As it is beginning to get boring only to paint NVA, I still have a lot to do, I sprinkle in the occasional US Marine. So today a Marine with a “pig” (M60).
M60 gunner
wargaming
Sampans
For my Vietnam war collection I needed some Sampans. I printed these in 3D and painted them up. Now my river doesn’t look so empty anymore.
I am working on a bigger river setup for the US riverine craft which will be added to my collection eventually. more on that project later.
The next NVA lot
Here is the next NVA soldier . The first figure of the miniatures I bought at Crisis 19 in Antwerp. He is another Empress miniature. I painted him wearing a black pair of trousers ( you need new ones after a while on the Ho Chi Min trail) and a traditional blue and white Vietnamese scarf.
Bamboo thicket
I got some plastic Bamboo from China. Bought it through e bay quite cheap. Don’t fear I bought it before the onset of COVID 19. So no space on an aircraft was waisted which could have been used for facemasks.
I quite like it but is it to tall? Should I have it halved in hight?
Who is calling in the Arty?
of course a Prick 25 operator. This is a Empress miniatures US Marine figure sculpted by Paul Hicks. He is carrying a PRC 25, aVHF transceiver, on his back. I made the antenna out of a plastic broom “hair” as I am clumsy and fear to brake the included metal one when gaming.
Here you see the PRC 25 with5 smoke grenades fixed to it. you can see that the metal frame , the PRC is affixed to goes down to the hip. Beneath the PRC is a role up rain poncho .
As always a treat to paint him.
“Do you see orange smoke? Over”
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
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….
Another NVA regular . Figure by Empress miniatures.
Just one more and the first lot is finished.
Bird down
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:
The complete platoon leader section
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.
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