From MattT: Ticket to Ride, VBCW

"Smith! When i sent you out to aquire us some transports i didn't mean this antique piece of  junk."

"But boss, its the late night 73, she's as regular as clockwork."

Sloppy Jalopy Type B Bus. I only glued my fingers together twice during the construction which i am taking as a success. Decorated with some signs aquired off ebay and some inspirational banners home printed from web images. I dont usually add bases to my vehicles but felt it need it to protect the wheels. The coblestones are some old textured wallpaper. Dont think its going to be the comfiest ride but should get the lads into the action.

Also added a few more boys to the rosta.

There is a couple of Black Tree Designs minis in the mix this time. I definitely belong to the mix and match school of thought when it comes to mini manufacturers.

Stay safe. Matt

From GregB: Epic 30k Land Raiders

XIV Legion Land Raider detachment, ready for Epic 30k gaming action.

One of the great aspects - among many - of these group painting/sharing efforts is the inspiration you get from fellow participants.  Sometimes you see someone's work and you think "oh man, I want to try that!" - but you don't have models or figures, so the urge can safely subside.  But in other instances, you realize that, not only are you inspired, but you have a small shed-load of the stuff yourself that you can dive into. And so it was with Iannick's excellent recent efforts on Epic 30k, I simply looked at another spot that is the mess of my painting desk and pulled out this detachment of Land Raiders.

You can get a glimpse of the definitely-not-carbon-neutral emission systems here...

These vehicles are painted in the livery of the XIV Space Marine Legion, known as the "Death Guard".  Very charming bunch, as you might imagine. The Land Raider is one the main combat vehicles used by the Space Marines, and is an iconic piece of kit from the Rogue Trader/30k/40k universe.  Many variants of the basic, WW1-era-inspired hull have been issued by GW over the years, but they went particularly bonkers with these things in their 30k universe, and there are many variants of the vehicle that accomplish essentially the same purpose - a very heavily armoured vehicle that can take out enemy armour AND transport a unit of marines.

Mortarion's lads ready to roll out...

The armoured housings on each side of the vehicle mount a pair of laser cannons.

The Land Raiders of the Space Marine Legion arsenal start out at "heavily armoured", and move toward "very heavily armoured", with the final flavour, "very, very heavily armoured" coming at the cost of some troop carrying capacity. This is an "Armoured Proteus" variant, and as such, falls into the "very heavily armoured" category.

There is a twin heavy bolter mounted in a bunker-style armoured casement on the top front of the vehicle, between the tracks.

There is an additional heavy bolter on a pintle mount on the commander's hatch. You know...to shoot even MORE things.

Deploying whole squadrons of these bonkers vehicles in a game of Epic is SUPER fun! These things had been sitting on my desk, base coated in black, for almost a year...it's been a while since I have added new items to my Epic 30k collection.  Iannick's excellent work inspired me, and so I whipped these fellows up over the weekend.

Many thanks to Iannick for inspiring this fun distraction! Thanks for reading.

GregB

KenR - 28mm Kingdom of Jerusalem Foot Sgts

Welcome all, hope we are all well 4 weeks into the lockdown here in Yarkshire, I for one am seriously missing some Fish and Chips with mushy peas and a breadcake !

This week I've finished a second unit of Foot Sergeants for my Kingdom of Jerusalem force, this time they are armed with a mixture of melee weapons, they took a bit longer to sort out than the previous unit due mostly to the shields.

I've used some shield transfers from Battle Flag, I bought two sets one battle damaged and one plain. The plain pack worked really well but I found the damaged ones disintegrating very quickly and had to throw a few of them away. I've not had this problem before, I've contacted Battle Flag but not had a reply yet.

I rather like this unit and they fit well with my Crossbow unit from earlier in the month, I've got a dismounted Knight, mounted Knight and Mounted Sgt unit and will most likely use the same livery to get a nice little force within an army.

So for the imagination, these are worth 121 points to add to the 563 from before moving me up to 684. Up next the start of my Cops and Robbers collection.

From TeemuL: Lee and Grant (16 points)

Something completely different again, as you might guess. A couple of 15mm World War 2 tanks to reinforce my Allied tank group for TANKS! (if I ever get to play the game).

Lee

These both are from the same box, it is possible to build two different variants from the parts and luckily I bought two of these on a sale. Since I expect to play TANKS at some point in this scale rather than any other game, I'd think it would be nice to have lots of different kinds of tanks rather than multiples of one. I might be wrong.

Grant

They were easy to assemble and fitted my approach of painting very well. I used my See-This-Is-A-Camouflage method on these, brown spots on green to indicate that they have a camouflage. And because I plan to use them on TANKS I didn't need to pay too much attention on historical details, so I skipped all the markings and weathering etc.

