One of these things is not like the others...

Most nights I get to sit down at the painting table around 9:00pm. Usually during this time I do more of the mundane aspects of painting, undercoats, basecoats and basing. I can usually just switch in to assembly line mode and god for it. Last night while I was working on my WW2 British my oldest son walked up to me and asked my why one of the miniatures was different from the others. I stopped painting and looked down and said something like "oh it's just because he's not painted yet" and then continued painting.

"No his helmet is different, is he from a different army?"

I looked again and only then could I see the difference.

Remember to click on the images for a bigger version.


Somehow this guy had decided to jump into my order from Black Tree, obviously a new form of reconnaissance. Why I never picked up on this before amazes me, after all I trimmed off the flash, based it, undercoated and painted the flesh, and I never noticed.

What this does mean is that I'm now one man down in my platoon, oh well just another reason to order some more :) And since I've already got one Fallshirmjager I'll have to get the rest of his squad, a platoon even.


It's been a learning experience in so many ways painting these guys. Working out new paints and a new paint scheme has slowed things down considerably, and at the pace I paint things are now at a crawl. Below is a shot of the colour scheme I've settled on. A lot of the colours are just blocked in right now with little or no shading/highlights. There is the temptation to put a lot of detail into these guys but there's a lot of them to paint.


I'll get some more shots up as soon as I have his section done.

Tamiya Color

I tried to paint my WW2 minis using my GW paints, honestly I did. They looked shite. No the looked ruddy shite. It's just that GW colours look like, well, GW colours. I think it's the finish, you know that flat gloss look that just screams GW paints used here. I think that on any other miniature the paints are the way to go, but for WW2 stuff just don't do it.

So I went down to my local hobby store with a short list of colours I'd need to get my British platoon done: Khaki, Drab Khaki and Khaki Drill. I was torn: I wanted to paint these minis as quickly as possible so I wanted to minimise any mixing of colours. But to buy three pots of paint that were just variations of each other annoyed me.

So I walk into my hobby store and stand in front of the Tamiya paint stand. I grab the colours I need and yeah there's enough difference beween them to justify the purchase. Ok I think 4 colours plus a new brush should come to around $26-27. I sigh, walk to the counter and hand over the card.

It came to $13.30.

$2.70 per pot of Tamiya Colour.

I'm still in shock.

As for the paint itself:

The Good
The paint goes on so easily, even when thinned down it goes on evenly. It dries flat/matt and looks like cloth. You can buy the exact colour you need and usually by name. The paint dries quickly and fresh paint blends well with existing paint, you don't get that overlapping paint ridge you get a lot with GW paints.

The Bad
You have to paint in a well ventilated area. This stuff is acrylic and is water soluble but man it stinks. Paint near a window. The fast paint techniques like drybrushing and washing don't seem to work well with this stuff. Although I've had nice results with only one or two layers of highlights so I don't think it matters much.

I haven't tried mixing it with GW paints and to be honest I don't think I'll try. My gut feeling is the results wouldn't be pretty. I also have a feeling that this stuff will beat up your brush and steal it's lunch. I won't mind this so much as the price of a pot of this stuff and a brush is still under what a GW pot would cost.

The Final Word(s)
I'll be buying a lot more of this range.

There's a hole in my bucket... err bases.

I thought was being really clever when I solved my problem of mixing 25mm and 28mm miniatures. By mount the 25mm minis on GW round bases and the 28mm ones on washers the height difference would be negligible. Oh so simple... or so I thought. What I ended up with was this (click on the images for bigger versions):


Easily fixed though with this:


Simply place a piece of sticky tape on the bottom of the base and plug the hole with spackling.


You can see the tape better in this shot.


Less than 5 minutes later I'd done my entire platoon and flamethrowers.


A quick splash of PVA and a dip in a sand/pebble mix and you have this:


All it needs now is an inkwash, drybrush and some flock... oh yeah and don't forget to paint the mini too.

Victory at Sea

This is another game I've been thinking of getting but I'm finding it really hard to find a good supplier of miniatures. I know the game comes with tokens for all of the ships in the game but I want to push little boats around the table not pieces of card.

I know is this an extreme long shot but if anyone knows of a retailer/distributor/online store in Australia that sells WW1/WW2 fleets then drop me a line.

World at War

WW2 has become a big of thing for me lately. I've always been interested in it the topic but recently I just can't get enough of it, movies, books and now wargaming. I've kept right away from Flames of War as the cost is just too much for a game that I'll play every now and then.

I've got Nuts! for skirmish level games and I have Fields of Honor and Blitzkrieg Commander for higher level stuff. so why do I need another set of rules? Well the answer is simply support. World at War (WaW) has been released with an Open Content License in a similar vein to the Open Gaming License Wizards of the Coast has with Dungeons and Dragons products. The amount of free and cheap content out for this game is impressive.

I won't try to compare Nuts! to WaW as they are so different on so many levels that I can't see one ever replacing the other. I have Nuts! for scenario based "play it like it was" games and now I have WaW for the "1000pts each" competitive games. And should I fall on my head and want to start playing modern era skirmishes then it's good to know that the core rules are similar across all of the games in the Battlefield Evolution series.

I'll get a battle report and rules review up once I get my British painted.

Timbo