28mm 101st Airborne Decals

I've been busy working on my Fallschirmjager minis and with a little luck and even less sleep I should have most of them finished by the end of the week.  So like all good wargamers I'm already thinking ahead to my next project: the US Airborne.

They're a much simpler model to paint so I'm hoping to get them finished in the first week of the holidays.  While reading some posts on the Warlord forums I noticed a few posts talking about 28mm insignia and rank decals.  I had thought about painting this stuff onto the minis in the past but it's a lot of very fiddly work and my brush skills just aren't up to scratch so I wandered over to Company B and bought a sheet of these for $6.40US including postage.  They can't be much more painful than putting 1.5mm roundels onto 1/600 aircraft... can they?  Well time will tell.

If these go well I think I'll have to grab a sheet each for the Germans and British minis.

Vallejo Paints

I've been trying different paints on and off for a while now and while I love my Tamiya paints they are just a huge pain in the ass to work with.  Great finish, a great range of colours and the price cannot be beat but the actual process of using the paints, the smell and the fact that some colours tend to react violently with others makes them unfun to work with.

The Vallejo range has always been on my radar but I've kept away from them, mainly due to cost but since I needed to get some more paints for the Fallschirmjagers I figured I'd just bite the bullet and get some.  I really like the idea of the dropper type bottle and the fact they mix well with GW stuff is a bonus.  And given the range of GW and Mr Hobby stuff I have I shouldn't need to get much more of the Valleo range until the other stuff runs out or dries up.

So I grabbed the following colours from Gus at Zepnix Wargames based on the following painting reference I found on the Warlord Games website.

German Grey (Vallejo 995): Uncovered helmet
Black (Vallejo 950): Webbing, pistol holster, rifle ammo pouches, boots, bayonet scabbard
German Field Grey (Vallejo 830): Trousers and breadbag
Luftwaffe Uniform blue (Vallejo 816): Luftwaffe tunic, field cap, officer's peaked cap
German Camo Orange Ochre (Vallejo 824): Canteen
Middlestone (Vallejo 882): Panzerfaust
Camouflaged jump smocks and helmet covers (Beige 821, Green 823, Brown 984)
Military Green  (Vallejo 975): Mess tin and gas mask container

Gus even threw in a bottle of the Army Painter strong tone Quick Shade ink which is fantastic for a few reasons: firstly it was free :), secondly my GW inks are running low and thirdly I've heard good things about their ink range and have wanted to try it out.

So I'll probably start painting the Black Tree Fallschirmjager models either tonight or tomorrow night, photos will follow as soon as I have something worth sharing.

Ok since I just couldn't put you through one more boring post without photos I thought I'd share some of the not so blurry photos of the church in action last Saturday night.

I just love my Zuzzy matt, the texture here while not totally appropriate just looks amazing.  The British had the upper hand for a while and managed to force almost half of the German forces to retreat into this this scorched earth garden.

Ok I'm off to undercoat my first squad of minis.

10 Hours and 39 Minutes

I just received an email from em-4 miniatures stating that my order has been shipped, after being placed only 10 hours and 39 minutes earlier today.  This is just amazing service, almost unheard of really.  I'm used to an order sitting in the "processing your order" queue for around a week or two, or longer... yes Black Tree I'm looking at you.

To be honest I buy my dice, tokens and bases from em-4 simply because their prices cannot be beaten, now I can add amazing service to the list.

So many little men!

I ran out of bases over the weekend and did a quick count of everything I have and will be getting on Xmas day and I was a little shocked: I need 206 bases!

The breakdown goes like this:

47 x German infantry (Black Tree, Warlord and other misc)
74 x Fallschirmjagers (Black Tree and Warlord)
84 x US Airborne (Black Tree, Warlord and other misc)
1 x Pulp/WWW2 Characters

Now obviously I won't be painting all these guys at once so I decided to order 100 bases and start working on the Fallschirmjagers.  With what's left over I'll paint up some of the German infantry as Waffen SS troops.

The game went well on the weekend with both Brendan and jame enjoying their first game of Disposable Heroes, or 28mm WW2 for that matter.  I took quite a few photos of the game but they all turned out oretty bad so I won't torture you with them.  The church is coming along nicely and was the focus point of the scenario even if most of the action took place in a ruined house across the street.

Sorry for all of these photo free posts lately I'll try to get some WIP shot of the church up later today or tomorrow.

Terrain: 28mm Ruined Church - Part 1

I've started putting together the ruined church from Dave Graffam Models.  Initially I started building these out of MDF for extra strength but the extra time it took to cut and glue the MDF just sucked all the fun out of building the models.  Foam board is much simpler to put together and coupled with some fast drying white glue the process of putting this together has been very enjoyable.

Foam card makes for a faster build, all this in one evening.

The outer wall goes up first.

The tower starts to take shape.

 

 

 

With a little luck I'll get this finished before my next game tomorrow night, I just can't wait to see it on the table.