Later Grant has different guns and lower turret

These two bolster my Allied force on TANKS and they also use much less space when assembled and painted compared to having them non-assembled in the box, so I get my first ones on the S list.

U: 0 (total 3)
N: 0 (total 1)
W: 0 (total 1)
F: 0 (total 12)
R: 2 (total 14)

S: 2 (total 2)
Points:
16 points for 2 15mm vehicles (total 158)

From Minion TeemuL:

It is nice to see those M3 variants and I like your simple camouflage!

From GregB: 10mm Prussian Artillery for FPW

10mm Prussian artillery, ready for battle - models and figures from Pendraken.

Some more FPW progress that I'm happy to share - a bunch of 10mm Prussian artillery pieces and crews.  There are two Krupp "4 pounder" guns, and six Krupp "6 pounder" guns. The guns and figures are all from the excellent Pendraken.

Divisional guns - Krupp "4 pounders" - there were four batteries equipping each Prussian division.

The steel breech-loading artillery of the Prussian army hit very hard during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The artillery was far from the only reason the French lost, but it was a major difference on the battlefield and, as you might expect, accounted for a significant proportion of French battlefield losses. I use air quotes around the "poundage" of the guns as I believe this rating was a theoretical one, the size of rounshot that might fit in the barrel. The actual shells were heavier, had a much better range and hit harder than the equivalent roundshot. Bruce Weigle has an excellent overview of the artillery and firearms from the war in his rulebooks, which are 150% worth buying even if you never intend to play the games...

The BIG GUNS...Krupp "6 pounders", six batteries in a Prussian corps' artillery reserve.

It will be a tough thing for the French player if/when this lot deploys on the table...

The "4 pounders" were divisional guns for the Prussians, with four batteries equipping each division. The "6 pounders" were corps-level reserve guns, with six batteries available to each corps.

Another view showing the great details on the models and castings - Pendraken is fantastic.

Painting artillery is always tricky. Curt summed it up well for me with two words - "spoked wheels".  He is right, that is probably the worst part, but just in general I struggle to paint artillery and crews from any "black powder" era. I'm just not very confident about what the guns themselves "looked" like, or any of the equipment that went with them.  These were no exception, so it's great to have them out of the way!
  

I don't enjoy painting artillery, so it's great to get this bunch of it finished!

This lot will round out the artillery contingent for the Prussian side of the Wissembourg OOB - the German allies will have 18 batteries of artillery they can bring to bear on the poor French! My brushes now must turn to Prussian infantry and a few more command models in order for me to finally reach my goal of completing all of the models necessary for the battle in 10mm. I suspect, however, that there may be a diversion to different subjects along the way before progress on my 10mm FPW project resumes...

From Barks: Soviet NBC troops

Is there anything scarier than Soviet gasmasks? I used this quarantine challenge to finish off ten of these Eureka figures I started many years ago, and to add another five from scratch. I had to try and match my originals, and both my paints and style have changed in the meantime!

I was surprised at how quick they were to paint- no faces, camo, hands, boots, extraneous wargear, purity seals, skullz etc... They're lovely figures, and now I've gone and ordered myself a copy of Zona Alfa...

From PeteF: Elven Heavy Cavalry for SAGA (50 points)

Next out of my big box of randomness was this troop of Elven (Elfish?) Stormwind Cavalry from Mantic Games. The big box of randomness was the result of buying a kickstarter on EBay with all the add-ons and freebies. There are ogres, goblins, orcs, war engines, gargoyles and who knows what. I decided to build a SAGA Age of Magic army by blindly selecting one plastic bag at a time from the box.

A couple of weeks ago this packet of cavalry came out. They are made of a plastic/resin/vinyl material that allows for a decent level of detail. There are some downsides. At least for this kickstarter the manufacturer did not do a great job with mold lines. The material has to be superglued (I much prefer hard plastic and hard plastic glue for both the bond and filling in gaps). The fit of the various bits was far from perfect - they recommend bending the figures after bathing them in very hot water.

I am experimenting with Turbo Dork's colour shift paints and used "Forrest Flux" for the green metallics. The initial layer of green looked a bit heavy and even with the colourshifting was monotonous, so they got gold trim on everything. I tried painting the horse cloth green but it (and the cloaks) were better a more neutral white.

There are five stormwind cavalry on individual magnetized bases. They'll do for SAGA mounted hearthguard as well as a troop of heavy cavalry for Kings of War when stuck to a metal tray. The plan is to have a complete SAGA Age of Magic army done by the time the local games stores are open again. I hope all my fellow quarantiners are staying sane.