The Lambretta workshop

12. March 2021 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Miniatures, 28mm Wargaming, Hue, Hue city, Lambretta, terrain building, Vietnam war, Wargaming terrain

As I build the two Lambrettas you can see here and here, I needed something like a Lambretta workshop for my city of Hue project. So I scratch build this workshop out of extruded polystyrene , coffee stirrers and cardboard.

It will fit next to, or in between a row of houses I am building at the moment for the Hue project. More about this later. The oil drums, tires etc are 3D printed and the tin roof is made with a device from green stuff world, which turns ordinary cardboard into corrugated cardboard. The posters and signs are from the internet and printed out on paper.

Here is a picture with a Full Metall Miniature for size comparison

A three wheel Lambretta

10. March 202111. March 2021 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Miniatures, 28mm Wargaming, 3 wheeler, Hue, Hue city, Lambretta, Tet1968, Vietnam war, wargaming

As I am slowly working on my cityscape of Hue, for the Tet 1968 offensive, I needed some of these vehicles. The three wheelers were and are often seen in Vietnam. As taxi, bus or van stand in. I got a 3D file from Wargaming 3d for a 3 wheeler Lambretta bus. This was printed with my Photon resin printer and then painted in the usual manner. I tried the weathering pencils from AK interactive for the rust effect. I think it works quite well.

The Lambretta sign is printed on paper, varnished with an airbrush and then fixed to the vehicle. I think it looks rather battered and old but thats the look I wanted to get. Now a driver or passengers would be nice. Couldn’t source any till now. Next up a cargo version of the Lambretta.

Walls

22. January 2021 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Wargaming, Hue, Hue city, North Vietnamese Army, US Marines, Viet Cong, Vietnam war, Wall, wargames terrain, wargaming, wargaming miniatures, Wargaming scenery

As I had a lot of shorter 3d printer filament pieces, too short for bigger projects, I printed these walls to finish them off with something useful. Walls like these can be used in between buildings or around parks and along streets. They are not only useful for my city of Hue project. So here they are:

The 3d stl files are from a WOW kickstarter campaign. I always based one wall and one pillar on one base to make them generic enough to be placed on my gaming boards in a multitude of ways.

Here are a few shots of a US Marine fireteam looking for the NVA/VC or is it the other way round?

Another building for my Hue city project

4. January 2021 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Wargaming, Hue, Hue buildings, shop, Vietnam war, wargaming

First of all I hope you had wonderful holidays during these rather stressing time. I managed to finish another building for my Hue project over the holidays. It is a 3D print from the WOW Vietnam kickstarter. There are another 3 different shops in the kickstarter I have already printed but not yet painted up.

The building is printed in 4 parts so that you can place figures inside each floor. The backyard wall and the pavement is scratch build to fit in with my other buildings.

The adverts are found on the internet and printed out on paper then glued on and matt varnished. Be careful here and use a rattle can or an airbrush as otherwise the color will bleed on the paper.

Here is another picture with an Empress NVA for size comparrison:

In the streets of Hue

29. June 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Wargaming, Hue, Hue buildings, Vietnam war, WOW Buildings

I finished the second building of my Hue city project. Here it is next to the first one:

And a US Marines section on patrol through the streets of HUE:

Full metal Jacket “Cowboy”

2. June 20202. June 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Wargaming, Battle of Hue, Cowboy, Empress, Empress miniatures, full metal jacket, full metal jacket movie, Hue, Paul Hicks, Sergeant "Cowboy" Evans, TET offensive, Vietnam war

Arliss Howard is the Texan Private later Sergeant “Cowboy” Evans who goes through boot camp with Joker. He becomes a rifleman and later encounters Joker in Vietnam, taking command of a rifle squad. In The Short-Timers, the book the movie Full Metal Jacket is lovely based on, Joker mercifully kills Cowboy after he is severely wounded by a sniper trying to draw the squad out. In Full Metal Jacket, he quickly dies of a sucking chest wound while in Joker’s arms, surrounded by the few remaining members of his squad.

Again a wonderfully sculpted characterful figure by Paul Hicks. This finishes off the full Metal Jacket miniatures done by Empress Miniatures. To my shame I have to admit that i missed to do a group shot . That will be rectified shortly.

The first Hue building

27. May 202027. May 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Wargaming, 3D printed scenery, 3d printing, Hue, Hue buildings, TET offensive, Vietnam war, wargaming, WOW Buildings

Here is the first Hue city building for my ongoing Vietnam war project. On the picture below you see an old scratch build building of my WWII collection. From a time 3D printing wasn’t available jet. On the left you see the start of the first building of a series of buildings from the citadel of Hue. think base line green. The STL file comes from a Kickstarter by WOW Buildings

I wanted the pavement to fit with my other buildings so I build it the traditional way, foam and scribing. The walls surrounding the building are from WOW ,too. The base is PVC .

Above you see a few pictures of the build I added some debris to the broken wall .

the base coated building shows clearly the problem with 3D printing. You see the different print layers.

But after painting these vanish more or less.

The finished building with plants and grass added:

For me the way to go is to combine 3d printing with traditional modeling. i think the finished building is presentable.

Sergeant J.T. “Joker” Davis

14. May 202014. May 2020 thomasriepe 28mm, 28mm figure, 28mm Wargaming, Empress, Empress miniatures, full metal jacket, full metal jacket movie, Hue, Matthew Modine, Paul Hicks, Sergeant J.T. "Joker" Davis, Vietnam war

Today it is “Jokers” time a main character of the movie full metal jacket played by Matthew Modine. Private/Sergeant J. T. “Joker” Davis is a wise-cracking young recruit and later Sergeant and squad leader.

While patrolling Huế, Crazy Earl, the squad leader, is killed by a booby trap, leaving Cowboy in command. The squad becomes lost, and Cowboy orders Eightball to scout the area. A Viet Cong sniper wounds Eightball and Doc Jay, the squad Corpsman. Believing that the sniper is drawing the squad into an ambush, Cowboy attempts to radio in tank support to no avail. The squad’s machine gunner, Animal Mother, disobeys Cowboy’s orders to retreat and attempts to save his comrades.