More Odds and Ends

 Just some more pictures of things that I recently finished. I am trying to get things done before I leave for Chicago for the holidays. 

Dwarf Challenge 2:

My old buddy from grad school days and I decided to do another painting challenge. This time it was dwarf magic users and he got to picture the figure. I've had a lot of bad luck with Reaper Miniatures. They seem to come broken. I had one earlier whose weapon came broken. Reaper was nice enough to send me a new one. This time, the top of the dwarf's staff was broken. I figured that I'd just work with it. After painting him, I glued a red translucent bead on top. I think it looks better than what was originally on there. Hopefully, it will hold. The guy standing next to him is a bonus that I will send my friend. He is a Reapers Bones figure that is made out of a plastic similar to what 1/72 figures are made out of. He's supposed to be a dwarf ranger, but looks like he's holding a giant wrench for a weapon. I bought him for my son to paint, but he didn't seem interested, so off he goes with the magic user.

More 1/600 Moderns:

As part of my effort to paint lots of stuff, I got these done for the Bovatopian army. I was also testing out a new shade. Its one of the Citadel shaders. 

Baron Henri of Emoree:

This is another pair of 15mm fantasy figures that were at the bottom of my lead pile. I ran of of ideas for coat of arms, so I used the symbol from the college I teach at. These are Demonworld Empire figures.

The car finished:

Here's the Cub Scout all ready to march in the Christmas parade. Fewer scouts than we thought built one. Hopefully, more will build one next year.

Numbering bases for 3mm armies

 This weekend, I started numbering units of my 1/600 armies for my Bovatopia campaign. I didn't get too far, but this is an example of how I'm indicating companies and platoons:

Three companies with four platoons each

Company of M48A5s

For my 1/300 microarmor, I number the infantry bases with numbers. These are too tiny to do that, so, I am using colors to denote company and a yellow tick mark to indicate platoon. I use Fist Full of TOWs organization of units. 

The March Toward 3mm War Continues

I managed to get a little hobby time in during Thanksgiving break. I wanted to clean off my bench, at least in terms of figures strewn across the table, so I went back and forth between 15mm fantasy and 1/600 stuff. Its probably been a year now, but I bought a whole mess of 1/600 AFV and infantry from Just Jack. He was running an pretty cool ImagiNation campaign with his son, but it didn't seem to last long. He sold them plus a bunch of WWII minis of the same scale. I've been slowly swapping out the stands to fit in with mine. However, in the spirit of "I want to play a game before I die," I left a bunch on their original stands and flocked some of the ones that still need flocking.

A side track to the side track of my original Gambusia campaign is that the nation of Aquor-Ornur is planning to attack an ally of Lavonia, Symbalia. If you read that original post, they have a tiny army but is funded by and large by the USA. Well, two things, first it got transplanted to the world of Bovatopia and second, its army and airforce grew a lot.

MBTs

They now have three armored battalions. Their front line tanks are the M48A5 sporting a 105mm gun. In the other two battalions are M47 and Sherman Fireflies. 

M48A5 with Sherman Fireflies behind them

APCs

Their main APCs are M1A3 halftracks. I am in the process of painting up some M113s but have not finished them. 

Artillery and Fire Support

The main artillery is some sort of 150 or 155mm field howitzers. I am not sure what they are. They don't seem to be US 155mm howitzers. But I'm not going to be picky. Most rules are not overly finnicky on the type of gun, more on the caliber and type of ammo. 

Just Jack's campaign was over a period time: same nations, different time periods in terms of hardware. So, in addition to the halftracks and the Fireflies, there are a lot of US tank destroyers of WWII vintage. Most of them are M18 Hellcats and a few M10 Wolverines. For some reason, I never liked the Hellcat, but I've got them so, I plan to use them. You can also see in the picture below a towed Bofors 40mm AA gun and a few random trucks.

Attack Helicopters

These weren't a part of Just Jack's collection. I went back and forth between just how advanced A-O's air support would be. I finally on more high tech to offset the low tech ground units. These are actually Chinese Z-10 attack helicopters, but all of these modern attack helicopter look pretty much the same, particularly at 1/600 scale. So, they are supposed to be the Agusta A129 Mangusta. I have had back luck trying to attach the clear rotors that are provided with the models, so I plan to cut out some clear plastic disks and use those.

