasting enough in my opinion so I took some white paint and dry brushed the grass pattern and now it shows a lot better on the table top.

Death Company Storm Raven finished

Today I finished off my Death Company Storm Raven.
I put some scratch marks on the edges to make it look like it has crashed down from the sky a couple of times to deliver its cargo of crazy, angry, raging lunatics.

For the base I tried to build something to hide the plastic stand a bit and to match my upcoming jungle terrain. I started off with some cork on the base to make a stony foundation. Then I used a bit of foam left overs and covered it with a plaster mix. After this I added some stones and gravel.

2012 March/April - US Rifle

As I posted in 2012 February/March I was going to finish up my howitzers and some other random things that week, but a week became a month instead. Last night I put the finishing touches on the last teams for my current US Rifles.


First up, the little AOP. I won't leave home without it, even though it has become a little bit worse with V3 it is still awesome to be able to rain down some fire any place you want on the table. The paint job stuck through the last game and it seems like if I can avoid scratching it the paint will stick.

Clump foliage, my first attempt

Since we play west front and Normandy, bocage is needed! I like doing things myself and I had a look around the interwebz for some ideas.So I found a video on YouTube about making your own clump foliage, didn't seem to be that difficult:

• A blender ~€10
• A piece of old foam, from a mattress or similar. €10 for a brand new, my test batch used about 1/30 of it.
• Paint €30 (got some big jugs, it will be used for more terrain features)
• Glue, I have a house, having PVA glue around is mandatory.

The procedure is very simple:
Rip the foam in to small pieces, put it in the blender, add water and let it run for a while.
Take it out and remove the water.
Mix foam, glue and paint. Don't be shy with the glue.
Spread it out on a news paper and let it dry.


I made a mistake of adding water, this is not needed. It will only increase the drying time, which was about a week for me.


The result? Very much like the foliage from Gale Force Nine I bought.

My next batch is on the way, playing around with the colors a little bit. I will try to make some yellow/orange/red to create some nice markers for destroyed tanks.
If you are having plans on building a lot of bocage terrain or maybe a lot of trees, get a blender and some foam and make it yourself!

2012 February/March

I have finally gotten some urge to do more painting, maybe it was the finalizing of the Rifle Company that made me want to paint more?
So in the weekend I painted up my L4 Grasshopper AOP, which was a disaster. The plastic looked a little bit odd, very shiny. I primed it up with my good old Vallejo Grey, put some highlighting with a white and sprayed on the Brown Violet base color. Everything seemed fine.
Then I decided to mask it up, to paint the invasion strips. I thought: "Cool, I'm finally doing some more advanced air brushing!"
Everything went fine with the black and white, I was really careful with the size of the stripes and I thought I got them really nice for my first attempt.
Then the removal of the masking tape came, oh the horror when the paint got stripped off with it! Big chunks of primer and base color just went away. So I had to sit down with my good old brush and redo a lot of the paint job and some of the highlighting was no more.
So after some varnishing I hope the paint won't come off again, the next time I play will tell I guess.


Next up was the rest of the jeeps, four 155mm howitzers, high-speed tractors and a couple of teams for the guns. Hopefully I can get these done during the week!
I also got some requests to put up close-ups of the finished Rifle Company which I will also try to do during the week. Spring has finally arrived here in Sweden so there is always something to do outside.


Just to practice some more with the air brush, I offered myself to primer up a friends Land Raider for his Nurgle marines.

1500 US Rifle Coy

Very close to being done now. The staff team for the howitzers is missing, the command team for the pioneers need some basing and a few jeeps has to be painted up too.
So I just had to unpack and take a picture of them together.

1500 points

When those things are done, it is time to give my Flesh Tearers some love.

FJ vs American RP - 1500p FFA

In the weekend me and Lasse got together to have a game of FoW, 1500 points, Free for all.
He had gotten some new terrain features since last time; a city piece with five buildings and some wooden areas. He also had a lake piece coming up but it was in the drying state. Good that at least one of us is building some terrain.


The board of the day looked something like this.

The Americans brought the following
1 x HQ with 2 bazookas
2 x Full rifle platoons (Command, bazooka and nine teams )
1 x Weapons platoon (Four LMG and three mortars)
1 x Towed Anti Tank Platoon (Command, three jeeps, four 3" guns, four bazookas)
1 x A&P platoon (Command, four teams and two bazookas)
1 x 5 Stuarts
1 x Artillery platoon (Command, observer, staff team and four 105mm howitzers)
1 x AOP


The Germans brought something like this (from the top of my head).
1 x HQ
3 x FJ with panzer faust or panzer schreck
1 x Four heavy mortars
1 x Two Tigers
1 x Stukas air support


I placed my AT guns and 60mm mortars in the middle and the arty in the right hand corner. On the left flank I put one rifle platoon and the Stuarts, for the left flank I put the other rifle platoon and my pioneers. My plan was to lure the Tigers over to the left flank with my little Stuarts and then zip over with the on the other flank to support a thrust on the objective. Unfortunately everything did not go as planned.

3" guns looking for targets

My Stuarts pushed forward but did not even manage to pin the FJ-platoon in place. At the same time, his air support whittled down my howitzers so I was not able to reliably hit anything with them during the game (when they were allowed to shoot from not being pinned).
My 60mm mortars lost their command, while being out of range for anything, so my 2IC had to run over to appoint them a new commander.

Howitzers, ready for some more punishment

After a few turns, the Stuarts had been relocated to the right flank and were supposed to push forward to nail his mortars but a combined strike from the Stukas and a few shots from the Tigers (big mistake in looking at the fire lanes from me) they were left as burning wrecks.

Successful air strike

  In the end, I did a bum rush for the objective on the right flank which left me with just the A&P platoon left but the Germans lost their FJ platoon on that side as well. Since it was getting late and we were running out of beer we shook hands and called it a draw. Another joyful game!
In a bit of retrospect, we should probably not play Free-For-All with two infantry forces, it makes for quite a drawn out game of no one wanting to really get out of their fox holes. Next time, we will probably try something new.