“Do you see orange smoke? Over”

7. April 20207. April 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, Marker smoke, Smoke Grenade, Vietnam war, wargaming

When you read about the Vietnam war or watch documentaries or movies about the conflict, you see or read about colored smoke for designating LZ or friendly lines to allow fast movers or gunships to work the enemy position. I wanted to have a marker like this for my games. Just to show that a FO ordered aircraft support.

I build a base and a skeleton out of plastic card like you can see here:

Then I painted the base like I paint all my terrain and painted the skeleton black. Sorry no pictures. After that i started gluing flocking material onto the skeleton with white glue or wood glue. You get something like this then:

At the left hand bottom corner of the picture you see the little smoke grenade which produces the smoke. Little plastic rod painted accordingly . I produce my flocking material by myself to safe some money and get different colors. To see how I do this go here.

Here are some more pictures:

And on the gaming table:

I think it works quite well. No to do some different colored ones.

Finished the first lot of my NVA soldiers

6. April 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, Empress, Empress miniatures, female 28mm figures, North Vietnamese Army, NVA, Paul Hicks, Vietnam war, wargaming

Here is the last NVA soldier of the lot i bought at the release date last year. Empress Miniatures NVA soldier , sculpted by Mr. Hicks.

And the last three together:

Next up ” throw smoke!”.

NVA Soldier waiting….

1. April 20201. April 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, Empress, Empress miniatures, North Vietnamese Army, NVA, Paul Hicks, Vietnam war, wargaming, Wargaming figure

Another NVA regular . Figure by Empress miniatures.

Just one more and the first lot is finished.

Bird down

31. March 202031. March 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, Bell UH-1C, crashed bird, Crashed Huey, US Marines, Vietnam war, wargaming

As you know, if you follow my blog closely, I build some 3D printed Hueys for my Vietnam wargames. If you haven’t seen them have a look here. As my son dropped one of the models I thought about doing a crashed one.

This is how i found the model:

Then over on the Lead Adventure Forum the build something 2020 competition started. Theme was something destroyed . So I entered this build. As I dropped out now I can show you the build here , too.

I started with the chopper you see above broken of course.

I build three bases to be able to use them in my games. I added some bulletholes in the windscreen and the engine. After all there must be a reason why the bird crashed.

I finished the bases with sand and added scratch marks of the skids etc.

I did my own decal sheet from white decal paper. This means that all the white parts of the decals stay white when transferred unto the model instead of the clear decal sheets were the white parts stay clear.

Here are the pictures from the competition:

And some pictures together with other parts of my collection:

New picture frame

30. March 202030. March 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, Empress, Empress miniatures, female 28mm figures, miniature photography, New photo backdrop, North Vietnamese Army, NVA, photography, Vietnam war

Now that there are only three older NVA soldiers left before I start on the Crisis19 ones, I thought it would be a good idea to change my photo setup. Until now i took the pictures on my gaming table . The lighting wasn’t perfect there so I decided to make a small framework for my painting/modeling desk as light there is no problem. So I took two pieces of extruded polystyrene and glued them together with my hot glue gun.

You get something like this then. I glued sand and grid down like I would do on a piece for my gaming table and started painting it with my usual ground colors.

Then I painted the backdrop a light blue color and used a second even lighter tone of blue to simulate light clouds.

So when used correctly you get a picture like this:

Now you can use different scatter terrain pieces to change the layout as you like. Here are pictures of another NVA soldier using the plain photo frame I described above:

I think you get much better pictures like that . What do you think?

The complete platoon leader section

29. March 202029. March 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, Empress, Empress miniatures, North Vietnamese Army, NVA platoon command, Vietnam war, wargaming

The platoon leader. The last figure from the command pack , to be found in the indo china range by empress miniatures.

And the complete platoon leader section:

Next will be the last 3 NVA soldiers from the first badge of Vietnam war figures I purchased. After that i will start on the miniatures I bought at Crisis 19.

Platoon banner bearer

28. March 202028. March 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, Bannerbearer, Empress, Empress miniatures, female 28mm figures, Miniature Wargaming, North Vietnamese Army, NVA, Paul Hicks, Vietnam war, wargaming

The NVA used quite a lot of banners for morale and command reasons. This is again a Indo China range figure by Empress miniatures.

More shortly.

NVA HQ signals bugler

27. March 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, Empress, Empress miniatures, North Vietnamese Army, NVA, Paul Hicks, Vietnam war, wargaming

This is the HQ bugler of my NVA platoon. The NVA used buglers quite often to relay orders in the field. The figure is again from the Empress miniatures Indo China range.

Will post more these days, to get your thoughts from Corona! Stay safe Stay at home!

NVA medic

26. March 202026. March 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, Empress, Empress miniatures, medic, North Vietnamese Army, NVA, NVA medic, Paul Hicks, Vietnam war, wargaming

This is the medic of my first NVA platoon. He is from the French Indo China range from Empress miniatures. Fits in quite nicely with the new NVA range.