Painting

By Mitch Reed

I wish that my love of history was more well-rounded.

Blood & Crowns is a new skirmish game that covered the Hundred Years War. The kickstarter campaign is still waiting on production of the initial project, and should ship this spring (northern hemisphere).

My journey from never having an interest in this period to becoming excited about it is a wild story.

When it comes to certain periods of history I have little more than a rudimentary knowledge of what occurred and may be able to recognize a few battles, dates, and historical figures. When it comes to the history of the Hundred Years War, I know it lasted more than a century, and other than reading Shakespeare’s Henry V and John Keegan’s Illustrated Face of Battle, both of which I read back in High School, I know little about the conflict.

When I heard that Firelock Games was working on a new game called Blood & Crowns that covered this period, I did not list it as a “must buy”, however after seeing a draft of the rules and especially after my NoDiceNoGlory.com interview with Eric Hansen, the designer, I was hooked and now I have painted over 100 models to play this great game.

By Kreighton Long

The German Eichenlaubmuster, also known as Oak Leaf, camouflage pattern began being issued in 1941 and was used by the Waffen SS until the end of the war.  Below are the steps I take when I paint Oak Leaf camouflage.  The paints I used are Vallejo’s German Cam. Pale Brown (825), German Cam. Black Brown (822), German Cam. Dark Green (979), and German Cam. Bright Green (833).

By Kreighton Long

The Italian Army, or Regio Esercito, was the first military in the world to mass-produce camouflage equipment for their soldiers. The M1929 telo mimetico was utilized by Italian soldiers and paratroopers as well as by Italy’s German ally during the course of World War Two.

For my Italian paratrooper army project I knew I needed to commit hard to the camouflage pattern and after a few trial runs incorporating feedback I reached a scheme that was close to accurate while still being doable.

By Richard Steer

Many wargamers that I know keep a recipe book, a notebook that is used to record which paints have been used for a particular project. This record is invaluable should the project be put on hold for a time, or ends up being extended at a later date due to new releases, as it avoids the question of “what on earth did I paint those with?”

Model Colors is a free iOS application that I have started using in place of my own recipe book. At its core is a paint library holding over 24,000 products from a wide range of manufacturers, which includes other types of products such as inks, pigments, and thinners. It also has a number of features that mean it can serve as more than just a catalog of the paints that you own.

It is no secret that I love and even before the game came out, I had a few armies ready to go for play testing and when the game finally came out. One of the things I pleaded with Rufus and Kai to make sure that the game was not all trench warfare. I have always felt that the Great War was under-gamed because many just think of static trench warfare. When I gave demos of the game, I stated that I have no plans to build armies for the western front. However, as I talked about the game more to potential players, I noticed that many of them wanted the mud and blood of the trenches and by picking up some great kits I gave in, well almost since I still do not have any trenches.

By Howard West

Background – a group of us at Legions Games in Pittsburgh, PA have been playing Flames of War for many years and Team Yankee since it was released. Several of us wanted to start playing something different but not that far away for our passion for Flames and Team Yankee.

A smaller group of us had already started assembling NAM armies in the Winter of 2018/2019 and several of the Flames guys thought NAM would be a good 2nd game for them vs TY or Fate of the Nation. So now we are off to the races. As I was completing several of my units for my NAM force several of our folks asked me how did I paint the completed units.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Those that know me, know that I am a huge plane nerd.    So it might be odd that I did the A-10’s for my Team Yankee Americans last and not first. The reason for this was threefold:  In the previous version of Team Yankee, aircraft were too easily killed by AA fire, even humble vehicle machine guns.

Second, the very high AT weapons weren’t really needed in a game without M1A1s, Challengers and T-80s.  Third, they were the Battlefront resin kits, with the weapons in the wrong spot, painted in a Desert Scheme that wasn’t really used, plus I did not have access to decals even if I did repaint them.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Alright, back at it, Team Yankee Americans. In this post, I am outlining my Desert MERDC camo M113 hulls.    MERDC camouflage was designed in the 70s to be a standardized pattern that could have 1 or two of the 4 colours repainted and thus transition from region or season.   In reality, apart from some White added for winter, the camo remained and was eventually replaced.   I like the look of it for my desert forces rather than the blander tan you see on most Desert Storm vehicles.   Since I am doing Texas National Guard units (with Texas-based regforce attached) I loved finding a pic of an M901ITV from Fort Hood at the NTC in this very camo!

Disregard the green M150 TOW in the foreground

By Paolo Paglianti

After having completed my British BAOR force and an antagonist URSS army, I wanted to move to a different theatre of Cold War. For a while, I was lingering on Fate of Nations setting, but the Oil War book gave me exactly what I was looking for: a new scenery for a brand fresh force, literally thousands of miles away from the ubiquitous NATO green.

As usual, I am going to create a core force of around 100 points for the two sides: at our club in Milan we like to have two opposing forces for every ruleset, so we can demo players wanting to get into the games we like. For Oil Wars, the first force I selected was IDF, and later this year I plan to complete the theatre with an Iranian/Syrian force. 

By Dennis Jensen

My first painted piece of the new year is the Taco Bell by .  This is an MDF and resin 28mm kit. Before gluing on the roof and the window frames I sprayed the building and the frames with a textured spray paint.  I experimented to see if the textures spray paint would hide the joins.