Curtgeld - Oberst Kurt Steiner from 'The Eagles has landed'

As usual I've been keeping one of the most important entries of the painting challenge for last:

The entry fee 'Curtgeld' miniature

Last but not least a couple of twins:

Both version of Col. Steiner side by side

Starting Desert Rats - Three colour tests

Recently a friendof mine was pondering about some plans for Egyptian / Middle Eastern terrain. How useful it is for most periods betwenn the Crusades and Modern Warfare and what interesting games we could play with Bolt Action, the upcoming Black Ops ruleset, SAGA or even Song of Drums and Shakos for Napoleonic skirmishes.

So guess what... That gave me the final push towards the plastic Desert Rats by Alan and Michael Perry. The box comes with 38 figures which should more or less be enough for a Bolt Action platoon. Of course the twins made a couple of very nice metal sets in addition but for the beginning I wanted to keep things small. (frequent readers might guess that this intent has probably a rather short lifespan...)

Anyway the figures have the usual high quality of Perry miniatures. The anatomic composition is wonderful and the poses look vivid and natural. Some of the faces could have been worked out deeper but that's my usual problem with Perry plastics. They leave a lot of artistic freedom to the painter which makes it very difficult for a me to outline the facial features. All other details are worked out very well and present themselves crisp and clean.

As usual the casting quality is very good. As far as I know the Desert Rats are cast by Renedra who proves again to be a top notch company for plastic molding. Assembling the boys is rather easy. The leaflet gives vital information for the right combination of arms they seem to fit on more or less every body. The only tricky part are the helmets which have to be cut from the sprue very carefully to leave the brim undamaged.

For the start I assembled three laboratory rats to test different colour combinations. Once more I consulted skilled and helpful Mark Hargreaves whose blog 'Over open Sights' should be well known by most of you. On this very blog I saw a couple of Desert Rats in his usual splendid style and wanted to lean my humble work against his splendid pieces of art. As usual this kind fellow gave me some precious advice and I adhere to most of them:

So I used Vallejo 'Desert Yellow' as base colour for the trousers, 'German Camouflage Beige' for the webbing and 'Iraqui Sand' for the helmets. With the shirts I experimented a bit. After I read that the uniform pieces bleached out rather unevenly and that some British troops temporarily used petrol to clean their stuff I thought this could be a good chance to break the uniformity of the Desert Rats. Thus I painted the three shirts in three different shades of greyish beige colours: 'Iraqui Sand', 'Stone Grey' and 'Beige'.

Currently I'm not sure which colour to employ most. Unfortunately until now I didn't get a chance to examine some original pieces of WW2 desert uniform. My last visit of the Imperial War Museum is ages back and I don't remember the correct shape of the pieces there. But judging from my personal taste I tend to 'Iraqui Sand'. It gives a subtle shift of colours without breaking the greyish sand colour scheme.

What do you think? Which colour is most appropriate?

In case that you want to have a look at other interpretations of those Desert Rats and visit either Mark's blog (linked above) or go to Raffa 'Archiduque's gallery. He's presenting some really great figures there.

British Para Reinforcements

It must have been twenty year ago when I first watched 'A Bridge too far'. Since then this movie influenced me and my wargaming hobby. Years ago I had 20mm Red Devils. Firstly Revell plastics and later Britannia metal miniatures. A while ago I stumpled over Warlord Games's range for their Bolt Action game and fell for their republished BAM figures. After a longish break I painted the second batch last week:

First two leader figures. Actually they're meant to be officers but I decided to use them as sergeants for my paratrooper sections.

Then a couple of riflemen wearing berets and a small 2" mortar. I have no idea whether I'll really need him but probably I won't harm to have one.

Last but not least four more careful troopers wearing the Mk. 2 Airborne steel helmet with some camouflage on it.

As you see I have to finish the bases but I wanted to take some pictures before varnishing the boys. For the DPM smock I used the same colour combination as for my earlier Red Devils. Although it looks too greenish on the detail shots the general impression on the table is rather satisfying to me. Especially because they combine well with their earlier painted chaps.

Only ten men but a large step to my initial 500 points army for Bolt Action. Only twelve men to go!

For now please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Enjoy your weekend!

Red Devils approaching!

Actually this week had an excellent start with "Trooping the Colour" on Saturday. This ceremony is closely connected with some of me earliest memories of English military tradition which sat the headstone for my livelong affection to the United Kingdom, its army and military in general. So I was highly motivated to get some British on my workbench finished. A perfect opportunity to put the final brush marks on the Red Devils I started to paint some time ago.

But unfortunately weather turned bad. Some hot air from Africa turned our part of Germany into a mixtures of oven and steamer. To be honest I like typical British weather as much as tea, biscuits or some nice fish & chips. Thus that subtropical sauna weather was just terrible to me. Even thinking of work made me sweat... Under those hard conditions it took until yesterday evening until I finished the first squad:

The whole squad

Miniatures are from Warlord Games' Bolt Action range and as usual I used nearly solely Vallejo Model Colours:
1. DPM smock:
Basecolour: VMC #70.823 "Luftwaffe Camouflage Green"
Camouflage 1: VMC #70.818 "Red Leather"
Camouflage 2: VMC #70.824 "German Camouflage Ocre"

2. Trusers:
VMC #70.921 "English Uniform"

3. Webbing:
VMC #70.821 "German Camouflage Beige"

4. Skin:
Formula P3 "Khardic Flesh" and Citadel "Elf Flesh"

5. Wooden Parts:
VMC #70.940 "Saddle Brown"

6. Blackened metal parts:
VMC #70.995 "German Grey"

Afterwards I painted some Armypainter Quickshade Dark Tone on the figures and added some final highlights after drying.

