Monday 22 October 2012

Dulce et decorum est... Weird World War One: The Hun get some heavy armour

Developing my 10mm WWWI Germans a bit further I dug out some old plastic models I've had on the shelf for a few years but never really knew what to do with.

These are Pegasus Hobbies 'Jaguarundi' tanks, which I modified with some old Games Workshop Eldar spares to beef up the guns a bit.  These will form weird 'mega tanks' like slow moving fortresses as they are 1/72nd scale models and tower over the 10mm German infantry.

For the first one I've gone with a dazzle style WWI camo scheme.



It's not finished yet, and to be honest I'm not sure I like it.  I'd planned to make the WWI Germans 'monotone' with predominantly black, grey, white/sliver, and red as their unifying colour scheme.

I have three more of these tanks to do so I may paint them up in simple grey and ditch this one.

Sunday 21 October 2012

In the grim Darkness of the Far Future there is only Mad Max meets Judge Dredd, or...Adventures in the Underhive III. Painting - Part II.

I've had a busy few weeks so haven't been painting much lately but I have made a bit of progress on the Necromunda gang.



The banner bearer is coming along nicely.  I've gone with a blue serpent motif for the gang's totem which has gone pretty well.  The serpent's head however is obscured behind the skulls which is a shame.  

Moving on, the heavy stubber chap is done.  He's wearing the blue gang colours over ragged thick coat that I imagine being some sort of industrial protective clothing.  Perhaps this chap once worked in a manufactory shut down by a hive quake.



With the 'sniper' chap I've toned him down completely.  There's very little blue or other colours and he's in a sort of urban camouflage get up over a brown industrial coat.  He's designed to blend into the filth of the underhive.




Next up is a similar chap with a scoped lasgun.  He's a good example of the battered, underhive scum look I'm going for.  His blue armoured carapace is scraped and bashed as well as rusted out and I've painted his military webbing kit as a mix of pouches cobbled together from various sources.  I really quite like this model, and I gave him a rusty yellow pauldron to tie him in with the flamer chaps (see below).




I took a bit of time with the flamer armed ganger and he's actually got a lot of layered colour on him with brown and blue robes meshed over one another.  The flamer itself is simply washed, and those washes are blended around the nozzle with brown and black inks to give the impression of burned metal.



I imagined this flamer has been jury rigged together from industrial parts and for the fuel tanks I decided they'd likely be pressure tanks that contained some toxic chemicals or high pressure gas or some such.  Therefore I painted them a sort of industrial yellow but stained with rust and battered from being reclaimed from a garbage pile.




I think he'd be someone you'd seriously want to avoid meeting down a cramped underhive tunnel!



More to follow....

Thursday 4 October 2012

Dulce et decorum est... Weird World War One: The Hun

Inspired by Mr Olivant's work I've begun a slow burner project for my own 'Weird World War One' forces and I've started things off with the basic troops for the Germans.



I've used Pendraken's excellent 10mm WWI Early Germans as the basic troops and I purchased one of their army packs to get a good mix of troop types and this pack has allowed me to put together:

3 Commanders



Here I've mixed together the mounted leader figures with infantry to represent their staff and guards.

3 HMGs



These appear to be wearing the shako rather than picklehaub, but no worries.  At 10mm on the tabletop such details are easily overlooked!

6 Cavalry



The cavalry are Uhlan lancers and I've based them in two's on the standard 30x30mm bases I'm using for this project.  This is a departure from my usual 40x20mm basing.  Although this format is pretty much a standard across many war games rules now, and I've used them extensively, with 10mm figures I've become less convinced by them.  The formations of these WWWI figures are not 'linear' and so it makes more sense I think to present them on square bases that better visualise skirmishing fighters, rather than a linear frontage better shown by 40x20mm.

3 Field guns



These appear to be the famous 77mm field gun used to great effect in the real Great War, however, you'll note that I've glued the shield plating on the wrong way round!  D'oh!  Never mind - this is 'weird' after all.  I decided to go with a camouflage scheme rather a flat grey, and frankly I'm not sure about it.  Certainly at arm's length the detail is mostly invisible.  However, it looks OK up close so I'll probably carry the paint scheme over to some of the weirder elements of the army, when I sort them out.

21 Infantry


I'm actually unsure precisely what rules I'll be using when these figures finally hit the tabletop, but with 21 bases, that means I can form seven 'units' of three bases each.



The uniform colour I settled on is similar to the historical colours, but with a bit of a 'weird' twist.  

Picklehaub = black with silver spike (Uhlans with canvas covers)
Tunic = light grey with red epaulettes and cuffs
Webbing / kit = black
Trousers = dark grey
Boots = black


I've got the basic British forces to complete (again using a Pendraken army pack) and then I'll be sorting out the 'weird' elements of both armies.