Underfire miniatures: 28mm East Germans

Hello guys,

I have finally finished painting a pack of Under Fire Miniatures 28mm East Germans. These are one of the two packs that company does in 28mm, but they have a huge range of 20mm miniatures. They were sculpted by the same guy that sculpts Moderns for Empress, and quality hasn't suffered - they are absolutely fantastic.

Cold war is not something I was planning to dab into (as I opted for moderns instead), alas they were a gift so I was more than happy to paint them.  They will not be put away, however, as they will take the role of the Evergreen army in my moderns that was so far filled by my WWII US Marines conversions.

Being ignorant of Cold War Germans of either description, I had to do some research figuring out the equipment and camouflage. I am not too confident about my paint choices, but I think it should do well enough.

If I am not mistaken, they would fit in the late eighties, should anyone be interested.

 This pack gives you three guys armed with AKs and a guy armed with a RPK for a support. The barrel of the later actually broke in transit, but by simply sanding it a bit and gluing it back, the damange is not noticable at all. Other than that, they pretty much all sport same equipment, with ammo pouches of the RPK guy being a tad larger, which I think was a nice attention to detail.

As I mentioned they were sculpted by the same sculptor that made the US Infantry I am using for Slovenes, but as you can see below the Germans are just a tad bulkier:

Unrelated, below are some notes on the paints used, mainly for myself as a future reference:

I had trouble picking up paints (not to mention painting the pattern). The pattern is horrible, it really is. It is brown stripes on brownish-greenish-greyish-beige background. The pattern gets lost from 5 meters away, so the easiest way would be to just paint the uniforms in one solid colour...but where is the fun in that?

I decided to make the pattern obvious, as these are miniatures after all and for that, I went with lighter brown background, so that brown stripes can be made out.

I painted the uniform this way (because of what I had available):

German Beige Camo base
Green Brown wash, some black wash
Brown stripes

Brown violet for helmet netting and helmet straps.

Helmet  - German grey, highlited with German Grey +  Green Grey to lighten it up

Straps, gas mask bag, bedroll all in Green grey with some black

I finished it all of with a light drybrush of German Beige Camo mixed with some white.


I have to admit I miss the RPG in this pack, but it will be provided in one of the next packs  that are due to be released, so I can always put them in. With my Evergreen army now matching my Slovenes, I am running out of reasons not to play a game soon. I am setting up an idea for a scenario already, but I always find myself missing some more terrain, so hopefully this can be a project for this week - perhaps some waist high banks that could represent various ditches and act like a cover in the large open areas?

As usual, thanks for looking!

Mathyoo

Where are all the posts now?

Hi guys,

I finally managed to break a radio silence! When I started working on my blog I had a fantastic idea of blogging two times a week, which was then downscaled to realistic once per week and by now to an irregular posting that started to annoy me.

I have great ideas for games, but the problem is working them out. I need to work on terrain, which somehow doesn't appeal to me at the moment for various reasons. Apart from all the fantastic ideas I shouldn't get into (WW1, Fantasy to some extent, Medieval...), I would really like to carry on with my moderns campaign. By lowering my expectations a bit, it should be doable.

As the Zabadak Joe mentioned, I managed to escape lovely 30 degrees we had in Slovenia to visit England again this year (yay!), mainly to participate in the excavation of WW1 training site near Durham. I was a bit disappointed in English summer at first (especially on the day that we had 10 degrees!), but I wish I was there now that I have been roasting at 35-40 degrees back home for two weeks since I came back. We were excavating a large house that was offered to 18th Durham Light Infantry Battalion for training purposes. The house was eventually found too small to house all the soldiers, so additional huts were constructed on the premises and there were even practice trenches dug. We didn't manage to find the latter unfortunately, but excavating the remains of the house proved to be just as - if not more - interesting. I was working on a part of the house shot below, my "personal project" being the stairway to the cellar. The shots are from last day, so it is a bit hard to imagine, but the stairs were burried in rubble. Should you be interested, we found a lot of animal bone, nails and some pottery in the rubble. From the finds certainly belonging to the WW1 soldiers, we found a (!) part of the heel of a military boot (period). There was a lot of remains from Victorian era, however, so while it was not what I expected it to be, it was still a fantastic experience, but I do hope to get a chance to dig on a proper WW1 site in future.

 I am forced to  mention that I starred in a local newspaper article. Apparently everyone loves the idea of international cooperation and no matter how British I wish I act, the way I speak is always a bit of a give away!

As I was "in the area", I prolonged my stay to stay with Joe for a few days - Thanks again! I even managed to persuade him to take me to Scotland (yay!) and while I only just made it across the border, it is a step further up north from the last time I was there.

The real gem that day was a visit to Berwick, a lovely border town with very well preserved

renaissance city walls (and best fish and chips I ever had!).

