The last figure in this batch. Another Empress NVA painted up as a VC complete with red scarf!
Next up will be a couple of Bell UH-1C choppers for my Marines!
Another Charlie in the bush
The black pyjama
I know that the Vietnamese figures from Empress depict NVA and not VC. But i thought after weeks on the Ho Chi Min trail the original uniform might have been unserviceable and the soldiers would wear what ever they could find. So I painted the clothes in the black color of the VC fighters. After all they might have provided their brother NVA after there long trek south. So here he is a NVA soldier in the traditional VC black. Painted mainly in GW contrast colors.
More terrain pieces for my Vietnam project
As a break from painting miniatures and as I like building terrain as much as painting miniatures, I started to do some more terrain for my Vietnam gaming table. I decided that my jungle wasn’t dense enough so there have to be more jungle scatter pieces. There were only a few palm trees so there have to be done some more. But most important I wanted to do some bigger elephant grass patches and a landingzonye for my choppers.
So I started with some palm trees . I use the plastic stuff you can get from sign makers as offcuts. This is quite sturdy and takes glue and paint well. I hot glued the trees to this and put some filler and sand on them to define the base of the trees.
Some of the trees were just glued to a washer and a 25mm mdd base to have a smaller footprint on the table and fit between the other terrain pieces. The washer was used to make the base heavier and prevent the tree from falling over. Then I painted the bases and added plastic plants and flock like on my other jungle pieces.
here are the finished pieces:
The elephant grass test piece was done by glueing pieces of artificial grass to a plastic base , adding filler round the edges of the grass to blend it all in , adding sand and scatter and of course paint.
So this looks like a small path through the grass doesn’t it?
some more pictures:
Next up my LZ ( landing zone) done like the elephant grass with a wider central free space for the choppers to land in:
Some more pictures:
And all the pieces I have finished at the moment:
Next project will be a village in the jungle with rice paddies, hooches , and animal pens.
More danger in the jungle
At least for the US Marines . One more NVA Soldier. Only 6 more and I finished all the figures I got during the first release of these figures in summer 19. I am a slow painter I know.
After these 6 I will do some more US Marines , the third squad of my platoon and then the NVA soldiers I got at Crisis 19. There will be the things like a Huey etc in between , oh, and of course more jungle!
Another NVA fighter
The next painted miniature for this year. Have to do a few more to get enough for the first vietnam wargame.
More Nathaniel Victor
Here is another NVA soldier. I am working on a platoon command group at the moment. Next up will be some RPGs then.
As you can see I added some elefantgrass to the base. These were offcuts of the artificial grass mat I used to do elegant grass with for my jungle terrain, more info here
More to come in the next days.
A special Space Marine of the Night Lords
As xmas is gone I can show you pictures of a special xmas present for my son , without spoiling his surprise. He liked it very much when he unwrapped it at xmas eve.
He is a huge Night lords fan and therefore I thought it fitting to build him a Night lord display marine. As I got a resin 3d printer ( Anycubic Photon) and found STL files ,on thingiverse, for printing marines I thought about doing a bigger then life marine. The parts on thingiverse are 28mm ( heroic GW scale) so I resized the parts to something like 200% the normal size and started printing.
Here are the parts:
I then sanded the parts to get rid of the supports and build the marine:
I then added some more details like skulls, horns, a loincloth and a cloak and started painting:
here is the finished model in all its splendor:
And a size comparison with one of my Galactic Knights marines:
The miniature will find a fitting space in my sons flat!
Thank you very much for your support in 2019
Thank you very much for 81.703 hits on my blog! this was the second best year since I started my blog. Only 800 hits less then in the best year. I hope you will stay on and enjoy the new content coming up in 2020.
This was 2019!
So the year 2019 has past nearly. It went so quickly indeed. But I think the older you get the more time flies by. When I had a look at all the pictures I took this year I thought it might be a good idea to do something like a photo revue of the year 2019 .
The year started with lots of games of cruel seas and the scratch building of a lot of ships for that game:
I build the steamer Rheinland:
In February I went to a local convention , the Kiepencon in Münster. I hosted a cruel seas participation game there:
Until this years Salute I build a lot more ships for cruel Seas. Like the S.S. Bellota and the S.S. Green Island:
Then I started on the Hunt II escort destroyer:
Then came one of the main hobby events for me this year Salute 2019 at Excel London. Here are a few of the over 200 pictures I took. If you want to see more have a look here
After coming back home with a bag full of goodies I resumed building ships for cruel seas. Next were the coastal colliers. Three little ships with different loads:
The last ship I build for Cruel Seas so far was a VII C submarine , Das Boot
Then I stoped building ships for now as two companies started to release miniatures for a conflict I was always keen on building and gaming. The Vietnam war . Empress miniatures and Gringo 40 both released wonderful miniatures. Here are a few of the Gringo 40 Miniatures I painted this year:
And a few of the Empress ones:
After my summer holiday i got myself a 3d printer and started on doing terrain for my Vietnam war project:
Then I thought about doing the jungle terrain I would need . I figured out that I would need a lot off scatter material to do the jungle pieces . so I went to a friend who has a upholstery shop and got some old foam upholstery pieces to make my own scatter flock . If you want to know how I did it go here
In November I went to Antwerp like every year for Crisis run by the tin soldiers of Antwerp. For all the pictures go here.
After returning from Crisis I build some jungle terrain pieces with plastic plant pieces , plastic palm trees and the scatter I did myself:
After Crisis i decided that I would drop one line of Vietnam miniatures as the size of both Empress and Gringo 40 don’t fit properly. I decided to go with the Empress miniatures.
The last thing I did this year was to start on some elefant grass for my set up. I used some offcuts from artificial grass to build these:
So that’s it for this year. There are a lot of projects in the pipeline for next year . Especially concerning my 3d printer. Expect to see a lot of vehicles for mt Vietnam project, trucks, gun trucks and even a huey! So have a wonderful new year 2020 and keep up the hobby. Hope to see a few of you at Salute 20 or Crisis 20!
Happy Christmas
I wish you all a Happy Christmas . It’s the time of the year were you have time for your loved ones and maybe a bit for the hobby , too. I wish you all a wonderful holiday season!
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