Source: Aldo Bidini - commons file, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69240249

Infantry

I didn't take any photos of infantry other than the one below. It seems to be a combo heavy weapons-ATGM team. Maybe the machine gunners are supposed to be part of the ATGM team? I have not figured out what the infantry have for LAWs, but I do like these for infantry ATGMs. It might be a Javelin or Dragon, but I'm going to use it as an Israeli Spike MR or LR. Again, at that scale, it can be anything you want it to be.

Source: Natan Flayer - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5306990

Bonus!

I bought a set of these off of Shapeways. I don't remember who the vendor was. They are the Russian VPK-39273 Volk-3 6x6 APC armed with a 120mm rifled mortar, the 2B17 Nona-K. They are incorporated into the mighty Bovatopian army as much needed artillery support.

Source: Armyrecognition.com January 2014

1/300 Conversion in About 20 Minutes

Yesterday, I made an all out cleaning assault on my pigsty of a workbench. Despite about three hours of work, I didn't get really far, plus all the dust I kicked up made my allergies a nightmare. Under the piles of junk, I found a lone, primed, Saracen APC and a ZU-23-2 23 mm autocannon with two gunners on it. It might have a carriage for it, or it might go onto another vehicle. The APC is an old Skytrex model and the autocannon belongs to H&R. Inspiration struck! So... shaving off the MG turret, pulling out the pin vise and drilling out a hole for the gun, I now have a Saracen with a ZU-23-2 AA autocannon on top.

I think it took me all of 20 minutes to complete, including waiting for the paint to dry. The thing looks incredibly top heavy and kind of silly, but I've seen some jury-rigged technicals that looked a lot more ridiculous. One more weapon to add to the Federal Republic of Gambusia's arsenal.

Progress During Isolation

I can't say I've been living the life of ease since the stay-at-home "strong suggestion" here in Tennessee. Most of my time has been going back and forth between homeschooling the boy, my own online teaching, and dealing with the back and forth tension between TigerMom and "where do you thing she gets that from" strong-willed daughter. Despite all this, I've been working like a fiend, mostly 3mm stuff. Here are some of the fruits of my labor:

9K33 OSA also known in the West as the Gecko. Its a big SAM system mounted on a really big truck thing. Even though it is Russian in origin, Lavonia ordered a bunch of them for evaluation.

BRDM-2 with Sagger ATGM. Bovatopia has a lot of somewhat obsolete weapons, but so do most of the threats they face.

T-55 MBT. The Pico Armor site now sells the one of the right, which is a more updated model, according to Marcin who is the owner of O8. However, there seems to be a lot of the older style models still in stock, which is what you see on the left. This is Bovatopia's primary MBT, at least until more modern Chinese MBTs come on line. I kind of like the older model.

Above is a number of models painted up. In addition to the T-55s and the BRDM-2s, I have some BTR-40s, what I think are BTR-80s, and some AMX-13 light tanks. Early on in the struggle for Bovatopian independence, they managed to score a bunch of these light tanks. Like a lot of my fictional nations, obsolete weaponry are never junked. 

Last but not least, I made up some terrain. Above are dug-in markers that I made while I was making the bunkers for the SA-2 SAM. They are made the same with aluminum foil wrapped in polymer clay, then flocked.

More Federal Republic of Gambusia AFVs

I could have sworn I posted these, but I guess I have not.

The Federal Republic of Gambusia (FRG) has an infantry battalion of made up of more modern APCs than old Saracens. It consists of Canadian 6-wheeled Cougars and Grizzlies. The Cougars have been modified into fire support vehicles and ATGM carriers.

I used the turret from a Scotia-Grendel Stingray light tank for the FSV. The ATGM were scratch built. Unfortunately, they all came out a little different on those. This is the best of them. These were my first conversions that I made when I plunged into modern gaming and I am quite happy with them.