 On our way back we stopped at the area of Dunstanburgh castle, mainly to hunt down the pillboxes in the area. As it turned out, the accurate maps and directions I had with me turned out to be...less helpful. We did find what we were looking for eventually, which is good. The bad thing, however, is that this is also the point where screen on my camera broke and from here on, my photos were all shot blindly.

 Some anti-tank cubes down below:

Later that week Joe's son put a game of Saga up for us. It was a game set in the age of Samurai, which had a nice feel to it and what Joe forgot to mention is he absolutely shattered me. Fear not, this is how most of my games end, so I barely noticed it!

I also managed to visit Vampifan Bryan, albeit just for a day and we played a few games Super Dungeon Explore. I have no photos unfortunately, but I can tell you - it's a great game!

Afterwards I went to Durham again, so here are some awful photos of that. While I did climb the tower and enjoyed the view, what I really liked was their LEGO cathedral. By paying a pound for a lego brick, visitors can help construct it, which is a fantastic way to fund yourself. The thing looks fantastic already, and it still has a long way to go!

I also go a chance to meet with Squeaky Pete again, my go-to man for military history chit chat!

I came back full of enthusiasm and ideas, but unfortunately also a week late to an internship I got just before I left, so I am spending a lot of time working, catching up, working on my article, working on my new research idea and while I am bragging - I was filming a short part about local pillboxes for national telly today. All this leaves little time for hobby, but I am working on something neat for my moderns and I can't wait to share it with you.

Should all go as planned, I hope to play at least one moderns scenario every month to slowly get my campaign going. I have the next one all planned out, as I have the idea of how I want my moderns to be played.

I also hope I can put a bit more time into reading other people's blogs now - I do apologise for the lack of attention lately!

Thanks for reading,
Mathyoo

Apache Longbow gunship

Hello guys,

Last week, I finished a Heroics and Ross 1/300 Apache Longbow. Not counting the assembly, it didn't take me long to get it painted as it only involved painting it greenish, washing it with black, painting it again, putting some black somewhere and some blue somewhere else.

I have to thank Clint again for picking one up for me - THANK YOU!

This model was my first foray into 1/300 and I did not enjoy it. The model came in several pieces and while there were no instructions added, the build was straight forward enough. The good thing was, it had a choice of 4x4 hellfire rockets or a 2x4 of the former and two canister of rockets. As the latter were a pain to attach, I went with the first choice. It also looks cooler.

Assembly was a pain. Nothing fit together, I tried making something work, but just too much work was needed to give it a nice round shapes where they had to be (for example, look just above the wheels. Do you see a large rectangle? You shouldn't.) I did forgot to attach the nose chain gun, so that's my fault, as well as breaking the tail wheel. That was a nice little detail.

Never mind the horrible photo background, I am ashamed. Another thing that I noticed is the symmetry - or the lack of it. Compare the engines below and trust me, it looks worse in real life from up close. But from a table distance, the aircraft looks just as great as it should. It also costs 2 pounds (compared to GHQ's 6,50!). It also shows that it's hand sculpted (I presume), which is always nice.

I put it on a random 25mm square base, nothing much to say about it. Attached it with a piece of wire.
It will be used to mark a presence of an air-support on the map, so having it nice and tiny is perfect.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

East Street Games Survivor and Zombie

Hi guys,

I will skip the apologetic introduction and I will dive right in - Few weeks back I received a nice parcel from the good man Clint of  Anything but a one! fame. (Thanks again!)

Among other things he sent me were these two miniatures of a female survivor in a living and zombified form. They are from a newish company called East Street Games for their Zombie Apocalypse game called Bullets and Brains.

Unfortunately the page offers very little information at this point and I would wish to at least see the sculpts, but Clint has posted a lengthy AAR in his April posts...actually, just click Here and then check the newer posts for parts 2 and 3.

As far as the miniature goes, the sculpt is fantastic. I have an abundance of survivors with firearms, so seeing one with a melee weapon was a welcoming change. The survivor is not cluttered with the detail, but the jacket, for example, was nicely detailed, so it pains up nice and fast. This is just a personal preference, but I like it as it feels a lot like a gaming piece and doesn't give me nightmares when I am painting it.

I more or less copied the paints from the web page, but I went with Khaki shorts as and a hat as I felt the jacket was blue enough. I kept the same paints for both of them and the zombie was given the pale and purple treatment that I found I like the most for the zombies and undead in general.

 For zombie, things are more or less the same. It doesn't have the typical shambling stance I like, but it looks like it barely stands upright, so this is "zombie enough" for me. It is full of little details, little cuts, little gun shot wounds, I could swear I saw one eyeball dangling out and there are even some blisters. One of the legs shows some bone, so there was a lot of diversity on it. The only thing that struck me was the gun shot wound on the hat. Not that I mind it, as it looks good, but as we like to associate dead zombies with blown up heads, this makes it a Living Living Dead.

I apologise for bad photos, I blame it on the weather!

