FoW: Panther G and Army Shot

After painting the Stug G's from the Open Fire starter kit, I had the hankering for painting some panthers. Not knowing what type to make, I settled on the Panther G, since it had the coolest looking equipment. One of the panthers has oil streaks applied. The rest will get the same treatment, but after my wife said she hated the paint chipped Stug, I thought I would see what a tank would look like with oil streaks alone. I think it can work, but I do need to put some paint chips in there, if only to provide narrative to the rust streaks. Other than that, I added yellow flowers to the german bases, and put together the allies side of the box.

Two hours later and two clamps per tank, and I finally have the Shermans and Fireflys ready for paint. I enjoyed painting the Plastic Soldier Company Panthers. I am not sure I will enjoy painting the Shermans. Maybe I have just been spoiled by Games Workshop, whose models are crisp and well detailed. I'm beginning to think that I should just buy models from anyone but Battle Front, though it seems a weird way to support a game.

FoW:

The pigments are stilly drying, and paint chipping and streaking is yet to be done, but I wanted to see what these guys would look like based. I don't think it is realistic, but the greenish brown earth provides nice contrast. Now the big question is whether I've managed to reach whatever the tabletop standard for FoW is. I found the figures really difficult to paint, so I was pretty loose with the brush. If I paint the remaining 96 guys up to this standard will it be considered a nice army, or do I need to spend as much time as I do on my 40k stuff?

I was thinking about painting the trims of each base black, but I am worried it will stick out too much. 

First Flames of War: A First for Me

I rarely paint anything but 40k, but after a year of having the "Open Fire" boxed set for Flames of War sitting in my closet I decided to break it out and paint some models up. All that military modeling research in order to paint better 40k tanks primed the way. It feels weird to be painting US, British, and German forces, since unlike 40k, in FoW we are dealing with real events. On the other hand, this is just painting.

What you see in the photos is the German side of the starter box. The American and British will be painted last. I sort of viewed these models as color modulation practice for my larger 40k models. If I can do it a 100mm scale, then I can do it at 28mm. The major challenge here was working with the terrible plastic these are molded in. The more I worked with it the more I hated it. Even weirder, it looks like battlefront sculpted these tanks by hand. The tracks are weirdly rounded and soft, and many details just blur together. I am not sure if all FoW plastic kits are molded in this soft detail, but brittle stuff, but if they are, then I will not purchase any more.

On the other hand, I found a shop selling Plastic Soldier Company 100mm kits, and was really pleased with the amount of detail. I purchased the Panther box set, and enjoyed building them, despite having no idea what variant I ultimately produced. There seems to be a profusion of kits that mix Panther A, D, and G variants, so I went with the G because it looked better. I think the A, and D versions are swapped, but it also looks like the G versions front ball turret thing should be on the A as well.

I've reached the point where I need to paint up some infantry, but I honestly have no idea how to achieve this. The models are so small I can barely see them. My plan so far is to airbrush white from the top to shade them, and then dust them with semi-transparent german field grey. Additionally, do people base them first and then paint them? It looks incredibly difficult to paint them once based, but basing second has its own problems.

Now on the big questions.

• Do I have to add brown and green camo to the tanks, or did the Germans have some units left yellow? I tried several practice runs with my airbrush, and none of them came out ok. I'd like to move on to the paint chipping, and streaking phase, but I can't until the base coats are done.
• I've purchased the starter box,  the PSC x5 panther box, and the PSC x5 halftrack SdKfz 251D box. Is there a way to make a list that uses these? The army list included in the box was not very helpful, and after reading PDF after PDF, I really don't know where to start, or what would be acceptable for the FoW community. I think this is a major barrier to entry for a new player, and problem for Battlefront. I am not interested in becoming a military historian of WW2, but with the amount of books and documents it feels like I have to. 

