Whitewashed Shermans

So I've decided I have enough "summer" WWII stuff in 15mm so now I'm going to start painting minis for "winter".  For vehicles that means whitewashes.  This is my first whitewash.  To start with I painted the Shermans in Olive Drab and detailed the improvised sandbag armor.  I applied decals and then masked them with frisket.  Next I thinned down white paint to a milky consistency and applied that over the hull and turret.  I repeated this twice more after each application dried.  Then I applied a black wash (50/50 water/future floor polish with a few drops of black ink).  When that dried, using a small, worn out brush I scrubbed on white paint to highlight the white wash some.  Then, with the Olive Drab and a stiff brush, I "stippled" on some olive drab to represent the corners and areas where the white wash has rubbed off with campaign wear and tear.    "Stippling" in my case means taking the stiff brush wet with olive drab paint and punching it onto the hull and turret leaving little dots of OD on flat surfaces and at edges.  Repeat the white scrub and OD stipple until you get the look you want.  Then I removed the masking from the decals, applied matte varnish and hit the model with a khaki/sand color mix as drybrush to highlight again.

After all that, I decided the tracks and running gear needed some mud so I added color to spackling paste and applied with brush and highlighted with lighter mud color after drying.

A busy procedure but I'm satisfied with it as a first attempt.  Now I have some armor ready to fight the Bulge!

The minis are Quality Castings 15mm Shermans.

British SAS and LRDP

My latest efforts are British SAS and LRDP figures.  These are from Artizan's 28mm line.  Basing was accomplished with pumice, then completely covered in fine-screened aquarium rocks.  When that dried, I applied a watery umber coating, followed by watered down PVA.  When all that dried, I drybrushed with Vallejo Middlestone, then Dark Sand, then White.

Playing Around with a New Camera

So my wife the photographer got a new Canon Rebel T2 and I inherited her old Rebel T1.  Still a big jump up for me.  I took first set of photos with the new camera.  Much better I think.  The first photo uses the standard 18-55mm lens and the rest use a 60mm macro lens.  I like that macro lens.  Unfortunately, it was a loaner and I need to buy my own if I want to use it regularly.  Given the large 10+Meg picture sizes, I dropped them all to 640x480 pixels before uploading to this site, so they may lose something on zoom, but in the original photo I can zoom and crop and still have very good resolution.  And it looks like I need to adjust the white balance further on some of the images.

 
Miniatures are 15mm Battle Honors tanks and Resistant Rooster 15mm (really about 18mm) Fallschirmjager.

Black Death!

WWII Soviet Naval Infantry Brigade, 3 battalions strong with AT, artillery, SMG, Pioneer, and Mortar battalions attached.  15mm Battle Honors figures based for Command Decision Test of Battle (one stand = one platoon/battery).  The Naval Infantryman wore the distinctive black trousers/ dark blue tunic/black peacoat.  Their dark attire and zeal (some unit cohesion and often fighting on their 'home turf' naval base) when committed earned them the sobriquet "black death" from the German Army. 

A good link for some reference material.

German Forces, 15mm

 New German troops.  Battlehonors/Quality Castings 15mm.  Black primer, Panzer Grey, camo, black ink wash, highlights, lightt brown drybrush, light sand drybrush.  varnish.

Narva 1944, A Command Decision Scenario

Ran a Command Decision scenario this weekend at our local game club.  Went pretty well as a first run so I thought I would make the scenario information available to all.

Narva February 1944

The scenario uses information pulled from Wilhelm Tieke's book "Tragedy of the Faithful" and a sprinkling of information from various other websites and reference books.  You have the III SS Panzer Corps holding the Narva River line under some particularly stressful conditions in February 1944.  The Soviets have pushed infantry across the frozen Narva into a small bridgehead at a critical point near the German supply route.  The Germans are at their improvisational best scraping together a counterattack.  Otto Carius of the Tiger Tank fame leads the 502nd Heavy Tiger Battalion, reduced to only a few tanks, as part of the counterattacking force.

In the game we played the Soviets managed to get up the steep slope and also managed to knock out Carius' Tiger before it could do any damage.  Night time was falling as the game ended in a marginal Soviet victory as the bridgehead still existed.

Forest Templates for Wargaming

The last few weeks I've been constructing forest terrain as shown in the "Architect's of War" How-To site.  These are sized for 15mm miniatures using 2 1/2" roofing nails.  Basic process is cutting the the top and bottom templates, spreading caulk on the ground template, securing the nails, adding sand/grit/pebbles and allowing to dry.  Build the canopy template next by hot gluing Woodland Scenics "clumps" to the black foamboard.  Then I lightly spray the clumps with 3M spray adhesive and sprinkle on a little flocking.  Going back to the now dry ground template I paint with dark to light shades of brown followed by dark gray over the "tree trunks" and a light gray drybrush over the rocks and trunks.  Done.