I know I adumbrated the DPM only but I like the result. It complies with my humble skills and gives an idea of the DPM even at wargaming distance.

Here are some detail shots of the boys:

Two troopers kneeling down and watching the surrounding area eagerly.

Corporal Williams throwing a hand grenade at a German MG-42 position.

Private Miller providing protective fire while Private Atkins is advancing.

Bren loader Private Jenkins catching up.

Lance Corporal Johnson rushing forward.

Some Indian Infantrymen finished

Tomorrow evening we'll have another game of 20mm Bolt Action. The game will be set in North Africa around 1942 and the DAK will have to fight against some of Monty's Desert Rats. While a fellow provided most of the miniatures I have to bring in some makeshifts to complete the British.

Therefore I painted some Indish infantry rather quickly. Those boys will man a 6pdr Anti-Tank Gun which will teach the Germans what fear is:

I really like those guys since it was my very first attempt to paint dark skin.

The miniatures are from good old Britannia and I ordered them years ago. I used the following colours to paint the boys:

• Vallejo Model Colour (VMC) "Dark Sand" for the uniforms
• VMC "Leather Brown" for the skin
• VMC "Leather Brown" + Citadel "Elf Flesh" for the skin highlights (two steps)
• VMC "British Uniform" for the socks
• VMC "German Camouflage Beige" for the webbing
• Vallejo Game Colour "Black" for the shoes

Between the basic coats of paint and the highlights I used my good old friend Armypainter Quickshade (Dark Tone) once more.

Well then... I'm prepared for tomorrow evening and will keep my fingers crossed that the luck of battle will be with us rather than with the Germans...

Bolt Action 23.11.2012 (28mm): Search and Rescue

Last Friday the THS met in the headquarter once again and I had the pleasure to participate in another game of Bolt Action. We played on an urban board with a lot of really nice scenary which Achim provided. Although the buildings were actually designed for 20mm miniatures, they worked well with the 28mm figures you might remember from the first Bolt Action game report here (Link). It created a dense feeling of street fighting and allowed an exiting, entertaining but unusually short game.

Target of German and American desire.

Within this small city a German airplane crashed down. It carried a high-ranking staff officer who escorted secret plans for the Army Group B to counter the Allied advance. Although he survived the crash, he severely wounded and unable to find his way back to the German lines.
To rescue him and the plans the Germans launched a search and rescue mission. At the same time the Americans sent a small vanguard to catch him and take him prisoner to lay their hands on the top secret plans.




 

Game Report: Bolt Action 20mm - 17.11.2012

Last saturday I played another game of Bolt Action. Some fellows of my old 20mm wargaming group visited me and we wanted to try how the rules work with smaller miniatures. Furthermore we have been developing our own ruleset sine 1995 and are still looking for new ideas.

Unfortunaley our main German collector and scenary builder was unable to join us. So we were limited to my very small pool of terrain and Axis troops. Therefore the board was realy simple and nothing compared with the great scenery we played the week before.

However we made the best of it and fielded the following troops:

Axis (mixed Italian and German troops):

• Infantry squad (regular) with SMGs, rifles and a light machine gun
• Infantry squad (regular) with SMGs, rifles and two light machine guns
• Command squad lead by Hauptmann (Captain) von Mamelstein (regular)
• Command squad lead by Sottotenente (2nd Lieutenant) Pacelliano
• Medium machine gun team (regular)
• Medium mortar team with spotter (regular)
• Sniper team (regular)
• SdKfz. 7 with 37mm Flak (veteran)

Americans:

• Infantery squad (twelve men) with SMGs, rifles and a BAR (regular)
• Infantery squad (twelve men) with SMGs, rifles and a BAR (regular)
• Command squad lead by 2nd Lieutenant Peterson (regular)
• Command squad lead by 2nd Lieutenant Masterson (regular)
• Forward air observer Captain Heinzen and his team
• Bazooka Team (regular)
• Medium machine gun team (regular)
• Medium mortar team with spotter (regular)
• Sniper team (regular)

Both forces were around 700 to 750 points.

The missiom resembled the one from the week before:

The secure their advance the Americans sent a vanguard which was ordered to establish an outpost within a large building overviewing the main road of the village (marked with a yellow 1 on the map). The German and Italian had to defed their position and stop theAmerican advance.

Our humble gaming board.

The place where the major events will take place.

Game Report: Bolt Action 09th November 2012

It was Friday evening in a cosy suburb of Düsseldorf were five of us met to play a game of Bolt Action. For me it was the first one and I was a nervous because of the new set of rules, but they proved to be really well designed and smooth-running. At the end of the game the common actions worked well without looking each dice roll up in the rulebook.

But now for the game itself:
Our umpire prepared a nice board with some Italian terrain and a fictional mission which was set somewhere around Anzio. Some Germans were holding a small village while the Americans sent a small force to occupy it for some strategical to maintain supply route from the beach.

The Americans were heavily piqued after there successful Operation Shingle (landing near Anzio) and were keen on driving there advance forward. Therefore they sent a small task force to a small village behind Anzio to secure the bridgehead and arrange a supply route for the following forces.