Bovatopia Campaign: Lavonian Units Painted and Based

I've had most of these done for awhile now. The most recent to be finished are the infantry, which for me, is the toughest to do in 1/600 scale. Lavonia is the main opponent to Bovatopia. Although it sounds like a small central European country, there is an actual Lavonia. Its a small town in northern Georgia (as in Georgia, USA; not the Georgia south of Russia) just over the border with South Carolina. We pass by it whenever we are going to my daughter's tennis tournaments in Atlanta.

Leopard M1A1

Polish Rosomak wheeled IVF

Brazilian EE-9 Cascavel AC

Lavonian infantry with supporting Milan ATGM teams

T-34/85 in 1/600 scale

My project continues much slower than expected. This has not turned out to be the quick slap on the paint and get them on the game board project I had thought. Part of the problem is that the weather has not been conducive to spraying. It's been either too cold or too humid to spray paint outside. The biggest issue has been flocking. I can't put my finger on why it is, but it's a pain in the you-know-where to flock them. Here is some finished T-34/85 tanks ready to go.

I am using Krylon and Rustoleum Camo spray paints. Originally, I painted a few of them khaki, but at that size, it didn't look any different from the pale green (Rustoleum's Army Green) that I am using for the opposition. Krylon makes a camo olive, which I would have preferred over the pale green, but none of the home improvement stores nor Walmart sells it. So, I used sand instead, and is now the official colors of Bovatopian ground units. Frankly, I am not in the mood to be all that picky.

Notice that the flock is rather uneven on the stands. I used PVA glue (Elmer's white glue). In some places the flock stuck; in other places, it didn't.

On a positive note, I found that Krylon clear flat is almost as flat as Testor's Dullcoat. Around these parts, Dullcoat is hard to get. A can of the Krylon is the same price as the Dullcoat for more than double the amount of paint.

The Short and the Tall

I'm about done painting all the vehicles for the Federal Republic of Gambusia's army. Their arsenal includes both the French AML H-90 and the British Staghound III armored cars. When I put them side by side, the AML was pretty dinky compared to the Staghound.

But apparently, the AML is very small:

Source: Thomas Webber II

 whereas the Staghound is rather large:

Source: Thomas Webber II

It was describe to me by a member of the Facebook 6mm Wargaming and Terrain Group as, "The Staghound was a wheeled tank, the AML was a turret on an armoured jeep."

The Mighty M103 Heavy Tank!

I finally got a day where the humidity seemed OK for spraying my GHQ M103 heavy tanks. I used Testor's Olive Drab, which was a little darker than what I wanted, so I highlighted them with Vallejo Olive Green. I tested out a black wash on one of the tanks, but it look too dark. For now I will leave them as is. Three I made into company command tanks.

The battalion

 

Three command tanks:

I designate my command AFVs by at least sticking on an antenna. I will also stick in a commander if I feel ambitious. I have tried different methods of antenna making with varying satisfaction. This time I used a method by the guy who makes GameCraft Miniatures. I think it has worked the best so far, BUT the brush hairs can bend very easily, and don't spring back. 

Commander 1: side view

Commander 1: turret turned

Commander 2

Commander 3

GHQ provided these tanks with a pintle-mounted 50 cal machine gun. This is great, but it made it difficult to sick in a tank commander. The commanders themselves are an example of scale creep. Yes, it even happens at the micro level. Commanders 1 and 3 are from GHQ's American WWII artillery and vehicle crew packs. They are much thinner than commander 2. Even so, I had to cut off and extend the machine gun on commander 1 to allow him to man the gun. Commander 2 is from their more recent 3rd World Regulars infantry pack. He was much beefier compared to the other two and it took more work to fit him in the commander's copula. I should have sniped off his binocular case to accommodate the gun.  As a result, the machine gun is stuck in that weird down position. 

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

Now I can now die a happy man! At last, after years of waiting, GHQ has FINALLY put out the US M103 heavy tank.

Of all the microarmor on my wish list, the highest on that list is the M103. Yes, both Heroics & Ros and Scotia have a model of the M103, but I've never been happy with them.

Why? OK, I'll tell you (cue flashback music)....
In my youth, my chums and I spent hours having epic battles involving our HO/OO Airfix miniatures and Roco minitanks. I had six or seven Roco tanks, but my favorites were like the Holy Trinity: the M47 medium tank, the M42 Duster AA, and the M103 heavy tank. They bore the brunt of many battles on the side of the forces of good. Something about the lines of both the M47 and the M103 that I really like. It's like the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. It had a lot of issues as a fighter, but it's a beautiful-looking bird.

Both GHQ and C-in-C has had the M47 out for a while. GHQ came out with the M42 about four years ago. But, no one made the M103 in 1/285 scale. As I said, I have not been really happy with either the Heroics & Ros and the Scotia versions, even though I own them. C-in-C has not put out much in the way of AFVs in a long time, so I had low expectations of them putting one out. GHQ, on the other hand, is constantly pouring out new models. What ticked me off was that they were often things like trailers. I'm sorry, but while trailers are important, they will contribute little to my games.

In my fictional campaign, Southern Chalupastan fields two battalions of the M103. There is even the vaunted Roco Division. It consists of a battalion of M103s, a battalion of M47s and uses the M42 Duster for AA support. When the M103 take the field, the North had better watch out!

A Break From Terrain

I am getting pretty close to the amount of terrain I need for the first battle of my campaign. About the only thing left is some fields of crops, need to check that I have enough paved road segments, and a truck stop, which is the biggie.

As I am figuring out how to make the truck stop, I decided to work on some odds and ends. First up, solving the problem of the tipping Caribou transport plane. I should have gone with my gut and made a clear, removable peg that served to hold the back end up, but NO-O-O!!! I had to try to cut out the back part of the plane to make it lighter. The result: EPIC FAIL!

Well, that looks like crap.

I drilled a bunch of holes, one of which pushed the sides of the plane out. After three holes, I decided this wasn't going to work. I globbed some nasty model putty in hopes that it will harden well. I still have to put at least one more layer on in the morning. I am hoping that the putty will be hard enough to drill a small hole for a peg.

After that waste of about one and a half hours, I wanted to feel like I accomplished something this evening, so I went back to a project I started in 2009, but never finished. This was improving the hold of GHQ's turrets to the hulls on their Chinese Type 63 tanks. This was more of a pertinent project because the Type 63s will be used in the first battle. Back in 2009, I used rare-earth magnets, but I was burnt out from just making big holes with large pin vises. Instead I used some really tiny nails to do the job.

Tiny nail resting comfortably on a piece of carpet

I only had to drill small holes in the bottom of the turret and on the body of the tank. The flat head of the nail will hold the turret in place:

It was a little work to make sure that the nail was reasonably perpendicular to the bottom plane of the turret, but they all seemed to work out. The turrets rotate smoothly.

The left and center have the nails for pins, the right has a magnet

This was a lot less work than the magnets. My only concern is that someone might try yanking off the turret, which may pull nail out. Time will tell. More importantly, it soothed my soul after the Caribou disaster.

M 113 Upgrades

 On the eve of the Second Chalupistan War, Southern Chalupastan wanted to upgrade the firepower of their M 113 APCs so that they were more like an infantry fighting vehicle. They added 20 mm Rheinmetall MK 20 Rh 202 automatic cannon turret; the same as is found on the Marder 1 IVF. Time ran out long before many could be converted, but enough were to be distributed to at least one platoon per company of the 2nd Royal Guard Dragoons and the 2nd Armored Infantry battalion.

 

Additionally, some M 113s had a remote weapon station installed with a 7.62mm MG.

The M 113s and the Marder 20mm turrets were from C in C. C-in-C's M 113 model is nice as it has a gunner manning the 50 cal MG. I can always use them for something else. I am not sure what to do with the Marder bodies. They also come with a rear mounted, remote controlled MG. Unlike GHQ, which pretty much gives you five of everything, C in C varies the number of vehicles per pack. There was one more M 113 than there were Marders. I had a spare remote weapons station from a pack of Heroics & Ros Australian Bushmasters, so I stuck that on the remaining M 113.

Fire Support Vehicles

Last week, I attended the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting. It was a great time, especially since I didn't present anything. The down side was that my baby boy sent me off with a bad head cold! I'm sure my poor roommate now has it.  So, nothing hobby-wise got done. However, I had some recent pictures that I decided to post.