Lehman Russ Afrika Korps Green Scheme Take 2

My first attempt at a dark sand and green scheme LR was not fondly received, so I thought I would take another stab at it. I spread out the camouflage lines this time in order to let more of the color modulated yellow color to show through. A little web researched showed that the early german tanks in Tunisia had the option of green or grey camouflage over the brown/yellow base coat.

There were a couple of areas I struggled with on this model in addition to the camo. The first was the spotlight. I painted it black/grey in order to have it painted, but ideally I would rather of had it been covered. I like painting lenses, and small lights, but large lights look weird to me when they are painted as if they were glowing. I thought about painting the light various shades of silver as a way to show the reflective part at the back of the lens, and then heavily gloss it. That might be a way to go forward in the future.

Yesterday the great Simple Green bath of tanks finally finished eating away 19 years worth of paint. The griffin that just finished soaking has a 1995 mark on it! I'm tempted to build more griffin's just because the model is so cool. After watching orange scented simple green eat through dozens of layers of paint and glue, my wife decided that every tupperware container used had to go. So it looks like I have finally procured storage for my hobby room!

FW Hydra Defense Battery German Color Scheme

This is another salvage piece from my old IG army. After a bath in 99% alcohol, most of the original paint came off. What I was left with was the original badly weapon arms. Despite that, I really enjoyed painting this piece. If the details had been sharper I would have tried adding some green camo, but as it stands I think it came out pretty nicely. The stowage, spreader bars, and oil barrel are not completed yet, but with their base coats on, I wanted to share what an old school FW hydra could look like.

I am still getting the hang of painting battle damage on with a brush rather than with a sponge or with real chipping. I quite like the process. The total control coupled with tedium makes it sort of like meditating.

On The Painting Table

Since photos of painters workspaces are so popular, I thought I would share mine. Yep, zero space. I've managed to completely fill an 8 foot table with a variety of projects. What you see here is my repaint of my IG tanks. In this photo each step of the painting process can be seen. I think my next job is to clean up my workspace! After that, some Nova Charitable Foundation Work. I've got a Knight Titan with LED's ready to hit the paint phase.

Lehman Russ Panzer Pt 2 With Color Modulation

When I first painted the sand colored LR and the turret with the green camo, my wife immediately liked the green. I was on the fence, but such a strong reaction led me to a paint test. The completed LR battle tank above is the result of that. Funny enough, when my wife saw the completed tank she immediately disliked it. We both got a good laugh out of it!

So despite one vote against it, I like the green scheme, but it might be the only tank that gets it. I just enjoy weathering the cleaner sand colored tanks more.

The LR punisher above is an example of the first stage for any vehicle attached to my DKoK force. That tank is a salvage vehicle from a previous color scheme, which is why you see some other colors peeking through. Even at this stage of painting, the tank looks really interesting. That is due to two things. The first is color modulation. Dark Yellow was used as the base coat followed by light sand which was applied as to produce a gradient between panels. This produced the color modulation that you see.  After that an oil pin wash finished up this stage of painting, bringing out all of the detail, and highlighting those gradient shifts.

So what to do now? Do I paint one of these guys up in a sand/grey paint schem? If anyone has reference images of sand + grey vehicles, I'd love to see them.

Lehman Russ Panzer Edition

Despite a weekend of paperwork for the company, I managed to complete one of the paint tests I started. Normally I don't paint a full model for a test, but this one forced me to complete it. I just wasn't sure if it was too boring before I added the weathering. In fact, most of the time was spent figuring out how to weather it, and deciding if I wanted to use green or grey cammo. I've decided to paint up another LR go to with the green turret showed in the earlier post. I don't think it will look too weird seeing a variety of tank color schemes spread across vehicles so long as they all look like they belong on the field together. The final tank may be predominantly grey with sand colored cammo. My Krieg will be painted with the grays and greens used on the tanks

One thing I am not sure of is the tracks. I painted the pins metal, the overall track brown, and the rubber pad black. Should I add metallic weathering powders to the edges of the brown treads? Should I mix in a few more colors of sand and dust?