This is it for today, and I'll post again next week, if all goes as planned!

Mathyoo

Technicals - part 1

Hello guys,

Before I start, I have to apologise yet again for the lack of activity and for missing so many of your blog posts. I am working on something else at the moment and the days often pass so fast I completely forget about the hobby. I will try to do better in the following week and check on some of the things I've missed!


When I was in London in March I scored a good day in Poundland and bought three police pickups for a pound!

They are horrible, but at 33,334 pence a piece, they will be just fine. I was desperate for some to give my insurgents much needed vehicle support.

I have no plan as to how I want them to look (except one MIGHT be up armoured and both would probably have machine guns), so I will see how they turn out as they go. I do not want them armed with an AA guns as my games are all up close and personal and those mounts would need some kind of minimum range as the gun is mean to be firing in the skies.

First thing I needed done was clear the stickers and it was a real pain. I tried all sorts of things and glue residue wouldn't come off. In the end, I covered it in dirt and then used an eraser to help me clean it - that worked really well.

As they come without windows and I didn't want to go through the trouble of converting and painting drivers, I decided to make glass. It was a pretty easy work, measured by the eyes. I glued plasticard on with superglue and then I sealed it with an old greenstuff that I can't use for my miniatures anymore.

Don't hold your breath for the next step (I've built those 2 weeks ago and still nothing was added!), but in the mean time, feel free to suggest the weaponry. I was thinking giving them two machine guns of some sorts (One medium as I have a model and one heavy that I could sculpt), to make them even with my Hummvees, but some sort of cannon would also look good on them!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

New terrain!

Hello guys,

Deciding I lack houses I could use in both urban and rural settings, I decided to build two smallish box houses that could fit in both SA and Modern setting.

They were recycled from my "urban terrain tiles" I built years ago for my zombie town and never really used all that much - I only had them for 3x3 and they started wrapping.

 The design is simple and meant for an easy and fast building. I used slightly larger bases so I could add a bit of a yard to each of them. They have no roofs as I found out roofs to be a lot of hassle for little gain. They aren't used during game, but they do look lovely at the beginning.

 One has a broken fence and the other one a laundry rope, other than that they are both pretty bland. I was aiming for even whiter colour with only a hint of yellow/blue, but I am quite satisfied with them as they are.

I decided against cutting holes for windows and doors as they aren't REALLY needed and as they don't have separate rooms, windows look weird (as they do on my older terrain).

Also, if the two are put together there is a lovely alley formed in between:

In other news, I started working on two technicals for rebels and I hope to play a game soon - I have so many soldiers painted now I'd love to use them some more!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

JTAC

 Hello guys,

It took me a bit longer than it should, but I finally have a JTAC prepared. Joint terminal attack controller, simply put, is a guy that calls in air strikes. All the communication between him and the pilot is always in English, no matter the nationality of either or both of them.

They receive a lot of attention here lately as SAF is trying to establish a regional training centre for JTAC in Slovenia. This is interesting, I suppose, as we don't have an Air Force as such, but just an "Air component" within the Army...and even those units are armed with Pilatus PC-9M Hudournik ("Swift", the bird) airplanes.

 While they look like something that might have taken part in the Battle for Britain, Pilatus planes are apparently one of the best training aircraft you can get. Slovenia bought them early after the independence to train its future fighter pilots on them and when it was realised that jets are costly, they were simply armed. While they are used as such on practices for media, these planes can obviously not intercept an airbus and our skies are currently protected by Hungarian or Italian jets. Needless to say, there's plenty jokes going around about how we don't need jets as they "can't make a U turn without leaving the airspace".

To make me feel better,  I have to let everyone know that a "guns only" dogfight between a Slovene in Pilatus and American in F-16 took place few years back which the former won with 2:0. So if nothing else, these planes are good enough to keep the know-how and pilots trained. On the other case, taking the tanks out of operational use is making us lose the tankers and their experience.

So, from a gaming point of view, JTAC is a guy with a radio and I converted him from one. He can be used as a basic radioman, JTAC, Artillery observer etc.

 I was quite gutted to find out I have misplaced the original antennae. It was really nicely done and I KNOW I put it somewhere to make sure it wouldn't get lost. So, I replaced it with a piece of solid wire. It's not as nice but at least it won't break easily.

I also scraped off his M4 and, as his main job is to direct airplanes and not fire his rifle, put an F2000 on his backpack, while giving him binoculars. My first idea was to let him have a touch screen computer with a map on it, but working on that would be a bit complicated and had to satisfy myself with a locally produced binoculars with a laser pointer.

To make him stand out at least a bit, his vest was painted in khaki. I wish his helmet was not covered with a cloth, but as that would include way too much work, I just went with it as it is.

I hope to use him in larger games to call in some airstrikes and I am now trying to find a nice 1:144 aircraft or even a helicopter. I am sure the International forces on Evergreen Island have an Apache or two laying around!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo