Ever More Basing For The Death Korps

I made really good progress this morning before the treadmill. It could have gone wrong though. Rather than follow my tried and true recipe using GW paints, I decided to mix things up a bit and use Tamiya air brush paints for these. After looking at the huge volume of painting to do, I decided that I really needed to avoid airbrush clogs at all cost. I am thrilled with the result. Granted that has more to do with SWM Green Earth weathering powder than my grey shading, but I like it none-the less. All I have to do is add black edging around the base, and I have enough bases for the force. Just in case I do some last minute list tinkering, I painted up some large bases to use with Krieg mortar teams. I love the idea have 6 more mortars to fire. When we play 40k with bolt action rules, the mortars are going to be incredibly important, since in BA they can fire smoke. That makes cavalry charges less hazardous. Alternately, it allows the dreaded Blood Pact (Dave, we have to play that game!) or Vrak's renegades (Steve, that is you!) sneak up and take out the artillery. If Greg ever paints up a huge force or orcs (I saw that painting tutorial, so I know you can do it quickly!) then we can also get in a guard on orc infantry game.

Got to rim the bases in black now. Better find a good documentary to watch.

Death Korps Bases For The NOVA Open

I've made so much progress on the Death Korps, that it is time to work on some bases. I see this army as complementing my Sons of Horus force. That means I have to produce what feels like an unlimited number of cracked cement bases. Now I don't like retracing old ground, so I made enough bases to provide me with extras for a while.

The cement like plaster is Hydrolcal, which has been broken into chunks and glued to normal GW bases. After the slightly diluted(water) wood glue has set, I'll probably carve in some bullet holes, and  other details into the surfaces. Painting these is a snap. Base coat them black, and using an airbrush, paint them from dark to light grey at the edges. After that a quick run of Steel Legion Drab around the dirt looking areas finishes it up. Wash the bases with weathering powder, SWM Green Earth, and then go back and paint the edges of the bases black.

That seemed like such a quick and easy process until I realized I had about a 100 bases to paint. Too bad I can't do this while on the treadmill.  

Death Korps Of Krieg Combat Engineers With Powder

I just added weathering powder to all of the armor plates on my Death Korps combat engineers. I like the effect, but it did wipe out quite a bit of detail. So the question is whether or not I add powder to all of the armor plates on the Death Korps. I could try to limit the amount of powder added on the next batch as a compromise. Maybe these will grow on me. They did take an enormous amount of time to paint.

I apologize for the photos. My camera is having 'focus issues'. Definitely not the photographer's fault.

Death Korps of Krieg Combat Engineers & HQ

I am finally nearing the point where some of the models are looking finished. This is where the long push starts to pay off and the models begin looking like the finished pieces. I still have a ways to go on them, but I can start envisioning what they will look like on the board.  The engineers have more washes, glazes, and layers to go, but the overall feel of the models is now set. Basically if you squint at them now and squint at them once all of the shading is done, the models will basically look the same. Engineers are a really characterful unit. They do the heavy lifting in the Krieg forces, building forward observation posts, trenches, and artillery emplacements. The 12 painted here will allow me to field two squads if I choose to do so, though likely they will end up joined in one big squad walking behind a tunneling hades breaching drill. I am not really sure what to do with the mole mortar. It looks like a pretty iffy unit game-wise, but it looks good paired with the breaching drill.

One of the time consuming tasks for NOVA besides the models themselves is the display board. I relish this part of army construction. However this year I have some problems. I have so many models that a normal 2x2 board simply isn't large enough. I'd really like to have a board with trenches and emplaced artillery, but what do I do with all the extra models? My list includes 3 heavy artillery pieces, 3 quad launchers, 3 medium mortars, 3 bombards, loads of infantry, and then 30 death riders. That takes a lot of space. I've though about doing a multi-level display, but really have no interest in that. Maybe I should bring an entire table to NOVA. :)

More Death Korps

*EDIT picked my final color. Orange.

It seems like I have been painting leggings and gas masks forever. I've painted so much these past two days that I think I am straining my eyes. However I am now at the half way point. Some decisions have to be made as well. I painted the rad counter box bootstrap leather colored as a sample. This is the same color I painted the guardsman's boots on the right. It is likely the same color I will paint their rucksacks. Is that too much brown? The shoes could remain a dirty black color, and the rucksack could be a dark yellow. However every additional color I use adds hours to the project timeline. I've got three Bombards to paint as a reward for painting so many of these guys, but at this point it feels like I might not reach the end.  In a worst case scenario, I can easily pair these guys with my Sons of Horus. At this point I have three troops choices, an HQ, and 20 men to crew artillery. It probably be a better army composition to ally them with Horus, but horses. Horses really ought to be part of my list.

Bolt Action Jagdpanther

I realized at Historicon that I had not posted any photos of my Jagdpanther for my Bolt Action German force. I am enormously proud to have won 1st place for historical vehicle. Historicon has opened up a whole new style of game play to me, in addition to painting challenges. Richard Rush, from our gaming group as well, took home two well deserved 1st place medals. His historical single miniature is simply outstanding. I have a few zillion part ww2 scale models that might actually get painted for the next HGMS event.

Ok, back to Krieg. (don't they have a striking resemblance to German Heer?)

Death Korps of Krieg

With my color scheme mostly down, batch painting of DKoK has begun. Hard to believe I have to paint ~60 of these guys. I think this is going to take longer than I anticipated. Unfortunately, I really only have 5 days to get this batch done. The 30 Death Riders are going to take a fair bit longer since I still have to sort out their misshapen legs and greenstuff all of the gaps. Despite this, it feels really good to have finally dived into the project I have been slowly collecting for over six years.

Death Korps of Krieg Unit Test

Thanks to everyone who has been making suggestions on the color scheme. I have painted as long as I can stand to paint today, and almost have a squad to share with you. It has been fun doing live updates like this, however I am spent. Loads of constructive input went into these guys. I included the melta gunner int the photo so you could see the progression. Most of the suggestions that went into improving that model ended up incorporated into the new color scheme. I may still paint up a squad in the darker brown color. I still kind of dig it, however I think the new scheme is much better.

Since I have to paint about a 100 of these guys, it is useful to paint up a test squad to see how difficult it would be. It turns out that I can probably kick out 1 squad every two days. The really killer is the webbing/leg wraps. Those take forever. I normally paint in silence, but for the big push I might need something to make painting all those wraps ok.