TAG African Modern Militia 28mm Figures

I found The Assault Group's Modern Militia 28mm Figures to be an excellent fit for Ambush Alley's "Down on the Farm"  scenario from the Bush Wars Force on Force expansion.  They are properly armed according to what the scenario has laid out and fit well with the figures I have from Eureka that will be used along side these.

Rhodesian Guard Force - armed with Lee Enfield rifles - front

Rhodesian Guard Force - armed with Lee Enfield rifles - back

Rhodesian Civilian Farmers - armed with shotguns - front

Farmers - armed with shotguns - back

The pose of the guy on the left is really neat - looks like he is getting ready to look from around a corner or peek out a window.

I'm really pleased with these sculpts and will definitely keep TAG in mind in the future.

Fields of Honor Rhodesian Test Board Layout

Lots of photos to share in this update.  Most everything is done for the convention and the photos below show the tentative board layout planned for Fields of Honor coming up this weekend.  There are actually two more boards planned that would fill in the driveway to take place of the two regular landscape boards that I'll be using instead.  The additional road boards were cut from the plan partially due to time constraints and mostly due to the worn thin patience of my wife.  I guess I don't blame her since I've pretty much been working on building terrain non-stop every evening for the past couple months.  Anyway, what has been built turned out pretty decent and hopefully it will be fun to play on.  Enough preamble, here are the photos.

Overview of the farm compound

Overview of the board layout

View from between the storage buildings to the house

Night shot.

View of the chain link fence.

Storage building attached to office/machine shed

Side of the carport

Front of the house through the barb wire topped chain link fence

Front gates

Side door

Storage buildings

Back of one of the storage buildings next to a burn pit

Approaching the compound from the front gates

The 28mm miniatures to be used for the planned scenario have also been painted and just await their final seal.  I'll try to get them photographed and posted sometime soon.

Additional photos with outdoor natural lighting will be added when I get the chance as well.  The better lighting will be good to show the details of the individual pieces. 

Aircraft Stands

Two aircraft stands are now finished.  After a few minor adjustments from the original plan they look like they will work quite well.

First, I had to glue in the metal telescoping rods into the base.  Initially I thought I would be able to unscrew them for transport, but the threads that were inside the rod were able to spin preventing them from being fully tightened down.  This, in conjunction with the Sculptamold shrinking ever-so-slightly gave it a little wobble which was obviously undesirable.  Gluing them together isn't a big deal since the whole thing collapses to 6" which makes it fairly compact.

The second thing I did was to glue a more powerful magnet to the one already at the end of the telescoping rod.  Although the magnet included sort of worked, I didn't want to take any chances with an aircraft falling off.  The Lynx would have been at most risk since its washer is the smallest and it is a bit tail heavy.  Using a drop of Gorilla Super Glue on the top of the existing magnet, I just set the larger one on top of it and it was held secure.

The third item, which is another addition to the plan, was to Rubber Cement a piece of latex glove to the top of the stand.  Again, another precaution.  When positioning the Lynx in a dive, it had a tendency to spin on the very smooth magnet and go nose up.  The latex rubber gave it a bit more 'traction' and helped out with that. The latex should also help to protect the paint on the bottom of the models rather than them being stuck directly against a piece of metal.

Fully extended, the stand can suspend an aircraft 18.5" above the table. The washers provide a very stable base and should work fairly well...  We'll see how they fare at the convention this weekend!

The base was covered in Sculptamold and painted just like the rest of the terrain.

The top is very movable so the aircraft can be posed in some great attack positions.

Both stands as low as they go - 6".

The Alouette III is at its highest altitude - 18.5".

The total cost of each stand including the magnet, telescoping pickup tool, washers, and other bits is less than $5.00.

If you want something without having to make it yourself, you can check out Armaments In Miniature.  It looks like you have to email them your order, but they do apparently take PayPal and other forms of payment.

Air Support - Cheetah - WIP Part 2

The Cheetah is also about finished minus a detail or two such as the twin .303 guns which will point out the side of the aircraft. The engine cowling needs to be added as well - similar to the one I need to do for the Alouette.  I spent too much time masking and in hindsight should have glued the windows in prior to painting to make them blend better.  Still, I think it turned out pretty well - again for my first set of model aircraft.

Radio Outpost

The scenario I plan to run at the convention is Operation Uric.  It describes trenches and destroying of radio communications.  Due to a lack of photos, I took some artistic license and came up with this fortified radio outpost. 

I am quite honored to have won first place with this piece in a recent competition over at Terragenesis.  Below are photos of my entry:

Exterior details including DShK 12.7mm heavy machine gun from Eureka.

ZANLA defend the outpost.

Some interior details.

There are a lot more photos in this album if you are interested.  I didn't prune many so please forgive the repeated and sometimes poorly framed photos.

Eureka 1970's Rhodesian Miniatures

All of the figures for the Force on Force games I plan to run at Fields of Honor on Saturday September 24th are painted and ready to go. 