In addition to taking the pictures seen in the previous post, my daughter and I used her iPad to try some closeup shots of microarmor. I was pretty impressed. I focused on some of the fire support vehicles that Southern Chalupastan has in its arsenal.

M36B1

First up is an old M36B1 tank destroyer. It is armed with a 90mm gun. GHQ has both versions. I decided to get the B1 version with the Sherman hull just because it looks distinct. The M36 was used well past WWII, into even the 90s, so I felt justified in including it as a holdover from the First Chalupastan War.

The next two are also by GHQ. They are the M56 Scorpion and the M50 Ontos. 

M56 Scorpion

The M56 was an open, air-portable, self-propelled anti-tank gun. It served in Vietnam, but was replace with the more effective M551 Sheridan. These, too, are holdovers from the First Chalupastan War.

Ontos

Last but certainly not least, is the M50 Ontos. Its armed with six 106mm recoilless rifles. I seem to have a soft spot for oddball AFVs. Also, it seems like they are on display all over the place. I've seen more than one. They were supposed to be anti-tank weapons, but they were used more for  anti-infantry fire support in Vietnam, where they were well liked. As much as I like them, putting them together was a major pain! Fortunately, GHQ provided a few extra RRs in case you mess up. I didn't need them, but I could see them being needed.

The backstory on both the M50 and M56 is that they were rushed from the U. S. A. to Southern Chalupastan as stopgaps. The South was taking a beating and there was enough holdovers from the Vietnam War to quickly ship over. Both being airportable didn't hurt either.  Not included in their arsenal of FSVs is the M551 and the Ratel 90 FSV,  I'll get around to taking pictures of them sometime.

!st Armored Division: 1st Royal Guard Dragoons

Like the Royal Guard Cuirassiers of the 1st Armored Division, the Royal Guard Dragoons are the best of the best, and get the best of the best as far as weapons go. After many evaluations including all-expense paid trips to various global arms fairs and weapons contractors by the top brass and defense ministers, it came down to the AIFV a.k.a the YPR 765, versus the Italian VCC 80, better known as the Dardo IFV. It was a tough choice, but the Dardo won out for several reasons. First, it has a higher power/weight ratio.  Lots of soft ground on the mini-continent of Gambusia, so that is an advantage. Second, although both have a 25mm gun, the Dardo can be upgraded with two TOW ATGMs mounted on either side of the turret (Dardo HITFIST). The AIFV ATGM is a separate, purpose-built TOW launcher (known as the YPR 765 prat) that lacks the gun turret. It is very similar to the US M901 ITV. Southern brass decided to have have the added firepower of both the 25mm gun and the ATGMs in one vehicle. The Southern Chalupastan Army has only recently embraced ATGMs, so they were reluctant to spend money on a purpose-built ATGM AFV. Third, the Dardo has a purpose-built mortar carrier. The YPR 765 has a version that only tows a mortar. Although Northern Chalupistan is a long-standarding threat to the South, all of the current combat operations to this point have been against rebels in the Central Highlands province. Mortars are used in close support of infantry rather than as long range artillery, so its better that the mortar and its crew be protected, and have the ability to quickly scoot if things got rough.

In miniature terms, only Heroics & Ros makes the Dardo. Several companies make the AIFV. Unfortunately, H&R makes only the the basic model. Here are the Royal Guard Dragoons on parade:

 It was easy to make the HITFIST version. Taking styrene square rods (square rods...is that possible?), I cut out the box-like TOW launchers of the appropriate length, and then glued them to the sides of the turret.

It was hard to get the TOW launchers perfectly lined up, but they don't look too bad from a distance.

The mortar carrier version of the Dardo is more of a problem. First, I have yet to find a good picture of one, let alone any sort of diagram to work from. Second, I am not sure how to even begin grinding away at a metal figure to get a square bathtub to hold the mortar. With my luck, it would look like a mess. I don't even know if its square; it could be round. So, I cheated and got some Argentine VCTP(M) mortar carriers from Scotia-Grendel as stand ins. Other than being tracked, they don't look anything like a Dardo, but they will do.