116th Infantry Regiment - July

[Aaron]

Ok well with my wealth of experience from last month Im feeling really good about getting stuck in again, I consider the lessons learned and the mistakes made.

This month Im going to take my time with basing as I missed out on the enjoyment of it last time in a frenzy to get it done & with my new sculpting tools from PitYak Studios I think I’ll have far more control (as opposed to using a disposable plastic knife and an old paintbrush). Also I now know what level to stop at so that my guys don’t end up knee deep in mud! Ive done some reading on painting 15mm figures so will be doing more things consciously rather than by accident which should help & Im going to take a risk on my jeep with the ink shading that I wasn’t willing to try on my tanks to see if that improves the overall effect.

Im going to stick with the same painting approach on the men as I believe it worked fairly well but I should have taken more care with the black lining, especially on the pants but just generally plan to take more time and care.

My target for this month is to complete a full strength anti-tank gun platoon. This incorporates 4 guns (M3 37mm’s with crew on a medium base), 4 ¾ ton Trucks and 1 Jeep (Trucks & Jeep already based on resin straight out of the blister).

I hope to do something a bit different with the gun & make it removable. Games wise the guns are either ready to fire or “limbered up” for transportation so I thought it could work well to have the gun removed and placed behind the truck when towing and on the base when shooting.

Im not sure this is really enough work to get done in a month but from a budget point of view it was right on the money (no pun intended) and I need to keep just under the budget to enable me to blow $110 in October to get a full strength 105mm Howitzer Platoon. I do have a couple of things sitting on my FoW shelf (2 spare jeeps, a Weapons Platoon (light machine guns & light mortars) & 3 spare infantry teams) so if I get finished early (yeah right!) I can keep working on things.

Here is the before pic:

[c0d3monk33]

Lovely! An entire unit of towed anti-tank guns! I look forward to seeing them painted up and on the field of battle! Hopefully they'll give that German armor a fright .

[Aaron]

Well Ive had a week off work and Ive almost done... nothing! ;D

Ive got around to basing them up but so far they haven't even had an undercoat. Altho I have manged to organise the garage, take down 2 monstrous Ivy plants, clean the front fence, replace 2 light fittings, have my car repaired & take my wife shopping 3 times. So I've been pretty busy.

I have succesfully made the guns removable with holes drilled into each wheel & pins placed into the base. It works quite well unfotunately they are a bit tricky to get on and off so Im not sure it will be worthwhile to do it during a game


I had to follow up on the replacement items from battlefront and I think the guy is insane.
I needed:
2 drivers, 2 loaders holding rounds, 4 feeders for the light machine guns and a Command post.
I got:
4 loaders holding rounds, 2 feeders for heavy machine guns, 2 heavy machine guns a replacement command post and 14 (!!!!) drivers.
Im not sure if he thru in extras as a sorry for the delay (altho he says they were posted originally) or is just mad! Either way Thanks to battlefront for the replacements, the service on the 2nd go round was excellent and presuming they did actually get lost in the post then I'd have to say extra thumbs up for sending out a 2nd lot of models.

I'll have to stick with the dodgy feeders for the light machine guns but now I'll be able to model up a couple of bases of .50cal machine guns to represent models having removed the AA guns from their transports.

I'll also have spare drivers incase anyone needs some?!

[c0d3monk33]

Slacker! I've painted the last Stuart Honey (varnishing it tonight) and two 6pdr gun teams (but not their Portees) .

What the heck? FourTEEN drivers? Perhaps somebody jostled his elbow when he was pouring them out of the container?

Had my first crack at green stuff sandbags too. I reckon they came out alright. Made two 'dug in' markers for the small Infantry bases (ie. a three layer row of sandbags that curves around the base front) and might try molding and casting them this week...just to see how well they mold.

After that I might plan a more comprehensive system of sandbag walls and curves for both terrain and dug-in markers and try flogging them off on TradeMe maybe.

[Aaron]

yeh I feel a bit guilty about not having got much done but cest-la-vie.

It was a bit weird I figure he probably just grabbed a handfull and chucked them in but possibly he knows the drivers can be a bit dodgy so thru in extra to stop me complaining next time. As an aside I asked why the bases on the resin vehicles are so dodgy but he just ignored my question.

Glad to hear that your experiments with 15mm terrain are working out. Obviously keep in mind that Nat and I would be keen to have a look at anything you manage to mass produce!

[Aaron]

Jeez, well finally Ive got a reason to post an update!

Had a busy weekend away (saturday night spent in 5 star luxury at the Hilton!) but still managed to get a bit done on my boys.

I finished all the bases (same scheme as last month obviously), did the base colour on all the vehicles and guns and got started on the gun crew. It'll be a pretty heavy week to get it all finished (again) but hey I've always been a last minute worker.

Being in town I visted Vagabond on sunday to sort things out for next month so Im all set to go for next month, now I've just got to knuckle down and finish this month!

[c0d3monk33]

Sounds good! I'm looking forward to seeing everybody's work again at the end of this month.

Sunday? You were at Vagabonds on Sunday! Me too...I was there about 12:45pm - when did you go in?

[Aaron]

Well I made reasonably good progress last night. I came very close to finishing off the gun crew, just hands and guns (or woteva they are holding) to go. but I got a bit sidetracked on the trucks, one is finished except for highlighting the body so now I know what is involved with the trucks the next few shouldn’t take too long (should be able to finish them all off in 1 evening).

My big concern remains the drivers for vehicles, which I haven’t even started! well except for sticking a pin up their bum and painting them black!. Im hoping to get the gun crew and trucks finished by the end of Friday giving me sat/sun to finish off the guns (highlighting and detail) & paint the drivers… <phew> I really must start earlier next month!!

[Aaron]

Well I nearly got hi-jacked by a catastrophic computer failure! fortunately We have a half dozen computers in the house so I just fired up another one! ;D

It does mean that Im gonna have to spend the next couple of days re-installing windows (thank god for regular back ups!).

Anyway thats all beside the point here is my finished worked for the July. It is a 37mm anti-tank gun platoon with transports and command jeep.

Overall Im reasonably happy with how things turned out. The guns are removable and all but one of them is easy to get on and off the pegs and holds firmly onto the base so I think that was a reasonable success for first a attempt.

I have done a much improved job on the basing, altho it looks the same as last month these guys aren't knee deep in mud! Also they have all had their helmet strap painted on which I think is actually pretty cool, adds a bit of life to the plain helmets.

Anyway here are the pics

www.album.co.nz/a?866

[c0d3monk33]

Looking good! Nice to see those guns painted now...last time I saw them they were all black primed and hiding in a forest.

So we both painted anti-tank guns this month eh? Curious...I wonder if that says anything about our regular opponents .

Love those Jeeps! I really should buy some just for an objective or something...the Brits can have them as command transports but I opted for Universal Carriers since they're lightly armored.