Overall I'm pretty happy with how the ZANLA turned out, but unfortunately my paint job on the RLI leaves a bit to be desired...  I couldn't figure out how to properly do the camo pattern and they are so packed with stuff (pouches, packs, webbing straps, canteens, etc) and are wearing shorts, there isn't much camo to paint.  The Caucasian skin didn't go well for me at all.  Since I planned on painting them as 'blacked up' with camo cream, I didn't spend much time on the skin.

Anyway, I really like the sculpts except for one small detail.  There are no eyes!  I'm not sure why they were sculpted with empty eye sockets.  I suppose I could have somehow filled them in with putty, but I was in a time crunch and skipped it.  The painted examples on Eureka's site didn't do anything with the empty sockets either so I don't feel so bad following suit.

Without further ado, here are some photos of the figures.  You can click on them to get a larger version.

1970's ZANLA Guerillas (28mm)

ZANLA Guerillas armied armed with AK-47s

ZANLA Guerillas armed with RPG-7, RPD, and AK-47s

Stop 1 armed with FN-FALs and MAG58 - Front

Stop 1 - Back

 1970's Rhodesian Light Infantry (28mm)

Stop 2

Stop 3 - Stick leader missing an antenna...I somehow couldn't find my wire...

Well, that is all for now.  Now to work on some air support...

Pulling it all Together

Below are a few quick shots of the African terrain laid out together.  Pardon the kitchen setting and just pretend the chairs are hills...or something. 

Looking from the termite mounds, past the village, the radio outpost bunker can bee seen through the bush.

Overview of the layout.  The AA gun emplacement at the bottom-right was my original test piece and turned out a bit too dark.  I'll eventually get around to repainting it to match the other pieces.  I'm still in the process of adding some grass patches to various areas on the layout, but for the most part these boards are finished and ready for Fields of Honor!

 Another view from a different perspective:

African Termite Mounds

Here is a shot of some termite mounds I made up using Sculptamold.   I mixed it up a bit thick - cookie dough consistency - and stirred in paint (Delta Mudstone + TerraCotta) then took small clumps of it and built the initial core which looks like an upside down ice cream cone.  The core actually makes good abandoned mounds or ones that have been ravished by anteaters by the way.  I let the cores dry and then added additional clumps of Sculptamold.  I looked at a few reference photos and tried to make them look similar.  As the outer layer dried, I poked a few holes here and there and made a few 'trails' using a dental pick.  For some of the larger mounds, I substituted the 'core' layer with carved pink foam to save on Sculptamold and time.  This stuff dries extremely hard resulting in some very durable terrain.

The tall grass is natural bailing twine (vs the plastic stuff) meticulously planted a few blades at a time with a tweezers.  This terrain piece measures 2'x1' and is part of my 3'x4' game board I plan on using at the Fields of Honor gaming convention.

African Shanty

Here is an small terrain piece I worked on for the 3" Base Competition over at TerraGenesis.  As the title of the competition suggests, the base is 3" on each side.  The tin is from a pop can and was all corrugated with a paper crimper.  Before corrugation, however, I sanded it with an orbital sander to make some holes worn through.  The armature of the tree is twisted wire covered partially in Sculpey and sawdust/glue.  I'll do a proper tree tutorial sometime in the future, but I need to give credit to 'grove den' and his great tree making thread.  The foliage for the tree is similar to that of making bushes - just apply the static grass to the small tree branches rather than the steel wool.

 

 The figure is made by Eureka Miniatures.  They are based in Australia and they have a US distributor as well.  I sculpted the tires from Sculpey. 

The competition was tough, but this project came out in 1st place.  I also have an entry in the Defensible Position Competition featuring a lot of the recent details that I've posted recently.  The competition ends soon so if you like it, please feel free to visit the site and vote for it!  Even if you don't vote, you should definitely check out the other great terrain related material on TerraGenesis.

Portable Generator

The radio needed some power so I created this portable generator.  I'm not sure where I came up with the design...  The goal was to have a diesel operated unit with a hinged lid on one side to allow for easy maintenance.  I thought I needed an exhaust pipe, but the result looked like either a big grill/smoker or a barn with silo (as one of my good friends pointed out). ;)  In any case, I found some reference photos and none of them had pronounced exhaust pipes so off it went!


This was my second go at the hairspray method described in the Tables post.  This time I used an airbrush to spray on the hairspray.  Unfortunately the added control over how much got sprayed left me with a layer of hairspray that was too thin resulting it a very difficult process to get the top layer scraped off when the time came.


Here are some WIP photos:
Except for the tires which I scavenged from an airplane model I built with 'gear up', this piece is scratch built from polystyrene sheets, rods, and tube.

 Undercoat of rust colors before sealing:

 The 'Communist star' was painted using a stencil I cut from paper and sprayed over with an airbrush. (Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the Communist Party and included it only for game flavor.)