Models and Painting

By Kreighton Long

Humans are squishy, fragile creatures who leak profusely when punctured. Knowing this, combatants typically are inclined to hid their more vulnerable bits away from the sharp pieces of metal flying through the air. While the First Industrial Revolution featured columns of well dressed fellas marching towards the sounds of guns and exchanging volleys with equally brave soldiers opposite them, there are instances of trenches and emplacements being used in sieges or to protect less maneuverable artillery pieces on the battlefield.

Moving into the Second Industrial Revolution, the descendants of survivors from the aforementioned battles fully embraced the value of fighting from holes in the ground during World War One. The topic of “digging in” continues to the modern era as any contemporary Soldier or Marine can attest to. On a typical wargaming table, dug in fortifications or emplacements are more of an exception than a rule. Players tend to prefer skirmishes and battles of maneuver rather than a bloody, typically one-sided siege or assault.

By Kreighton Long

It’s not too hard to find decals to add rank patches to your GIs. The Warlord Games set of US Infantry even comes with decals in the box. For those of you who are gluttons for punishment or want the bragging rights of painting tiny lines on your already tiny toy soldiers here are the steps for how I add rank patches to my 29th Infantry Division army.

By Kreighton Long

When playing Bolt Action I’ve run into the headache of trying to find an NCO who fell to a successful sniper or find an officer to see if he’s close enough to a unit to buff their order check. Taking an extra ten seconds or so to find the right model is a minor inconvenience at worst but there are means of expediting this step while adding fun historically accurate details to your painted toy soldiers.

The American GIs in World War Two painted a white stripe or bar on the back of their helmets so that soldiers they were leading, presumably from the front, could identify their leader and follow them into battle. American Officers donned a vertical bar while Noncommissioned Officers sported a horizontal stripe.

Below are the steps I took to hand-paint my platoon and squad leaders for my Bolt Action 29th Infantry Division army.

By Kreighton Long

While window shopping for light artillery models for my WW2 Romanian army I found limited options to choose from. While Great Escape Games makes a fine looking Romanian light artillery piece (one will make its way into my arsenal eventually) I wanted to challenge myself with a bit of conversion work to add variety to my three-light artillery Romanian list for Bolt Action.

For my conversion attempt I began with the wooden spoked wheel variant of the WWI French style 75mm gun as found in the Warlord Games . The crew themselves needed a little customization to make them more Romanian which is where the conversion work was done for this piece. I did attempt to find a way to modify German, Soviet, and American helmets to the point where they would pass as Romanian but the solution alluded me.

By Paolo Paglianti

I really like to have custom bases for my miniatures, as you can see and read here (), here () and here (), I normally try to have small dioramas for my Flames of War or Team Yankee infantry teams. When I began painting my new Iraq army, and I come to the three platoons infantry formation, I wanted something different. One of the three platoons would fight on rocky ground, the same I used for my “Sicilian” bases for my British WW2 Paras. Some great inspirations come from my friend Luca Papisca and his US bases!

For the other two platoons, I chose an “urban street” scenario and a “rural village” scenario, using my new 3D Resin Printer (). I think 3d Printing is a true revolution in modeling and in our hobby: not only because you can print the tanks you need, but especially since you can “create” almost everything you want, you just need some creativity.

By Kreighton Long

In honor of my new home in Virginia, and for a less commonly seen WWII US Army theme, I decided to design my US Army on the 29th Infantry Division.

The 29th was a National Guard division recruited from northern Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania.  The division deployed to the European Theater of Operations and took part in the amphibious landing at Omaha Beach, bocage fighting in Normandy, siege warfare at Brest in Brittany, then urban fighting and battles of maneuver in Germany.

By Tom “Chairborne” Mullane

I was in the market for some of the little things that make Blood and Plunder games look so gorgeous. And while there are plenty of wonderful buildings and larger pieces on sale at Firelock’s site, there are other sources for some of the smaller stuff. And as someone whose tables are typically overflowing with terrain, I wanted to get my hands on some Market stalls and barrels.

Here is an overview of the haul I had delivered from , I’ll go over some of what they had in stock, how well it went together, and how easy it was to paint up.

On Irongate’s site, you’ll find sub categories for different types of terrain. the Aztec Ruins looked appealing, but I’ll save them for another article. I focused right in on the . I wanted to have a Bazar worth raiding and fighting over. So I grabbed a few of these.

 

 

By Kreighton Long

The backbone of the World War Two Romanian army was the humble riflemen. Romania lacked the quality and quantity in armor of their German or Soviet peers and the heavy artillery that rained destruction on their victims on the Eastern Front was sorely lacking in Romanian arsenals. Without powerful armor formations or heavy guns the Romanian military was forced to rely on manpower rather than firepower.

The average Romanian rifleman was equipped in fairly simple, but functional, gear. Color photographs of Romanians from the war are hard to come by but illustrations from Osprey Publishing and photographs of contemporary reenactors helped to guide my color choices. The Romanian soldier wore a cotton tunic during the summer which bleached in the sun. During the winter the Romanian soldier wore woolen tunics which retained their darker khaki color. Woolen trousers were worn year round and maintained their color like the woolen tunic.

By Kreighton Long

As one project ends, or ends as much as any army building project for our hobby can, another begins to take shape. After building Bolt Action armies for Germans (Heer, Waffen SS, Fallschirmjager, Grossdeutschland Panzergrenadiers), Soviets (hordes of khaki), and the United States (29th Infantry Division and 101st Airborne Infantry) I started looking at a fresh new army.

I decided to take a look at the minor Axis powers. Building a minor Axis power would add some interesting flavor in my local meta which heavily emphasizes the major powers and would provide myself with a new challenge.

The first step was to pick up the book and look through the minor Axis powers with available lists.

The factions covered in the Armies of Italy and the Axis book include Italy, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. Each faction has it’s own appeal and I dream of one day building an army for all factions but I needed to narrow down my choices for my first minor power. I mentally developed a three part criteria to help me pick: local meta, history, and aesthetic.

By Paolo Paglianti

Editor’s note: this is the first in a two part series looking at 3D resin printing. The second part, where Iron Tom takes a look at many of the cons of

Also: click on any of Paolo’s images to see a higher res image

Back in the 70s and 80s, Star Trek forecast a lot of things that we later saw in real life – touch screens, smartphones, TV screens as  walls, personal computers in every house, and AI answering with a human voice. Also the replicator: the Enterprise crew uses it to create any kind of food, while our “replicators” – the 3D Printers – allow creating resin models. For a wargamer, this is even better than the food!